Meditating on Proper 11 - Fountain of all Wisdom

 

Proper 11    

The Sunday closest to July 20

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our
necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have
compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those
things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our
blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son
Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the
Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Preface of the Lord's Day

The World’s Fair came to Seattle in 1962. From our house in Ballard, you could stand on the front porch and just see the Space Needle poking up from behind Queen Anne Hill as she (the Needle) approached the 600 foot mark in height. Those were exciting days. That summer we had our extended family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins galore) make the trek out from Illinois to visit us and attend Century 21.

While the Space Needle got most of the publicity, being the most futuristic thing we had ever seen (and so tall when compared to the then tallest building, the Smith Tower (about 42 stories) on the southern end of downtown Seattle), what caught my attention more than that was the Musical Fountain at the center of the fairgrounds. The waters shot up out of a thousand nozzles, more or less, while spotlights changed colors and music played over loudspeakers. It was oh so mesmerizing to this ten or eleven year old boy.

“Almighty God, the FOUNTAIN of all wisdom …”

Fountains fascinate me. I love watching them shoot water up into the air, spit out through the mouths of cherubs, pour out from the spouts of water pitchers, or simply trickle down rocky pathways laid out by garden-design experts. It is best when you can’t see where the water is coming from. Whether it comes in through hidden pipes and hoses, or comes springing forth from some artesian well, it’s the mystery of it all that captures the mind and heart of this viewer.

Fountains – natural and artificial fountains – spring forth from hidden reserves. The wisdom of God is like that. We don’t know where it comes from, but we believe it is not only mysterious, it is limitless. One of the divine attributes is knowing what we need before we even ask. 

Our collect makes mention of God’s ability to know what we need before we ask. That could lead one to inquire as to why we would even need to pray, then, if God already knows what we need or want. That misses the point of prayer, however. God isn’t some divine vending machine that pops out responses if we punch in the right code and deposit the correct change. Life isn’t a crap shoot wherein we sometimes roll snake-eyes like Adam and Eve in the garden. 

No. Life is relationship. It involves our relationship with God, neighbor, and self. How does Micah put it? “The Divine has shown you what is good, O mortal. And what does the Holy One require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8). So God, in her wisdom, knows we need justice, mercy, and humility (and oh boy do we ever need humility!). So there’s no magical knowing ahead of time what we need, is there? The key to this prayer of ours today is re-collecting just what it is we need. 

What are our necessities? Whatever helps us obtain and share the justice, mercy, and humility we and our world need. We’re asking God to help us discover how to obtain those things for which in “our unworthiness we dare not ask.” 

Like what? Our hypocrisy, for one thing. We often expect of others what we aren’t willing to do ourselves. We often expect the world to change, but we fight against the idea that the change that is needed is most often found within – our own stinkin’ thinkin’, if you will. We are blind to our own faults, not because we can’t see them, but often because we have buried them so deep to avoid  seeing them, smelling them, or dealing with them. 

So, in humility, we ask God to help us here. To be “unworthy” isn’t false humility (or worm theology). God isn’t asking us to beat ourselves up or come groveling for help. We simply acknowledge that we often go about setting a very low bar for ourselves, and God’s desire is to help us raise the bar so that God can help train us in a way that we are able to more regularly cross over the bar.

Our human desire, it seems, is to play Limbo, to see just how low we can go. God invites us to see the bar upon which Jesus hung and says, “Go higher, my friends, my loved ones. Go higher.” This is the cross we carry, isn’t it? An invitation to go higher, and to do so in the power of the Spirit, the fount of all Wisdom.