THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM

May 29, 1988
11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church

Scripture
Proverbs 1:1-7
John 3:1--8

"The wind blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it, but you do not
know whence it comes or whither it goes.” -~Jobn 3:8 (RSV)

One of the hottest courses at Harvard this spring, according to the
New York Times last Sunday, is not Marketing Analysis or The Art of
Corporate Takeovers. It is “Jesus and the Moral Life," taught by Harvey
Cox, a Professor at the Divinity School who also lectures for the
University. Last year a thousand students signed-up for the course. It
was too large for any of Harvard's classrooms and had to be moved to a
theater. This year Professor Cox has limited enrollment to 450. Everyone
is stunned by this dramatic and rather sudden interest in religion at one
of the brightest, best and most secular of our institutions of higher
education. Some judge it harshly. Others are ecstatic. Most are puzzled.
Cox himself is not sure why the course is popular except that students are
clearly seeking ideas that will help them cope with an uncertain and
frightening future.

One of Cox's colleagues sees the course as “learning a way to think
about those issues that are pressing into the lives of students. They want
to know what Western religious traditions have to say about life, death,
career choices and work." [New York Times Magazine, 5/22/88]

More people than we realize, I think, turn to religion for
intellectual reasons, for answers: for intelligent ways to think about
life's tough questions: for a reasonable framework in which to live life.
Net everybody finds it at a revival meeting or sitting in front of TV. Not
everybody is content with the “try harder, lock up and keep smiling" piety
marketed with such consummate media skill. Some come to the Lord with a
list of questions.

Nicodemus was one of them. A Pharisee, a well educated man.
Successful. Substantial. A kind of lawyer. Reasonable, rational and
prudent. So prudent that he comes to talk to Jesus at night. All thal we
ordinarily recall of that incident is that in Verse 16 the author of

the Fourth Gospel starts to editorialize a bit and writes one of the

must memorable lines in al] of literature: "For God so Joved the world
that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should aot perish
but have eterna] life.“ [John 3:16] That's not Jesus talking to
Nicodemus. That's John preaching, addressing you and me.

What Jesus says to Nicodemus remains very much an enigma. Nicodemus
opens the conversation with a lawyer-like observation that no one can do
the things Jesus is doing unless God is with him. I think that's basically
a question. “How do you do it, Jesus? Who are you anyhow?" Jesus doesn't
answer but instead makes his own observation about the need to be born
again in order to see the Kingdom. The interrogator cannot resist: "How
can a man be born when he is old?" Again Jesus ignores the question, says
some more about rebirth, and then these intriguing words -

“The wind bliows when it wills, and

you hear the sound of it, and you do

not know whence it comes or whither it
goes; so it is with every one who is born
of the Spirit." [John 3:8]

They talk some more in this strange way. John adds his editorial
homily about God so loving the world and Nicodemus disappears until the
end. Then we see him again, on the day of the crucifixion, after sundown,
helping Joseph of Arimathea (another substantial man) carry the dead body
of Jesus to Joseph's garden for burial.

I have always been intrigued with him. My assumption, based on
nothing except my own imagination, is that Nicodemus continued to ask
difficult questions. I see him always on the periphery of the moment,
never going in, but always asking questions - "What does that mean? Could
you clarify that?" And I've always imagined Jesus appreciating that, being
irritated by it at times, by the necessity of clarifying what he said for
Nicodemus; but actually respecting and loving him for it. I've always
imagined Nicodemus' relationship to Jesus on this intellectual basis -
growing in confidence, trust and intimacy ~ but never willing to let go of
the lawyer's commitment to skeptical questioning, doubting, probing, in
order to get at the truth. People like Nicodemus don't believe easily;
don't join up without a real struggle, never act impetuously, don't allow
passion to overrule reason. And so I've always been fascinated that he
came to Jesus in the first place. The older I get, the more touched I am
by his helping to carry the dead weight of his young friend to burial.

He came with a list of questions. So do a lot of people, I think. I
did. What a wonderful surprise to discover that there are academic
faculties subjecting religion to the same academic rigor, disciplined
research, and intellectual criticism as happens at the Physics Department
or the Medical School. What a wonderful surprise to discover professors
whose vocation, practiced in a divinity school, is the same as professors
of mathematics, literature and biology - the pursuit of truth. I like
that discovery. TI was not so happy about its corollary; namely, that
religion does not always enjoy a reputation for truth-seeking, academic
rigor and intellectual integrity. The memory of the discovery is still
very much with ame.

5/29/88

IJ came to the Divinity School (of the University of Chicago) fairly
innocent of much academic religion. In college I had never declared myself
openly as a pre-ministerial. student, partially because I wasn't at all sure
what I was, but also in part out of fear for what that might do to my
social life. Neither did I experience much academic hostility to religion,
other than one Economics professor who enjoyed a reputation as an eccentric
atheist, who loved to badger and insult Campus Crusade for Christ types -
who got very excited when he attacked their simple faith. I just kept
showing up at the Presbyterian Church on an occasional Sunday morning —
with my list of questions. “Is it true? How can it be? What does it
mean?"

