“[F]ull of joy through the Holy Spirit”: let’s start there.  The Holy Spirit brings the gift of joy, beloved.  We want to be happy.  Sometimes, we are.  What we really ought to be reaching out for, though, is joy, because joy is always reaching out for us, in the arms of Jesus, through the Spirit.  Oh, the Spirit has reach, beloved!  Nothing and no-one is beyond the Spirit’s reach.  It’s just that people, even us, sometimes, keep pushing those arms away, turning another way.  Why?

Hearing what the seventy-two have done, in his name, and “full of joy through the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.  Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do” (10:21).  You know, we’re not told that Jesus sent out any of the Pharisees or experts in the Law who always seemed to be hanging around, to take his name with them and to perform acts of evangelistic healing, sharing the good news of forgiveness through repentance.  People didn’t get college degrees then, as they do today.  Debates continue as to the exact value and return on investment of that parchment, and that conversation is a wise one to have—that slip of paper costs many tens of thousands of dollars!  And we know, in this market, there are employers who toss applicants, no matter how qualified, who do not happen to have the costly parchment.  But what I want to emphasize here is that it wasn’t exactly the top of the class, gathering around Jesus.  Those who did gather, who were drawn to Jesus, were what, in a more polite age, would have been called common people.  A bit rough around the edges, earning their living, often by the sweat of their brow, but not exactly making money hand over fist.  Not stupid people, just not educated to the same degree in the same subjects as others who also heard what Jesus said, even saw some of what he did, and responded, meh.

Now, it also was not the case that every person of the “common” sort packed up and headed out with Jesus.  It wasn’t really class that made the difference for discipleship.  It wasn’t occupation or education that mattered.  It wasn’t ignorance or intelligence, or wisdom or experience.

No one seriously thinks of him or herself as stupid or a fool, even though they may call themselves such things from time to time.  If you really think of yourself as stupid—(a) think again, and (b) you’re going to do something about it.  Same with foolishness—if you really think that about yourself, you’re not just going to shrug your shoulders, grin, and go about your business.  To do only that would be truly foolish.

No, it’s another attitude entirely: one that refuses to see oneself through the eyes of Scripture.  Jesus calls it the “wise and learned” attitude.  Wisdom is not from book learning, though book learning can facilitate a kind of wisdom.  Wisdom comes from reflecting on human experience, which often means reflecting on hardship and perseverance.  Wisdom is from the Lord.  Wisdom is knowing how to respond to whatever is happening in a God-seeking, God-honoring way, and then responding that way.  Wisdom is always applied, never merely speculative.

Now, we have this book.  It’s a big book and of the highest importance to us, truly indispensable.  We’re supposed to learn it and learn from it.  Certainly, we can learn what’s in it.  We learn from it as we live it, apply it, come back to it again, after, and think about it all: read, apply, evaluate, repeat.  We learn from Scripture as we pray.  It’s when we allow Scripture to guide our living, rather than make our preferred way of living the rule for deciphering Scripture, that wisdom comes alongside us, holy wisdom, true wisdom.  We can feel as if we’re wise and yet be quite foolish, when we permit the world’s measure of wisdom to be our measure.  The problem plaguing people especially in the West for the past three hundred years has been how to read Scripture and believe and trust what we read.  It’s not true if it doesn’t fit my experience.  It’s not true if it goes contrary to reason.  These are strategies for putting oneself over God’s Word rather than under it.

Those who, wisely, submit themselves to the reshaping power of God’s Word will by no means lose their reward.  Those who, thinking themselves wise and learned, reshape Scripture according to their own sense of wisdom and learning—well, they’ll find they have yet more to learn—maybe.  We are used to ideas like free will, independence, autonomy, agency, and all the other liberating words.  We often neglect that salvation is also such a word.  But what sort of liberation is “salvation”?  No, no—let’s have it here, now!  Let’s have fun! Let’s indulge ourselves.  Salvation is not that kind of liberation, that kind of freedom.

