surrender my heart
i wanna be open
The LORD appears TO Solomon in a dream by night. And then, who knows why, offers Solomon carte blanche. Ask what I should GIVE you,” ORDERS the Lord of heaven and earth.
What would you do in such a situation? And keep in mind, your answer, like Solomon’s, will reveal a lot about you. Maybe more than you’d like.
Turns out, more is at stake here than a mere windfall. Solomon doesn’t just stand to gain his heart’s desire. He also stands to reveal just what it is his heart really CHASES after.
And when you consider it like that, it’s hard not to be at least a little grateful you weren’t in Solomon’s shoes, or should I say slippers, that night.
Solomon, though, was ready. When God came calling, Solomon stood tall. When he was offered what essentially amounted to a blank check, Solomon made the right decision. He could have had it all, BUT all he asked for was wisdom. Wisdom.
So admirable is Solomon’s request, even God’s astounded! And as such, God doesn’t hold back! God grants Solomon’s request. Plus, a little extra on the side for good measure, too.
And with that, as we all know, at long last, that steady story of humanity cleaning up its act little by little finally gets underway…
You'd better not be nodding along! First of all, today is Reformation Sunday, for heaven’s sake! Secondly, just look around! That’s clearly not what happened. And what’s more, that’s not even what happened for King Solomon himself.
Now aside from King David, Solomon is the great king of Israel. However, if he’s famous for anything, he’s famous for being infamous. Isn’t he?
Yes, Solomon ruled over a time of great prosperity. And yes, Solomon greatly expanded the kingdom and oversaw the construction of the glorious temple, too. But, in the end, his kingdom wound up collapsing under the weight of its own glory.
And so did Solomon! Before his reign ended, Solomon dabbled in forced labor to complete his ambitious building plans. And he engaged in false worship to cement his political alliances.
Solomon died as cynical as he was wealthy. The final analysis of Solomon’s reign is nothing more than a heavy sigh over what could have been. For as humble and discerning as Solomon began, it didn’t amount to much. At least, not as far as God would measure things.
…This, by the way, is the part of the story we don’t believe. Or it’s at least the part we think we can explain away. Playing armchair ethicists, we like to imagine we’re clever enough to identify Solomon’s fatal flaws. You know, the ones not even Solomon in all his wisdom could spot.
And if that wasn’t enough, we also tell ourselves that we would have avoided those failings, too. You know, the ones not even Solomon in all his glory could steer clear of. In the end, for all the advantages Solomon had, they didn’t amount to much. At least, not as far as we measure things…
In Luther’s day, the church had a very sophisticated way of measuring things. The church assured anxious consciences that all you had to do was what was in you. In a seemingly therapeutic move, the church insisted God doesn’t make unreasonable demands. You just have to do your best with what you’ve been given.
SOUNDS good, right? What Luther discovered, though, from his own experience, was that it’s really NO good at all! That solution is really no solution! In fact, it’s nothing less than the very problem itself!
Luther had tried doing what was in him. And he didn’t take any shortcuts, either. All he learned in the process, though, was that it was what was in him that was causing all his problems!
The church’s seeming solution was really NOTHING more than just throwing the problem back ON itself! Ourselves! And that just made everything twice as bad as before!
Looking back on those bad old days, Luther said, “Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscious. I could not believe that God was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God…” In summation, Luther sardonically adds, “Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscious.”
When his back was against the wall, Luther learned that he didn’t really want to obey God. He learned that, deep down, he chaffed against God’s commands! Luther’s problem wasn’t just that he best WASN’T good enough. No, that was just the start of it! Luther’s real problem was that even his best WASN’T all that good!
In fact, his best was contaminated with the very same Sin and Evil that infected even his worst.
The genius of Luther, if you want to call it that, is that out of the whole history of all of Christendom, he alone called malarky on the whole holiness scheme. But it wasn’t out of courage that Luther leveled that charge. On the contrary, he did it out of downright desperation.
Luther didn’t set out to blow up the whole ethical structure of the church. He just found out, the hard way, that it didn’t really work! But instead of pretending everything was just fine, he started raising questions.
Now, doubts about the church are a dime a dozen these days. Maybe even cheaper. However, the only solutions you ever seem to get are cynical indifference or some form of alternative righteousness. Some alternative righteousness that will presumably lead to the very SAME stalemate…
Luther seems to have intuited this, too. Because instead of taking either dead end, he hung out in the unhappy impasse he found himself in. And, against all odds, it was right THERE, with nowhere to turn, that the Gospel BLEW everything wide open for Luther!
