The Park Road Pulpit

You have been called “the greatest generation.”[1] Perhaps rightly so. For those of you here who actually do consider yourselves “Senior Adults,” I would also like to pronounce you a generation of “inconvenient souls.” Let me explain.

Not long ago, the late Ralph Chandler said to his son, Steve, he was glad he was “not going to be around here long.” Ralph, who died recently, at 92, spoke clearly and with a touch of fear – “I don’t like what I see.” It was an odd sort confession, I thought, one filled with great irony. This might be a frightening day. It is certainly not 1912 – neither the country nor the world into which Ralph Chandler, and some of you, were born.

Some nights, the children of the 1950’s, ‘60’s, and ‘70’s don’t sleep too well, either, but Ralph Chandler was born by the light of an oil lamp, not in the antiseptic spotlight of a modern labor and delivery room. Ralph Chandler was born when “running water” came only from mountain streams, which no one, anywhere, would have considered not drinking for fear of contamination. Ralph Chandler was a born into a world where “horsepower” meant… just that!

Ralph and the rest of you “Senior Adults” may have joined the rest of us, the kids(!), in worrying about the growing threats of terrorism and biological warfare. But many of you were also adults before there were even vaccinations for smallpox! I think Ralph was right when he told me,” we’re in a mess in Iraq – and we shouldn’t have even been there in the first place.” But many of you have also lived through two wars that took nearly half-a-million of your fellow Americans. (I can’t even imagine the social, political, and religious climate of America during the second world war – when over 12% of the United States population was at war!) You who are our most mature members may have joined your children and grandchildren in praying for a revival of our recessed economy. But regardless the level of the Dow Jones today, it is a market secured by F.D.I.C., and only you who lived through October 1929 can truly appreciate the value of that “four letter word!”

“I don’t like what I see” – do you hear the irony? What could you, who have known some of country’s greatest tragedy, while simultaneously experiencing the world’s most accelerated advance, possibly fear in a time of such comfort and great convenience?

Unless, of course, comfort and convenience have never been the gods of your worship.

Regardless the truth of Tom Brokaw’s superlative, “the greatest generation,” you are here today because we, who come in your footsteps, have noted something in your character that is worth commendation. We have found an example which is worth following. We have gathered this day to Worship God, by giving thanks for your lives, for your examples. They are examples of inconvenient living.

We have chosen two texts for today from the ancient world, both texts preceding the writing of “Christian scripture.” We have chosen these ancient texts today because their ancient wisdom is still relevant. The first is a remarkable testimony to the prominent place a “good woman” played, even in the male-oriented ancient middle East. I think the text should not be heard as too-blatantly patriarchal (male dominated), as if the only good woman is one who is someone’s wife. That the ancient scripture included an affirmation of women, at all, much less one in which a woman of that society is pictured playing so many roles, is noteworthy. The woman of this text is far from the barefoot, pregnant model of the “submissive wife” that some Southern Baptists would have us uphold as our standard! The good woman of Proverbs 31 is a woman of industry and wisdom, one who participates in the business life of the community, in addition to raising her children, and who takes care of the poor and the needy. Thousands of years before ERA, the woman of Proverbs 31 was certainly “liberated.”

When I read this text, I think of my grandmother, whose strength and hard work could put many men to shame. I think of many of you, living in a day when the notion of “a woman’s place” was well-accepted, who, yet, did what was needed, when it was needed, to make ends meet. The images of “Rosie the Riveter” come to mind – when this country needed women doing the hardest of men’s jobs, you were there.

There is a little ceramic dish that hangs on the wall of my parents’ lake house. It was purchased in Arab, Alabama many years ago, by my mother’s father.[2] Granddaddy Phillips was a product of his time -- sexist in his thinking by current standards, I’m sure. Yet the inscription on that plate became a motto of his that he did not understand, I think, in a discriminating fashion. The words remind me of the gratitude of the Proverb, Her children rise up and call her happy; her husband too, and he praises her…(vs.28) Each time I see that little ceramic doodad hanging there, I read the inscription with a grin, and without the cynicism of a politically correct world, and I understand it the way I believe my grandfather understood it – as pure truth and pure gratitude. It says simply:

“In the course of his life, every man deserves one good dog and one good woman!”

Far from being someone’s possessive claim, there are women among us today, by whom the wisdom of the Proverb’s praise is proven. You are women of character and industry. Where would your husbands have been – in fact, where would we all be – if not for you!?

The final remark of that proverb praises the good woman for her faith – a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised – for faith is the final mark of true greatness. Solomon, reputed to have been one of human history’s wisest men, is given credit for today’s second text. In his words we hear the so-called “Speech of the Wicked,” in which the writer, through the mind of the unrighteous, describes the character of greatness. As with the woman of Proverbs, faith is the final mark – and Solomon’s text is not to be limited to males alone.

