Preaching Notes for the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost (September 20,
2015)
The Rev. Dr. Dawn Chesser
Proverbs 31:10-31
In spite of generations of preachers who have imagined that these verses are
intended to describe “The Good Wife,” I find myself persuaded by Alyce McKenzie’s
argument that the writer here is not holding up an ideal example for women to
emulate, but rather recounting the characteristics of Lady Wisdom (McKenzie and
most scholars call her “Woman Wisdom”). McKenzie explains,
Coming at the very end of Proverbs, this acrostic poem is part heroic poetry,
part hymn of praise. It sums up the qualities of Wisdom and commends her
benefits to potential followers. Woman Wisdom, who earlier in Proverbs has
come out of her home to challenge the young to enter the path of wisdom,
now invites them into her home, a place graced by lovingkindness (31:26),
industry, and care for the poor of the community. The message is clear for
the readers of Proverbs: Become members of this woman’s household! If you
do this, you will gain every measure of happiness (Alyce McKenzie,
Preaching Biblical Wisdom in a Self-Help Society. Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 2002. pp 116-117).
In Proverbs, the wisdom of God comes to the world in the form of a woman. Last
week we heard Lady Wisdom shouting from the street corners, calling upon her
people to not turn away from the knowledge she had to bring. This week we get a
glimpse into her many attributes:
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She is trustworthy and brings gain to those who commit to her.
She is faithful.
She does good work with her hands
She feeds others.
She takes care of her home and especially her female servants.
She is a landowner.
She is a gardener.
She is physically strong.
She takes care of her belongings.
She is a weaver of fabrics.
She takes care of the poor
She keeps her home warm
She makes her own beautiful clothes and sells clothes.
The people in the city know and respect her
She keeps busy.
She is happy.
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She fears the Lord.
Wow, what a list! That doesn’t sound like any human, male or female, at least not
one that I have ever known. It sounds more like a list describing the attributes of our
Divine Creator. And indeed, that is one way to think of Lady Wisdom. She is one of
the faces of the Lord God. She is the wisdom of God. She is the Spirit of God. She
offers the love and care of God to God’s people.
And what’s more amazing is that she invites us, she invites you and me, into her
home. She invites us to be part of her family. She offers us all of the benefits of her
wisdom, if only we are willing to reach out and take her hand, join our hearts with
her heart.
We see the face of God in so many characters in our Holy Scriptures. Sadly, the vast
majority of faces we are given are those of men. So how refreshing is it to see the
face of God in the gifts and graces of a female character, Lady Wisdom, Woman
Wisdom, full of grace and mercy for God’s people.
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a
This week’s lesson from James also concerns wisdom. It is posed around the
question of whose wisdom we follow: the wisdom of God or the wisdom of the
world? For James, the answer to this question is found not in what we say, but in
what we do. And James is very clear that we can’t have it both ways. We either
follow the wisdom of God, or we follow the wisdom of the world.
So maybe it would be good to take stock of our own lives and examine what our
lifestyles reveal about whose wisdom we really follow.
James says the wisdom of the world cultivates a life defined by “bitter envy and
selfish ambition,” while the wisdom of God is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle,
willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or
hypocrisy” (James 3, verses 14 and 17).
What does a life that follows the wisdom of the world look like? It is selfishly
motivated and characterized by an endless parade of desires. It is a life in which a
person simply can never have enough. It is a life where, in order to have all of the
finer things in life—a large and lavishly decorated house, nice cars, expensive
vacations, a closetful of fashionable clothes, perfectly coiffed hair, membership in
the country club, maybe even a boat—the person must become a slave to feeding
the never-ending demand for more and better things.
He or she must be willing to sacrifice everything else in order to obtain this lifestyle:
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Sacrifice time with family and friends to long hours to earn more money to
fund all of these expenses.
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Maybe sacrifice some personal integrity and be open to cheating a little bit if
it helps him or her to stay ahead in the game
Sacrifice trust in other people, because they might steal from him or her
Perhaps even cultivate a willingness to take away someone’s life in order to
maintain one’s own desired lifestyle
By putting this in such stark terms, James forces us to ask ourselves very seriously
what it means to choose to live a certain way when we know that our choices have
dire consequences for others. Further, he calls us to not look the other way but face
the hard truth.
For example, I must face the fact that when I buy a fashionable item of clothing that I
know is made in a place that has been well-documented for using child labor or
forcing people to work in terrible conditions for very little money, I am living by the
wisdom of the world. And because I spend many long hours working so I can earn a
pretty decent living, I can afford to buy that new dress or that pair of shoes. But does
that make it okay?
James is saying in the strongest terms possible that it does not make it okay. In fact,
he is saying that if I do that and I choose not to see the consequences of my actions, I
am living according to a wisdom that is earthly, unspiritual, and devilish.
This is but one very simple and common example of something from my own life. I
must confess it, and furthermore, I know deep down in my heart that James is right
about this, and that I am guilty of living more according to the wisdom of this world
than the wisdom of God. And yet, I do buy that new blouse or that new pair of shoes
anyway.