Jesus puts it in a way that may feel very peculiar, for us.  Jesus praises his Father in heaven, saying that the Father has “hidden these things”—has hidden the power of the name of Jesus except from those with the wisdom of faith.  The Father has hidden this power “from the wise and learned”: that is, from those who raise up their own standard as the criterion for truth and falsehood, right and wrong, beauty and ugliness (morally speaking).  God has hidden Truth from such as these, made Truth inaccessible to them except, of course, through the good will of the Father, by the Spirit.  God causes us to want the Truth; God causes us to know the Truth, despite every obstacle we continue to lob in the way.  God tears every barrier down.  God reminds us that His power for salvation cannot be for those who set themselves over Scripture, who delight in shaping Scripture to one’s own codex of key values: my way like I want.

It’s not as if the power of God for salvation can ever be entirely obscured.  God is pleased to reveal it.  There’s the key word: reveal.  It is God who reveals.  If we would have some revelation, we must go to God, and wait.  If we’re going to wait, we’ll have to wait a certain way.  How shall we wait?  Impatient and distracted?  Petulant and pouting?  Angry and squirming, wishing we were somewhere, anywhere else?  We have done all this.  But, since we must wait, if we want revelation from God, apart from which we can’t really have the learning necessary, or the wisdom, we might consider waiting as we’ve been shown to wait.  Jesus tells us a lot about waiting, what to do while we’re waiting.  Wait patiently—learning patience is making quantum leaps in wisdom.  Wait humbly.  Wait submitted, knowing full well that God has something to teach and that all of us, very much including me, have something to learn, still.  Wait faithful—let faith fill your waiting; faithful waiting will be rewarded: the revelation will be worth the wait.  And, certainly, wait attentively, to God and to your fellow human beings; wait compassionately, for those within the church as well as those as yet outside it.  We can do all sorts of truly helpful things while we wait.  My hunch is that God is at work in these helpful things, in order to make what He will reveal to us all the more clear, all the more powerful, as He reveals to us His power of salvation.

Finally, most importantly, wait as little children.  It’s like Christmas or a birthday—eager waiting, happy expectation, the irrepressible delight of feeling the perfect goodness of what is so near.  God has shown us good things already and promises more are on the way.  He hasn’t disappointed us yet, has He?  Well, don’t say “No, never,” so quickly.  It’s a real question.  We get hurt in this life.  What does God promise?  His constant presence and His love that does not fail.  He doesn’t promise hardship will never be.  He doesn’t promise that we will never feel disappointed in Him.  He promises us He will never disappoint.  These are not the same.  He doesn’t promise that we won’t get hurt by what happens in this life, what happens to us and what we also do to others that causes us to see ourselves in new, sometimes unwelcome ways—maybe also, eventually, wiser ways, by grace?  Have you never failed to live up to your image of yourself?  We get disappointed, yes!  God will never disappoint.

How to begin to try to make sense of it all: the hurt, disappointment, difficulty—not that this is all there is or can be in this life, we know.  But the hurt feels hard, even harder than holding onto the happiness.  It can all feel so senseless, so unnecessary, until we start to know ourselves, know what those who have seen themselves as so wise and learned have actually done: the strange fruit of their wise learning.  Stubborn blindness so often seems to be in charge.  But it isn’t.  How do we know?  Jesus tells us, and we receive his words as truth, through faith.  No other way is possible.  “All things have been committed to me by my Father.  No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (10:22).  Again, revelation.  A work of God.  A miracle.  All things, Jesus says.  So much can go so badly awry, so quickly—sometimes very slowly, too, as we allow the drift to take its own predictable course.  Always, at the end, over it all, Jesus has his hand on the rudder, piloting us home, unless we’re simply determined and resolved to go elsewhere.

Jesus only can have such command, such authority to turn all things, because Jesus alone has his unique relationship with the Father.  Jesus reminds us that to see him is to see God, to know him is to know God, to trust in him is to trust in God.  To trust in God is to rely upon Jesus.  Even you and I, entrusting our very lives to Jesus as we have, we can still wonder how he is possible: how can a man also be God?  How can all the fullness of God dwell in and with a man?  How can the death of one man, his spilled blood, be salvation for all who will trust?  How can his one, sacrificial body be true food enough for all the faithful?  We do not know who the Son is: all his depths, all his history, all his thoughts, the totality of his love—we get glimpses, yes, of course, but it is only the Father who knows all.  Son and Father enjoy a unique relationship, into which they are pleased to invite us, through the Spirit.  Hence this table before us this morning—the bread, the juice, body, blood: sacrifice, forgiveness, love, grace, life.  Receive in faith, and you shall learn how to be wise with God’s wisdom.