Wisdom Series 11, Gospels, "The questions of Wisdom inform the Wisdom of Jesus"

 

B Wisdom 11 Pilg 2021

Matthew 6:25-34; Luke 10:25-35

November 21, 2021

           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.

          

          

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[1] “What is the Socratic Method?”  http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-socratic-method.htm. 
[2] See Alyce M. McKenzie, “No Easy Answers: Reflections on Matthew  6:24-34, Patheos:Edgy Exegesis http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/No-Easy-Answers-Reflections-on-Matthew-Alyce-McKenzie-02-21-2011.
[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. 
[4] McKenzie, “No Easy Answers.”

Wisdom Series 10, Jonah, "The parable of the prophet"

 

B Wisdom 10 Pilg 2021 Jonah

Jonah 1; Luke 11:29-30

November 7, 2021

The Bible has echoes of other stories that always tell us how we should read the next story.  For example, God calls to the prophet, and the prophet responds by saying, “Here I am,” as a way of saying I am fully present, I will show up, and it is time to get to work.  This statement always comes with the prophet’s disqualifying characteristic--the prophet is not a good speaker, is too young, or too young and too female.  God is unconcerned by these disqualifications.  God is a non-anxious presence in the heart of what will be inevitable conflict for the prophet and their mission. This happens with Moses in the Exodus story.  This happens with Mary of Nazareth in the Gospel of Luke story.

As the celebrated literature teacher, Joseph Campbell might tell us, myth constructs worldview.   And within myth are verbal, visual, or auditory clues that open us up to a wider story of values, implicit understandings, and behaviors.  The cues also develop expectations.  Like a joke might begin with, “A priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a bar,” or “Knock, knock.”  With these beginnings, we have a hint how things are going to go when we hear or read certain words.   We hear or read the words, “Here I am” and we know that we are in the midst of a story about the call of a prophet. 

Parable, on the other hand, subverts worldview.  It takes the common story and upends expectations.  Jesus of Nazareth would teach with parables to upend worldview with the hope that space might open up in the heart of the listener and transform what the listener thought they already knew.

Within parables are these absurdities, comedies that help us see the world wholly different. 

Today we have before us the call of the prophet parable.  God calls the prophet Jonah, and Jonah does not show up.  Instead, Jonah hops on a boat that takes him in the direction toward the furthest known point away from the holy land.  Certainly, Jonah must reason, God’s presence and activity will not be known in Tarshish.

In Jewish mythology, the sea and the sea monster are part of the chaos that fall outside the purview of God’s love, grace, and salvation.  But here they are, the sea and the sea monster, smack dab in the middle of this parable, as agents of God’s mercy and salvation. 

The prophet, the one who is supposed to be the faithful messenger of God’s broad and wide love and compassion, is the one who chooses not to show up, not to be present, and not to do the work given.  God’s will is not done through the prophet.  God’s will is done through the agents of chaos, the sea and the sea monster.

I think Biblical stories seep into our culture in ways that we do not often see in the modern world because we rarely engage the Bible like we once did.  For good or ill, though, I see them undergirding the stories we still tell in modern culture.

 You may remember the TV show from the early 90s, “Northern Exposure.”  The show was about a Jewish doctor from New York who was sent, unwillingly, to the wilds of Cicely, Alaska, to pay off his accumulated student loans.  Ironically, my sister, Dr. Elizabeth Mulberry, was sent to Bethel, Alaska, to pay off her medical school loans.  She felt a little bit like Dr. Joel Fleischman.

“Northern Exposure” told the story of Dr. Joel Fleischman and his grouchy and grumbling attempt to make sense of Cicely, Alaska, where he was exposed to an uncounted number of quirky personalities and cultural clashes.  The show won almost every award possible for the way it loved all of its characters, their diverse personalities and habits, and the resulting humor from their interaction.  Salvation could be found in Cicely, Alaska—just not through Dr. Fleishcman, who came to Alaska thinking he had a corner on salvation and healing.   In the show, he was often the one being taught and saved.  In his critique of the personalities and settings found in Alaska, the learned Dr. Fleischman was also often the subject of satire. 