What does this mean for the average American who reads this passage? What does
it mean for the people to whom you are sharing this word from God? What does it
mean for you personally? Can we even be honest enough with ourselves to take a
hard look? I don’t know about you, but I’m finding it pretty upsetting.
How can we move away from living according to the wisdom of the world and
toward the wisdom of God in our everyday lives? What changes do we need to make
to submit ourselves to God and resist the devil so he will flee from us? How can we
draw near to God, so God will draw near to us?
Mark 9:30-37
Sometimes I feel really bad for Jesus. Do you ever think about how frustrating and
depressing he must have found his situation?
I mean, he had hand-picked and personally called all of these disciples with whom
he planned to be in ministry. When he asked, they had all agreed to come along.
They had followed him from place to place, lived with him, watched him, and
listened to him night and day for three long years. They had seen him perform
miracle after miracle. And then, finally, when Jesus asked them who it was that they
thought he was, only Simon Peter had figured out that he was the one sent by God.
That’s sad, isn’t it? I mean, he must have felt disappointed. So little to work with!
But, alas, he just had to take it all in and move on.
“Okay, Simon Peter,” he said. “You’ve got it right. I am indeed the one sent by
God to show you the meaning of life. And this is what I’m going to show you.
When we get to Jerusalem, I’m not going to overthrow the government and
take control of the city. Instead, I’m going to let myself be turned over to
those who are already in charge. Then, they are going to arrest the one whom
God has sent, put him on trial, find him guilty, and put him to death. So if
you’re thinking we’re going to end up on top, I can tell you for sure that we
are not going to come out the winners, at least not in the way that people
keep score. We are going to lose, and we’re going to lose big time. But God
doesn’t keep score the way that people do. So three days after he has been
killed, the one whom God has sent will rise from death. This is the way that I
trust in God. And you must trust in God too. You must follow this kind of
pattern of living. You have to throw out the rules by which people keep score,
and trust in God to keep score. This is the meaningful pattern that God has
sent me to show you. Do this, and you will find life” (See Mark 8: 31).
So what did Simon Peter, the only one who had correctly named Jesus as the Godsent one, do? How did he respond? He began to argue with Jesus, and they got into it
so bad that Jesus was obliged to rebuke him (Mark 8:32-33).
The lectionary skips over the next part and saves it for Transfiguration Sunday,
which comes just before Easter, but in the Scriptures it says that it was just after this
argument that Jesus decided it was time to put the fear of God into Peter and James
and John, so to speak.
So he took them up on a high mountain for a little get-together with Moses and
Elijah. And while this was going on, the robes that Jesus was wearing began to flash
like lightning, and the voice of God came out of a cloud and told them to listen very
closely to whatever Jesus had to say (Mark 9:2-8).
After all this happened, these shocked men climbed back down off the mountain
where Jesus was almost immediately surrounded by a great crowd of people in need
of healing. The disciples stood by and watched as he healed another child. When he
was finished, he began to teach them again, saying that he was going to be killed, but
that after three days, God would redeem him from the dead. The disciples listened
intently and nodded their heads solemnly, but it wasn’t two minutes before Jesus
caught them having an argument over which one of them was the greatest, who
among them was Jesus’ number one disciple.
Now don’t you imagine that Jesus would have liked to have grabbed one or two of
them and slapped their faces? Here were his closest colleagues displaying this
reprehensible kind of activity that we see on football fields and other sports arenas
where the players, after scoring, begin to dance around in a showy way and hold up
their index fingers and proclaim, “We’re number one!!”
Back in the days when I was a cheerleader (yes, I was), we even had a cheer about it.
It was really simple: We would strut around and clap our hands while chanting
“We’re number one! We’re number one!” rhythmically. And then, as if that weren’t
enough, the band would begin to play that song by Queen, “We are the champions.”
We’d sing along and feel all self-satisfied and indulgent and superior.
You who are reading my words right now know exactly what I’m talking about. We
have all had the experience of self-satisfied elation that comes when our hometown
high school wins the ballgame on Friday night, or our daughter’s team wins the
volleyball tournament or the softball game, or our favorite team wins the World
Series or the Super Bowl. We know that feeling, and we like having it.
So this is kind what Jesus’ disciples were feeling that night so long ago. They were
thinking that if they stuck with Jesus, one day they would score a big victory. They’d
win the election. They’d be number one. The top of the heap. The rulers of the
Roman World. The President of the Roman States.
And which one of them would be Jesus’ right-hand man? Who would he pick to be
his vice-president? What would be the pecking order among Jesus’ closest followers
when they won the big victory? Which one of them was the MVP to Jesus?
This, my friends, is what they were talking about. This, on the eve of what was to be
shame, embarrassment, failure, and death, which was what was waiting for them in
Jerusalem -- as Jesus had just told them. This, in the context of everything that Jesus
had been about and tried to teach them for three years. This is what he found them
arguing about as they walked along the road to Capernaum. Can you imagine how
he must have felt?
But Jesus never responded like you and I might. He never lost his cool. He never
slapped anybody around, not even when he was really provoked, as he was in this
situation, when it must have seemed to him like everything he had been doing these
three years with the disciples had been nothing but a waste of his time and energy.
