Sunday, October 28, 2018
Rebecca Sheridan
1 Kings 3:4-28
Can you think of a time in your life when you got something right? Maybe it was deciding to marry your spouse, or taking a job that was a good fit, or making it through raising your children to be proud of who they’ve become as adults? Or maybe it was a smaller thing – being a comforting presence to a friend who was going through a rough time, sending a card or saying something that you didn’t think much of, but it really meant something to the person and they told you that later.
Solomon is one of my favorite Bible characters, partly, because he gets some things right! I would love to say that if God asked me for whatever I wanted, I would respond like Solomon wisely and not selfishly. But guess what? He wasn’t perfect either, just like all of the Old Testament people we’ve been learning about this fall. It’s subtle, but our reading starts out by reminding us that Solomon went to Gibeon to make sacrifices at the local shrine there, which was not an altar to God but to the local gods. He married many foreign wives, one thousand, to be exact, so we could say loyalty to God or to one wife was not his strong suit. Despite all this, however, he was a good king. He led the charge to build the first temple in Jerusalem to God. Solomon did love God – like many of us, he was tempted and drawn away from God, but God always drew him back to worshipping the true God of his father, David. On this Reformation Sunday, I want to remind us all that like Solomon, like Martin Luther, sometimes, we get things right! We are both sinners AND saints. God created us to serve him and sometimes we actually do. Solomon’s story is a good reminder of this.
So here’s a recap: as Solomon is worshipping the local gods of Gibeon, God appears to Solomon in a dream and says he’ll give Solomon anything he wants. That’s a pretty gracious offer to someone who has been spending his time worshipping someone else! And Solomon gets the question right – he doesn’t ask for riches or a long life or power, he asks for God’s wisdom to be able to serve God’s people well as king of Israel. He says to God, “Give me a God-listening heart so I can lead your people well, discerning the difference between good and evil. For who on their own is capable of leading your glorious people?” Solomon doesn’t put himself first, but thinks about what would be best for him AND for his people. He seeks God’s will to be done before his own. He asks for a God-listening heart. Then immediately after this dream, he returns to Jerusalem and arbitrates a conflict between two women fighting over the same baby and wisely identifies who is the true mother. The writer of 1 Kings reminds us that the Israelites “were all in awe of the king, realizing that it was God’s wisdom that enabled [Solomon] to judge truly.” Solomon strives to live by God’s wisdom instead of his own, putting God and God’s will first in his life. He isn’t perfect, he doesn’t do it all of the time, but he knows that when he relies on God for help, God will do it. And when he does make decisions by relying on God’s wisdom, others notice!
Solomon’s story isn’t unlike Martin Luther’s own story of struggle to rely on God. As a young man who entered the priesthood and the monastery, he was over-the-top in his feelings of guilt. He was so aware that he was imperfect before God and sinful that he was paralyzed by his inability to do good. It was unhealthy. Martin Luther’s Priest Confessor Staupitz told him to stop confessing every little sin and rest in God’s grace and forgiveness, but he couldn’t do it…until one night, reading the book of Romans, he came across chapter three, “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” It was a lightbulb, lifesaving moment for Martin Luther that would change history. He got something right. It wasn’t until he realized that life wasn’t about keeping score of how good and bad he was, what good and bad things he did, but about relying on God for forgiveness, grace, and salvation, that Martin Luther could live freely knowing he would still mess up as a sinner, but that sometimes, by the grace of God, he would get it right. And that changed the world – it brought the Christian church back to an understanding that Jesus taught us in the Lord’s prayer, to be about God’s will to be done in our lives instead of our own, to rest in God’s grace rather than on our ability to save ourselves.
When we get up and start our day by relying on God’s wisdom, by praying to have a God-listening heart, by seeing that God has given us everything we have including grace abundant through Jesus Christ, we get it right! God gives us the strength and wisdom we need to do what God calls us to do, at work, at home, with friends and family, here at church. We don’t always listen – we aren’t perfect. We still sin. But because of our faith in Jesus Christ, we can sometimes get it right. And like Solomon, we can strive to serve God and our neighbors with a God-listening heart, enabled by God’s wisdom, not our own. This morning in particular, we are surrounded by visible reminders of God’s grace working through us – these beautiful quilts, the music offered throughout worship, our monetary offerings that go to ministry to touch lives right here and across the globe. It is good for us sometimes for God to keep us in check, reminding us of our sin, helping us discern evil from good like Solomon. But instead of being hampered or held back by our mistakes, God empowers us through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit to serve God and all people, with God-listening hearts. Amen.