That is where comedy is often found.  Not because someone can tell a good joke, but because they take themselves so seriously that they cannot see the panoply of color and beauty and goodness found within their reach.  In his inability to know that beauty and goodness, Dr. Fleischman always seemed to be the most miserable, god-forsaken person on the show. 

Much to my Biblically geeky delight, in one of the episodes the writers placed the Jewish Dr. Fleischman in the belly of a great whale, contemplating the meaning of his life.  Here he was, a doctor ready to offer the small town of Cicely salvation with his gifts, and almost nobody seemed beholden to the salvation he was offering.

Jesus says in the gospels that the only sign this evil and adulterous nation shall receive is the sign of Jonah.  So we best be figuring out what that sign is to know the meaning of Jesus. 

I love the story of Jonah because it reminds me of the fractured fairy tales I would watch on Saturday morning TV when I was growing up.  Fractured fairy tales had a way of telling the stories we grew up with with absurd, modern twists.  As Callie Plunket Brown writes of Jonah’s story: 

There is much that is absurd in the book of Jonah:  a man gets swallowed by a fish; animals don sackcloth, and a prophet gets so angry over the death of a bush that he wishes he were dead.  But the questions the story provokes are quite serious.  Is God clueless or just terribly irresponsible?  How can justice be served in the face of such mercy?  How on earth can human beings hope to make sense of such a deity?

 

It is easy to make fun of Jonah in a context so far removed from the big fish story.  For the Jewish people, however, there would have been a strong identification with his plight—the fear and anger that had built over the years of the Exile and toward Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian Empire.  In historical context, the humor of Jonah had an edge.

Scholars date the book of Jonah to the 6^th or 5^th Century BCE when the people of Israel were still smarting from the real pain of the Exile and its aftermath.  In relating a metaphor for the Jewish experience of Exile, the prophet Ezekiel has us envision a killing field full of the dry bones of the Jewish people, a people laid waste, an image of genocide.  In Exile many of the Jewish touchstones for faith were violently stripped from them.  The Temple—the habitation for God and place for pilgrimage—razed to the ground.  Their leaders—the representative for God on earth—had been murdered or carted off in chains to serve a foreign ruler.  The land—the place of covenantal promise and ancestral heritage—was no longer their own and had become wasteland or desert.  One of the responses to the Exile was to circle the Jewish wagon of identity and close ranks around Jewish tradition so that outside threats could not, would not eradicate all of what it meant to be Jewish from the earth.  In some quarters, this gave rise to a nationalism that condemned close contact with people who were not Jews, punched up part of the Jewish moral code that prohibited intermarriage, and offered strong critique of anyone or anything that saw God outside of Judaism.  The book of Jonah then is a parable, a satirical story, which unseats insular nationalism, an ethnocentrism that believes our people have the market on truth and God’s blessing and mercy.

While the call of the prophet story is certainly true, we also know this story of Jonah to be true.  Jonah may run from God to avoid his call, but there are times in our lives when God tracks us down, is on the hunt for us. 

Representative John Lewis was one of our terrible losses in 2020.  You may remember him as one of the people who made pilgrimage without Dr. King on the first march to Selma and was the first person beaten unconscious on the bridge leading into town.   Lewis related that Dr. King would talk about the feeling that God was tracking us down to do the necessary work.  Lewis said,

You have been caught up. You have been led. You have been not necessarily forced, but something caught up with you and said, "John Lewis, you too can do something, you too can make a contribution, you too can get in the way, but if you're going to do it, do it full and with love, peace, nonviolence, and that element of faith.

There are times when we are the prophet that says, reluctantly, “Here I am,” but there are other times when we try to run, seek to get away from the necessary work that has to be done, and God tracks us, catches up with us, to let us know it is ours to do in full love.

Not only does the Jonah story diverge from the faithful story of the prophet but also from what happens when the prophet speaks truth to power.  Jesus gives voice to it when he says to his own holy city, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who murder the prophets . . .”  This is the usual plight of the prophet—they are scoffed at, ridiculed, thrown in prison, or murdered.  In the book of Jonah, miraculously, the prophet succeeds and the people of Nineveh repent.    

