Hilton Head Island, SC – December 29, 2024
The Chapel Without Walls
Proverbs 3:13-20; Psalm 90:1-12
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12
During the past year, I have preached several sermons in which advanced age was either the theme of each sermon or one of the themes. That may be because, subconsciously, I have felt my own advancing age far more in 2024 than in any previous year of my life. Furthermore, at age 85, I would guess that I am only a couple of years older than the average age of Chapel members who attend regularly. And beyond those two considerations, next Sunday will be the last service that will ever be held in this congregation. Individually we will continue to exist, but corporately The Chapel Without Walls will exist no more.
In the spring of 1951, President Harry Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of command of the American forces who were fighting in the Korean War. The majority of us here today are old enough to remember that occasion and its aftermath. The country was sharply divided over the wisdom or lack of same of the general’s insubordination and the President’s decision to fire MacArthur. On April 19, 1951, MacArthur gave a sort of “Hail and Farewell” speech to Congress. At that time I was twelve years old. I don’t remember if they let all of us out of school early to hear the speech or if I got permission to go home early to hear it, but I heard it live, and I have never forgotten it. At the end he quoted the words of an Army song whose opening lyric was this: “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” Well, that also is what old Christians do; we all just fade away.
Was it wise or foolish for a popular five-star general to ignore the clear instructions of his commander-in-chief? Was it wise or foolish for the commander-in-chief to relieve the general of his command? Does wisdom come with age? It was very unwise of the general, and it was politically damaging for the president, although militarily a necessary for the commander-in-chief.
Wisdom is an elusive quality, both to attain and to explain. If anyone manages to acquire wisdom, presumably it takes many years to do so. However, there are some children who seem to have more innate wisdom at age nine than many oldsters have at ninety, and some people with little education or social position have more wisdom than some people from the finest of families and graduates of the finest universities. When we lived in New Jersey fifty years ago, the governing board of the church provided a lady to clean the large manse for the pastor’s family. She had been born and raised in Sumter, South Carolina, and she had only a sixth grade education. Nevertheless, Lottie had a remarkable wisdom regarding many things, including human psychology, child psychology, canine psychology, interpersonal conduct, religion, politics, and the New York Yankees.
Wisdom is not facts, instantly remembering this and that about this and that. It isn’t knowledge as such, nor how to achieve this or that. Nor is wisdom intelligence per se, or intuition, as such.
So what is wisdom? According to my dictionary, it is “1: accumulated philosophic or scientific learning: KNOWLEDGE” (I respectfully disagree with the Merriam-Webster Company; untold millions of people have oodles of learning and knowledge, but they also have the wisdom of a small stone or, for that matter, a gallstone) “ability to discern inner qualities and relationships: INSIGHT c: good sense : judgment…. 2: the teachings of the ancient wise men.”
Wisdom is the ability to sort through the multitude of information that one has accumulated over the course of years and to suggest policies or actions that benefit those to whom the suggestions are offered. Historically, certain cultures and societies especially valued the advice of sages on how peoples from competing nationalities could get along with one another.
In the nativity story of Jesus in Matthew, it says that “wise men from the East” came to see the newborn baby. In the Persian culture, these men were known as Magi, a word related to the word “magicians.” We think of magicians as people who do slight-of-hand tricks, like pulling rabbits out of empty hats. In Persia, however, Magi predicted momentous events by following the movements of the stars. In other words, they were astrologers, but to the ancient Persians and many other people, astrology was considered a particular example of wisdom. I don’t say this to discuss the validity of the practice, I note it because, after all, it is Christmastime, and during this Advent and this Christmas, I have said almost nothing about Christmas. That is because in the first sermon of 2024, I said I would retire at the end of this year, and later I decided my last Sunday would be the first Sunday of 2025. That date is the exact date of our first service as a congregation in 2004, so today is our 21st birthday. Further to explain what I am trying to explain right now, the point of this parenthetical detour is to support the dictionary when it declares that one definition of wisdom is that it is “the teaching of the ancient wise men.” Five, ten, or twenty centuries ago, people revered both wise men and wisdom, even though today astrology is rejected by nearly everyone except particular presidential wives and other Hollywood personalities.
