Does Not Wisdom Call - John 16:12-15 (Trinity C)

 This morning we are celebrating Trinity Sunday - that may not mean a whole lot to each of you, but it’s a celebration of the triune nature of God - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In the celebration of these three - in some pastors, there’s a desire to try to explain the relationship between these, and so this might be a really quick sermon or much more than anyone bargained for today. To help out - let’s take a twenty minute meditation as I have my children come in here with blown up photos of puppies and kittens. 

Ok - they’re not coming. But this is one of the most difficult concepts in the whole Bible to try to explain. And any of my words will not do it any justice, even if I was an expert on the topic, but I am not.

What do you think of when you think of wisdom? Your teeth? - all four of my wisdom teeth are out. Do you think of the term “collective wisdom” - wisdom seems to be more than just one individual thing, right? Like - let’s put our brains together and think about the possibilities and hopefully avoids what could go wrong. But this is also the second week of June, so it’s still maybe the tail end of the graduation season. We celebrated Tom’s grandkid’s graduation last week in our joys, and this weekend we will be having a graduation party for Amy’s youngest, Quentin, who graduated June 4th from Northrop. 

But I felt the need to craft my own graduation speech, passing on some of the limited wisdom I’ve picked up along the way. Please indulge me, and just for a minute, pretend that you all here today are the graduating class of 2022, from Bethany Academy here. 

Good morning, my fellow classmates of the class of 2022, we have made it! It has been a long period of time that we have struggled through these classes, the tests, the lectures. But this day we have longed for has finally arrived! Let us not forget what we have learned here, and may we carry it through all our days. 

One thing that I’ve learned in the last year has been the power of words. Emily Dickinson once wrote, “I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine”. The last two years have been transformational for me, hopefully for each of you as well. I was going about my rather ordinary life, when God took me, and reached inside of me, and said - this ordinary life is not all I have planned for you. I need you to be bold, and risk. I need you to get out of your comfort zone and use something you’ve been dreading - your words. 

I am not the right person to be up here, giving this graduation speech. But, prepared I did, and here I stand before you today. I am not the right person because as much as God has prepared me for this moment, I know I am still a work in progress, and that grace is what I am leaning on hard these days. I am not the right person because I am not the best speaker or the best writer. But God has greater wisdom than I, and God’s wisdom is really all I am seeking. 

Here’s the thing though - although I am not the best speaker and don’t feel like the right person up here, I don’t have to be. My success is not really based on what I say, or don’t; my success is based on God’s wisdom being able to be put through me, or any of you. The more faithful I am, the more I lean into where the spirit is leading me. When grace gets a hold of you, whether it’s the first time or the hundredth time, it’s best to follow it. 

Over the past year, we have had a lot of ups and downs, with community events, celebrations, funerals, weekly joys and sorrows. But we have shared all of it together. I am thankful for each of you in our congregation this morning, for sticking with it and allowing me to be a part of the great part of your mission. I bet this is the first time that a pirate party has been thrown at this church, but who knows - maybe it won’t be the last! 

The wisdom, though, of leadership is listening to those who you serve. I’ve been gathering all sorts of wisdom from all of you over the last year, and it has been a great sharing of joys and concerns for Bethany. Of all the things I’ve learned since I’ve graduated high school, listening and being in community is something that I wish I would have learned a bit better. We live in our society which is so focused on individuals that the idea of seems backwards. More than just the “feel good” mantra, I feel like we have forgotten the communal wisdom that what is good for the whole is good for each member as well. It goes back to caring about each other, whether in our neighborhood, zip code, or even beyond our borders. 

If there’s one thing to take away from this speech, it’s that community which can unite us and help us believe that there is more to live than just satisfying ourselves. The wisdom that is shared and passed down, can be comforting in times of trouble, knowing that others suffered then as we suffer now. Now, falling back into a rhythm of doing things the same because that’s how we’ve always done them is a problem, but we can rise above that to see how things are serving us and what we value as a community. 

Words can be great comfort, or a way to great anxieties. As Emily said in our earlier quote, in a different way, Words have power. We need to be willing to hear the comforting wisdom of experience, but yet in many ways be open to the prophetic words of foretelling. It’s a balance that some are more interested in doing than others. Some people just want to be locked into their own box of comfort, not to be bothered with anything that doesn’t fit what they already believe. Based on what I’ve preached about over the past year, I don’t think too many of those people are still here. 

The scripture from John today is interesting because the speaker is Jesus, and he says that he has so many things to tell his disciples (or maybe even speaking to us)… but we’re not ready. He knows that in the future, we may still not be ready, but it may be easier to hear then. But that our rewards are in listening to Jesus because he came to save us and redeem the glory that God had put in creation in the beginning. 

The beginning is where Wisdom began, as the scripture from Proverbs says. God created this separate wisdom from his own. The wisdom in proverbs is portrayed as a woman, which is interesting, and maybe a whole topic for a different day. But there has been the Holy Spirit and the Christ and God from the very beginning, just as it says in the first chapter of John - that in the beginning was the word…. Words are powerful. God spoke the world into existence with words. 

Let me finish up this commencement address with this - your words have power. How you use those words are powerful, depending on how you use them. And now is the time to use them. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think not enough people are using their voices to add to the collective wisdom, and some days it feels like that collective wisdom is just noise, or contradictory at best. But in those moments you feel overwhelmed by the words around you, maybe it’s just time to stop and listen to where the spirit is leading you. Maybe a time of discernment to find out what’s important and what’s not is in order. 

Wisdom calls each of us, whether through grace, or through mercy, or any of the other great attributes of God. Fear does not hold wisdom, it is designed to be silencing. But our powerful words can overcome that fear, until it doesn’t hold us silent anymore. I’ve spent too much time being silent in my life, and so now, for me at least, that I need to use my voice. Therefore, I’ve been honored to be your speaker today, and that I have officially the opportunity to be your pastor for the next year. I am excited to see what the future of Bethany holds, and may our wisdom be used as a catalyst for transformation of our neighborhood and of our world, as our mission says. 

Thank you, and Amen.