...To the Little Pixel

Getting It Together: Cultivating Wisdom, Part 3

September 25, 2011

Rev. Dr. Craig Strobel

Psalm 139

Psalm 139:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me. 
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
   you discern my thoughts from far away. 
You search out my path and my lying down,
   and are acquainted with all my ways. 
Even before a word is on my tongue,
   O Lord, you know it completely. 
You hem me in, behind and before,
   and lay your hand upon me. 
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
   it is so high that I cannot attain it.


Where can I go from your spirit?
   Or where can I flee from your presence? 
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. 
If I take the wings of the morning
   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, 
even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me fast. 
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light around me become night’, 
even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is as bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light to you.


For it was you who formed my inward parts;
   you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
   Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well. 
   My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
   intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
   all the days that were formed for me,
   when none of them as yet existed. 
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
   How vast is the sum of them! 
I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
   I come to the end—I am still with you.


O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
   and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me— 
those who speak of you maliciously,
   and lift themselves up against you for evil! 
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
   And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? 
I hate them with perfect hatred;
   I count them my enemies. 
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
   test me and know my thoughts. 
See if there is any wicked way in me,
   and lead me in the way everlasting.

The Basic Point

Each of us has a unique and significant story, which is a part of the bigger story of God’s love for the world. Wisdom helps us see our smaller stories in the light of this greater story. As each of us travels our individual journeys in the Big Picture of life, we accumulate a lot of things. The path to Wisdom requires that we take careful stock of everything we bring along.

Children’s Sermon:

(Idea: Use a backpack with things in it, heavy and light, sharp and soft, etc.)

·      Heavy weight: Grudges and resentments

·      Knife – traumas that are not attended to, resulting in PTSD – must attend to this in a supportive atmosphere, otherwise they will continue to cut and hurt, but must name them and acknowledge the reality of what happened to us – must acknowledge the knives in our baggage

·      Teddy bear – the warmth and love we have received

·      Granola bar – the nurturing we have received

·      Prickly cactus or thistle – unkind words, criticisms

·      Blindfolds – prejudices, inability to see others as they are

·      Flashlight – spirit of God to guide us into truth, peace

Journey – we each carry our luggage or baggage.  The things in our baggage reflect our journeys: the flowers we pick, the rocks that fall on us, the brambles we cut through, the cool clear waters that refresh us. At a deep level, each of these things shape us and form us, and deform us, which is why we are in need of transformation.

In order to move into wisdom, we need to stop and take stock of everything in our baggage, and discard the things that are not serving us well, or are hindering us. Those things that continue to wound us need to be removed and healed.

The journey to wisdom thus involves self-examination and truth-telling. That is, we need to look at what has shaped our lives and attitudes and ways of behaving and our emotional and psychological lives.

So let’s consider why it is important to stop and examine what is in our baggage. Into our backpacks we put every word we hear in our life, every idea expressed, every thing we see, every caress we receive and every blow that strikes us. We put language in that backpack, along with values, morality, ethics, theology, mathematics, biology, and so on. Sometimes those are placed there by families or teachers or friends, sometimes we get them directly from the world around us. But all the contents of our Personal basket shape who we are, and as we interact with our family, friends and, we pull our reactions, words and attitudes straight out of our backpacks.

The work of the Spiritual Journey is to look at where we are going, determine where and who it is that we really want to be, and to see what needs to be done in order to get there. It means taking stock of just what it is that we have in our personal backpacks, and being honest about what it is we carry around with us. What do we need to discard, and what new habits or ways of talking do we need to cultivate?

The first steps on a spiritual journey require this sort of spiritual inventory, as it were. The old fashioned terminology is self-examination. This leads to confession. Repentance is about deciding to set our journey on a different course, and to discard the things that take us away from our goal of becoming the full persons that God intends us to be. Remember our destination in life from last week: To become whole persons in Christ.

This is where the work of healing our past comes in. Do you remember how I said that we have things from our past that keep getting in the way? We have ways of behaving that are deeply engrained that block us and trip us up. We don’t do or say the things we ought to do or say, and we do or say the things we ought not do or say. Paul in his letter to the Romans put it this way: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Romans 7:15)

This is the stuff we find in our personal basket. There is stuff there that we probably don’t want to be there, and which does not serve us well, or serve God well, for that matter. Taking the spiritual inventory of self-examination is the first step on the way to healing. We can’t heal what we don’t admit we have, or even know we have. This is a place where counseling can help as we identify those things from our past that have shaped us, or left their card in our basket, as it were. Remember, we don’t pull anything out of our personal basket that wasn’t put there before somehow. All that is good and healthy, loving, kindly, gentle, conducive to our well-being we want to leave in the basket. But things like grudges, resentment, uncontrolled anger, abusive language, demeaning words, injurious behavior we need to get rid of.

This is the work of confession. In counseling or in spiritual direction, we name the behaviors we want to change, acknowledging how they got into our basket. And I recommend a very practical exercise, to actually write down the name of whatever it is you need to have healed or cast out of your life. Take that out of your basket and place it in another basket or bowl called “God.” Place it in the consuming light or fire of God’s presence. The Letter to the Hebrews states “our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). The work of the Holy Spirit is to act at that deep spiritual level to affect healing in our lives. That is God’s work. Our work is to bring it to light.

But then we have to put something in its place. If we want to have better things in our basket to choose from, we have to be sure that we have put them there. This is what that old-fashioned word “repentance” is all about. We discard the junk and replace it with the things that support a life-giving, loving way of being in the world.

Jesus tells this story: "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first” (Matthew 12:43-45).

We make sure that this doesn’t happen to us by doing such things as associating with people who support us on the spiritual journey, who show maturity of faith and behavior. It might even mean changing the people with whom we associate. We replace bad behaviors with good, bad language with good, hurtful thoughts with thoughts that help and heal. We engage in acts of compassion because that is what Jesus did, and it works at that deep level of the soul.

All of these little acts we engage in are part of a grander picture of salvation. God is working within each of our individual journeys to shape the world according to the image of Christ. Just like this banner here – which is made up of all these smaller pictures of people’s faces – we all make up the face and the body of Christ. This is the likeness God is making us into.

So what is it that is in your backpack? What needs to be tossed and what needs to be replaced? The Church stands ready to help. Jesus Christ stands ready to assist with a little housecleaning. We can heal our past by bringing our hurts and traumas and lay them at the feet of Jesus Christ the Great Physician.