Rev. Noelle H. Read

July 7, 2002

“Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”

First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta

Let us Pray:

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage

to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.

Who wants to be a millionaire?

You know that game show where each knowledge question takes the contestant to the next level. The more certain you are of all categories of information, the farther you progress toward the prize - one million dollars. That final treasure that says that you have made it. The crowd goes wild, cheering you on and your mind races to think of all the things you can buy with that cool million! You have achieved the mission impossible! You are a credit to the school system, you answered the impossible question of what happened in 1066! You always hoped that bit of knowledge would pay off someday…and today was the day! You have proven yet again….as great game show winners before you…knowledge is power.

And we do quest for knowledge; we surround ourselves with books and marvel at the amount of pure, raw information that the web provides at our fingertips. IN fact, while researching for this sermon, I surfed the net for over 4 hours looking for at least one sermon written on verses 25-27 of today’s scripture reading. I found not a one, and I searched and searched the files of the world’s greatest, best-known theologians and preachers …zilch. Oddly enough, I did find many on the ending of this passage, verses 28-30.

A mystery not to be solved, at least not that day. Like many of my net surfing adventures, I was frustrated to learn yet again, the amount of knowledge I just don’t know. Perhaps the old adage holds true, the more we learn, the more we learn how little we know. This morning I feel like I am a Judge Judy – in a courtroom watching events unfold in a rather typical way. When all of a sudden, like a Law and Order episode, out comes a surprise witness to testify to that one key piece of evidence that undoes the seemingly airtight case.

This morning that one witness is this biblical text. Called into the courtroom to stand witness over and against our own understanding; what seems to us to make sense. See, the text pulls us out of this world where knowledge and certainty guarantee a treasure and reward and into a shade of gray. A world where things are hidden from the wise only to be revealed to infants and

children. Where we think we have it figured out, when wham, someone with all the knowledge, changes it. So where logic was once the roadway to answers but now the roadway is that illogical pathway known as blind trust.

Let’s reach back into our childhood; remember The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis? Where by walking through a seemingly innocent coat closet the children find themselves in a strange new world? Or maybe you remember the Wizard of Oz. Visa vie a tornado, Dorothy of Kansas is transported to a place over the rainbow called Oz. Or for the more contemporary folk out there…remember the Matrix? The main character, Neo, played by Keanu Reeves takes a pill that ushers him into a new world, a new way of being. Though made in different years, these movies all play with a common theme, “What seems certain is up for grabs.”

Now, our scripture reading for this morning is not a movie, but it too plays with the same theme. In the world of Jesus, the lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the lepers are cleansed, and the poor get something…good news.

The world of Jesus stands in sharp contrast to the world of the Pharisees as given to us by the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew wants to make sure that through this Gospel, Jesus, the teacher, is without a doubt, the long awaited messiah; the holy messiah that came to fulfill the law of God. The author of Matthew purposefully begins with Jesus’ genealogy, linking Jesus not only to Abraham and David, but also attests to the working of God throughout history and in surly unexpected ways; even through such unlikely people as Rahab the harlot.

Into the calm pool of empty legalistic law, Matthew lets loose a drop of disruptive truth. The law; that which according to theologian John Calvin was to restrain the wicked, reveal our sin and most of all, to reveal the will of God, had its place at one time. Calvin said that it was the law that held the mind in readiness until the Messiah came; the law kept alight the desire for the

awaited Messiah.

Jesus doesn’t necessarily critique the law, but rather the empty legalism of it. Jesus comments, “because John eats nothing the Pharisees say “He has a demon.” And, because Jesus eats and drinks they say he is a glutton and a drunkard.”

It is making an assessment out of context and with very little understanding.

It is like saying:

Just because someone is homeless, they don’t want to work.

Just because someone is having a drink, they are an alcoholic.

Just because someone drives a pinto, they are poor.

Just because someone carries a Bible, they read it.

Can you remember asking your parents “WHY” about something and getting the pat reply, “Because I said so.” Period.

It is to this legalistic thinking of the Pharisees that Jesus answers “Yet, wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” Actions tell only a small part of the wisdom behind them, they do not tell the whole story. Eugene Peterson In the Message, translates this verse by saying, “the proof is in the pudding”.

Wisdom informs the way we act. German Theologian Karl Barth says that, “wisdom is the knowledge by which we may practically and actually live.” Wisdom is a guiding principle. Unlike legalism, which thrives in certainty and struggles to remain confined; wisdom cannot be confined.

Columbia Seminary Professor Kathleen O’Connor writes this about wisdom, “Ultimately, biblical wisdom is neither innate talent, nor disciplined human achievement. It is divine gift. Wisdom is something or rather someone to be sought after, to pursue and pray for. But finally it is wisdom who finds us.

