God, you are the one who surrounds us with the right people so that we can steward the gift of wisdom in our lives and navigate hard decisions in the messiness of the world, where it's hard to determine what is clearly the right answer, because all of the ways that we were told with binary thinking was no longer holding up in the messiness of life. 

So may your Spirit guide us in this time together and lead us towards your wisdom for our world today. Amen. So anyone who is listening to the scripture this week and remembers last week might have done a little bit of an eye roll when they made it sound like David was perfect and did all the right things. Because last week we were talking about David and Bathsheba, and since last week David has had another child with Bathsheba, Solomon. And Solomon ends up being the fourth son, so the fourth in line for king. 

And so since last week, Bathsheba and Nathan scheme and plot to ensure that Solomon is king and Solomon becomes the king. And this is interesting. The agreement is he's young for a king. But as someone who is frequently told at the ripe old age of 40 that I'm young for a pastor, I don't always know what that means. A good chunk of the rabbis think that Solomon was around 12, which is very young for a king. 

Other academics, even within Jewish tradition, argue that he had to have been closer to his 20s because of the age that his son is when his son takes over as king. So still twenties, pretty young to be a king. So either way, through a hot mess of watching his older brothers no longer be able to be king for all kinds of different reasons. And if you'd like to be entertained, feel free to read the stories in between last week and this week because it is nothing short of a good political drama. 

And so Solomon finds himself king and way too young to be a king and ends up asking God for wisdom because he feels entirely unprepared for this. So when he asks for wisdom, the Hebrew word is interesting because there's a whole bunch of different ways that it's translated. And I appreciate, I think it's the 2023 revisions to the JPS translation where they just like, if you like, look at the footnote, it gives you both so 

a discerning or understanding mind and listening heart. It ties the Hebrew word ties being able to discern with being able to listen. So Solomon first listens to God. He's seeking God even though he falls asleep. And so I'm going to use this passage anytime I fall asleep in prayer to go. 

It's good to fall asleep in prayer because Solomon did it turned out pretty all right. So maybe we should do that a little more often. And after he listens to God the next story after we stopped reading, he listens to the pain and suffering of even the least of his kingdom. The two women that come to him for his judgment are not people who typically get to be heard by a king. 

And then after listening to God and listening to this women, he practices this wisdom that he's been given. So feel free if you get bored sometime this week to pick up a Bible or the Pew Bible if you get bored a little too early and see where the story keeps going, because it's actually, it's gut wrenching. And last week was hard enough that I didn't want to just keep going into the depths of hardened scripture. But it's worth seeing how the story is told and maybe even across multiple translations. 

If we go back to when Solomon asked for the wisdom in the first place, God says, all right, bet. Wisdom that you got that. And you get so much more than that. Along with a reminder that he should steward those gifts carefully in order to avoid repercussions. As you can probably guess, he does not do that. 

As he grows older, he doesn't steward these gifts nearly as carefully and becomes the textbook definition of what everything a king wasn't supposed to be doing towards the end of his kingship. But the reality is, as we stand on All Saint Sunday, that all humans are this messy mix. The Lutherans refer to it as we're all sinners and saints. 

We're all capable of connecting with God in such great ways that we can transform the world and disconnecting from God and others in a way that just destroys so much. And we've got, I think it was 36 when I last counted names that we will read later today. And the reality is that when we hold their memories, we tend to have the good days and the bad days, 

because that's just the reality of being in relationship with one another, especially if they're close family, if they're people that you only get to see outside of the house, you might only get to see the really nice shiny version of them. But when we live in the same house, that's when we get to see all of the good and the brokenness, all of the ways that we're really good at being there for one another and really good at getting frustrated with one another. And so to highlight this connection to learning from our saints and the ancestors before Us. 

I wanted to share with you a little bit of the saints and the great cloud of witnesses that I turn to for wisdom, especially that I think exemplify the aspects of what Solomon's doing in this passage. So. So when we're thinking about listening to God, I can't help but to immediately think about Howard Thurman. So Reverend Dr. Howard Thurman was friends and colleagues with Reverend Dr. 

