Text: Luke 2:40-2 (1 Kings 3:4-15)
In the name of him in whom the Father has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the
heavenly places, dear friends in Christ: From ancient times scholars and philosophers have
recognized what have become known as the four cardinal virtues. These are the noble qualities
that everyone should seek to cultivate in themselves. The list includes justice, that is, the
capacity to be fair and objective when making judgment; temperance, the ability to exercise
restraint and self-control over one’s own person; and courage, which is the strength to stand up
to fear, uncertainty, and intimidation without faltering. These are good qualities to possess. But
always ranking top on the list of the four cardinal virtues is wisdom, defined as the ability to think
and act with a proper combination of knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense,
and insight. There’s a reason wisdom comes first on the list. Without wisdom, the other virtues
are not very helpful. What good would it do to be unwisely just? Or foolishly temperate? Or
recklessly courageous? None at all. Wisdom is an essential element to making the others
work; therefore wisdom is the virtue we should pursue first and foremost.
We should do so recognizing that no one is born wise. Nor is it merely a question of
being knowledgeable, intelligent, or quick to learn. There are lots of people who are very bright
and who have studied widely and possess all kinds of advanced degrees from prestigious
universities, and yet remain fools. And I’ve known people who didn’t go to school beyond the 8th
grade – except for the school of hard knocks – who could be described as truly wise. The virtue
of wisdom transcends its component parts. It isn’t just knowledge or experience or
understanding or common sense or insight. It’s all of them working together in harmony. And
again, it’s not an innate quality, something that comes naturally. No, wisdom needs to be
acquired. It comes from the outside. That raises the question: Where do you go to find it?
In answering the question, we have to be careful. Recall that our first parents fell in part
because they were seeking wisdom. The serpent promised them that eating the forbidden fruit
would make them wise like God, knowing both good and evil. That much was true. They
already knew good. What they didn’t know was evil. When they ate the fruit they found out
about it. They learned evil, and they discovered that they had become it. So, in one sense they
became wise like God; but I don’t think any of us believes that it was a wise decision that they
made. And now we are stuck with the consequences of their unwise action.
The point with respect to wisdom, though, is that there are different kinds of wisdom, and
most of them are not beneficial. Satan possesses a crafty sort of wisdom in the ways of evil.
Unless you are the villain in a James Bond story, you don’t want that (even then, it doesn’t help
in the end. The bad guy always loses). No, the Bible tells us that with regard to evil we should
strive to be innocent and unlearned. Scripture also tells us to be wary of the wisdom of this
world. The world’s wisdom is not overtly evil. It appears good and right on the surface. It has a
ring of truth to it. But its end is destruction.
Allow me an example. One of the greatest tenants of modern worldly wisdom is that
personal happiness is the greatest good. Whatever makes you happy, that’s what you ought to
do, and no one has the right to tell you otherwise. So, you think having sex with this person will
make you happy and they’re agreeable? Don’t ask questions. Don’t think about consequences.
Just do it. Whoops. One of you got pregnant and you think that having the baby will make you
unhappy? No problem. Abort it. There, now you’re happy again. Tired of your spouse? Think
you’d be happier with someone else? Go on, divorce the one to whom you pledged lifelong
fidelity and marry the other one. Oh, and don’t worry about the kids. They’ll be all right. It’s up
to them find their own happiness. It’s their fault, not yours, if they don’t find it. Or maybe you
think you’d be happier if you were the opposite sex of what you are now. Go for it. Change
your wardrobe, take the hormones, have a little surgery, and presto change-o! It’s done. Well,
not really ... but you’re better equipped to go on pretending if it makes you happy. Wait, what?
Not happy with the quality of your life? Find yourself depressed most of the time and think you’d
be happier dead? Okay, go on and kill yourself. Or better yet, get a doctor to help you. Have
him perform one of those physician assisted suicides for you.