Again, we might think Jonah without compassion to not want to go and preach a word of repentance to the capital of the Assyrian Empire, Nineveh.  Think about what the Exile must have done to the Jewish psyche, how the violence caused them to with withdraw as a people.  And Assyria was a byword for brutality in the ancient world.  Hebrew Scripture scholar, Beth Tanner, states that Assyria was, “[T]he nation that destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and held the southern kingdom of Judah as a vassal for almost one hundred years.  Assyria was more than an enemy; it was a brutal occupying force that forever changed Israel’s fortunes.”

The Assyrian Chronicles describe horrendous acts of torture which were employed to create fear and, thus, submission in the enemies of the empire.  The text says that its pagan sinfulness was legendary, as was its cruelty.  “It was the people which scorched its enemies alive to decorate its walls and pyramids with their skin.”

 Here is the thing though.  It is a part of every people that they seem to be able to recount the horrors and cruelty of their enemy but are seemingly unable to see even worse horror and cruelty among the citizens of their own nation, among their friends, and among their family.  It is one kind of love to wish love and mercy for your own people and kin.  It is a strange and unusual kind of love that says love and mercy should be extended to your enemies.

This is the sign of Jonah.  And it reveals a God who is actively seeking to save all of creation.  And that love is far wider and broader than even those who claim to be God’s chosen.  The work is ours to do.  And God is tracking us, to unseat the conventional wisdom, and reveal to the world a God who is wider and broader and longer and deeper than we could have ever imagined.  Amen. 

Wisdom Series 9, Wisdom of Solomon, "Are you one of the 36 righteous?"

 

B Wisdom 9 Pilg 2021 (Wisdom)

Wisdom 10:1-17

October 31, 2021 

           As church leaders, one of the things we often struggle with, both personally and professionally, is the countercultural message we have been given through Jewish and Christian tradition, history, and Scripture that community life is one of the great communicators of the Divine.   For the cultural narrative we see doing damage to the personal and communal lives of our world is Western individualism.  

While one of the triumphs of Western individualism may have been individual liberty and the Bill of Rights over and against abusive power lodged in the Church and the State, what we have seen time and again is the inability of humankind to come together, in all of our diversity, to recognize that we are woven together in a single garment of destiny.  That turn of phrase comes from Dr. King.  And the prophets of our own age are usually telling us that all signs are pointing toward the need for us to learn how to live together to solve a number of intersectional issues from the pandemic to racial capitalism to climate change.

The calls for individual liberties, freedoms, and rights have been used against us by the powerful and the wealthy to make us believe that if this group or that group gets their way, all of the freedoms, accorded to the righteous (namely—us) will come crashing down.  We become fearful that something we have, and it is presented to us very vaguely, what we have . . . will be taken away. 

Long work done by community organizers, protests against state violence, and, finally, video evidence, the testimonies of neighbors, and the screams of family members helped us all to see what had been said by the African-American community for so long—the problem is not about taking away the freedom of white people—it is about life and livelihood for people who are already pinned to the pavement, running away, sleeping in their own home, their backs against the wall.[1]  I have heard a number of long-time African-American activists like Angela Davis say that what was going on with protests that were at their zenith last summer felt different.  Felt different because though there are certainly white folk who talk smack about the protestors--the recent Black Live Matters protests also brought many more white people out to join the protests—particularly young people.    

Change is happening.  But change is hard.  And as historical institutions and ways of community begin to transform, we can ask ourselves, “What is holding us together?  What is holding the universe together?”  For though we know that community is a Biblical value, we also know that there are righteous individuals who seem to hold the moral integrity of families, whole communities, even a nation together.

The Scripture passage we have from the book of the Wisdom of Solomon is one that poetically tells us there are times when life hangs in the balance, when danger threatens and calamity is nearby.  Into those times, Wisdom infuses someone with the strength, and power, and righteousness to bring about glory, rescue, and salvation.  It happened with the Exodus, with the Flood, when famine threatened Joseph and his family in the land of Egypt.  It happened with Queen Esther and Ruth.  Wisdom animates someone who steps into the lurch, stands in the maw, and brings about redemption. 

