James 3:13-4:3; 7-8a; Jeremiah 11:18-20; Mark 9:30-37
Let’s run a systems check on ourselves this morning. We have sung a hymn and a response, and we have voiced the invitation to worship and the corporate confession, so we know that our voices work. We have listened to a couple of scripture readings and an anthem by the choir, I guess that our ears work. Let’s see if our brains work.
As one of my elementary teachers used to say, “Children, let’s put on our thinking caps.” Think of someone who is the picture of smart.
Now we’ll test your arm muscles. Raise your hand if the person you imaged had white hair. Thank you. Raise your hand if the person wore glasses. Raise your hand if the person was good-looking. Raise your hand if the person was not of European-American descent. Raise your hand if the person presents an image of confidence and power. Raise your hand if the person was male. There is a possible variation to “smart.” Raise your hand if the person was a “geek” or “nerd” a la Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg.
Now take an eraser and wipe the whiteboard of your mind and let’s try another imagination exercise. Imagine someone who embodies the word “wisdom.” I’ll let you rest your arms. Instead, I’ll play mind reader. I am going to guess that whoever you envisioned as smart disappeared and in that person’s place was a face creased and worn, lined with a road map of wrinkles. The hair was grey, longish, and had that “Einstein-is-my-hairdresser” look. The ethnicity of your “wise” person is not entirely discernable. Gender, too, isn’t exactly clear – there were hints of both feminine and masculine traits. There is, however, a decidedly rumpled and even weary quality to this “wise” one, who also clearly would have qualified for the “senior citizen” rate at the movies. Instead of the telltale marks of “success,” there was a suggestion of satisfaction. A sense of peace and contentment seemed to hang about this human image of “wisdom.” Raise your hand if your image roughly approximates that.
Your own images, of course, may be quite different. But for all of us, being “smart” and being “wise” inhabit two different places in our culturally determined human pantheons. Advertising will tell us that the “smart” one is more appealing. Yet experience may remind us that there is more gravitas with the “wise” one. From our imagining, we have to choose between being rich, successful and well-groomed or being old, wrinkled and having a perpetually bad-hair day.
Our mental images are predetermined by cultural biases and prejudices which are subtly hard-wired into our brains. Being “smart” is a quality highly valued in our society. To paraphrase Julius Caesar, being “wise” is a quality that doesn’t easily fit into our consumer-oriented, “Veni, Vidi, VISA” (“I came, I saw, I charged”) culture.
It’s not easy to see what “wisdom” can do for us. So we identify wisdom with images to which we give only marginal status in our culture – the very old and the very young, the mythical “noble” poor, the eternally powerless. At best, we credit “wisdom” with being a virtue we may possibly have the luxury of developing in our retirement years. It is false flattery for our culture to claim that wisdom is achieved in old age, or that we respect and honor our elders for the wisdom they possess. The truth is, we foist the title of “being wise” upon the “Third Age” (60-90) because in the First and Second Ages we are too busy doing the “really important” things of life, too busy trying to be “smart” to be bothered with such an intangible, non-monetary quality as “wisdom.”
Wisdom is not a peripheral quality of life and faith. In ancient Israel, wisdom was a normative, integral part of a compassionate person’s mind and spirit. Jewish wisdom, after all, stressed realism. It asked point-blank, as does James in today’s epistle text, “How can we live so as not to displease God but continue in God’s favor?” The advice of Jewish wisdom was not any mumbo-jumbo chanting of cryptic sayings, or some secret knowledge. It was suggestions on how to run an effective household, how to work with others, how to get along in this world. Jewish wisdom on occasion taught that even wisdom itself need be tempered by wisdom. The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes wrote:
“Don’t be too righteous or too wise, or you may be dumbfounded. . . . It’s good that you take hold of one of these without letting go of the other because the one who fears God will go forth with both.” (Ecclesiastes 7:16, 18)
This vision of wisdom shaped Jesus’ advice to his disciples that they should be “wise as snakes and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). Wisdom is not the sage, sanctimonious sayings of old folk. It is the informed, inspired, yet humble movement of God’s Spirit and insight within the human heart and mind.