Some time back I read an article that shows where this kind of “happiness is the ultimate
good” wisdom leads. It told story of a 52 year old Canadian man who is not only transgendered
but also trans-aged. What makes him happy is thinking of himself as a 6 year old little girl. So
he quit his job, left his wife and family, and got himself adopted by an understanding older
transgendered couple. He calls himself Steph-on-knee (as in Steph on someone’s knee) and
he spends his days playing with dolls, watching cartoons, and dressing like a princess or a
school girl – which is hard to pull off because he’s over six feet tall and weighs upwards of 300
lbs. Got news for you, Steph: you ain’t sitting on my knee. But now here’s the thing: the article
spun this as if it were perfectly normal behavior, and that readers should be thrilled to know that
this guy pursued his dream and found his place of happiness. But has he? I can only imagine
the heartbreak he will suffer when the other genuinely six year old girls in the neighborhood
don’t invite him to their birthday parties – the big mean bullies. And make no mistake: that’s
exactly how it will be painted. Anyone who does not indulge his fantasy will be labeled a
backward, bigoted, hater. No one dare be the kid who points out that the emperor has no
clothes.
There are any number of other forms of worldly wisdom we could examine. Take
naturalism, the philosophy that lies behind so much of modern scientific theory, which begins
with the unscientific assumption that there is nothing supernatural and therefore there is no
God. Or we could look at that popular bit of contemporary wisdom that asserts that all religions
are equal and lead to the same place – even though these religions clearly differ in regard to the
nature of God, mankind, sin, grace, human participation, salvation, resurrection, and eternal life.
Still, they’re all the same. We could look for wisdom in the scores of self-help books that are
published every year, each espousing its own sure fire method to straighten out your life and
help you to attain your goals. We could on looking, but all we would find are other forms of
worldly wisdom. And because this world is fallen and under the curse of sin, that’s the kind of
wisdom we would get: wisdom that is inherently flawed. Just as we cannot find wisdom in our
sinful selves, we will never find it in this fallen world. We need to look for wisdom in a source
beyond this world.
This is what we find young King Solomon doing in today’s Old Testament reading. He
was likely in his mid teens when he inherited the throne of his father, David. David chose
Solomon to rule in his place even though he had several other older sons, half-brothers of
Solomon, who had long time experience working in Israel’s government administration. Surely
Solomon knew that too, that among David’s sons he was the least qualified for the office he now
held. Thus we see him approaching the task before him with humility and an appropriate
trepidation. He knows he’s not up to this on his own. He knows he’s going to need help. So it
happens that after a day spent offering sacrifices of thanksgiving, when the Lord appears to him
in a dream at night and tells him to ask for whatever his heart desires, Solomon requests an
understanding mind and the ability to properly discern between good and evil. Unfortunately,
the translation we heard there is not the best. Instead of an understanding mind, what Solomon
actually asks for is a heart that listens to judgment. This is key. Solomon did not request that
the Lord miraculously implant his famed wisdom in him in an instant – “Poof! Now you’re wise.”
No, he was requesting that the Lord fill him with wisdom as he continued to listen to God and his
judgments. What Solomon was saying was, “Lord, let me keep on listening to you so that the
judgments I make as king will reflect your own.”
It’s important to note why Solomon requested this. It was not so that he’d become rich
and famous for being such a smart guy. It was not to glorify himself. He wanted it so that he
could rule over the Lord’s people well in his office as king. This is what pleased the Lord so
much: that Solomon wanted a gift that would enable him to better serve others. This is the
purpose for all the spiritual gifts the Lord bestows, to equip and enable his people to serve the
needs of others. So the Lord was only too happy to grant Solomon’s request. And as long as
he continued to listen to the Lord and his Word, Solomon did rule wisely and well. Later in his
life when he stopped listening to the Lord, he didn’t do so well and he made a lot of foolish
mistakes. So the life of Solomon proves the point both ways. Wisdom comes from hearing the
Word of the Lord.
