7 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 12, July 27, 2014
1 Kings 3:5-12 Psalm 119:129-136
Romans 8:26-39 Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Romans 8:26-39 Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
The word "philosophy" derives from the Greek language and is a word formed from two words. It literally means "a friendship love of wisdom." Making friends with wisdom. The word philosophy expresses a way to characterize perhaps the chief goal of life, making friends with wisdom. Making friends with wisdom is a process of life. Wisdom is never attained because the friendship with wisdom is never finished. The challenges of living always present to us the need for wisdom. Wisdom is the loving and propitious application of our life information in practical actions and decisions in our lives and so we can never stop befriending wisdom and wisdom does not allow us to brag about what we thought was wise yesterday because the demands for wisdom today are varied and different.
I think a chief facet of the ministry of Jesus was his role as a wisdom teacher. Jesus was a multi-faceted sort of person and he understood that his verbal production had various application according to the context of the people to whom he spoke. Jesus spoke to lawyers, scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Roman soldiers, Samaritan women, village women, fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes, children, widows and because he had such a diverse audience, he understood that one kind of discourse did not fit every situation. If the words of Jesus or anyone seem at times to be contradictory, it has to do with the wise understanding of how words are applied for many different kinds of circumstances for many different people. Truly, when it comes to wise words, the cliche "one size does not fit all" is applicable and true.
I believe that what Jesus proclaimed as the kingdom of heaven was all about learning to have a wise re-orientation in how we see life. A wise re-orientation in life means we learn to see life differently than the common glaring opinion or public propaganda; it means we have put on a different kind of seeing lens through which we can see the world and because we see the world in a different way, we can make different decisions, decisions of faithful action.
Jesus told the wisdom stories, call parables to encourage people to read their lives differently and come to faithful actions in face of some great challenges.
The public propaganda of the time of Jesus was this: The kingdom was the Kingdom of the Caesar and so it was unthinkable for people to disregard the Caesar in their thinking. But the situation of oppression gave rise to wishing that things could be otherwise and wishing that a king of one's own making could be in control of things. And so there was the collective aspiration of the Jewish people for a new King David to return and give the people of Israel a more perfect king of their own. Messianic expectations bring visualizations of something better for oppressed people. Within this environment, the actual kingdom of the Caesar and the hopeful wishes for a new David, Jesus told his parables about the realm or kingdom of heaven.
The parables of Jesus about this kingdom of heaven invited the people of his audience to see their world differently and come to faithful actions. Faithful action did not mean resisting the Roman authorities; it did not mean latching on to some "super-hero" figure who would magically overthrow the kingdom of the Caesar.
The wisdom parables of Jesus were an invitation to people to see their lives differently so that they would have wisdom to live within the specifics of their circumstances.
What kind of seeing promotes a different kind of wise action to live with faith within the actual circumstances?
Jesus said to take note of the small things in life, the things like the mustard seeds. A few thrown here and there as insignificant seeds and suddenly one can see that they have taken over like weeds which control the entire environment. This type of wisdom seeing reveals the counter-logic of the kingdom of heaven. We like to write our histories from the perspectives of the heroes or the great publicly known figures. Yes, you can know about Caesar and you can dream about a new King David magically to change everything but it is really the small and minute things which are more important. The little things accumulate to form character and to form networks to be the very scaffold on which the great people of life are often but strutting problems for the majority of people. I have been in enough places in this world to know that in neighborhoods of people there is such a desire for the common small things of life: safety, health, education, friendship for family and friends. The desire and the performance of small acts of safety and kindness is what preserves the life of people and not the public leaders strutting on the great stage. Jesus had the wisdom to know that this world needs or tolerates the oft necessary evils of leadership of the few political leaders even while he also knew that these few would keep the people of the world perpetually divided and against each other even when most people are united in just wanting adequate safety, food, clothing, shelter, education for their families and neighbors. The mustard seeds of the desires of people for safety, food, clothing, shelter, love, friendship, justice and care for each other are the small things which will preserve and save this world; it will not be the so called kings on the stage of public life. If you can see this then you have the wise eyes of the kingdom of heaven. If we are blessed to have wise political leadership, wise leader will tend to the importance of the small but basic needs in the lives of people.
Jesus reiterated the mustard seed parable with the parable of the yeast. Yeast or leaven and mustard seeds are negative metaphors. He was comparing the kingdom of heaven to weeds and leaven and in Judaism leaven was a symbol of impurity. Jesus was saying, "What you think is small and insignificant or even negative is what is important and sustaining in life. So, don't be fooled by the public propaganda and public advertisement." We can be frightened into activity because of the Caesars in life. We cannot easily overthrow an evil Caesar anywhere, but we can do the next act of kindness in our very local situation. The wisdom of the kingdom is this: Don't let global propaganda or angst hinder us from some very small local kind action. It is through the performance and perpetuation of small kind acts that this world is preserved.
