Dismantling the dam and coming to wisdom
We all build worldviews based on what we reckon as righteousness. We have collected ideas and views to build an understanding of the world that we are proud of. When Nicodemus was confronted with a new, divine truth that conflicted with his worldview, he realized he was blocked. “You must be born again” Jesus said. What dams have we built that keep God’s wisdom from flowing through our lives?
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Transcript
In the name of the Father,
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Just some thoughts this morning looking at where we are, where we find ourselves, both in terms of this season, getting farther into this season, and also just in terms of the world where we find ourselves in uncertain days. I love that this Sunday, on Tuesday, when we were meeting with the whole team to look at the service, I love that we’re drawing on such rich, rich, images and languages, from our Hebrew chant, and Amy, thank you for that. Thank you for chanting the Psalm this morning. And then a Latin piece that the choir will sing a little bit later. And then, of course, all of our readings and prayers. I think that’s one of the things that we do well, not to brag about ourselves, but I think we do that well is to draw on wisdom where we can find it and to keep it close, to keep it closed in uncertain days, as we continue to wrestle with what it means and how we make meaning in the world in which we live.
So I have been struggling. I have learned the hard way over the years of being a priest, not really to sit down and write my sermons or to form them in a solid way, even in my mind, until Saturday. Because as many times as I have tried to do that during the week, then the world shifts completely off of its moorings come Friday evening, usually sometime, and then you’re left there with a wonderfully written and crafted sermon that actually does not really connect with the anxiety and the uncertainty that we feel. So yesterday I just spent time in the garden. I had a lot of chores to do, but I spent time in the garden digging. Digging barefoot. Trying to stay grounded and find some way to root myself with all that’s going on. And this image came to my mind as I was doing that and sitting there reading for a bit. And it’s a story, an awful thing, I think it was terrible, something I did as a child back in Arkansas.
So when we were kids, when we were really little, we lived in this little house on a street in town and behind on our side of the street, behind the houses was this, at the time it was a huge creek. It was huge. It was the size of the Mississippi River, in my mind. It was huge. Now when we go back there, it’s just a big ditch. But for a kid, for me, it was this huge creek and that’s where we lived back in the 80s. Growing up as a child in the 80s, which was a great time to grow up, we just lived back there. No one knew where we were for what seemed like days at a time.
But one day I had the bright idea that I was going to build a massive dam all the way across that creek. And so I went through all of the neighborhood and my rule in my mind that made sense was this: if they put it behind their shed, it’s fair game to be pilfered. So I went for, I don’t know how long, a few days pilfering concrete pieces, bricks, old boards, anything I could find to make this dam. And I made it. And in my mind it was beautiful. It was the size of the Hoover Dam. It was huge. I made it, and I also cleaned up several people’s sheds in the process. So it was a win-win. That was all going fine. And I was so proud of myself until it came a massive rainstorm. And my parents looked out and it had flooded into the backyards of everyone on this side, and I was smart enough to build it right behind our own yard, where they could clearly tell that it was me who had did it. If I was smart, I would have gone two doors down. So my dad came out and said, “What in the world?” And I said, “but it was great. Look at what I did. Look at what I made!” “You’re going to have to tear it down. You have to let the water flow.” And that was the image that came back to me all day yesterday. I had spent so much time. I was so proud of myself in my adolescent mind, that I had created and built this dam, and that I could do this. But it did harm, and I wasn’t really even aware of the harm that it was doing until my parents, who were wiser than me, said, “why don’t you tear that down and let the water flow?” And so I did.
That’s what’s stirring up in me, that we go through these cycles, it seems like. And I hear so many of you who call and come by and say, “what can I do? What do we do now? What do we do in days like this? How do we make sense of it?” And the truth is, we only really have one answer. And it has something to do with that memory of mine. And it’s: what is the spirit stirring up in your life? Something that you have made, some way that you are blocking that deep flow that needs to be broken down so that that deep truth and deep wisdom can flow.
