One of the most unnerving and comforting parts of
our civil litigation class in law school was a professor who knew well how to
use the Socratic method. He would choose
one particular student to carve the heart out of every class period. Comforting--in that if your name was not
called, you could sit back and nervously smile as you saw your classmate
confidently handle the first two questions. Watch beads of sweat gather as your
classmate realized how the teacher was leading them out onto a thin tree branch
with the next few questions. And then .
. . turn away as the teacher carved out
your classmate’s heart and showed it to them before their lifeless body tumbled
from wisdom’s tree with the final questions.
Unnerving--as the words, “Mr. Mulberry, you are up today,” were finally
spoken. And you felt classmates
physically distance themselves from what was soon to become my intellectual
corpse.
The Socratic method was developed by
the Greek teacher, Socrates, who sought to engage the critical thinking of his
disciples and students by becoming the student himself. Socrates pushed the certain knowledge of his
students so that they might be open to new possibilities, beyond what they
thought they already knew. With a series
of questions, Socrates could trap them with what they thought they already
knew. Socrates pressed his disciples to
think for themselves and come to understandings, insights, and wisdom they
could then own for themselves.[1]
Within Wisdom Literature is found
this elusive form of obtaining understanding and insight through questions.[2] This form of questioning challenges what we
think we know and asks us to think for ourselves, to struggle with the
questions, and, if we take the questions seriously, opens us up to new
possibilities. In the book of Proverbs,
we begin with questions like, “Can one walk on hot coals without scorching
one’s feet?” (Proverbs 6:28) and “Does not Wisdom call, and does not
Understanding raise Her voice?” (Proverbs 8:1).
We continue with deeper questions from Ecclesiastes such as “How can the
wise die just like fools?” (Ecclesiastes 2:16) and “What do mortals gain from
all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun?” (Ecclesiastes
2:22). Finally, there are the sober and
serious questions from Job like, “Where is the way to the dwelling of light,
and where is the place of night?” (Job 38:19-20).
We began with Wisdom Literature way
back in September and into October asking one of those sober and serious
questions from Job, “Where can Wisdom be found?” (Job 28:12)
That sounds like an idle question until we realize that the question is
posed by a man who has lost his children, his wealth, his belongings, his
health, and, finally, his friends. Job
is asking sober and serious questions of God in bewilderment. We can imagine the questions asked in
justifiable anger and rage, “Teach me, God, tell me what you have in mind! Give me reasons and rationale for this
suffering I am going through. Make me
your student. I await your answers and
invoke your presence!” And the Redeemer
of Blood grants presence and answers Job’s questions with questions of God’s
own. Wisdom Literature does not provide
us with easy answers but suggests that we gain wisdom and understanding only by
struggling through the riddles and parables it puts before us. Wisdom and understanding are not closed
circles of knowledge, but open circles which invite us to greater study,
discernment, prayer, relationship, and experience.
We live in a world that embraces
certainty rather than wisdom. And it is
killing us. It was the great science
fiction writer Isaac Asimov who said, “Anyone would rather go to somebody who
will say, ‘Two plus two equals five and there is no mistake about it,” than to
go to someone who says, ‘Well, modern scientific research says that two plus
two is usually four but we can’t always be certain, of course.’ They’ll go for the certainty even if it’s
wrong.” Asimov describes the rationality
paradox. Certainty is the opposite of
wisdom. Wisdom is not the sum total of what we know. Wisdom is the sum total of what we don’t
know. In other words, wisdom is the
capacity to reflect upon our assumptions.
Certainty is comforting. Wisdom and
rationality are discomforting. Wisdom is
to question the basis for people’s certainties.[3] Biblical tradition and deep spirituality call
for people of faith to seek wisdom. In
these difficult times, this good earth is in deep need of people who will seek
wisdom.
“Who is my neighbor?” Jesus is asked,
and rather than share certain knowledge about the world and our relationships,
Jesus tells a story which asks us to forever see Samaritans and the Law and our
neighbors differently . . . unpredictably.
In the other Scripture passage before us today, Jesus asks sober and serious questions of his disciples, presses them to think critically because life in the world has become a continuing crisis for Jewish people all around the Roman Empire. Jewish communities are beginning to tear, rip apart at the seams, disintegrate as the Roman occupation and its violence take their toll. If I remove my responsibility for my neighbor, strictly define what it means to be neighbor, and extract myself from my community to get me and mine, then I create one more fracture, one less resource in my community. In this context, Jesus asks these questions, “"Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your loving Creator feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the
oven, will the loving Creator not much more clothe you, you of little faith?" No answers, no certainty, but questions for a people who could not imagine in their war-torn lives that God loved them. Now the horizons of God’s love open up before them.
