Proper 15 (20) Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost Year B - August 19, 2018 Be Careful What You Wish For Michael Booker

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1 P a g e 1 Proper 15 (20) Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost Year B - August 19, 2018 Be Careful What You Wish For Michael Booker I ve been married for quite a few years, and from time to time my wife is asked how we met. She has been known to answer the question with by saying that I used to be her dungeon master. This has, I m afraid, resulted in certain misunderstandings. I ve played the game Dungeons and Dragons off and on since In that game, the person who is referee and chief storyteller is called a dungeon master. (By the way, if you were thinking something else, shame on you.) When the game first started, the rule books were cryptic to the point of unintelligibility. In odd moments, though they gave clever guidance to assist the dungeon master. In the earliest versions of the game there was a magic item called a Ring of Three Wishes. It s basically a plot item lifted from the Arabian Nights. The game manual said that such wishes can do anything, but that the Dungeon Master should fulfill each wish in a way which is literal yet decidedly unpleasant. For example, if a person wishes for a million pieces of gold, fine. They ll suddenly be buried under them. If a person wishes for immortality, they would get that, yes, but not the eternal youth that would be needed to make such a thing tolerable. If a player got clever and

2 P a g e 2 wished for more wishes, well, the dungeon master was instructed to throw them into time loop so they become trapped for all eternity, wishing over and over again for more wishes. As a consequence, Dungeons and Dragons players learned to be meticulously careful about how they worded wishes. In our reading today from First Kings, Solomon finds that his devotion to the God of Abraham has rewarded him with a wish. God said, "Ask what I should give you" (1 Kings 3:5). This is an extraordinary opportunity, and it never appears anywhere else in Scripture. As a child, the story fascinated me. What would I wish for if the God who ruled over the universe would fulfill that wish? At this point we re supposed to say that Solomon asked for wisdom. That s usually the caption to this passage in the Bible. But a careful reading shows that this just isn t correct. What he says is this, Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil " That s not really about wisdom as such. Instead of asking for wisdom there is, of course, a word for that in Hebrew he asks for a mind that can discern good from evil. (Of course, had he actually asked for wisdom, that probably would have indicated that he wasn t lacking in wisdom. As Socrates noted,

3 P a g e 3 there s a profundity in knowing that you aren t wise that tends to elude people who aren t wise.) What he asked for was knowledge of good and evil, and at first glance that sounds to us like Solomon s asking for the ability to make sound ethical judgments. That would be a reasonable thing for a king to want to know, but the term here is a Hebrew idiom, a figure of speech, which doesn t mean what it looks like at first glance. The phrase good and evil in Hebrew can function like the phrase soup to nuts in American English. When I say, soup to nuts, that may not have anything to do with either soup or nuts. It s a way to say everything. And likewise, in Hebrew, good and evil is a way to say everything. So, in the story, God asks Solomon what he wants, and he replies, knowledge of everything. In other words, omniscience. The language here about discerning good from evil that might ring a bell. It echoes Genesis (2:16): And the Lord God commanded the man, You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil Moving on to Genesis 3 (1-5) we read: Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, Did God really say, You must not eat from any tree in the garden?

4 P a g e 4 The woman said to the serpent, We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die. You will not certainly die, the serpent said to the woman. For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Omniscience, knowledge of all things, is one of God s chief attributes. Solomon s wish is for the very thing that got Adam and Eve kicked out of the garden of Eden. This wish is a setup just begging for a catastrophic resolution. Solomon has just asked God for a bite from the Forbidden Fruit. What could possibly go wrong? Strangely, the request pleased God, making him a terrible Dungeon Master. God interpreted Solomon s request as benevolently as possible. God granted Solomon a wise and discerning mind, and in addition, riches and honor. According to folklore this isn t in the Bible Solomon was so well-informed that he could speak with animals and judge trials without needing to call witnesses. He also had a huge flying carpet and the ability to summon both demons and angels. Tradition describes him as an absurdly overbuilt hero. But why did God give Solomon what he asked for when he was just begging to be slapped down for it? Some people read the story to say that the wish was granted because Solomon didn t ask for something for

5 P a g e 5 himself, but for a gift that would help others. He wanted omniscience in order to rule well. So is this telling us that the secret is that God will give us what we want so long as we aren t selfish about it? I wish that were true. I wish that intercessory prayers prayers that I offer for other people.always worked. But they don t, at least not every time. We live in a physical world governed by physical laws. Remember that only one of the Twelve Apostles died of natural causes; the rest were killed for their faith. If God didn t step in to save them, then we have no business expecting that he owes us one, no matter how altruistic our motives. Despite his reputation as being the wisest man of all time, Solomon does do much in the Bible to merit that label. We re only ever given one story which actually demonstrates that wisdom, namely when he threatened to chop a baby in half. In truth, Solomon made a lot of terrible decisions, in particular his choices involving idolatry, which is kind of a big deal in Judaism. Theologian Adam Clarke noted in the 19 th century, No character in the sacred writings disappoints us more than the character of Solomon. God may have made him the wisest person who ever lived, but he sure didn t do much with that gift.

6 P a g e 6 It s possible that Solomon s understanding of the world made him depressed. We read these words in Ecclesiastes (9:11), attributed to Solomon: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. In other words, there s nothing at all new about injustice and suffering. But what should our response be? In our reading today in Ephesians, Paul tells the church to be wise. What does he mean by that? Well for starters, we can follow his advice and see the good that s around us. There are, even when things are at their darkest, sources of joy and beauty. We can then give thanks to God for those things. God s wisdom can then be called upon to decide how to act. Anytime we re wondering why God isn t solving the world s problems, we should ask why we haven t solved them. That isn t some sort of gotcha. We are finite creatures with limited resources and limited understanding. Of course the world s problems are larger than we are. We need God s holy wisdom to know when and how to act. We can t solve every problem, but we can put a dent in some of them. And there are billions of people on this planet who call themselves Christians. Maybe we are more powerful than we

7 P a g e 7 think we are. Maybe we can do more good in the world than we can imagine. And perhaps, just perhaps, God believes in us more than we believe in Him. Amen