What have we done? What are we doing in our lives so that we create, we construct, whatever it is, social frameworks, military frameworks, economic frameworks, the way we live, so that it is the damming up a deeper flow that needs to wash over all of us and move through life. To me, that’s a question always about wisdom. Wisdom. What is the deeper wisdom that we need to actually focus on? When so much around us seems uncertain and fearful it’s so easy to spin. It’s not helpful. It’s not for me. I can spin with the best of ‘em. But it’s not helpful. What do I do? How do I need to nurture my practice so that I can connect more deeply, more fully with the wisdom that flows through all of life? What does that look like? What shape does that take in my life? What shape does that take in your life? And how do we learn from each other? How do we compare notes and encourage each other? To call each other to account on the construction, the things that we’re grasping, the things that we hold on to, that we want that sense of certainty.
But the truth is, is that it’s dammed up, that flow. That the waters of life are not able to go and flow through our souls, our hearts, the way that they’re meant to. What does it look like? I love this text from today. The Old Testament reading is very short. Don’t you wish they all were this short? It’s very short. It’s just to the point. God says “Abram, go! And Abram went. Here endith the lesson.” But the Romans text picks this up, if you notice, and says “look back at what he did. Look back at what that was like for him in that moment of trusting.” And there’s this phrase that’s used: “And Abraham’s faith, his belief in God” and I love it, it’s a true Southern phrase, “was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Reckoned to him as righteousness.” What does that mean? On one level, it’s easy to think we can go up to a surface, superficial level and say “they’re qualified, moral statements that we each can make, backed up by certain text in the Bible.” We do that really well. We can pit against each other and claim our own sense of righteousness. That we’re right. That our thought pattern around this deep wisdom, we’ve taken it and we put it up in our heads, and that is pitted against someone else’s thought pattern. And that’s a battle of the righteous ones. But that’s not what Saint Paul says is going on. Saint Paul says there’s something deeper going on here with Abraham’s trust in that deeper flow, the deeper wisdom. That word righteousness is a curious one, because it actually has to do on its deepest meaning with the sense of having integrity. Being grounded in that flow of wisdom, that deep truth that permeates all of life, having a grounded sense of integrity. In English, when we pick it up, the root word of righteousness actually has wisdom in it. Right-wis which has been transmogrified through time to where we have it now. But it helps to know where it comes from, because it points to that deeper peace. Right?
We encounter something outside, beyond the constructs that we have put in place that challenges us. Challenges us to reground ourselves in that sense of wisdom that’s flowing through life. That’s what happened with Nicodemus. Nicodemus had a certain way of seeing the world, but he encountered something in the person, in the teaching of Jesus that challenged the way that he saw the world, and he couldn’t make sense of it. So he leaned in and he went, and I love it, he went under cover of darkness. Sometimes I need to do that. I just can’t bare myself to go out and admit that maybe I don’t have all of the answers, so go under the cover of darkness. Sometimes it works better. And he and Jesus have this exchange between them that is fascinating, where he says, “I know that you must be grounded because no one could do these things apart from being grounded in the presence of God. How do I make sense of it?” And Jesus says, “you must be born again.” And Nicodemus is off. He’s off the rails in a literal grasping mode, and Jesus just continues to invite him into an experience of touching, being nourished by that deep flow.
That’s where we find ourselves, I think. That’s where I find myself: wrestling and struggling, knowing that something exists beyond the constructs that I’ve put in place. My adolescent grasping, going, and pilfering all the things I can to construct whatever edifice I want to be proud of in any moment, and having someone, some insight, breakthrough and watching that flow and wash over me.
Here’s where I’m left. At the end of the day there’s an old saying of having a come-to-Jesus moment. You can come at it another way, too. I like to think of it as we-will-come-to wisdom. We will. At some point, we all will. We may come, like Nicodemus, under cover of darkness. We may choose to openly be curious and step toward it, and know that there’s something beyond our grasping mind. We may also be dragged, kicking and screaming, but at the end of the day, we will all come to wisdom and we will be grounded. The question is, during this season of lent, how could we nurture our practice so that we can actually taste and see here and now what the spirit has in store for us?
Amen.