This passage probably reflects an oral tradition within Judaism which required 36 righteous persons to hold the world together and make possible salvation.  The 36 are the Tsadik Nistarim who receive the gift of Divine Presence, the Shekinah.  This tradition was thought to originate with the story of Sodom when Abraham pleaded with God, knowing that his son Lot and his family lived in Sodom.  In contrast to what many conservative Christians believe the sin of Sodom to be, what the Jewish tradition teaches was that Sodom was a land of brutal inhospitality, violence, and cruelty.  The ethic of Sodom was, “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours.”  They did not share, they did not care, they were not kind.  Abraham pleaded with God, “Please, God of Mercy, if there are but 10 righteous people in Sodom, relent and do not destroy it.”  And God relents.  But this is the final story told of Sodom before its destruction. 

 

[T]here were two young girls who would go out in Sodom to draw water from a well. And one day when they were walking together, one of them asked the other one, "Why do you look so devastated, so distraught?" And she confided in her friend and she said, "Well, we have no more food left in our home and I'm afraid that my family is going to die."

 

So the first girl filled up her pitcher with flour from her own home and she gave it to her friend. But when the citizens of Sodom heard about this, they abducted that girl, the one with the generous heart, and they burned her to death. And so the Holy One said, “Even if I desired to be silent, justice for that young girl does not permit me to keep silent.”[2]

 

No.  There were not 10 righteous people left in Sodom.  And God could not bear it, that another kind, young girl might die at the hand of state violence.  Judgment came.

           We do not want to think of God in those judgmental terms but what of that young girl?  Do we continue to live and let live as the world burns?   Does not the loss of her life move the Heart of God?

           The Tsadik Nistarim, the 36 righteous people necessary, have become part of Jewish folklore.  They appear at times of great peril to save the world.  They come forward out of their hiddenness, their anonymity and humility, to save the world.

After she helped raise $8.9 million in disaster relief for families affected by 2016 wildfires in the Great Smoky Mountains, sending them $1,000 checks for six months in a kind of celebrity experiment with universal basic income . . .   After it was known that she sends out over one million books of month to first serve children in East Tennessee, then in the United States, and now around the world . . . After she came out in support of Black Lives Matter by saying, “Of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little White asses are the only ones that matter? No!”[3], one of my favorite Jewish writers, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, wrote, “There's an idea in Judaism that there are 36 special people in the world at all times who secretly maintain the world.  I have begun to suspect that Dolly Parton may be one of them.”[4]  Think about that the next time you hear “Jolene” being crooned by Dolly or one of the many people who have covered it.

           The 36 righteous are part of the Jewish tradition now.  One of the 36 is said to maybe even be the Messiah.  And so the Jewish people look for people who rise in difficult circumstances.  That orientation ripples out wider and wider.  Strangers are treated with great kindness in the belief that one of them might be a Tsadik or one of the Tsadik Nistarim or even the Messiah.  They arise because we need them.[5]  The Jewish people look for them everywhere, even in Country Western singers, because as they look, they are rummaging-through for the places where they see God’s goodness, presence, and activity in the world. 

           As President Biden’s Build Back Better infrastructure bill are being stripped of their climate provisions, I found myself not only angry but losing hope for our world, for any quality of life my future grandchildren might have.  When I read an update on Friday with Tracy traveling to see her mom and daughter, I sat up in bed and cried and just couldn’t stop crying.  I really didn’t want to preach this Sunday . . . wondered why I do this anyway if it is not to be about serving the righteousness and wisdom of God.

    Then I read again the story of the five young people from the Sunrise Movement who are fasting outside the White House.  Fasting is a spiritual practice.  It disrupts habits and the regular.  It hones attention.  And purifies intent.  Fasting detaches from the Domination System to remind us who or what is truly the source of our power.

  

Rather than church people, five young climate activists from the Sunrise Movement.  They have been fasting now for eleven or twelve days.  I think these young people show me to be a hypocrite and call me to such action. That will have to be worked out talking with family and this church about how that might impact us all for me to take that risk.  Because it scares the heck out of me to believe that my faith calls me to that spiritual practice.

One of the strikers, Kidus Girma, almost died from low blood sugar.  He continues his fast. Girma said:

 

I’m on a hunger strike for my family and my future and the promises that the president made to young people who put him in office. I’m on hunger strike, after having a dangerously low blood sugar amount, because the president of the United States made promises when he was running for office and the couple of months leading up to this deal, and even while this deal is being negotiated, that he would deliver the climate mandate that he was elected on. I’m on a hunger strike because this is what the world needs.