This speech from Wisdom characterizes the mind of the unrighteous in terms philosophy would call “nihilism.” From the Greek word meaning “nothing,” this philosophy is “an extreme form of skepticism denying all existence.”[3] We hear the thought clearly stated in the words of Ecclesiastes, “Meaningless. Meaningless. All is meaningless. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?” (Ecclesiastes 1.2-3) And the answer, for the nihilist? – Nothing.

This philosophy is too prevalent in our own world. Made manifest nowhere as starkly as in the frightening number of teenage suicides in this country, the feeling of angst, the despair, the meaninglessness of life creeps into our world through a number of cracks and crevices. Notable among them is the belief that our place in the world, far from being the “crown of God’s creation,”[4] is as some backwater accident of a purely blind evolution.[5] In this thinking, even we who can reason and love are at best a random accident – purposeless in design, futureless in destiny.[6] And this idea was not original to Charles Darwin. Solomon’s “Speech of the Unrighteous” says, “We were born by mere chance, and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been…” (Wisdom 2.2).

This feeling of meaninglessness is exaggerated by the idolatry of materialism. It is an idolatry for which our society is guilty! There is no opportunity or challenge that money cannot buy. Far be it from us to work out our problems with a God-given ingenuity and a little God-inspired “elbow-grease,” our society answers every problem with seventeen new products purchased for a price – most of which entice us by claims of effortlessness in resolving our problems.

But Solomon the wise says the life of the righteous is neither characterized by meaninglessness nor convenience. Senior Adults among us, if you are “the greatest generation,” it is because you have, through your life’s work and through this life’s joys and sorrows, come to know this truth. Every time I spend a day of work with a healthy 80-year-old, I learn, anew, that I don’t know the first thing about real sweat! And the work I saw in the hands of Al Wilson last winter, as he taught me how to fell an oak tree, was not the meaningless toil of pointless labor. It was the joyful work of meaning and life.

Men and women of our oldest generation, I commend you today for the meaningfulness of your work. Our society. Our happiness. Our understanding of faith has been bought by this work. Thanks be to God.

But the final mark of the righteous is not your work. One single word in Solomon’s text sparked the idea for this sermon. Your righteousness is the reason we celebrate, for you who have known so much, you who have worked so hard, have been a great inconvenience to our world. Thanks be to God!

We celebrate your lives today, because in your faithfulness, you have shown us Solomon’s wisdom. Doing the right thing is never convenient. Telling the truth (the whole truth and nothing but the truth) is never convenient. Believing in God, despite the evidence, is never convenient. Following the Way of Jesus, denying self, taking up our own sacrifice is never convenient.

But where would our world be without your insistence on being so stubbornly inconvenient? Inconvenient in your pursuit of truth. Inconvenient in “becoming in character who you are in relationship.”[7]

And, herein, lies your prize. For the nihilist, whom Solomon calls “unrighteous,” there is no faith, there is no future, for there is no God. And apart from God, there is no final hope. Our destiny is only death. But it is not so for inconvenient souls. The Wisdom of Solomon teaches that God created us mortal, yet for immortality. Solomon’s wisdom, which your own lives have made manifest, teaches us that we can touch eternity now, and that even in dying we can hold fast to a blessed, forever hope.

So the prize is really no secret after all, for you who have lived well continue to reveal the great prize of Relationship to the Everlasting. You continue to reveal the secret purpose of God – in your work, in your character, in your faith. You are children of God. For wisdom, made free. For joy, made free. For freedom – made free!

In our sermons this fall, we are talking about how we will “Make a Name for Ourselves” – as a church. One of the truest tests of this community of faith is the challenge to continue to produce women of discernment, men of character, mature, children of God who know the grace of The Secret Prize of Inconvenient Souls.

You of this “greatest generation,” thanks be to God. And to the rest of us…

[1] Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation, is a collection of stories from men and women of the World War II era.

[2] If you live in Alabama, the name of the town is pronounced “A-rab”!

[3] American Heritage College Dictionary.

[4] Taken from a literal reading of the creation narratives of Genesis, many theologians held (many still hold) that humans are not only the highest of the created order, but that we are, in fact, the reason for all of creation. This idea began to wane with Copernicus’ discovery that the earth was not the center of the universe. As the vastness of the universe has been unveiled, and with the widespread acceptance of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary science, humans have come to be seen by many as simply another product of the evolutionary process, no more or no less important than any other animal on this small planet – a planet amid the infinite universe of galaxies and planets and (supposed) other intelligent life.

[5] I accept the findings of science, including those of Darwin’s evolutionary biology. But I do not accept a “blind evolution,” which denies the presence/participation of God in the ongoing process of creation, especially in regards to some future “consummation” of all creation.

[6] In his satire, “Big Mistake,” David Wilcox demurs that the mystery and depth of love could be simply an accident of chance. His song includes this lyric, “The choreography of a coincidence / At the turning point there was eternity behind a moment's glance / It was for you and me the timing made us laugh / The fact that anyone could find their only one along this darkened path… It was a big mistake… “

[7] This phrase comes from Charlie Milford. This is Charlie’s understanding of the meaning of “salvation.”

[8] David Wilcox, “Golden Key.”