The boy Jesus knew that too, as we see in today’s Gospel. And that may be surprising
to us. Our inclination is to think that because Jesus is God in the flesh, already at 12 years old
he is perfectly wise and that he knows all things. Not true. I said before that no one is born
wise. That includes the Lord Jesus. And today’s text says clearly that Jesus increased in
wisdom over time – which means he wasn’t all wise to begin with. What we’re dealing with here
is the mystery of Christ’s humiliation. It’s the biblical truth that during his earthly life and
ministry Jesus did not make full use of his divine attributes and truly lived as one of us – except
without sin. He had to. In order to be our substitute and impute to us his righteousness, he had
to live a perfect life as one of us with all of our human limitations. So as a child he had to learn
how to walk and talk and dress himself and read and write just like everyone else. He also had
to be filled with true wisdom from its only source: God’s Holy Word.
We’re told that the holy family came to Jerusalem each year for the Passover
celebration; but this would have been a very special trip for Jesus. Up to this point he would
have had to stay with his mother, Mary, and his younger brothers and sisters on the court of
Jewish women while only Joseph went forward onto the court of Jewish men to offer the
paschal lamb as a sacrifice. But now at age 12, Jesus would have been recognized as a young
man and could accompany his father deeper into the Temple. Here for the first time he would
have seen the sacrifices actually being made – the sacrifices that foreshadowed his own
Messianic mission: to give his life as the atoning sacrifice for sin. And here too he would have
had access to the areas in which the great rabbis and religious scholars taught and discussed
the Holy Scriptures. For Jesus, hungry for God’s Word, it would have been like going from
Sunday School to the seminary. He couldn’t get enough of it.
This explains why he’s apparently unaware that his family leaves Jerusalem without him.
He’s too caught up in hearing the Scriptures being taught to notice. For the family’s part, they
suppose he’s with their group – probably with the cousins or other members of the extended
family. It’s not until they settle down and make camp after a day’s journey that they discover
Jesus is not with them. We can well imagine the sense of panic that Joseph and Mary
experienced as they retraced their steps back to Jerusalem the next day. But what’s interesting
is that it took them yet another two days to find him. Why? It’s because they looked for him in
all the wrong places. They looked for him in the kind of places where you’d expect to find a 12
year old boy. It didn’t occur to them to seek him sitting among the scholars in the Temple and
listening to them teach. When they finally did find him there, Mary gives her son a piece of her
mind. “Do you have any idea what you put us through? Your father and I have been searching
for you in great distress.”
What follows are the first recorded words of Jesus. And I believe them to be intended
for us just as much as they were for Mary and Joseph. Jesus says, “Why were you looking for
me? Did you not know that I must be in these things of my Father?” Jesus means that there
was only one place on earth where he could have been. The moment they knew he was
missing, they should have known that the Temple where the Word of God was being taught was
the first place they should have looked for him. Why? Because that’s where Jesus always is:
he is where God’s Word is being taught and explained. He is, after all, the Word of God made
flesh. He is the sum and substance of divine wisdom. Mary and Joseph were seeking divine
wisdom and didn’t know it. They had forgotten who he is. They were used to thinking of him in
too familiar terms – as only the eldest of their children. And so they were seeking a 12 year old
boy according to a worldly way of thinking.
This is the take home for us today. Wisdom is a virtue we should all be seeking, for it
makes us better people and empowers us to better serve others. And there is only one place to
find it: in the person and work of Jesus who fills the pages of Holy Scripture. But sometimes we
forget or fail to appreciate what we’ve got here in the Bible that God has given us. It becomes a
bit too familiar to us, like the boy Jesus was to Mary and Joseph. We think of it as a collection
of old stories suited for children but not for grownups. It’s not. It is the Lord Jesus in written
form. Through it we come to know him who is divine wisdom. And knowing him, learning of
him, listening to him – these are the ways God makes us wise unto salvation and equips us to
do his will. Therefore let this be our New Year’s prayer: that our heavenly Father would give us
a hunger to hear his Word as Jesus had when he was a youth, and that the Lord would cause
us also to increase in his wisdom and grow in favor with God and with man. In Jesus’ name.
Amen.