 

I’m asking the president of the United States to be the president of the United States and to fight for climate, to fight to make sure that the next wildfire, to make sure that the next hurricane, to make sure the next possibility of famine is not as extreme as it has to be. And right now I feel like the president of the United States is fighting for a superstorm and not for kids. And I need the president of the United States to start fighting for me.[6]

 

Kidus Girma moved with his family from Ethiopia to the United States when he was 8 years old.  Girma’s mother supported the family with her job at Samsung which paid her $8 an hour.  He knows how fragile that life was and how climate change is tied to everything, including housing and public transportation.  In the original Build Back Better bill, Girma was particularly interested in the Civilian Climate Corps because it embodied his work and his hope for a healthier earth.

           Girma said in an interview before he began his fast, “We won’t win unless we are actively creating a new world.”[7]  Not surprisingly, I think that sounds like faith language spoken by an immigrant young man who is using a spiritual practice to hone our attention and purify not only his but our intent. 

           I think Kidus Girma is one of the 36 righteous who have been hidden but now have appeared, in all their humility, to the Divine Presence with us and show us the way. 

           Who do you think one of the 36 are in our world in this generation?  Out of humility, they have remained hidden till now but have begun to show themselves because the world needs saving.  Have you begun to look for them?  They are known by their everyday kindness, by their courage which came forward when called upon.   Maybe you are one of them, too humble to believe that the Divine Presence would be shared with you.  But you are aware that the time has come.  And . . . Dolly Parton?!  Right?

           Look for the Tsadik Nistarim as the Jewish people have done in each generation.  Do not lose hope in the goodness of God who would not leave us alone in this hour.  Discern whether you are one of them.  

 

Wisdom gave to holy people the reward of their labors;
she guided them along a marvelous way,
and became a shelter to them by day,
and a starry flame through the night.

 

for wisdom opened the mouths of those who could not speak

and made the tongues of young people speak clearly. 

 

Look for the Tsadik Nistarim in our schools, communities, in our wider world.  And search your heart.  Maybe you are one of them.  Amen. 

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[1] “Backs against the wall” is a term coined by Howard Thurman. 

[2] Rabbi Sharon Brous, “The Spirit of Sodom lives:  Reflections from the Border,” ikar, November 16, 2019, https://ikar-la.org/sermons/the-spirit-of-sodom-lives-reflections-from-the-border-rabbi-sharon-brous/. 

[3] Alyssa Rosenberg, “Dolly Parton is the superhero America needs in 2020,” Washington Post, November 18, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/18/dolly-parton-is-superhero-america-needs-2020/

[4] Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, Twitter, November 17, 2020, https://twitter.com/theradr/status/1328861214168977414?lang=en

[5] Rabbi James Stone Goodman, “The 36 Unknown,” toddweinstein.com, https://toddweinstein.com/project36.html.

[6] Kidus Girma, “Hunger Striker Out of Hospital Demands Biden Keep All Climate Provisions in Build Back Better Plan,” Democracy Now!, October 27, 2021, https://www.democracynow.org/2021/10/27/white_house_climate_activist_hunger_strike.

[7] Amal Ahmed, “The Sunrise Movement’s Trailblazing Questi for a Green New Deal,” Texas Obverver, August 9, 2021, https://www.texasobserver.org/the-sunrise-movements-trailblazing-quest-for-a-new-green-deal/.

Wisdom Series 8, Ecclesiastes, "When Buzz Lightyear knows he is a toy, he becomes something more"

 

B Wisdom 8 2021

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13; 4:7-12

October 24, 2021

 

           This Scripture verse we have before us . . . from the number of times I’ve preached on this Scripture verse at funerals, to the Byrds song, “Turn, turn, turn”, to one of the bands of my age, Kansas, singing, “Dust in the Wind”, these verses, Ecclesiastes 3:1-13, should be some of the most familiar in our culture.  I remember wondering why people chose these verses as a comfort early in my ministry.  But then I remembered that the first words out of my mouth during a counseling session usually are, “What you are experiencing is normal” or “What you are going through, it simply stinks.” 