In the administration of President Harry Truman, Charles Bohlen, George Kennan, and John McCloy became known as The Wise Men. In the early years after World War II, they carefully studied the behavior of the Soviet Union. They concluded the only way to prevent a nuclear war between the US and the USSR was the threat of mutually assured destruction by the two superpowers. They persuaded both governments to follow that policy for over fifty years, until the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991. The wisdom of the Cold War averted the outbreak of a thermonuclear war. After the establishment of the European Union, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany seemed to be the only leader who could keep Europe united in the EU’s early years. Even though she has lost some popularity in the struggles the EU is now having, the Germans still universally call her Mutti: Mom. Until she retired from politics, she was in effect the Mother of the European Union.
For centuries, the leading church in Eastern Orthodoxy was the Hagia Sophia, the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. When the Ottoman Turks conquered the Eastern Roman Empire in the fourteenth century, it eventually became a mosque. Now, under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, it is a secularized museum. Wisdom is not always valued, and under the wrong kinds of leaders, it can even be publicly disregarded or disdained. Certain kinds of men are apt to dismiss the wisdom of the elite for the folly of the unwise.
In many languages, every word is deemed to be masculine, feminine, or neutral. In both Hebrew and Greek, “wisdom” is feminine. In the Bible, when the word wisdom is used, it is always called “she.” The entire Book of Proverbs is ascribed to King Solomon, but the scholars say the hundreds of proverbs that are collected there were written over the course of several centuries by numerous anonymous thinkers and writers. In Chapter Three, it says, “Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gets understanding, for the gain from it is better than silver, and its profit is better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her….Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace” (Prov. 3:13-15,17).
The way of wisdom is the way of peace. Therefore it is particularly fitting that in the original biblical languages, peace is a feminine word. Almost always it is men who start wars. If there were far more women as heads of state, there would be far fewer wars. By nature, women seem to be more peaceful than men, so it seems only proper that wisdom is also a feminine word. In German, “war” (Krieg) is a masculine word, as in Blitzkrieg: lightning war. Where is the wisdom in war? Is there truly ever wisdom in any war?
When the Soviet Union imploded, it appeared as though the world was heading into what would be a long period of peace. For a time that is what it felt like. Then came 9/11, and very soon afterward two long wars in in Afghanistan and Iraq. Then came Covid, and several million people died. There was much second-guessing of the decisions that leaders made during those upheavals. It is easy to observe mistakes looking back, but it is painfully difficult to know what can be done or what ought to be done before anything is done. Where are wise leaders when we need them most?
In our own nation, as in many others, the people seem to be divided into two equal groups: those who want wise leaders, and those who desire leaders who are committed to swift action. The two positions are certainly not antithetical, but the sharp divergence of each side creates leaders who tend to head in opposite directions. The result is that over time we lurch from one extreme to the other. Each coalition is sure it is calm and rational but that the other side is misguided and irrational. Each side is convinced that wisdom exists among them alone.
God did not create the human race to be in constant conflict with each other. Wisdom exists in many people and places. However, it is up to us to recognize wise leaders and to support them to the best of our ability. God does not force us to follow those who are wise, but He expects us always to be searching for those who exhibit wisdom, and who have the charisma to turn it into bold and decisive action.
Psalm 90 is a biblical summary of life as it passes from beginning to end. In 1714, Isaac Watts wrote a paraphrase of it in his famous hymn, “Our God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.” It is one of the most loved and widely sung hymns in all Christendom. The words remind us that life expectancy is seventy or eighty years. Amazingly, it hasn’t changed all that much in three thousand years. The Rev. Dr. Watts says, “Time, like an ever-rolling stream,/ Bears all its sons away;/ They fly, forgotten, as a dream/ Dies at the opening day.” To that poetic thought the Psalm responds, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”
Wisdom is not a talent that God reserves for the intellectually acute or the well-born or academically superior. Everyone is capable of acquiring some degree of wisdom if they put their minds to it. Those with IQs of 60 can develop their highest degree of wisdom as well as those with an IQ of 160. What is required for that to happen is for each individual to sort through all the knowledge and experiences they have and to come up with ways and means to help themselves to have better, more productive lives and to help others to do the same.
