15 Pentecost Proper19 September
16, 2012
Proverbs 1:20-33 Psalm 116:1-8
James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38
It seems as though the writer of the book of
Proverbs presents Wisdom as rather unforgiving.
I quote: “I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when panic
strikes you,” And though this might seem
cruel, I believe that it represents the reality of ignorance in not understanding
the clash of the various systems of natural law and human behavioral
responses. We have wisdom clichés that
state the same principles: “If you play with fire, you’ll get burnt.” Buddhism is a wisdom philosophy and one of
their chief understandings is that in a great part “suffering is caused by
ignorance.” Not knowing leaves us at a
disadvantage in life. If we could cure
the gross ignorance of the world how much could we reduce the amount of
suffering? If I could cure my own gross
ignorance, how much of my own suffering could I reduce?
The writer of the book of Proverbs presents a
natural theology; God as Wisdom can be discovered and known by simple
observation. But is the attaining of
wisdom really just natural or does it have to be learned within the traditions
of a particular community? And are the
findings and practices of wisdom in one age adequate for the practice of
another age? I think that one could make
the claim that the Bible is a book of the unfolding of wisdom in the belief and
practices of various communities of people.
And this would mean that wisdom is still in the process of being
unfolded and known to us. The Bible is
not to be a limitation to details of ancient practice of wisdom; it is to be an
invitation to us to be engaged in the current work of the discovery of wisdom
in our lives and the practice in the situations that confront us here and now
in the year 2012. In fact, one can even
say that what was once regarded to be the ancient practice of wisdom now seems
to be ignorant or at the least irrelevant.
We don’t see the need to keep from our diet shell fish or pork though
ancient religious prescription did so.
We don’t see the need to restrict the roles of women or practice slavery
for economic well-being. In this regard
we find so called “ancient wisdom” to be even cruel ignorance.
I do not believe that any one can observe
nature with pristine eyes and see things how they “really are.” We only see things through the lenses of
culture and tradition which we inherit from our communities of birth and our current interaction with the communities of influences. And just as
communities and traditions grow in adjusting wisdom to new situations, so too
we as individuals need to grow and adjust and discover wise practices in our
moment by moment situations. If we look
at the world communities today we can find lots of conflict over how wisdom
traditions are practiced in various countries and communities. In America we admit that the free speech
tradition permits tasteless speech, sacrilegious and disrespectful speech and
cruel speech and the free speech practice is not appreciated in other cultures
that do not share the same free speech traditions.
And when we think about the free speech
tradition in our country, we can note the wisdom from the epistle of
James. What the writer of James reminds
us about is that the tongue is perhaps the smallest and most powerful muscle of
the human body. One does not have to be
a politician to put one’s foot in one’s mouth.
How many of us have regretted at times things that we have said? Every thought that we have does not need to
be said or published. Our social media
today allows things to be published and
made public without proper thought for self-censorship to take place. We are in the age of “too much information.” We are in the age of the practice that
everything that can come to language and publication, should come to language
and publication. I’m not against the
free speech tradition but the wisdom tradition of James encourages all of us to
adopt a policy of self-censorship otherwise known as the fruit of the Spirit of
self-control.
So how do we attain this Spirit of
self-control? How can we make free
speech the blessing of truly creative speech that is used to bring goodness and
kindness to our world?
Wisdom needs a strategy or it is wishful
thinking or mere academic thinking. We
often would like to make the Gospels into academic thinking; simply treating
them as theological words on the page that we need to have the correct view
about. In wanting my position to be
declared the correct position, I can be obsessed with orthodoxy or right belief
as a way of declaring that I hang around with the right crowd. I think that the Gospel writings that
originally were read as liturgy to mostly illiterate congregants are more about
orthopraxy, that is, they are a spiritual methodology more concerned with wise
practice rather than correct belief.
So
how does the Gospel reading as our liturgy promote wisdom and self-control that
could extend to the control of our speech?
Remember we don’t read this Gospel as an
eyewitness recording of the actual life of Jesus; we read it as the method of
the early church using the story of Jesus to teach a spiritual method for the
growth and renewal of one’s life.
In this method the church is taught that
having the correct confession does not mean that one has wise practice. Peter is used as a teaching foil; he is the
one who had the correct confession but he did not have the wisdom and the
practice of that confession. It was not
enough to know that Jesus was the Messiah.
For Peter, being the Messiah and the Messiah’s follower meant that one
was on the triumphant winning side such that nothing of loss or disappointment
could happen. But this was revealed as
ignorant thinking and untrue to life; bad things do happen to good people, in
fact, a very bad thing happened to the Messiah and he was not any less the
Messiah because of the bad death that happened to him.
And in the early church, there were teaching
catch phrases: “taking up one’s cross,”
and “dying to one’s self.” These phrases
express the method of wisdom, knowledge and education. We die each day to a state of mind that is
exposed as ignorance through further education and wisdom. But as ignorance is exposed by wisdom, then
we have the ability for more self-control, more intelligent action, more
intelligent and wisdom in our speech.
Today the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not words
on the page to believe in a certain way; it is the invitation to a method of
coming to progressive wisdom in our lives so that we may excel in wise practice
and in wise speech. And what is the
desired goal? To live and speak the Good
News of God in Christ in our lives.
Amen.
