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.
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