When James urges Christians to act wisely in their community of faith, he is differentiating between those who know more and those who know better. Owls are our classic symbols of wisdom. Perhaps it is their quiet ways, their wide-eyed, taking-it-all-in stare or the fact that they can swivel their necks 180 degrees and so keep as sharp a lookout behind them as they can in front of them, that gives them this reputation for “wisdom.”
Crows and ravens, on the other hand, are known to be very smart birds. Like parrots, they can be taught to talk and can figure out fairly complex logistical problems. However, crows and ravens are also compulsive collectors. They will fill their nests with odd bits of shiny metal, gleaming buttons, bright string – anything glitzy and gaudy that catches their eye is dragged home.
In today’s text, James calls Christians to embody wisdom, that is, to be the owls of this world – a world where there is the paradox of more and more information, and less and less wisdom. Too many of us have become crows – smart to the ways of the world, and stupidly suckered in to any bright new idea, any slickly appealing gimmick.
Christian owls, James reminds us, are called not to wage war, but to wage wisdom on this world. Waging wisdom takes an entirely different type of armor than the secular world is used to dealing with. James calls his Christian brothers and sisters to outfit themselves with wisdom from above which is “pure, and then peaceful, gentle, obedient, filled with mercy and good actions, fair, and genuine” (v.17). The outcome will be that “those who make peace sow the seeds of justice by their peaceful acts” (v. 18).
Jesus contrasts “smart” and “wise” when he catches the disciples up in their inner thoughts about who will take Jesus’ place after his death – little did they grasp what rising on third day really meant. “Whoever wants to be first must be least of all and the servant of all” (Mark 9:35).
Wisdom – greatness – is determined by servanthood. A true leader places his or her self and needs last, as Jesus exemplified in his life and in his death. Being a “servant” did not mean occupying a servile position; rather it meant having an attitude of life that freely attended to others’ needs without expecting or demanding anything in return.
Jesus described leadership from a new perspective. Instead of using people, we are to serve them. Jesus’ mission was to serve others and to give his life away. A real leader has a servant’s heart. Servant leaders appreciate the worth of other people and realize that they are not to be above any job. Jesus invites each of us into this wisdom. Jesus would say to us, “If you see something that needs to be done, don’t wait to be asked. Take the initiative and do it like a faithful servant. Don’t approach life expecting high positions, honors, and special privileges. Look instead for ways to help others.”
The leadership – servanthood – that Jesus calls us to depends on the wisdom from above that James cites. This wisdom is pure. At the same time as we gain pure hearts, we peel away the false wisdom and the “‘smartness” of the world. Wisdom is peaceful and grows from the inside of the person into the world around them. This peace is to be not just preferred but spread. Gentleness tempers justice with mercy. Wisdom knows that obedience to God is an ongoing task that requires personal change as the will of God becomes more and more revealed through prayer and study. And God’s wisdom is full of God’s gracious forgiveness. And his love leads to fair and genuine good actions of helping and serving others.
So imagine yourself as a beneficiary of God’s marvelous grace and you, too, can wage wisdom rather than strife, wage wisdom rather than smartness, wage wisdom for salvation and God’s glory. May we commit our way to God.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Mark 8:27-38; Isaiah 50:4-91; James 3:1-10
One of the daily comic strips in the Chillicothe Gazette is “The Born Loser.” Brutus Thornapple has been a hapless victim of circumstances for 50 years now. He can never get anything right, nothing ever goes his way, he has a hectoring wife and a harrowing mother-in-law. He is the epitome of “loser.”
I remember that “loser” was a taunt that was hurled frequently on the elementary playground. Today we would consider that activity a mild form of bullying, for it devalues the ones who are thus labeled.
At the close of last week’s episode of the television program, “The Biggest Loser,” the woman weighed in after participating in the program for a year. The final weigh-in showed that she had shed almost half of her starting weight. She had lost 151 pounds and was down to svelte 158 pounds. She looked wonderful. Her life attitude had totally changed. Through the support of the exercise and nutrition counselors and her faithful husband she was a new woman. She was the biggest loser but in reality she was the biggest gainer.