***

In the Spirit of Who Wants to be a millionaire, I have a quirky bit of trivia for you today. A poll was done in the year 2000, in Britain and guess what its favorite word is? Serendipity. That’s right, serendipity. You know that word we like to use to describe chance meetings, rare instances, those things we just can’t explain. The word comes from a Persian fairly tale called the Three Princes of Serendip, where its three heroes – the 3 princes – regularly go about discovering things they were not looking for. As a good friend once told me, if we overlook the source of serendipity, we miss the point of it. England’s serendipity is the church’s revelation from God. What is typically called “waiting for Fate,” is our certainty of God’s providence. God’s providence and revelation is neither a chance encounter nor a crazy coincidence. It is the hand of God reaching out toward us, beyond the boundaries and flat certainties of legalism.

So, wisdom given in God’s revelation transcends what we can pin down, capture, or control. Our scripture reads, “no one knows the Son except the Father and no one knows the father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal himself.”

Karl Barth says, “Knowledge of God takes place where divine revelation takes place, illumination of man by God”. Revelation, the unveiling of that which was hidden, is God’s choice, God’s gift, God’s decision. Not one we can manipulate.

It is at this point that it is important to ask 2 guiding questions: What does this say about God? And what does this say about and for us?

Well it says that it is God who hides and it is God who reveals; revelation is God’s divine initiative. It is God who discloses himself. It also tells us that if we want to know God, we look to Jesus Christ. There is intimate relationship here! It is in and through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit that God lifts the veil of mystery to show us not only God’s nature, but God’s will

and purpose. Jesus Christ is the final revelation of God. Final, not meaning that God will never again act in the world for from Scripture we learn that God continues to move and act. Rather final meaning the end all beat all! Jesus is the decisive, fulfilling and unsurpassable witness of God. It is through the revelation of Jesus Christ that all other revelations of God are seen. Jesus is like the photo developing fluid for snapshots of God; it is through Jesus that we see things clearly.

We also learn that God’s revelation makes no room for empty dry legalism Jesus has higher authority than the law for he came to fulfill the law. He invites all who are weary of trying themselves to take his yoke and to learn from him. Knowledge of Jesus is not knowledge for knowledge sake, for in Jesus Christ we see knowledge in action – we see him bend in compassion to the sick and the unwanted. We see Jesus transform with his touch and heal with his radical teachings. When we see Jesus, we see God.

So what does this say about and for us?

Well, we know we humans do seek to know God. We have gathered here today to not only worship God, but because we also seek even a glimmer of God.

We learn that God made sure humans could not find God through our own brilliance for it is God who finds us; IQ gives us no foot up on knowing God. I Corinthians 1:15-30 says that God chose deliberately to use ideas the world considered foolish, a plan despised by the world, to make those considered great by the world, to be nothing. All so no one can brag in the presence of God. If one is to brag, let them brag in what the Lord has done…it is in the Lord that God revealed God’s plan for salvation, His will. It is to children or infants says today’s scripture. Children – those who let God be God on God’s terms and don’t try to box God in but rather wait on God’s word, for God’s action and rest in the mystery of God.

A professor once told her students before a grueling test, “You know more than you think you know.” She knew that the uncertainty of the test erases even the faintest glimmer of what her students once knew. In terms of God, it is at this point that we know God the most. When we give up trying to figure it all out, have all of the right answers, give up control and just trust in

faith.

A friend of mine once told the story of her rock climbing experience. There she stood all harnessed up in front of what she described to be a smooth sheet of rock – so smooth she decided that there was no way to possibly climb it. Where were the footholds? The handholds she asked! Her instructor replied, “you just have to trust they are there; even if you can’t see them now.” To her amazement, her instructor was right! Places that didn’t look like indentions in the rock were indeed safe and secure places for her hands and feet. Trusting in the words of her instructor, she made it to the top of the rock face.

Trust in faith.

*

In last week’s sermon, Charles Black spoke about the inconvenient call of God. Well the revelation of God is also neither always convenient or in expected ways. It may come when and where we least expect it, we may even over look it…but one thing we know for sure, it comes. This is the biblical witness, this is the witness of Jesus Christ.

It does come. We have to trust in this promise. I’ve seen it, have you? Maybe you too have missed it, as I have many times. It is like expecting someone to come in the front door and they really come in the back door and catch us by surprise.

But I didn’t miss it last Friday. There I sat in the car dealership waiting for my car to be fixed, I began reading Hospitality, the newspaper publication of the Open Door Community located here in Atlanta. The Open Door is an intentional Christian Community committed to serving the homeless, working poor and the imprisoned in Atlanta – a big job by the way. I read the articles, the updates and then turned to the last page where they have reader letters printed. I couldn’t believe that there were 4 letters signed simply “a friend in prison”; four letters praising God and witnessing to God’s care, love, and even God’s miraculous ingenuity. Imagine, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ present in the penal system the state of Georgia. As one prisoner exclaimed “truly God is able”. And to think, a revelation of God’s nature of providence and compassion revealed to me at a Volkswagen dealership. It was not a revelation to me because I thought “O, even though they are imprison they have found Jesus.” Rather, it hit me that I too am a prisoner – to guilt, events of my past, and it is in the darkest places of my life that God comes to heal, transform and to affirm that I am a beloved human child of God. Thanks be to God!

So who wants to be a millionaire? Who cares? There are more important things that we are waiting to have revealed to us.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Let us Pray:

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage

to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. In

Christ, Amen.