Martin Luther King Sr. Which means that he was a spiritual mentor of Junior to the point where MLK junior Walked around with a copy of Jesus and the Disinherited in his either pocket or in his luggage wherever he went. And if you ever want to find some joy because of the time that he lived, we've got great recordings and television interviews. And when he's talking to someone and they realize that what he's really talking about is connecting to the deepest depths of who we are and finding God in the deepest depths of all things and then 

realizing that we're all connected, he just gets overwhelmed with joy. He. He gets this big smile on his face every time someone has heard him correctly and is on to the right thing. He also, in the book talks about Jesus turning towards those who are most marginalized or with their backs against the wall. 

And so when I think of people that inspire me to do that same type of work, in addition to Reverend Dr. Howard Thurman and I think of Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray, we're noticing a trend with all these reverend doctors. But Pauli Murray's doctorate is actually a law degree. And she spent so much time trying to legislate a better world where women and black women and other people of color could have equal rights in the United States during the Civil rights era. 

To the point where her doctoral thesis work was later published at the request and financing of the United Methodist women. Except before there was United Methodist. But it was the Methodist Women's group that funded her research what ends up being states, laws and race. It was the Bible of what laws were saying about race and color in America. 

And that was a huge inspiration for the Brown versus Board of Ed decision. Except she doesn't get credit for it because she was a woman. And then after she realized the pains of the world were only so fixable through the. The law. And she became a jaded law professor. 

Eventually looking at these young hooligans that don't understand how to do things right, which, like I get it, happens to all of us. But she saw the brokenness of the world and all the problems that she kept Running into as not necessarily just legal issues, but issues about our spirit and our heart. And so she became the first black woman to be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church. And because of that transition, I hear echoes of my own story that I talked about. 

The learning to discern whether it was right to leave teaching. All the problems that I saw my students encountering, I couldn't fix because I saw how Christianity was being misused and abused in order to harm my kids. And so I went into theology. Similarly, I find great inspiration in Saint Oscar Romero. 

He was the archbishop in El Salvador, or at least a region of El Salvador. And if you ever get the chance to watch the movie about him, it is amazing because they make it very clear that he was chosen to be archbishop because he wasn't going to rocked the boat when it came to the military rule in El Salvador. 

He was just going to like be a good moderate. And that was until the pain of this oppression being dolled out by the military rule impacted a friend of his. And then he adopted this listening heart towards those that were being most impacted by the government and started to advocate for them as the archbishop. 

And that got him assassinated in the middle of communion at the communion table. And then lastly, I want to share Archbishop Carl Bean, who also has an infectious smile as a black gay man. He found that the church was really good at excluding him. And so he founded the Unity Fellowship Church movement, which has two different churches even in the Baltimore area now, despite how it was started over in California. 

And he also founded the National Minority AIDS Council, which did. Which was birthed out of his AIDS support work in D.C. and LA because he saw that black gay men were completely excluded. Even more so when it came to the AIDS intervention and AIDS education and taking care of people. Being a double minority was already harmful enough. 

And then to see his kin have their lives ruined because of governmental malpractice and refusing to take care of people, he decided to take it into his own hands. So all four of these are saints to me, only one of them is an official saint in the Catholic Church. And that's pretty recent because Oscar Romero is pretty awesome. Pauli Murray would probably be considered a saint in the Episcopal tradition also. 

I know that she's got her own day on the calendar, but the reality is, as United Methodists, we get to just say that anyone who has passed on in the faith are saints. And so we have this huge history of people who lived in the messiness of life that we can turn to for wisdom, especially at the times when we feel like Solomon, that we are entering into situations where we are grossly unprepared to see how the Holy Spirit has moved through our ancestors, even the ones who we are naming today is how the Holy Spirit continues to motivate us and move us towards the ongoing revelation of God's kingdom work here on earth. 

And that begins so much like Solomon, just listening to God, having a listening heart to be able to listen to the things that make others hearts break so that we can then be God's love in this world. So let us pray. God, we are so grateful for the ways that through Solomon and the saints and those that we have known and 

loved that we can find inspiration to be your people. That all those times when we feel like we have reached the ends of our own knowledge, we can ponder what would what would dad do? What would your great aunt do? How would they have navigated similar situations? Or how have the saints taught us to live lives that are desperately seeking your heart in this world? 

So in the way that your Holy Spirit worked through all of the saints and our ancestors who have gone on before us, may your spirit continue to guide us so that we can be your people here and now, who love boldly, serve joyfully and lead courageously. Amen.