Speaking of gains, that other religion of the land – OSU Football – now has two buckeye leaves on the win chart towards what practitioners of that faith hope will be a second coming of the glories of last season’s national championship.
Let me refresh your memories of the gospel account of last season. The intended starting quarterback, the Big Ten conference player of the year for two years, was injured before the season began. His backup stepped in and, after a shaky start, led the team to an 11-1 record, setting 17 school and two Big Ten records, before breaking his ankle in the last regular game of the season. At that point, the third quarterback came off the bench to lead the team to victories in the conference championship and the two national playoff games that gave Ohio State the national championship. It wasn’t the expected hero but two benchwarmers who made the difference.(1)
Sitting on the bench is the pits. Every team has them in case of emergency, so to speak. They are the pinch-hitter in baseball or the sixth man in basketball. Pro football teams play 11 positions for offense or defense and the carry a 53-man roster. Benchwarmers have enough talent to get them to the bench, but they don't start because someone else has more talent. They could sit on the sidelines and sulk about how unfair life is or how the coach doesn’t like them. Or they could be the ones greeting the teammates as they come off the field. They could be the ones who sit next to the teammate who fumbled the ball and offer words of encouragement. They could be the ones who set aside their dreams, their hopes, their lives for their friends and for the sake of that community called the team.
The image is most vivid in the realm of sports. But there are second- and third-stringers in all walks of life. There are spouses who give up good jobs to follow their mate as he or she seeks or makes a significant career advancement. There are those who quietly serve behind the scenes and out of the limelight doing what they know they are called to do and getting little or no glory for it.
There was a letter to the editor in the Columbus Dispatch recently from a doctor who had served in Perry County under the National Health Scholarship Program of three years of service in a rural clinic in exchange for his medical education. The government clinic worked 8 to 5 on weekdays only. Next door to the clinic was small town doctor who often saw patients in the evenings, on weekends, and on holidays. He also made frequent house calls. The Genesis Healthcare System, to whom he had sold his building and his practice a he looked towards retirement, fired him with no explanation. The letter writer said that he didn’t know or care about the financial and political reasons behind his firing. But, he said, “I am willing to bet he has worked harder, longer and for less money to provide health care for the people of Appalachia than any executive of Genesis Healthcare System of Zanesville.”(2) Another loser who is really a gainer.
Prophets talk about speaking “truth to power.” Jesus spoke divine truth in the midst of human power. He revealed his messiahship to his disciples on foreign territory. Caesarea Philippi, at one of three sources of the Jordan River, was a vacation spa built by Philip the Tetrarch, son of Herod the Great, and dedicated to Tiberius Caesar and himself, hence the name: Caesarea Philippi. It was situated on a beautiful terrace about 1,150 feet above sea level on the southwest slope of Mount Hermon overlooking the Jordan valley. The Sea of Galilee, on the other hand, lay nearly 700 feet below sea level. The summer’s oppressive heat drove any who could afford it to retreats like this royal spa. It must have been of considerable significance to Mark and to his audience that this should be the place where Jesus revealed his full identity to the disciples. The fundamental apostolic creed proclaimed, “Jesus is Lord,” not Caesar or his puppet king, Philip.
No matter how little we think we know about scripture, all of us have had Christ’s messiahship drilled into us. We have heard this reading from Mark, along with its parallels in Matthew and Luke, so many times that it has lost its shock value. Peter says, “You are the Christ,” and our thought is, “Yeah, everybody knows that!” But at the moment that Peter uttered those words nobody knew it. Not the disciples, not the religious elite, not the political incumbents, not the man or woman in the street. Peter’s words shattered the existing order of things. In an earsplitting phrase the world was forever changed.
Changed, not because the unimaginable had been put into words. Changed, not because a long cherished dream was about to become reality. Changed because the long-held dream was completely reinterpreted, cast in a new light, re-imaged. The one in the know threw out the generations-old dream of a military/political conqueror and replaced it with a loser. The expected champion would not do physical or verbal battle with the powers that be. He would hold his face high and submit to every ploy and trick in the book and be defeated, dying in the most hideous fashion. Then, in the midst of tyrannical gloating, he would show God’s true purpose and exercise the power for which no earthly power was a match.
