In testimony to how fast
time flies, it has been just over 25 years since Robert Fulghum wrote
his classic in the genre of wisdom literature entitled All
I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.
He wrote trying to capture a child's sense of wonder at things that
are otherwise ordinary. He begins the book saying:
“All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how
to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the
graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday
School. These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair.
Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up
your mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re
sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life --
learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and
play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go
out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick
together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the
Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody
really knows how or why, but we are like that. Goldfish and hamsters
and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup -- they
all die. So do we. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the
first word you learned -- the biggest word of all -- LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there in that list somewhere. The
Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation, ecology and politics and
equality and sane living. Take any one of those items and
extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your
family life or your work or your government or your world and it
holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be
if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk about three
o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a
nap. Or if all governments had a basic policy to always put things
back where the found them and to clean up their own mess. And it is
still true, no matter how old you are -- when you go out into the
world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.”
Robert Fulghum's words
here are wisdom, not flashy words of philosophy or powerful
persuasion. They are just little tidbits of truth in the form of
rules to live by to help us through life on the good side. Well, the
ancient Jews also collected such words of wisdom. We find them in
such books of the Bible as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Yet, their
ideas of wisdom were a little different from Robert Fulghum’s
kindergarten maxims. You see, Fulghum collected his wisdom from his
life experiences. The ancient Jews, they collected their wisdom from
the midst of lives lived in relationship to God. For the Jews,
wisdom came from God and in a sense it was the very mind of God as
Paul seems to indicate to us in today’s text by saying that we have
the mind or mindedness of Christ and wisdom is the byproduct of
living accordingly.
To the ancient Jews,
gaining this wisdom comes through two avenues. First,
worshipping God is where wisdom begins as the writer of the book of
Proverbs tells us, “The fear (or reverent awe) of the Lord is the
beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
Wisdom is rooted in the awesome gobsmack that comes with knowing one's
utter dependence on God who is steadfastly loving and utterly
faithful and therefore why would one want to go against him. Second,
wisdom also comes to us as the collected lessons learned by people
who have walked in the ways that the Lord God revealed in the Law,
the Ten Commandments. An ancient Jew would say that a truly wise
person tries to get to know God by walking in the ways given by God.
Well, if we were to apply
these insights from the ancient Jewish faith to our own, we can say
that Christian wisdom comes from worshipping God and by conducting
our lives in the way which Jesus showed us when he went to the cross. For the Apostle Paul
both the Law and the accumulation of Jewish wisdom came to their
fullness in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the
incarnate Son of God. Jesus Christ and him crucified as offensive and
scandalous as it might be is the only wisdom we need according to
Paul. This simple message of a man (well, not just any man) being
crucified and risen from the dead when accompanied by the witnessing
power and presence of the Holy Spirit reveals to us the wisdom by
which and in which we are to conduct our lives.
Paul tells us that he
went to Corinth not to persuade anybody to follow Jesus Christ by means of
wise words or piercing argument. Rather he came preaching the gospel
of Jesus Christ who was crucified by man and raised by God. The fifteenth chapter of 1
Corinthians states Paul's message, “For I handed on to you as of first
importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins
in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that
he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and
that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to
more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom
are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James,
then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he
appeared also to me....in
fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those
who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has
come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so
also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order:
Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to
Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the
Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.
For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For "God
has
put all things in subjection under his feet."... When all things
are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to
him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all
in all.”
This message of a man
dying and being raised from the dead and by that event - and not just
the event but who it was that died and was raised - our sin is dealt with
and death ultimately defeated sounds foolish to those who are
perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God.
We may want to ask how. First, we must note that it is by the
workings of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit opens our eyes and our
ears and our minds and our hearts to believe this message that
the Triune God of grace has finally intervened to heal his beloved
humanity and indeed the whole creation of sin and save it from
ultimate and final death and has made the new life in Christ
available now, implanted in the midst of the old. You see, the Holy
Spirit comes to indwell us and so binds us to Jesus the risen and
ascended Lord so that we share in the relationship that God the Son
shares with God the Father. The Holy Spirit points us to Jesus,
binds us to Jesus, and causes us each to know ourselves to be a child
of the Father just as Jesus knew himself to be, that at the end of the day
come what may we are God's children and the Father loves us as much
as his own only begotten Son. He is for us to the same extent that he
was for Jesus. The steadfast love and faithfulness of God the Father
is the final word with respect to each of us. God the Father, the
God and Father of Jesus Christ, is our Father too.
Knowing ourselves to be
loved by the Father as much as he loves the Son, is at the heart of
what it is to have the mind of Christ. The Spirit, the Holy Spirit
who knows God’s thoughts and ways, who is the personification of
the communion of love that the Father and Son share has been given to
us. We know this because we can look at the cross and the one who
died on it and it means something very profound for us. It is the
love of God objectively displayed for all to see. We look at the
cross and understand that the self-giving, obedient love which Jesus
the Son of God showed to us by going to the cross to reconcile us to
the Father and destroy sin and death in the process is the way we
ought to live. When we see the cross with eyes illumined by the Holy
Spirit we see the way of the love of God. When we hear the gospel
message amplified by the Holy Spirit, we hear the call to obedience
and feel compelled to follow in that way to become ambassadors of
reconciliation; compelled to question ourselves, our motives, our
actions, our drives, and even our goodness and indeed find even that
wanting in comparison to the great love of God in Jesus Christ. The
Holy Spirit places within us and compels us to live by the same
drivenness that characterizes Jesus' cruciform way of life: the same
self-giving, unconditional, indeed sacrificial, and apparently
wasteful love that is what defines being obedient to God the Father
as was God the Son.
All we really need to
know about how to live and what to do and how to be we learn not in
kindergarten but at the foot of the cross. The cross is wisdom to us
not foolishness. The way of the cross is the wisest way to live in
this world and by living it we come to understand better who our God
is and what he has done for and indeed in us. In all it's weakness
and shame the message of the cross is the power of God for our
salvation. At the cross we see the extent of the love God has for us
each and indeed all of creation. In the cross of Christ we see the
self-giving way in which we must live and we desire to live by it.
So, let the way of the cross be the lens through which you see and
understand your life in Christ and live accordingly the reward is truly knowing Jesus. Amen.
