So, you want to be a chacham? Then let's examine the Haggadah's treatment of the Wise Child. He asks: "What do these laws, statutes and ordinances commanded by G-d mean to you?" And we answer, "Do not eat any dessert after eating the Korban Pesach."
What exactly is bothering the chacham, and how does this answer help him? Furthermore, why does the Torah, in parshat V'Etchanan, give a totally different answer to the Whiz Kid's kasha, namely: "We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and HaShem took us out with signs and wonders, in order to bring us to the land He promised to our ancestors."
Okay, let's try to understand. The chacham wants to know, "What is this Torah all about? What's the bigger picture? Beyond the laws and the literature, the Rahn and the Rashi, what does it all mean?"
The Haggadah tells him that one may not eat anything after the Korban Pesach, so that the taste of Pesach lingers in one's mouth long after the Seder is over and done. So, too, what really matters is what "taste" is left in your mouth after you close your Gemara and leave the beit midrash. What effect does that Tosfot, that Talmud have upon you as a human being? How do you conduct yourself after "swallowing" all that wisdom? Is your religiosity just something you carry in your valise to and from the yeshiva, or has it become an integral part of you, the way you walk, talk, speak, eat?
That is the message of the Haggadah, a very personal message for the individual, because the Haggadah is focused on each of us individually (as in the Four Children, as in "every person must see himself as going out of Egypt," etc).
But the Torah is focused not on the individual, but on the nation as a whole, and so it has a different message than the Haggadah. It says to the chacham, "The learning of Torah, the mastery of mitzvot that you achieve are a means to an end: to come closer to HaShem through appreciation of all He does for us, and to return to Eretz Yisrael." That is the bigger picture, that is what we expect a wise person to discern.
Through the study of Torah, we come to know HaShem and to develop a relationship with Him. And we keep alive the "end game" of history: to fulfill His Torah in our own Land.
We, in this generation, are the blessed recipients of a miracle befitting Nissan, a miracle that mimics the momentous events of the Exodus. We have been given the z'chut of leaving the Exile and entering our own land. The question we ought to be asking ourselves is: Are we chacham enough to appreciate it, to understand it and to act upon it?