It is always disconcerting to hear Jesus tell the disciples not to tell anyone about him. It is really an extension of other times when he asked individuals not speak about him. And they always do. Peter’s response to Jesus’ explanation of his messiahship suggests the reason Jesus may have tried to keep it quiet. Peter’s response shows that he didn’t understand. He had the right title but the wrong definition. If everyone went off talking up Jesus as Messiah but with the wrong understanding, the entire mission and ministry could be compromised. The whole Palestinian world of Jesus’ day would be trying to force a square peg Jesus into a round hole revolution. The end result would be devastating. There will be no glory and reward in that misguided approach.
Some scripture passages are filled with information. Some are filled with rules and guidelines. This one has neither. It has a single demand. It requires a personal commitment. Who is Jesus for you? Only you and you alone can answer that for yourself. And we have to do so knowing that we may have the title right but may not fully understand the meaning. What does it mean for us if we call Jesus Savior? Son of God? Messiah?
Peter was human. We are human. Jesus urges Peter, urges us to gain another perspective. That is a lifetime of work. We are invited to find in our relationship with Jesus the promise and the hope that somehow the divine perspective on who we are and what we are about will break through our wall of humanity and grow within us. Then we will find a way of life that is different from the way of the world, a way that fill truly and eternally fulfill all that God intends. The world calls it “losing.” God calls it salvation. If that is the case, each of us is called to learn to live as a loser, for those who lose their lives because of Jesus and because of the good news will save them.
Praise the Lord.
(1) Thom Shuman, “benchwarmers and toothpaste,” midrash@joinhands.com, Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 11:17 AM
(2) Ronald Bloomfield, “Physician gave all to a poor community,” Columbus Dispatch, Friday, September 11, 2015, B, 14.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark 7:34-37; Isaiah 35:4-7a
Immigrant: one who comes to a country to take up residence.
Alien: a person of another family, race, nation; a foreigner; someone or something differing in nature or character, typically to the point of incompatibility.
Sojourner: one who stays temporarily.
Foreigner: a person belonging to or owing allegiance to another country.
Multiple translations of the Old Testament Hebrew intermix these terms, which are used upwards of 250 times, representing three word roots. The New Testament Greek’s uses come in at under three dozen.
In the Old Testament the phrase, “the widow, the orphan and the stranger/sojourner/alien” form a recurring refrain in legal code texts as well as the prophetic writings.
While “stranger” is the preferred word in the King James version many of us were raised on, our sanctuary Contemporary English Bible likes the word “immigrant.”
Since this constellation of related words – with nuanced differences – is prevalent in scripture, there must be a message for us within them.
The author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes near the conclusion of the great listing of praiseworthy forebears in the faith:
“All these people died in faith without receiving the promises, but they saw the promises from a distance and welcomed them. They confessed that they were strangers and immigrants on earth.” (Hebrews 11:13)
The psalmist many centuries earlier wrote:
“Hear my prayer, Lord!
Listen closely to my cry for help!
Please don’t ignore my tears!
I’m just a foreigner—an immigrant with you.
Just like all my ancestors were.” (Psalm 39:12)
The word to us is that we are all aliens, foreigners, strangers, immigrants.
In the sociology of the Appalachian culture in the midst of which we dwell, a person isn’t a native until they have lived here well into the third or fourth generation. We aren’t native unless our great-grandparents lived here. We are still immigrants, even after a quarter century.
So think about it. We are immigrants. And we have been a number of times.
- Many of us were immigrants leaving another place and society to come to Waverly.
- For some of you it was a hard immigration from a life of working to a life of retirement (and some of you failed, didn’t you?)
- We were immigrants leaving home and going to college, going into the military, marrying into a new family, getting our first job, and the next one, or changing careers.
- And, for most of us, this thing called aging is surely alien territory and there be dragons.