           I know what you’re thinking.  All of that seminary training, workshops, seminars, and 20 years of ordained ministry experience and this is what we get?  It’s normal?  It simply stinks?

           Yeah, I know.  But I think sometimes what we need to hear is that we are not off our rocker, that what we are going through is a common life experience.  Where we are on the road is where we should be—sometimes whining and complaining when all of life’s rules change, sometimes ranting and railing at God when it feels like we’re the only one pulling our weight in covenantal, familial relationships or friendships, sometimes going through deep depression over a significant loss in our life, sometimes refusing to forgive and forget when we see no willingness to change or apologize.  We need to know we are just being human, going through the season appointed to us.

           This passage from Ecclesiastes is classic Wisdom Literature in that it does not tell us how life should be or how we should be in it, how to be more moral or a better person, but shares with us how life is in all its ambiguity, paradox, and complexity.  Another characteristic of Wisdom Literature is that it begins with the human experience rather than relate the demands of the Divine or describe the miraculous, the mystical, or the heavenly realm.[1]

           New Testament scholars are just beginning to point out that gospels like Matthew edited some of Jesus’s original teaching with a strong moral overlay. Originally, Jesus may have been teaching his followers that they should be wise to the way the world is, not how they “should be” in the world. For example, Jesus teaches when people are picked up by the plantation owner at various times of the day and all paid at the same amount, the moral overlay tells us we “should” stop complaining because we worked more, longer hours, and were paid the same amount. Jesus may have been sharing that the plantation owner is in charge and can pay any darn thing he well wants to, regardless of how fundamentally unfair that may be. Jesus is sharing that this is the unjust life for a Palestinian sharecropper. This is what we face, day to day, this fundamental unfairness.  Not a “should.”  This is the way of the world.  So be wise to it.  We know that the author of Matthew is probably the one moralizing because this teaching appears in a gospel that was not included in the Bible.  In that version, the teaching appears without the moralizing found in the Gospel of Matthew.

           Another example.  When Jesus is asked, “And who is my neighbor?” he does not offer some mystical, deep, retelling of the Law, he tells a story.  He tells a story about what life is like while walking along the dangerous Jericho Pass. 

           “For everything there is a season,” Qoheleth, the one said to be the author of Ecclesiastes, writes.  Throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, Qoheleth repeats a proverb that has generally been translated as, “All is vanity and a chasing after the wind.”  Catholic scholar, Father Thomas Bolin, noticed, however, that the Hebrew word used for this passage ruach can mean “wind” but also can mean “breath” or “Spirit”, all a reference to God’s presence and activity.[2]  Bolin argues that the repeated phrase, better translated is, “All is human, transitory, fleeting, but strives for permanence or Divinity.”  In that pursuit to capture permanence or Divinity, Bolin believes the author of Ecclesiastes is saying, life can be meaningless.  Better to recognize our mortality, our humanity, our impermanence.  

           I have long told Tracy that this is the storyline behind the great animated “Toy Story” movies.  Buzz Lightyear struggles, must check his own vanity at the door, when he believes he is not a toy but truly a space hero, “To infinity and beyond!”  Buzz becomes unglued when he realizes his lasers don’t stun, his space wings do not help him fly, and that the other toys do not honor his space commander rank.  When Buzz finally accepts that he is a toy, who can offer is gifts to the wider community, he seems to transcend who he is as a toy.  His laser may not stun others but it can create a temporary blindness, his space wings may not elevate him into space but they do help him glide and float when he is lofted into the air, and Buzz is not really a leader by rank or office but finds leadership in his friendship with his toy colleague, Woody.  I know. That’s why my son and daughter hate going to the movies with me.  I see Scriptural stories everywhere.

           “All is human striving for the Divine.”  Better to accept our humanity, that there is a season to all of life.

