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“Pure Wisdom”
James 3:31-4:8a; Psalm 1; Mark 9:30-37
Rev. Sandy Nuernberg
Oakland-Cambridge Presbyterian Church, Cambridge, WI
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time -
Evangelism Sunday
September 24, 2006
“Who is wise and understanding among you?”
James 3:13
It seems to me that by the
question here, there is insinuation of both wisdom and understanding to be
attributes in the goodness of life. It’s classic O.T. wisdom literature here;
practical good behavior; sound judgments of what we know in our life and conduct
our actions, our public good deeds. Being wise and having awareness may get us
pretty far in life! Or not.
In our Gospel, the disciples are
immersed in arguing among themselves as to who is the greatest; like anyone who
thinks they are great, the competition can be fierce! They were chosen first,
are the most influential, and might become the wealthiest; all attributes of the
great ones of their time. But Jesus is telling them the second of three times
now, he is ‘cluing them into’ his future away from them and they don’t listen.
They can not comprehend what they are hearing, that Jesus will suffer and die;
and when Christ leaves them for the cross, reality hits them hard, and they
leave the scene. They don’t want to identify with his death or resurrection,
nor, heaven forbid, do they have the desire to ask. They are too busy
determining their own fate in this house in Capernaum. How great were these
disciples, anyway? How wise and understanding were they?
In James there is a somewhat
similar conundrum; we, Jesus’ disciples are confronted with contrasting, and yet
familiar consequences of pure wisdom. But do we get it? Here, there are two
kinds of wisdom, really: earthly and heavenly wisdom. Earthly wisdom is bitter,
envious, selfish, boastful, false to the truth, unspirited, and devilish. It
results in ‘disorder and wickedness of every kind ’(v.14-16). Heavenly wisdom is
from above and is ‘first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of
mercy, and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.’ This pure
wisdom is a harvest of righteousness sown of peace upon peace (v. 17-18).
Which is more gentle? Earthly
wisdom confronted with disputes, conflicts, cravings within you of war, murder,
and wrong, OR heavenly wisdom world, we are given grace to be humble by a loving
God, who is ‘desirous of being near to us’ (v.8). If you are like me, there is
no doubt at all as to what kind of pure wisdom we want to be near!
But how can we take up friendship
with anyone in this earthly world without sacrificing something, some part of
us, for a relationship with pure wisdom of heaven–the heavenly world above? (
Pause)...Ironically, this is exactly what God asks of us, and Jesus was asking
of his disciples. And it’s not simple; God requests of us to allow God to be
nearer to us in our earthly world, SO THAT we might be nearer to God in God’s
heavenly world! If we sacrifice anything in our earthly world, it is to be wise
and understanding of the Kingdom of heaven, God’s heavenly world!.
We are to show it by our good life
and we become wise and knowing of Christ in our life–the fruits of wisdom in
being led by the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23); love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The beauty of these
virtues is that there is no law against such things! Ultimately, the choice is
ours, isn’t it?; we know full well that the choices come with demands that are
great, indeed. We live in an earthly world, you and I, and it’s hard to obey a
heavenly kind of wisdom and understanding, isn’t it? We also know the great
ones, the ‘top dogs’ win most of the time, or so we think.
I saw Forbes listing of the
wealthiest American heroes, (WSJ, 9/23/06) but a pre-requisite was that
the richest are yes, billionaires! There’s a bit of a blow-up story about
one rich and famous female–Oprah Winfrey and her lifestyle. It seems she
admitted publicly ( perhaps on her show) that she pumped gas herself for only
the first time since 1983 on a road trip with her friend, Gayle King–yes, it was
headline news in much of the media a day or so ago. On searching the Web for
something else, I found that she was being compared with Donald Trump with his
wealth and happiness and I found a blog most interesting. It went something like
this:
‘Oprah was
honest and it demonstrated the privileges of WEALTH.
I thank God the Lord has blessed her in the manner that he did because
she has done more to benefit society than others have in a life time. People
of power and influence can forget what life is like for the ordinary
citizen.’
(9/22/06, 2:15pm, turnerdusmarine)
Another blog said:
‘Any idiot can pump gas. Just read the directions
if you need to.....
I think we’re all sick to death of Oprah, Trump, and Rosie..
Can’t we find some interesting people to hear about?’
( 9/22/06, 1:46 pm, redcrow953)
Now, even though we know 2,000
years ago there were no ‘comments to the editor’ of our Gospel writings, or any
other Biblical texts, for that matter, there is wonder at where wisdom and
understanding come from and how they are acted out—be it gentle born or
learned!!! Our texts reflect God’s gifts to us of pure wisdom and of good
works–it’s what we have chosen to believe and to do in our lives with these God
given gifts. In Mark the disciples chose not to comprehend what Jesus told them
about his life. Who was the greatest of them was important imperially; it
was their seeking of control and dominance in the empire in their time.
But God’s kingdom (empire)
represents something different; there were/are different practices and different
values. The sages, those of wisdom and sound judgment of Israel lived in a less
scientific world than we do; they were pressed to find the proper human response
to any of the world’s dimensions. This was true in the relationship of their own
human nature, and the Creator, God; the ancient mind was interpersonal in their
own decisions and also in the will of their God. They wanted to find where God
was revealed in creation. Yet we today, are scientific in wanting to know the
answers, finding the knowledge and boastful in pre-judging what an outcome may
be. In doing so, some, I say some of us, aren’t bashful to patent our knowledge,
write books of our interpretation, and even go to extremes in proving by
lawsuits that ‘we are right.’ How we practice our wisdom and understanding is
critical in today’s world.
We are great disciples, like
Jesus’ disciples, if we love and serve others, if we welcome new neighbors and
friends in our midst, if we serve at the Breakfast Club with the school children
and give them a meal, if we volunteer in our community. We are loving God’s
children and welcoming them to God. It’s as simple, and as difficult as that. To
be last and to be servant to all is not easy. The good news of our Gospel is
that in doing these pure and simple acts of wisdom, we are showing our good
life, our works and our walk to all people; to our children, our confirmands,
our adults, even our shut-ins in our community. We come nearer to God in our
actions and we move closer in our heartfelt love for one another. AMEN.
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