Euphemistically, Luther writes that it was while he was doing some thinking in the tower that the logjam was cleared. As things tend to be in such places. Ironically, though, this occurred while he was studying on, of all things, the righteousness of God!
Attending to the finer points of grammar, Luther noticed that God’s righteousness is never described as a quality God has. On the contrary, God’s righteousness is always described as something God does!
That’s so revolutionary I’m going to repeat it. Righteousness is not a quality of God. No, righteousness is what God does!
Here’s how Luther puts it himself: “All at once I felt that I had been born again and entered into paradise itself through open gates! Immediately I saw the whole of Scripture in a different light! I ran through the Scriptures from memory and found that other terms had analogous meanings, e.g., the work of God, that is, what God WORKS in us; the power of God, by which God MAKES us powerful; the wisdom of God, by which God MAKES us wise; the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God! I exalted this sweetest word of mine, "the justice of God," with as much LOVE as before I had hated it with hate.” Then, Luther delightedly adds, “This phrase of Paul was for me the VERY gate of paradise.”
The dynamite of the Reformation is that it blows up every path we might take to God. Like a good bypass, though, it opens a new and unobstructed route to the very heart of God! And this route is cleared by GOD’S descent TO us in Jesus Christ! Not the other way ‘round.
That impasse between our very best and the actually good ISN’T where faith ends. No, it’s actually right where it really begins! Because it’s right into that breach that Christ plants his cross!
And so that means if you have places in your life where your best ISN’T good enough; or worse, if you have places in your life where your best IS the very problem itself, then that just means you’re FINALLY ready to end that toxic relationship you have with your OLD self!
If YOU, like Solomon, like Martin Luther, and like so many of those early-aught pop-punk bands I grew up listening to, if you are your own worst enemy, then that just means you’re ready for a new relationship! And Christ, that old friend of sinners, has already chosen to make you, YES, you, the apple of God’s eye!
And DON’T you go thinking something foolish now, either! DON’T you go thinking I mean someone else. I don’t! I mean you!
When the church puts someone up here and puts a stole on her or him, the church says this person speaks for God! And God, from on high, in all the wisdom, power, and glory thereof, looks down, smiles, and says, “youbethcha!”
Yes, this’ll trip up that part of you that insists YOU have to earn God’s love. And yes, it’ll sound like a lot of foolishness to that part of you that thinks God has to act self-respectably! But that old you couldn’t be any more wrong!
Christ is nothing less than the very power and wisdom of God! The power and wisdom of God FOR you! And for you who are being saved by Christ in all that wisdom and power, are about to learn, right now, that Christ, GOD’S foolishness, is wiser than all our wisdom! And you’re also about to experience that Christ, GOD’S weakness, is stronger than all our power, too!
Christ comes to be your new best friend today! In fact, he’s already saddled up right next to you! And he hasn’t even waited for you to get your act together. And he hasn’t waited for you to sort yourself out, either!
No, instead, he’s come to you preemptively! He’s come to you right now! Right now, in the very midst of all your pros and your cons! Right now, in the midst of your very inability to choose one over the other, too!
And in the place of all that ambiguity, CHRIST has decided to do the choosing himself! And he chooses you!
CHRIST has chosen to give you something better than yourself! HE’S chosen to give you himself! Christ pledges himself to you today in HIS undying and unending FRIENDSHIP!
Your flaws, your prowess, these are utterly beside the point! Your old habitual sin and your brand new vice; your flagging virtues and your failing willpower, too; these make absolutely no difference when it comes to Christ! For he has come to claim all of you!
Christ makes no distinctions when it comes to you! Good and bad alike, he’s here for all of it! He demands ALL of you! He’s a jealous God in that way!
Solomon may have asked for the wisdom to discern between good and evil, but that didn’t mean the ability to choose one over the other. That’s a matter of the heart, you understand. And it’s YOUR heart CHRIST has come to claim today!
Christ, by his friendship, comes to draw you OUT of yourself! What’s more, in turn, he plans to put all of himself INTO you! Christ, by his relationship with YOU, comes to make a NEW you OUT of you today!
And that, like a good heart-TRANSPLANT, will leave you walking away from this encounter utterly transformed! YOU, in Christ, have a NEW heart! And a NEW will, too!
And that’s not all, either! You NOW also have, on account of all THIS, a brand new set of lungs! Lungs filled with Christ’s Holy Spirit! Lungs ready to, by the power of that Spirit, belt out your newfound love and gratitude to the God who makes all things new! And raises the dead, too!
And so, accordingly, let’s test out these, our new bellows! Let’s lift our voice in song, and praise us all our God!
Christ, Be Our Light; ELW 715
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