In a pair of parable Jesus further goes on to equate the kingdom of heaven with another rather negative notion. Insider trading. In our time the SEC rather inconsistently prosecutes those who practice "insider trading." Every person is tempted by the juiciness of insider trading. I go to a garage sale of an elderly woman who has a box of vintage baseball cards for sale for but a few bucks. I know the value of the baseball cards and she obviously doesn't. My heart is beating with excitement that I happened upon this find even while I have the dilemma of possessing the knowledge of their worth. This poor widow is sitting upon a goldmine that she does not know that she is unwittingly letting go of for a song.
This is the kind of the moral dilemma of the kingdom of heaven. It is like having a kind of knowledge about the way things are which not every person has. The wisdom of the kingdom of heaven is open to everyone but not everyone has it. If one can become converted to begin to see life differently to make faithful choices in one's given situation then one is drawn to commit one's entire life and life resources to the quest for this kind of wise seeing of the world. Jesus was offering to his followers the seductive winsomeness of wisdom because with wisdom one honors the true freedom which is in this world even while one learns to execute faithful actions in each occasion. What more could one want in this life?
The last two parables of Jesus which we have read today provide us some insights about the practice of wise people and the process of wisdom. With wisdom we are always sorting how what we regard to be the good and evil in the past. We sort from our past how we let what has been good and what has been bad affect how we are going to act now. In our wise judgments on the good and bad of the past, we make the past serve us in making a wise decision now. A wise scribe has received a wisdom tradition but the words of wisdom written in past are not a strait-jacket hindering freedom and wise action now. Many religious people in the time of Jesus regarded their tradition to be like a restricting strait-jacket and Jesus saw that this approach to religious faith had devastating consequences for most of the people of the countryside who were left out. It had devastating consequences for the non-Jewish population who were regarded to be excluded from God's blessing and favor.
The wise scribe uses the wisdom tradition of the past to inspire new syntheses, new combination which provides for creative and inventive new decisions to be made. So St. Paul, in his wisdom, could honor his Judaic tradition even while he creatively and inventively accepted the Gentiles as those who could come to valid faith and wisdom from God. Being a Gentile could not separate a person from the love of God in Christ.
Jesus taught us that in our efforts to gain loving friendship with wisdom, we will be inventive and creative and open for the new to occur because the application of wisdom is always new. Do not let the Scriptures or the good traditions of church history or our parish ever become strait-jackets to prohibit the freedom and creativity of new and faithful inventive response.
You and I honor the past and we honor the wisdom process of Jesus Christ as we use our traditions to make wise and creative responses to the new challenges of our personal lives and our community life today. Let the good news for us be today that we have fallen in love with wisdom, as Jesus did and with the wisdom of Jesus, we know that we have new wise choices to make each and every day of our lives. Amen.
I think a chief facet of the ministry of Jesus was his role as a wisdom teacher. Jesus was a multi-faceted sort of person and he understood that his verbal production had various application according to the context of the people to whom he spoke. Jesus spoke to lawyers, scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Roman soldiers, Samaritan women, village women, fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes, children, widows and because he had such a diverse audience, he understood that one kind of discourse did not fit every situation. If the words of Jesus or anyone seem at times to be contradictory, it has to do with the wise understanding of how words are applied for many different kinds of circumstances for many different people. Truly, when it comes to wise words, the cliche "one size does not fit all" is applicable and true.
I believe that what Jesus proclaimed as the kingdom of heaven was all about learning to have a wise re-orientation in how we see life. A wise re-orientation in life means we learn to see life differently than the common glaring opinion or public propaganda; it means we have put on a different kind of seeing lens through which we can see the world and because we see the world in a different way, we can make different decisions, decisions of faithful action.
Jesus told the wisdom stories, call parables to encourage people to read their lives differently and come to faithful actions in face of some great challenges.
The public propaganda of the time of Jesus was this: The kingdom was the Kingdom of the Caesar and so it was unthinkable for people to disregard the Caesar in their thinking. But the situation of oppression gave rise to wishing that things could be otherwise and wishing that a king of one's own making could be in control of things. And so there was the collective aspiration of the Jewish people for a new King David to return and give the people of Israel a more perfect king of their own. Messianic expectations bring visualizations of something better for oppressed people. Within this environment, the actual kingdom of the Caesar and the hopeful wishes for a new David, Jesus told his parables about the realm or kingdom of heaven.
The parables of Jesus about this kingdom of heaven invited the people of his audience to see their world differently and come to faithful actions. Faithful action did not mean resisting the Roman authorities; it did not mean latching on to some "super-hero" figure who would magically overthrow the kingdom of the Caesar.
The wisdom parables of Jesus were an invitation to people to see their lives differently so that they would have wisdom to live within the specifics of their circumstances.
What kind of seeing promotes a different kind of wise action to live with faith within the actual circumstances?