So I came under the cover of some darkness: I suppose Like Nicodemus
came to Jesus, discreetly, asking questions. I discovered immediately that
everyone else seemed to have lots of opinions, liked to argue and quote
authorities whose names I barely knew... Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich,
Kari Barth. I had read nothing by any of them. So on a Saturday morning,
early in September, I decided to remedy the situation. I walked down 57th
Street to a smail book store, encountered a counter-culture type we used to
call beatnik, with all the appropriate costuming and studied lack of =’
grooming, and asked innocently if he had anything by Niebuhr, Tillich ‘or
Barth. He must have been lying in wait for me — sitting there since. July,
waiting for the first fresh twenty-one year old Divinity School student
from Central Pennsylvania. He flew into a rage. I couldn't begin to
repeat the language with which he told me what he thought of Neibuhr,’
Tillich and Barth, religion in general, and the Divinity School in
particular... No, he didn't carry stuff Like that, nor would any book:
seller interested in truth. Religion was childish, silly, and there was no
reason why it would be present in a serious book store. I suppose I. .
protested. What I remember is being shocked at the hostility and the open
conflict, at least in his mind, between the intellectual rigor of the
academic life and religion. - .

There is evidence that things are changing a little, and that
religion is becoming a new and very respectable topic for rigorous inquiry.
Nicodemus must be happy. I think Jesus is happy with it, too. But he was,
please remember, if not negative, at least cautious with Nicodemus. He
seemed to be warning Nicodemus that faith is not something that you can pin
down, ultimately. Faith is not something you can learn like a list of
vocabulary words. Rebirth - or faith - is like the wind. It comes from
somewhere else. It is illusive. Sometimes you can feel it - sometimes you
can't. It is not, that is to say, the same as a mathematical formula.
Although even mathematics is not as precise and nailed down as we used to
think. -

‘Perhaps Jesus was anticipating the danger posed by the adherents of
religion who have everything figured out. Perhaps he was warning
Nicodemus, and us, that every time people are convinced that they have ali
the truth, it begins to make sense to them to use whatever means are _
hecessary to convince others to adhere to that truth. That's the way the
people thought who brought us the inquisition; it's what Fundamentalists
believe when they want to dictate what textbooks can be presented as

science, or when fanatic Islamic fundamentalists throw themselves into Holy
Wars.

I was reading an essay on the Male Aging Process (a topic in which I
have something of a personal interest) by Pete Hamill, who describes his
own determined and intentional secularism - at the age of 52.

“Any truly conscious middle-aged American must recognize that belief
is the great killer of the century. Political belief has slaughtered
millions. Religious belief has slaughtered the rest. ‘Agree with me or
die' has been the essential Slogan of the believers, at home and abroad,
and you could fill every line of every page of every newspaper in the world
with the names of the victims and still not have enough room. And yet we
cannot seem ever to get free of them; charlatans pose as wise men; hustlers
- offer themselves as redeemers... So in middle age I am permanently
secular." ["The Best Is Yet To Be?" Pete Hamill, Esquire, June 1988]

How very sad that is ~ because one of our oldest religious traditions
has to do with wisdom. In a recent article, a Brown University professor
suggests that the uniqueness of the Judeo/Christian tradition is that in it-
intelligence is celebrated. Its holy literature contains attempts to 9°:
explain creation and history, to put down in writing everything that is -
known. Wisdom is honored, not physical strength, sexual prowess, military =. -
might. But wisdom. .The wise person is one who knows, understands; sees". ~
clearly — and has the practical knowledge to live in harmony with nature; © =
and in peace and justice with neighbors.. ao

- So the tradition has: always encouraged the life of the mind. *
Learning has been honored. in Judaism through the centuries. . In ‘the’ :*" ©
ghettoes. - even in the extermination'camps -— there were poetry reading-*
. groups,.. writers‘. workshops,-chamber..music.’:-We Christians enjoy that
legacy. The early Christians ended up on top of the Roman Empire, someone”:
observed, because they had. ail the brains; they out-thought everybody.’ The © ©
Gospel of Christ attracted the best minds in the world. In our particular ©
corner of the church, Calvinism has always celebrated academic discipline, -~
and has been a consistent proponent of public education and academic
freedom. Our forbears started colleges everywhere they went -— from

Princeton to Lafayette, Waynesburg, Wooster, Hanover, Lake Forest,
‘Monmouth.

But the undercurrent of the conflict, I discovered that September
Saturday, continues. Utterly convinced that it had the whole truth, the
church took on Copernicus and Galileo and, of course, Charles Darwin.
Misguided religionists continue to oppose open scientific inquiry, to ask
adherents te leavé their intellect outside the church door, like so many
umbrellas in the umbrella stand, and to prove the old stereotype of
religious faith as “trying to believe what you know to be untrue."

