King Solomon in our first reading told God that he wanted to be wise, and apparently God granted this wish. If you continue reading the story of Solomon, you’ll read the part where Solomon judges between two women arguing over possession of a baby. Solomon proposes to split the baby in two as a way of settling the argument, and the reaction of the two women reveals who the real mother is. It’s supposed to show how wise he was. But the fact is, Solomon was not always wise. He was a king, and the powerful especially lose sight of wisdom all the time. It turned out his kingdom started…
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In the gospels, Jesus is seen praying frequently, but it’s interesting, the disciples, not so much. Maybe after some time together they finally noticed this, and in today’s gospel, they asked Jesus to teach them to pray. And in response, although he does give them a prayer to memorize, and we have all dutifully done that for centuries, in response what he really tells them are a couple of stories, and the stories aren’t really about exactly how to pray. What Jesus wants them to understand is not so much about how, but about who, something about who the God they are praying to actually is. Because if we get…
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Back when I was growing up, I had six aunts who all lived in the same town, and of course they were in charge of pulling together the food for every sort of family gathering, from Christmas to the 4th of July to the occasional funeral. And a special fear had clearly been passed down to my aunts: the fear was, that at a gathering you were in charge of, you’d run out of food. We don’t know where this fear came from, whether it was something they got growing up during the depression of the 1920s, or whether it went back much further to pre-history in the mountains of…
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One of my children has a gift that I don’t think is all that unusual in this parish, but I want to tell you about it anyway. Unfortunately, this gift is only really in evidence when she wants something. She is the most charming, persistent and relentless asker I have ever seen. Her approach has everything — great timing, endless, wearing-down frequency, cheery smiles, logical and not-so-logical arguments, moving examples of injustice, a little flattery when appropriate, very occasionally, when all else fails, even PowerPoint. The things she asks for aren’t always possible, much less sensible, and she doesn’t always get what she wants, at least as best I can…