I was traveling last week. I once enjoyed air travel; now it seems a hassle. First of all, either I'm getting bigger or the seats are getting smaller. Have you had that experience?
I miss the intercom humor of airline personnel in “the good ole days.” For example, I remember a captain saying, “folks, we’ve reached cruising altitude. I’m turning off the seat belt sign and switching to autopilot so I can chat with all of you for the rest of the flight.” Or “we have now reached our cruising altitude. Please feel free to move about the aircraft, but please stay inside the plane until we land. It’s a bit cold outside and if you walk on the wings if affects the flight pattern.” Or, “there may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane.” I say, bring back the humor of “the good ole days.”
The word of God carries us back to King Solomon in the 10th century before Jesus. He gave ancient Israel a brief touch of splendor. The bible tells us very little about Solomon compared with his father David. But it does tell us this: Solomon probably was twelve or fourteen years old when he came to the throne, was clever with affairs of state, built a splendid temple in Jerusalem, married many wives, owned 4,000 chariot horses, uttered 3,000 proverbs and wrote 1,005 songs. Wow! These are mighty accomplishments.
In today's passage, God appeared in a dream to Solomon: ask me for something and I will give it to you. Surprisingly Solomon doesn’t ask for power or wealth or health. No, he asked only for the wisdom to know the right thing to do.
Think about it? What would we ask of God? I confess that I might ask for a winning Powerball ticket. How about you?
Making right choices is really the stuff of life. Should I go to this school or that, take this job or the other. Many of us think hard about our choices, trying to make the best ones for ourselves and our families who rely on the wisdom of our decisions.
Often enough, we have to choose between right and wrong, greed and generosity, honesty and lies, people and things. And occasionally, we may have to choose between life and death: for example, whether to continue a loved one on medical life supports. In all these decisions, small and great, that affect work, career, family and social life, even leisure time, we pray to God for the wisdom to do the right thing.
Paul in his letter to the Christian community in Rome writes: “All things work for the good for those who love God.” But in light of media news day after day, we might surmise all things are not working for the good. But Paul, the incredibly faith-filled disciple of Jesus, who trusted in God and God's presence in his own life especially as he encountered hardships of one kind or the other in his ministry, urges us to fix our eyes on the ultimate prize—eternal life in relationship with God. God, Paul proclaims, ultimately will transform us into a new kind of spiritual embodiment just as God already transformed the earthly Jesus into a new heavenly reality.
Paul may be asking whether we're fixing our eyes on the ultimate prize: looking beyond this earthly horizon to the heavenly horizon.
In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus continues the theme of choices, as in the first reading.
In the first parable, a farmer plowing someone else's field hits a clump that turns out to be a buried treasure. He thinks, “Finders keepers.” He sells everything he has to buy the field so that he can claim the treasure as his own.
In the second parable, we have a merchant who is like the treasure hunters in our own time. They spend their entire lives searching for more riches that will guarantee them happiness. Here, the merchant finds a pearl so magnificent that he sells all the riches he has accumulated in life to buy that one pearl.
Jesus says to us in these parables, “carpe diem,” seize the moment. Make the right decision. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” So much for making right decisions.
But what about the decision maker? Solomon, for example, despite his mighty accomplishments, seemed to have character flaws. He countenanced non-Israelite religious practices, launched expensive building projects, imposed high taxes to pay for them and conscripted work gangs to build them. As a result, his policies created such widespread discontent that the kingdom split into two after his death.
Right decisions presuppose men and women with character or integrity. Character defines who we are at the core of our inmost self. It's an ethical reality. Centuries ago the Hebrew psalmist spoke of King David as a great (though not perfect) leader who guided his people with integrity of heart and skillful hands. (Ps 78: 72) Leadership requires not only character or integrity but courage. Whether it's starting a new business, battling a life-threatening disease, getting married or struggling to overcome an addiction, life demands courage to move beyond our fears and self-doubts to achieve something worthwhile.
The most common phrase in the New Testament is “Do not be afraid.” The most common phrase in the Old Testament is “Be not afraid.” When the phrase appears more than a thousand times in both testaments, God may be trying to get a message across to us.
Finally, leaders have a “can do” attitude.. They know what they want, why they want it, and how to communicate what they want to others so that they can galvanize them into action. They're optimists; they get the facts; they're enthusiastic and self-confident, and their confidence instills confidence in others. At different times in life, all of us are called to be leaders: as professionals, business people, parents, citizens in a community and volunteers in an organization. But in the final analysis, you may ask what is the most important ingredient of leadership? Character! Courage! A “can do” attitude. Here's how one American hero put it to the cadets at West Point:
“Your character, that’s what's important in leadership. I tell cynics who scoff at character to go out and look at the leadership failures...in this country in the last 100 years. (They) were not failures in competence; they were failures in character. Greed, lying, prejudice, racism, intolerance, sexism, hate, immorality, amorality–none of these things are competence failures. They are all character failures. You see, leadership involves things like ethics…a sense of duty…a value system…morality; and...integrity. And that is why character is what counts in leadership. Integrity: that is the linchpin in all of this.”
If you want to be inspired by a list of wonderful virtues, I suggest we might want to start with Rudyard's Kipling's poem “If.”
Yes, seek always what's the right thing to do — not what is fashionable, not what is merely acceptable, but what's right. And having found what's right, as the Nike slogan says: just do it.