‘The students at Harvard are discovering, I think, that the world
needs: something the Judeo/Christian tradition calls wisdom. “The beginning
of wisdom is the fear of the Lord" — the ancient Scripture reads. What do
you suppose that means? . It is not fright, terror. It is awe, reverence.
It is the suggestion that wisdom begins with the acknowledgement that there
is truth beyond my limited ability to understand it. Wisdom begins with
modesty before God, or at least before that which I do not know. Wisdom
begins —- where religion begins - with a confession that I don't know

05/29/88

everything and have everything: a confession of inadequacy, emptiness and
need. Learning starts when an individual coufesses that someone else has
what he or she does not have.

The most eloquent proponent of that position cantinues to be a
scientist, Lewis Thomas, head of the Sloane Kettering Cancer Clinic ‘and
popular author. In all his essays Thomas writes about wonder,
bewilderment and awe before the magnificent mystery of life. What we do
best is "learn," Thomas says.

One of my favorite Thomas quotes (and I have a lot of favorites): is
this -

"The only solid piece of scientific truth
_about which I feel totally confident is that

we are profoundly ignorant about nature.

Indeed, I regard this as the major discovery

of the past hundred years of biology... We are,

at last, facing up to it. In earlier times,

we either pretended to understand how

things worked, or ignored the problem, or

simply made up stories to fill the gap."

[The Medussa and the Snail, p. 58]

So maybe science can teach us something that we have forgotten: that
the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord; or at least reverence
before the mysteries we do not understand.

The best scientists know that. Albert Einstein was not traditionally
religious, but he did say once:

“Religion without science is blind.
Science without religion is lame."

At a time when it is possible to blow up the world by accident, the
ancient wisdom of the Bible looks very good. We have the technological
capability to biow up, burn, gas, poison, infect everybody in the world.

So do other nations. So will many other nations in the very near future.
We are in the process of killing the fish in our oceans, depriving the
ecosystem of the rain forests it must have to manufacture oxygen; and we are
apparently burning holes in the atmosphere. Our technology has outrun our
wisdom. We can do more things than we know how to do right.

The poet Shelley said that a long time ago --

"we have more scientific and economic
knowledge than can be accommodated. We want
the creative faculty to imagine: our
calculations have outrun our conceptions.”

The optimist in me wants to see the renewed interest in religion as
evidence that the human race is waking up to the graveness of our
situation. The optimist in me wants to regard the Holocaust. as- a‘ life-—
giving reminder, that knowledge is not the equivalent of goodness; that

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technological skill is as capable of killing us as it is of saving us. I
am comforted by a recent report that our Military Academies, for instance,
are teaching poetry, history and English, along with engineering: that 30%
to 40% of the graduates major in the liberal arts. I'm comforted by those
bright Harvard students sitting at feet of Harvey Cox. The world needs
wisdom that begins somewhere in the vicinity of the fear of the Lord.

Our city does too. We could use a dose of balance, modesty, and
practical truth-telling. We desperately need political wisdom that is not
arrogant and impetuous. Someone has to be wise enough to say that racism
is wrong; that we struggled, sacrificed and died a little to move away from
the institutional racism of the past - because we knew it was wrong. And
so it is still wrong - whether its perpetrators are White or Black —
whether its victims are Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, or whoever. If the fear
of the Lord is where wisdom begins, then this city needs nothing so much as
for its wise citizens to stop tolerating racism in any form.

{ believe the students at Harvard are on to something as old as the
Bible. I think they know that we are not as secular as we once thought we
were; that we are not wise if we don't acknowledge our own modesty; and if
we can't affirm a full-blown faith in God, wisdom, intelligence and
historic necessity dictate acknowledging that there is a lot about life
that remains a mystery. I think the Harvard students are learning what
Proverbs knew thousands of years ago - that one of the paths to God, to
ultimate truth, is through that list of questions each person carries
around in his or her heart. ,

Where did we come from?
What is life all about?
What happens when we die?
Dan Wakefield, in his wonderful new book, Returning, a Spiritual
Journey, concludes by observing that our culture seems to be newly opening

to religion in general and, in particular, to the truth and power of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ.

He cites a speech made at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York
recently by George Trow. Mr. Trow said, “I believe that humans are unable
to live without some contact with what I call the third parent: God.'
Catholic theologian David Tracy observes that "More has been written about
Jesus in the last twenty years than in the previous two thousand." And
then there is that ultimate confession by a burned-out member of the Me-
Generation: "Once you've played all the tennis you can play, what then?"
[Wakefield, p. 248}

So we come here - each of us [I think, at least in part - like
Nicodemus came to Jesus, intellectuakly curious, with our list of
questions.

“What does it all] mean? Is there a God? Is Jesus for real? Does
religion have anything to do with the real world? What shall I do with the
rest of my life?"

5/29/88

It is all right to ask these questions. The good news is that you
don't have to have it all figured out before you can be a friend of Jesus.
The Gospel of Christ invites these questions ~- urges them in fact -
as an expression of your personhood, your integrity.

Jesus entered the dialogue, encouraged Nicodemus, became a partner in
the search. Nicodemus continued and at the end, having become wise, having
learned to trust, stepped forward, declared himself, and loyally and
lovingly stayed with Jesus in death.

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," is the way it was
put thousands of years ago. I commend it to you. Amen.