I know I want to answer each one of those
questions from Jesus with a “Yes, but . . . .”
As in, o.k., I see where you are going here Jesus, that’s probably what
I should be doing, and where my priorities should be, but . . . .” If Jesus provided answers, maybe they are
easily dismissed. But questions . . .
questions nag at me, disturb me, unsettle me . . . Theologian, Alyce M.
McKenzie, writes, “Jesus used the wrong questioning technique if he wanted to
live a long time.”[4] For this form of questioning challenges what
we consider to be common knowledge, our most basic assumptions locked within
the status quo, and wonders aloud whether our lifestyle and God’s values can
co-exist. If our lifestyle and God’s
values cannot co-exist, there is a rub, a conflict, that calls for
resolution. Do we jettison God’s
values? Our lifestyle? Or the messenger?
After
all these questions, Jesus ends with the line that brings home the meaning of
all his questions, “Seek first God’s Empire and God’s righteousness or justice,
and all these things will be given to you as well.” There is that word we have heard over and
over again in Wisdom theology—righteousness.
Righteousness coupled with those two
other social virtues—justice and equity, are what Proverbs, Chapter 1, tell us what
Wisdom Literature is all about. But
throughout Wisdom Literature, righteousness seems to get more play than the
other two.
Again, within the Bible, righteousness is about an inner
integrity, an inner world created in partnership with God that creates a
conflict with the necessary transformation found out in the world. And righteousness asks for that conflict to
be resolved. Interrupting the status quo
and working toward transformation are hard.
Nobody likes to enter into that much conflict. Righteousness says, however, that if interruption,
transformation, and conflict need to happen to rehabilitate society, then bring
it on. No hurdles are too high, no
stumbling blocks are too many which will keep us off the path. If one says, in my relationship with God I
have learned that these are the values of God, but then blinks and gives up
when things get tough, then that person betrays themselves as something less
than righteous.
Jesus said to the Jewish community of his time, “Do
not let the Roman world transform you.
Instead, transform the Roman world with what God seeks to stitch, weave
together in you. Resolve your inner
integrity with the conflict, brokenness, and fracture you see in the wider
world.”
So I come to the end of this Wisdom Theology sermon
series and many of you must be asking, “Why did you put us through all
this? Was there a point? Was there a purpose? Give us a little tour of the evil mind of
Mike Mulberry.”
The major reason I believed it important to study
and struggle with and run Wisdom Literature as a thread through our worship for
several weeks was that Wisdom Literature is a deep well within our tradition
that is plumbed by Jesus over and over again in his teaching. If we are to know more about Jesus and his
teaching, we must learn more about Wisdom Literature.
I believe learning more about Jesus and his teaching
is critical because so much of Christian culture has become about the death and
resurrection of Jesus. We make
resurrection into a miracle and suggest that all we have to do is believe, have
faith in Jesus as resurrected, and we have paved our way to the pearly gates. And
as long as I believe and Mike Mulberry is saved, is not my faith requirement
complete? In light of believing the unbelievable, Jesus’s life and teaching
have become almost irrelevant in certain Christian circles.
Jesus teaches to seek first the Empire of God and
God’s righteousness. Christian culture
teaches that we are to seek first the belief in the death and resurrection. Do we seek first to believe in the death and
resurrection of Jesus, as taught to us by cultural Christianity, or do we seek
first the Empire of God and its righteousness as taught to us by Jesus? I think that it is a critical Socratic
question for our faith. For if we seek
to believe first in the death and resurrection of Jesus, then who Jesus was and
what he taught can become irrelevant--irrelevant to the point where Jesus
becomes whatever we need or whatever want him to be. If we seek first God’s Empire and
righteousness, however, then there is a whole tradition of Wisdom and its
righteousness which informs us more of who Jesus was and what he taught. If we recognize the pearls within Wisdom
Literature, Jesus’ life and teaching become critical and have a wider context,
a wider character. Stories like Jonah,
Ruth, Job, and Esther teach us of God’s character, how that character was
mediated through Christ and his teaching.
I won’t threaten to tear out your heart and show it
to you as my law school civil litigation teacher did to so many students, but
in all good Socratic practice, I ask, “As people of faith, as Christians, what
do we seek first?” In all good wisdom,
may we be found to be righteous. May we
seek God’s righteousness. Amen.
[3]Julian de Medeiros, @juliandemedeiros, TikTok, de Medeiros is a Ph.D. candidate and Assistant Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent.
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