[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage #559, Trinity Sunday, 6/3/07

[rmcgregoralbq at aol.com]

Trinity Sunday – (June 3, 2007)


Proverbs 8:1 4,22 31
Psalm 8
Romans 5:1 5
John 16:12 15

CLEVER WE ARE -- WISE WE AREN'T

There was a time when Wisdom delighted in the human race, according to 
Proverbs 30.  It must have been before we figured out how to open a 
hole in the ozone layer and make clouds rain acid and turn atoms into 
poison eternal.  Clever we are; wise we aren't.

Of all the reasons we need an outpouring of God the Holy Spirit, our 
need for wisdom is seldom mentioned.  We know we are clever, so we 
think we are wise.  We need the Holy Spirit to make us feel good, to 
heal our bodies and minds, to give us love and enthusiasm, to grow the 
church and to confirm our hope.  If we have all that, we can figure out 
the rest.   What we don't want is restraint or constraint.  We don't 
want wisdom telling us to consume less.  We don't want wisdom telling 
us to share more.  We don't want wisdom telling us to have fewer 
children and take better care of the children we have.  "Come Holy 
Spirit so we can sustain our foolishness?"  No.  "Come Holy Spirit; 
make us truly wise that we may ever enjoy your consolations." We need 
wisdom for our own sakes, but we need wisdom for God's sake too.   "O 
LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! ... 
what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you 
care for them?  Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and 
crowned them with glory and honor.  You have given them dominion over 
the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet..."  
(Psalm 8:1,5-6)  Does God's decision to put all things under our feet 
make God look majestic or foolish?  The Scriptures reveal that God has 
chosen to be known in part by looking at God's covenant partner.   
"What are human beings that God is mindful of them..."  Yes, and, "What 
is God that God makes such a blunder?"  Our foolishness raises doubts 
about our claim to the created order.  Maybe we are just a clever 
species that blundered into its own dead end.  Much is at stake when we 
pray for God the Holy Spirit to come and impart to us wisdom.

If God the Holy Spirit can impart wisdom to us, then we can know and 
understand things that we didn't know and understand before.  We can 
know that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit even if that were not 
clear to us when the New Testament was being written.   "When the 
Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth..."  (John 
16:13)  This truth is not a wisdom concocted from things lying around 
but a wisdom that God brings from outside the creation, outside the 
cleverness of the clever.  "[It] has been poured into our hearts 
through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."  (Romans 5:5)  Paul 
is talking about love, but a love that includes wisdom because it is 
God the Holy Spirit pouring in.  Paul is talking about a future in 
which the love and wisdom of God are characteristic of the human race.  
The love and wisdom of God in us is both God's glory and ours.  "...we 
boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God."  (Romans 5:3)

The presence among us of God the Holy Spirit means there is still hope 
-- hope that we may become truly wise in addition to clever; that, 
rather than blunder into an evolutionary blind alley, we may ever enjoy 
God's consolations.


May these thoughts strengthen you.

An Open Letter to Fellow Pastors
>From Roland McGregor, United Methodist Pastor
(an e-mail service)

[See Web Page address below for a Children’s Message coordinated with 
these lections.]

http://www.webspawner.com/users/ChildPage/

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