Parents assist their children best from infancy to adulthood by granting them whatever wisdom they have accumulated and by judiciously giving them advice on how best to live. Because the parents are a generation older than the children, those two generations are more likely to clash. The generation that is in the best position to enable their grandchildren to become wise in their earliest years are grandparents who live in extended-family circumstances. That was the pattern for most families in biblical times. It is only in the past century when most modern families did not live in the same community in an extended family situation. Now it is rare for a primary family (parents and children) to live where all their relatives are in the same extended-family environment. In any case, realistically most people our age are not able personally to bequeath wisdom to any one of our relatives, especially to children who are in their forties, fifties, or sixties. Furthermore, we should be wise enough to know not even to try.
So, how can septuagenarians or octogenarians or nonagenarians use their wisdom to benefit themselves? One thing is not to get upset with oneself or the world or God when we have creaky joints or sluggish brains or worn-out parts. It is unwise to imagine that we can live to be this old and to have no problems whatsoever that result from old age. A few people are fortunate enough to live to be 94 and to shuffle off this mortal coil with nary an ache or pain, but they are few and far between. We do ourselves no favors by complaining about problems of aging that we cannot change.
In addition. We must not allow ourselves to become overly discouraged by what we perceive to be evidence of social and political decline. Many churches all across the theological spectrum are losing members, mainly because large numbers of younger people have simply dropped out. A trend toward autocracy is also occurring in many countries around the world.
Robert Frost was one of the most sagacious of poets. I admire people more who are decidedly realistic about life rather than those who choose to delude themselves about the difficulties that life presents to all of us in one form or another. Robert Frost was a poet who didn’t gild the lily, which is one of the reasons I admire him so much. In his poem, The Death of the Hired Man, we see that stern realism in spades.
This poem was written in what teachers of literature call “free verse.” It does not rhyme, and each line is as long as it is. It tells the story of three people, a married couple, Warren and Mary, who own a small New England farm, and their hired man, Silas, whom Warren had fired some time ago. Silas was never a reliable or hard worker, He was shiftless and too often drunk. When Warren finally fired Silas, he disappeared for a few years, and then, when he was about to die, he returned to the farm. It angered Warren, who snarled with venom in his voice, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Mary, who is more warm-hearted than her husband, says to his biting comment, “I somehow should have called it something you haven’t to deserve.”
So I ask you, who is the wiser, Mary or Warren? Apparently Silas could drive a teetotaler to drink, but is that truth of any help to Silas on his way to his grave? Is of any assistance to Silas to point out his weaknesses to a man who knows he is dying? It is easy to see the faults of others, but is it wise to verbalize it, either to them or to ourselves? Is kindness wiser than harsh judgement? Is being supportive to miscreants more biblical than verbal slaps in the face? Are we wise enough to judge ourselves and our own missteps, or do we deliberately ignore them, trying to make our lives less painful than they already are?
In my opinion, for people as old as we are and as much as we have lived through and what we are likely to face for the rest of our lives, we will need to discover the wisdom to put up as equitably as possible with all the adversities we shall inevitably face. You know the expression, “It is what it is?” Well, there will be countless “It is what it is’s” in the near and more distant future that we will be required to put up with. They will be a severe test of our wisdom and our patience. It is pointless, as the apostle Paul said about a physical annoyance in his life, “to kick against the goads” of something that is unavoidable, and it is self-defeating to kick against the unkickable.
If any of us has lived this long and hasn’t learned anything about anything, it isn’t because we’re stupid; it’s because we’re either totally unobservant or deliberately ignorant. We must not allow ourselves to have no wisdom if we lived this long and have learned nothing about life. Instead, we should respond to God by saying, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” And remember: It’s never too late to gather a little wisdom. Besides, the lessons are free, and the classrooms are unlimited.