What Jesus did do was calmly sit down and call everybody together around him for a
little talk -- a “come-to-Jesus” moment if there ever was one. And he took a child into
his arms and he said to them, “If anyone would be first, that person must be last of
all and servant of everybody else. Whoever understands that his or her status is not
higher than the status of this child, understands life and me and the God who has
sent me” (Mark 9: 35-36).
What was Jesus trying to get at by talking about this child? Well, part of it might
have to do with the fact that in those days, a child had absolutely no standing in the
community, no status, no rights whatsoever. A child was the property of his or her
father. A child had about the same rights as our dog Rusty has today. And maybe
with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals around to protect his
rights, Rusty may have more rights.
As powerless as some children might feel in our day and age, believe me when I say
that tremendous strides have been made since the times when Jesus lived. But each
one of us can recall what it feels like to be a child, so we can surely understand what
Jesus means.
Especially in times of war, a child was, back then, just as today, completely
powerless and at the mercy of the grown-ups who are struggling for power. And
what the disciples had thought Jesus to be leading them into was nothing if not a
war.
After all, their ancestors had taken the Promised Land by war. David, their greatest
king, was the one who had been the greatest at waging war. It was going to take a
war to overthrow the Romans, who were the best-known conquerors and wagers of
war in that time. But before that could happen, their own rulers in Jerusalem would
have to be overthrown, which also meant war.
They had thought that when Jesus was born, he might be the one sent from God, but
the proof of that would come only after he had grown up and come into power by
not just waging war, but by winning that war. So when Jesus said these words, the
disciples surely must have wondered how in the world such a child could be of any
use in any test of real power, like war.
We can all remember that after the attacks of 9/11, the United States declared war
first on Afghanistan, and then on Iraq, and a number of other nations as part of the
War on Terrorism. Shortly after the campaign in Afghanistan began, my bishop at
the time, Bishop Joseph Sprague from the Northern Illinois Conference, went to visit
Afghanistan. We were all worried about his decision to put himself in such a
dangerous situation, but he felt strongly that if our young men and women were
risking their lives in combat, then he was willing to put himself at personal risk to
bear witness to it. He spent about a month there. When he came back, he made it his
mission to go around to as many churches as he could to talk with United
Methodists about what he had seen.
He even came to my little church in Chicago for our Wednesday night Bible study
one week in the spring of 2002 to talk to us. We had about twenty people gather that
evening to hear about what he had witnessed. The most lasting impression on me
came in the form of a hand-drawn picture that a ten-year-old Afghani boy had made
for him. He’d met the boy in an orphanage that had been set up to care for the
youngest survivors of the war. It was a child’s rendering of what it had been like
when the bombs began to fall upon his family’s farm.
In the picture were stick figures with their heads and legs blown off, red-crayon
blood spilling out, a family dog that was cut in two, and the bombs raining down
from the sky on the only world he knew. Bishop Sprague told us that this boy’s
entire family perished in that bombing, right before his eyes. The boy had borne
witness as his mother, father, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins were
blown to pieces. The child was powerless to help, and powerless to stop it from
happening. He was powerless to do anything but watch, and then begin the painful
work of healing and moving forward in his life as an orphan in a country torn apart
by war.
So many years have passed since Bishop Sprague visited that orphanage. I wonder
what happened to that boy. He’s probably long dead with no one left who even
remembers him, save for Bishop Sprague who showed us his picture, and those of us
who remember the story.
Of what use are children in a war? We might be tempted to answer that they are of
no use whatsoever. But if we were to ask that question another way, if we were to
ask, which are more necessary for our survival, war or children, we would see right
away that even though sometimes we decide that going to war might be the best
course of action, the fact of the matter is, we don’t have that same choice about
children. I mean, we could make it without war, but we could never make it without
children. If we were to give up on children, we would be giving up all our hopes for
the future.
Life doesn’t consist just of who wins the war or the football game or the baseball
championship or even the war. Being able to claim we are number one is not all
there is.
Life is also about hopes and dreams. Of utmost importance is that we dare to hope
and dream that there is a God, hope and dream that not a single one of us just
randomly happened into existence, but that there is a spirit of love behind all of life,
all creation, all hopes and dreams, and that spirit of love is God.
Whether we happen to be among the twelve original disciples that Jesus chose, or
have only come along to follow him some twenty centuries later, those of us who are
followers of Jesus take the childlike stance that there is a God, and that God sent
Jesus to show us the way our lives ought to be lived and the pattern that our hopes
and dreams ought to take.
Those of us who dare to take the stance that there is a God can never prove that we
are right about that. We take a risk, we believe, we hope, we claim our stake that
says that, despite the ways of the world, of men and women and power and
elections and war, there is a God in and beyond and through it all, and that Jesus
Christ represents the wishes of God so completely and absolutely that the only
words that are sufficient to describe him is that he is the one sent from God, the one
who is God, God’s very own child.
Each of us must pick. We must make our choice. Who are we going to trust? Will we
trust human definitions of power and ambition and think only about winning the
war, winning the game of life, coming out on top, becoming and remaining number
one? Or will we trust God, and Jesus Christ, whom God sent to show us how to live
another way?