But, as in the title of the motion picture
starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelley,
he had a "Beautiful Mind."

While still at Princeton as a student
he developed a concept called
"Equilibria in the Theory of
Non-Cooperative Games."

It is widely used now
in macro economic thinking.

He also proved the
"Isometric Embeddability of Abstact
Riemannian Manifolds in Euclidean Spaces,"
although he admits that,
"This problem is not much talked about
in general conversation."

In this true story
we next find John, newly married
and with a small child
as a fresh Ph.D. at M.I.T.,

and here the story gets strange.

We see him approached
by an intelligence officer of the Defense Department

and put to work de-coding secret messages
in American printed media,
looking for a Russian plot
to smuggle small nuclear weapons
into the United States.

His work seems heroic.
He is almost assassinated once
when making a drop.

He hides in his apartment,
isolating himself, shutting out his young wife.

On a lecture trip that he cannot refuse
he is pursued and carried off
to a mental hospital
by a Psychiatrist
who administers 50 Insulin Shock Treatments
and sends him home drugged to the point
of numbness.

He feels nothing, notices nothing.

As he sits in his rude rented house
and the clock ticks away,
we, the audience, begin to wonder
if we might be missing something here.

Is this man working to protect his country?
Is he a hero
who has been neutralized by Russian Agents?
or, is he delusional?

The room mate he had at Princeton,
the man's little niece he has adopted,
and the military intelligence officer
come to him daily
to try to persuade him to return to his work
He is needed to protect his country.
It is such important work.
No one else is smart enough to do it.

Or, is it all in his brilliant, but damaged brain.

He can't tell what is real and what is not.
Neither can the audience.

It is at this point that this story presents itself
as a powerful metaphor of the human mind
and our difficulty in knowing the way.

We have intellectual powers
and the ability to reason,
and we put a lot of trust in them,

But those things
in huge quantity and quality
didn't seem to help John Nash.

His wife finds that he has stopped taking his medication,
and discovers a shack behind their house
where he has posted thousands of pieces of paper
in a nonsensical pattern,
showing his code breaking to be a delusion.

We learn that he never had a roommate at Princeton,
that man was his alter ego;
and the little girl, the roommate's niece
over the years has grown no older.

In a distracted moment, John almost allows his infant son
to drown in the tub,
so his wife sends the child off to stay with her mother
and bravely asks,

"If I stay,
will you hurt me, John"

And, he, in despair, answers,
"I don't know.
I just don't know."

"You must leave me here
and I will try to think my way
through this."

She walks to him, touches his face,
and says,
"Think your way though it?
It is your mind that is the source of the problem."
"The answer to all this
lies not in your mind,
but in your heart."

Ladies and Gentlemen
This is a true story
not just because it happened
but because it is so for each of us.

We can be our own worst enemy.

We can assume that
it is by our own powers and efforts that we are saved
from our own demons
and from the vagaries of the world;
and it has always been so.

It was so in the time of Micah, our first reading.
The armies of Assyria
under Tiglath Pileser III
rode through Damascus in 732,
and on to the Northern Kingdom of Israel
10 years later.

Micah's home town, Moresheth
was threatened at the time of his writing,
and Jerusalem was besieged.

Danger was ever present
from the terror without
and from fear and intrigue within.

Mercantile empires fell;
commerce trickled to a halt.
The economy of the Northern Kingdom was in ruin.

No one could figure out
what to do.

But, Micah called the people
back to an understanding
of who they were before God;

and he does it as a wonderful dialogue
cast as a court case,
but sounding more like a lover's quarrel.

You are so afraid of loosing your wealth
your empire
says God,
that you have forgotten what is important.
You have forgotten me.

Hear what the Lord says,
rise up, o my people, and testify.
Answer my charge against you.

Next, he addresses the everlasting mountains,
Hear, you mountains.
that is "hear", as a Judge hears a case.
The mountains are to be the judges.
Hear you mountains my controversy with my people.

Then, God addresses the people,
How is it I have wearied you so,
that you have lost sight of me.
I have taken you from slavery
and made you a people.

The people answer,
addressing the mountains, the judges;
What do you want us to do?
Give burnt offerings?
Offer gifts of huge wealth to God?
Perhaps give our first-born sons?

And the Mountains then render their judgment and remedy:
"God has already told you what is good:

Do Justice,
love kindness
and walk humbly with your God."

We are rarely, if ever,
in control of what the world sends our way.

We are visited by all kinds of trials and temptations,
illnesses and terrors,
disappointments and failures
during our lives.

That is not debatable;
it just is.

What is in question
is how faithfully we will live and love,
grow and make God proud,
in spite of all our demons.

Note, if you will,
that John's wife told him
that he would find the answer
in his heart;

and she stayed with him
through all the years of illness
and rehabilitation.

She mirrored the faithfulness of God,
as God stayed with his creature
through millennia of apostasy.
"I will be your God
and you will be my People,"
he said again and again.

The work of healing for John was possible
only because in his wife
he found for the first time
a paradigm by which to judge
what is true and what is not,
what is good and what is not,
what is of life and health and what is not,
what is faithful
and what is not.

As a result
he began to hang out in the library at Princeton
and formed for the first time
real relationships with students
and began genuinely to engage them
and help them in their studies.

People liked him,
and he liked them.

He returned to teaching part time,
and at the end of the movie
he is nominated for a Nobel Prize in Mathematics.

Someone is dispatched
to check him out.

You mean, will I embarrass you
at the presentation
by doing something strange,
like tearing off my clothes
and running screaming from the stage?
he asked.

Yes, nodded the man.

I still see the three characters of my delusions
said John,
but, I have learned in my heart
what is real and what is not,
so I ignore them
and they pretty much leave me alone.

As in this story, friends,
humankind, each of us,
is engaged in a lover's quarrel with God.

Are we going to exert ourselves
and try to win?

or, as held up in Micah
and in the Beatitudes from Matthew,

will we let God overwhelm us with his love,
so we, by that love,
can perceive what is true and good,
and full of new life,
and dare to try being a bit different?

dare to become whole, forgiven,
hopeful, joyful,
faithful lovers of this wonderful life
which God has given us.

A beautiful mind is a powerful thing;
but without a beautiful heart
it has nowhere to go.