Readings:
Proverbs 1:20-33, James
3:1-12, Mark 8:27-30
We pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations
of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our
sustainer. Amen
In my monthly
retreat day this past week I read some Wind in the Willows. It’s good to know what a minister does with
their spiritual reflection time isn’t it?
There is some good stuff in there though, and the characterisations of
Mole and Ratty and Toad and Badger are altogether too close to home at
times. Probably the most foolish of the
four is Toad – exuberant, impulsive, obsessive, refusing to hear the words of
his friends who can see disaster looming and try to talk him out of whatever
his latest craze might be. Even landing
in jail as a result of his love affair with crashing fast expensive powerful cars is not enough to
being an end to his foolishness. At the
very end of the story we think maybe he might have learned his lesson – but….we
can’t be sure.
Enter Wisdom:
calling out in the streets, begging to be heard. We turn our backs, stop our ears, tune out,
grab the nearest fast car (or our equivalent of it) and speed off into our
inevitable catastrophe. Too harsh do you
think? We are not Toad-like extremists,
never listening. But all the other
characters from Kenneth Grahame’s story also have their moments of foolishness
(Badger perhaps less so) – where the voices of their friends and their own wisdom
just can’t seem to dissuade them from silly choices.
There are two
strands of thought from this that I would like to pursue.
The first is
encapsulated in a quote from commentator Mark Douglas:
‘For James, [the
epistle writer] evil is not defined by consistently foul action but by its
capricious movement between the fair and the foul”[1]. In other words – we are both made in God’s
image, the fair, and we are capable of cursing each other – the foul. We are capricious creatures.
The second thought
is that we rely on those around us to guide us out of foolishness and, if that
doesn’t work, to be there to pick up the pieces – just as Mole and Ratty and
Badger did for Toad.
We are all capable
of both wisdom and foolishness – and this works on a whole bunch of
levels. On one hand, there are the things
that we immediately know are wrong, hurtful, but there are also the things we
do that we are convinced are wisdom, have every rational argument and
historical support for but don’t hear when a new truth comes along. This was the case with the disciples when
Jesus asked them ‘Who do you say I am?’
They had been able to loose some of the more fanciful answers because
Jesus first asked ‘Who do the people say I am?’
Elijah, John, a prophet! But
Peter says ‘the Messiah’. Discerning
words, we think, good old Peter – yet
what follows shows Peter’s inability to actually listen to the new truths that
Jesus is teaching – Peter’s messiah still came in triumphant power and glory,
Jesus, the Messiah came to suffering, rejection, execution. Peter had yet to actually hear the words of
wisdom. Are there words of wisdom that
Jesus brings to us that we actually haven’t heard, that we slot conveniently
into our already determined understanding when God is asking us to break out
into something new, some fundamental change of direction in our thinking? This reminds me of one of the many gems from
the Joy Cowley workshop last Sunday afternoon that she just kind of threw into
the mix – to stop seeing The Fall as our primary response to God and to live in
the exuberant generous grace that is God with us. Major shift in thinking for
many who live in the Christian faith I would think. New truth.
What about the
things of the moment – the ordinary.
James picks up on a piece of foolishness that is everyday, commonplace –
our choice of how we use the power of speech!
For our words have the capacity to heal or to harm, to build up or
demolish, to calm or to set on fire. It
is no small responsibility for each of us – and particularly when we are in a
position of some mana – where through what we say, we influence the thinking
and lives of others. May the words of
my mouth…..be acceptable in your sight…take on a very real meaning.
We need to be
careful, says James, and wise in how we use words. And for all James words being known as
‘wisdom writings’ – (called by one writer a ‘homiletical mural) – we need to be
careful not to cherry pick out of context.
For example, if we were to extrapolate the phrase ‘No-one can tame the
tongue – a restless evil, full of deadly poison’[2]
– should language as we know it cease to exist?
I don’t think so. Wisdom is
actually about interpreting knowledge of who we are in the light and love of
Christ, that is to understand our capacity for hurting others and to let love
stop our words of poison. In fact
knowledge by itself without the heart, (love,wisdom) to guide our application
of knowledge could very well be one of the best definitions of foolishness.
Did you know today
is Humanity Sunday. It seems that the
events of the last week have only emphasised our inhumanity. The peace lecture where Rabbi Morgan
emphasised that unless we can truly view ‘the other’ as worthy of our respect
and compassion, then we will never lose the acts of war that have decimated our
world. The Refugee Crisis where our
Government had to be convinced that we needed to up our quota and still sits on
a paltry increase when the some of the rest of the world is rediscovering the
meaning of generous hospitality.
Heartening to be at the rally in the Octagon – and to hear the
determination of Council and politicians and people to change that.
The foolishness of
the world is to be met with the loving compassion and hospitality of those who
believe that we not only need to guide the world away from the idiocy of war
and greed and fundamentalist power struggles but that we also need to be there
to pick up the pieces that result from these acts. We are one family are we not? All people are worthy of our respect and
compassion are they not? Is it time that we, like wisdom, shouted out our
frustration at the way people fail to understand the consequences of acting in
selfishness, anger and destruction? Where is our voice to guide the world out
of its foolishness?
Yet even that is
not the whole – we have to demonstrate in our own lives, our communities of
faith especially, that we follow the way of wisdom, the way of God, the
teaching of Christ. There is a great
deal of wisdom within the church, especially the recognition that we can only
live this life of right choosing within community – that we need to hear each
other’s understandings, listen to differing perspectives so that we can make
decisions that put aside foolishness and embrace wisdom – God’s way, not our
way is a journey we take together. And
we are not going to get it right – picking up the pieces of foolish choice
needs to be done in love and compassion, and those of us who get it wrong (and
that is each one of us at some stage) can recognise that actually we haven’t
been cut off, our family is still there for us, we are loved despite our
foolishness. Not easy when we think of
some of the actions and words of our church family but the way of Jesus none
the less.
So let us grow in
wisdom – in our language, our actions, our beliefs and our understandings. Let us show the world that the ways of God,
of love and forgiveness, of hospitality and compassion, respect, mercy are
indeed the wisdom of the Christ, the one who came not as a judgement on the
world, but to reconcile humanity with God so that our living might reflect the
wisdom of living in the way of love, the way of Jesus. Amen.
Margaret Garland
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