This summer we have two hot movies: Barbie and Oppenheimer.
"Barbie" has fashion icons Barbie and Ken in the idyllic world of Barbie Land. When they get a chance to go to the real world, they find joys and perils among humans.
"Oppenheimer" is another hot ticket. Oppenheimer's team developed a nuclear weapon and tested it in the New Mexico desert in July 1945. A few weeks later, a bomb heated Hiroshima to 7,000 degrees F, killing over 70,000 people immediately. A second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. People have debated the use of the bomb ever since.
Back to Barbie Land. American company Mattel began making Barbie dolls in Japan in the 1950s. Mattel is working on at least a dozen more films based on toys. And so, we may have toys galore on the market.
The word of God carries us back to King Solomon in the tenth century before Jesus. Solomon probably was twelve or fourteen years old when he came to the throne, was clever with affairs of state and built a splendid temple in Jerusalem. Tradition attributes 3,000 proverbs and 1,005 songs to him.
In today's passage, God appears in a dream to Solomon, saying: ask me for something and I will give it to you.
Surprisingly, young Solomon doesn’t ask for power or wealth or health. No, he wants the wisdom to know the right thing to do.
Making right choices is really the stuff of life. Choosing between right and wrong, greed and integrity, people and things. In all decisions, we pray to God for wisdom.
Paul in his letter to the Christian community in Rome writes: “All things work for the good for those who love God.” The faith-filled disciple of Jesus, who trusted in God's presence especially as he encountered hardships, urges us to fix our eyes on eternal life. God, Paul proclaims, ultimately will transform us into a new kind of spiritual embodiment, just as God transformed the dead Jesus.
Paul may be asking whether we're focusing on the heavenly horizon. Make sure that’s what we do now!
In the Gospel, Jesus continues the theme of choices. In his 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, a merchant is like treasure hunters spending their lives searching for more earthly riches to guarantee them security. Here, the merchant finds a pearl so magnificent that he sells all he has 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.”
What about the decision maker? Solomon, for example, despite mighty accomplishments, appeared to have character flaws. He countenanced non-Israelite religious practices, launched expensive projects, imposed high taxes and conscripted work gangs. Those policies created widespread discontent.
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.
Leadership also requires courage. Whether starting a business, battling a life-threatening disease, getting married, struggling to overcome an addiction, or engaging in community service, 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.” The phrase appears more than a thousand times in both testaments, so God may be trying to get that message across.
Finally, leaders have a “can do” attitude. They know what they want, why they want it, and how to communicate what they want so that they can galvanize people into action. They're optimists; they get the facts; they're enthusiastic 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?
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...(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...integrity. And that is why character is what counts in leadership.”
For a list of inspiring virtues, explore Rudyard's Kipling's poem “If.”
Yes, seek always 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 slogan says: “just do it.”