Jesus said to take note of the small things in life, the things like the mustard seeds. A few thrown here and there as insignificant seeds and suddenly one can see that they have taken over like weeds which control the entire environment. This type of wisdom seeing reveals the counter-logic of the kingdom of heaven. We like to write our histories from the perspectives of the heroes or the great publicly known figures. Yes, you can know about Caesar and you can dream about a new King David magically to change everything but it is really the small and minute things which are more important. The little things accumulate to form character and to form networks to be the very scaffold on which the great people of life are often but strutting problems for the majority of people. I have been in enough places in this world to know that in neighborhoods of people there is such a desire for the common small things of life: safety, health, education, friendship for family and friends. The desire and the performance of small acts of safety and kindness is what preserves the life of people and not the public leaders strutting on the great stage. Jesus had the wisdom to know that this world needs or tolerates the oft necessary evils of leadership of the few political leaders even while he also knew that these few would keep the people of the world perpetually divided and against each other even when most people are united in just wanting adequate safety, food, clothing, shelter, education for their families and neighbors. The mustard seeds of the desires of people for safety, food, clothing, shelter, love, friendship, justice and care for each other are the small things which will preserve and save this world; it will not be the so called kings on the stage of public life. If you can see this then you have the wise eyes of the kingdom of heaven. If we are blessed to have wise political leadership, wise leader will tend to the importance of the small but basic needs in the lives of people.
Jesus reiterated the mustard seed parable with the parable of the yeast. Yeast or leaven and mustard seeds are negative metaphors. He was comparing the kingdom of heaven to weeds and leaven and in Judaism leaven was a symbol of impurity. Jesus was saying, "What you think is small and insignificant or even negative is what is important and sustaining in life. So, don't be fooled by the public propaganda and public advertisement." We can be frightened into activity because of the Caesars in life. We cannot easily overthrow an evil Caesar anywhere, but we can do the next act of kindness in our very local situation. The wisdom of the kingdom is this: Don't let global propaganda or angst hinder us from some very small local kind action. It is through the performance and perpetuation of small kind acts that this world is preserved.
In a pair of parable Jesus further goes on to equate the kingdom of heaven with another rather negative notion. Insider trading. In our time the SEC rather inconsistently prosecutes those who practice "insider trading." Every person is tempted by the juiciness of insider trading. I go to a garage sale of an elderly woman who has a box of vintage baseball cards for sale for but a few bucks. I know the value of the baseball cards and she obviously doesn't. My heart is beating with excitement that I happened upon this find even while I have the dilemma of possessing the knowledge of their worth. This poor widow is sitting upon a goldmine that she does not know that she is unwittingly letting go of for a song.
This is the kind of the moral dilemma of the kingdom of heaven. It is like having a kind of knowledge about the way things are which not every person has. The wisdom of the kingdom of heaven is open to everyone but not everyone has it. If one can become converted to begin to see life differently to make faithful choices in one's given situation then one is drawn to commit one's entire life and life resources to the quest for this kind of wise seeing of the world. Jesus was offering to his followers the seductive winsomeness of wisdom because with wisdom one honors the true freedom which is in this world even while one learns to execute faithful actions in each occasion. What more could one want in this life?
The last two parables of Jesus which we have read today provide us some insights about the practice of wise people and the process of wisdom. With wisdom we are always sorting how what we regard to be the good and evil in the past. We sort from our past how we let what has been good and what has been bad affect how we are going to act now. In our wise judgments on the good and bad of the past, we make the past serve us in making a wise decision now. A wise scribe has received a wisdom tradition but the words of wisdom written in past are not a strait-jacket hindering freedom and wise action now. Many religious people in the time of Jesus regarded their tradition to be like a restricting strait-jacket and Jesus saw that this approach to religious faith had devastating consequences for most of the people of the countryside who were left out. It had devastating consequences for the non-Jewish population who were regarded to be excluded from God's blessing and favor.
The wise scribe uses the wisdom tradition of the past to inspire new syntheses, new combination which provides for creative and inventive new decisions to be made. So St. Paul, in his wisdom, could honor his Judaic tradition even while he creatively and inventively accepted the Gentiles as those who could come to valid faith and wisdom from God. Being a Gentile could not separate a person from the love of God in Christ.
Jesus taught us that in our efforts to gain loving friendship with wisdom, we will be inventive and creative and open for the new to occur because the application of wisdom is always new. Do not let the Scriptures or the good traditions of church history or our parish ever become strait-jackets to prohibit the freedom and creativity of new and faithful inventive response.
You and I honor the past and we honor the wisdom process of Jesus Christ as we use our traditions to make wise and creative responses to the new challenges of our personal lives and our community life today. Let the good news for us be today that we have fallen in love with wisdom, as Jesus did and with the wisdom of Jesus, we know that we have new wise choices to make each and every day of our lives. Amen.
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