Being immigrants is not something new. Forget the fact that most all of our ancestors in one generation or another crossed an ocean to live in a land filled with promises and perils. The political revolution that created this nation was an immigration from the tyranny of an absent and exploitive monarchy to an experiment in broad-based community government, a democracy. Most of the early settlers lived off the land, hunting, fishing, doing subsistence farming.
Later generations were immigrants in a new form of life called the Industrial Revolution. That led to immigration from far-flung rural cabins to the urban tenements of cities. The expansion of mass production was aided by the influx of immigrants mostly from Europe. Then the Great Depression set in and nearly a third of the population became immigrants in a life of hardship.
Following the end of World War II our parents immigrated from being GI Joes and Rosie Riveters to living the seemingly never ending good life. Some of us immigrated from the inner city to the strange world of the suburbs. We became immigrants in the information age as television came of age, the Internet was created, and now the digital age in which our children and grandchildren are full-fledged natives. We can only imagine what they will have to immigrate to over the course of their lives.
In the great parable of the judgment of the nations in Matthew 25, when those to the king’s left, who are being eternally banished, ask, “When did we see you ... a stranger ?” their question is from a position of rootedness rather than the rootless life of immigrants. They had done everything they could to solidify and plant themselves in a life to which they dearly wanted to be accustomed. They missed the whole point of their relationship with God.
Calvin Butts, pastor of New York City’s Abyssinian Baptist Church had a father who was a butcher and a mother who was a simple servant. He says, “I never thought the dream was about trying to become more successful than my parents were materially. I never had an idea that it was about one generation doing better than the next.” To him the essence of the American Dream was in the “prophetic and poetic” words of the Declaration of Independence on the inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”(1) Once again we are brought back to those profound words of the Westminster divines: “The chief end of human beings is to glorify God and enjoy God forever.”
We are immigrants in a world, a culture, a lifestyle that goes on around us. Yet the words of the Ephesian letter tell us a deeper truth than the dis-ease of daily living:
“You are no longer strangers and aliens. Rather you are fellow citizens with God’s people, and you belong to God’s household.” (Ephesians 2:19)
Because we are immigrants in a culture and society that at best only mouths the word “God,” and at worst, denounces God, and because our citizenship is in a world very different from the physical world our bodies inhabit, we are in this together. That creates unlikely alliances. We are an mixture of bodies – toned, tattooed, or tubby. We are old, young, rich, poor, helpless and helpful, stutterers and orators, dreamers and pragmatists. Yet our citizenship is the same. In baptism we have been made all the same – adopted children of the King of kings.
The words that James offers his faith community apply to every faith community. Regardless of outward appearances, despite what may appear to be blessing or curse of the economic and social life, believers – you and me and everyone washed in Christ’s name – are equal. There is to be no favoritism. Unlike the characters in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, some of us are not more equal than others. We are all citizens of God’s eternal realm, even in the here and now.
If we are called to treat each other as full sisters and brothers in the Lord, that behavior should be the way we behave no matter where we are or who we are with. Jesus on numerous occasions reached out to people who, for a variety of reasons, were not welcomed and included in the faith community created by God through the formation of the Israelite nation or its seemingly constant testing, discipline, exile, and reconstruction. The dream of Isaiah does not change:
“Say to those who are panicking:
‘Be strong! Don’t fear! . . .
God will come to save you.’
Then the eyes of the blind will be opened;
and the ears of the deaf will be cleared.
Then the lame will leap like the deer,
And the tongue of the speechless will sing.” (Isaiah 35:4-6)
The realm of God’s rule is always coming near. God’s reign is always happening. But it is always happening in the midst of what seems like a universal and impossibly fierce effort to thwart it. That is why we are aliens, strangers, foreigners, immigrants. We live in the constantly coming, almost-but-not-yet reality of what God has called creation to be and do.
Who is an immigrant? You and you and you and you – each of us. And that is all right. We are each a little colony of heaven. God the Father will protect us. God the Son will guide us. God the Spirit will bless our immigrant life.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
(1) Cited in America’s Moment: Creating Opportunity in the Connected Age (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015), 2-3.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