           Professor Timothy Sandoval, Wisdom Literature scholar, believes that Qoheleth wrote this text to indict an economic system that had people toiling for greater and greater wealth believing that they could capture God in a bottle.  Inordinate chasing after gain, excessive work to obtain more, all of this leads to a futile and deterministic life.  Professor Sandoval said this is a direct criticism of the Hellenistic Empire and the meaningless lives and values they dictated to the Jewish people.  There is no freedom and meaning in such lives, such values, such pursuits, Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes says.[3]

           So where can wisdom be found?  If God is not to be captured in a bottle and that is meaningless, what does give life meaning?  We get a clue what Ecclesiastes is all about when we translate the author’s name.  Qoheleth means “the gatherer” or “the assembler”, the “one who brings together community.”  If Qoheleth were translated into Greek, it would be the word from the New Testament we commonly translate as “church.”[4]

           As we read into Chapter 4 of Ecclesiastes today, Qoheleth, the gatherer, suggests that God’s gift to us is to eat, drink, and find pleasure in our work or to see good in our work. For ancient peoples, eating and drinking were common social or communal activities. So God’s gift is the thoroughly human activity of social and community life and seeing good in our life's work.  We learn that what is of real value is human partnership, community, and solidarity.  Chasing after Divinity as a pursuit of power and wealth is worthless, fleeting, a puff of breath.

    Later in Chapter 4, Qoheleth talks about a life that is pointless:  a life without family, friends, neighbors, companions.  Life utterly alone is pointless.  But to have others, to live in community, brings meaning because community provides capacity to pick us up when we fall, to keep each other warm, to put up resistance when we come against those who would do us violence.  Qoholeth's name is now explicitly stated in teaching:  community brings life.

           We live in a culture that has us hedging our bets against power and wealth, right?   It is the flip side of keeping up with the Joneses.  It’s, “We’re not as bad as the Joneses.”  As long as I’m not doing it more than some people, I know, I have my priorities straight.  Maybe it is not the most expensive sports car we have, like him, or maybe not the biggest flat panel TV like her, or I mean, come on, the Illini season tickets I have are in the horseshoe and the Illini stink.  All of our chasing is good, it is the other person who doesn’t have their priorities straight.  We sometimes fail to ask, “What am I really knocking myself out for?  What good is it?”

           This passage from Ecclesiastes seems to suggest that we all will go through these common life experiences, they are part of the human condition:  love, hate, war, peace.  But are we allowing the culture to dictate the season for all of these common life experiences?  Why are we doing what we do?  Do our actions suggest that we seek after power and wealth to validate or capture the Divine within ourselves?  And, if so, do we hear God calling us back to the human in loving partnerships, mutual communities, and the struggle for solidarity?

           Sometimes, rather than immerse ourselves in these human activities, we opt to get a little fix now and then.  We join with other parents to help out with the local school musical.  We come together and eat guacamole as Aaron Rodgers once again torches my beloved Bears and screams out at the fans that he “owns us.”  Or we come together for the art class, the student government group, or the exercise session.  Maybe there is that great restaurant or bar we’ll all go to see a few of our neighbors.  We get a little community fix.  But when we stay long enough with folk to recognize our differences or end up in arguments, we break rank.  Why would we end up in all these different denominations if people hadn’t broken rank through years when one group in the church decided that the other group was just all wrong when it came to church organ music, the order of the church potluck, or some other high falootin’ theological point at the end of a pin?

           I’ll have to say that this church is living out a dream of what I think it means to be the Beloved Community.  There are always things that we can work on, but I think we do hard work in an ongoing basis to be human.  We recognize the humanity of migrant workers in the southwest Michigan area through our care packages and donations. We look out after people who have not been at church recently, seniors and shut-ins, to let them know they are included in the wider Body of Christ.  We have important discussions and reflection on issues like migration and climate change.  We met just recently to talk about how we might provide education and presence for the young girls who are a part of our community of faith. 

           Our divinity is found in our humanity.  We say, at Pilgrim Congregational UCC, that life is not found in these vain pursuits of wealth and power but in the real partnerships, diverse community, and strong solidarity we show for one another.  In living out our common humanity, we become God’s Beloved Community and we are Divine.  Sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins!  Let us continue the meaningful work God has given to us.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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[1] Anthony R. Ceresko, Introduction to Old Testament Wisdom:  A Spirituality for Liberation (Maryknoll, New York:  Orbis Books, 1999), pp. 2-3.

[2] Thomas Bolin, “Rival and Resignation:  Girard and Qoheleth on the Divine-Human Relationship.”  Biblica, Vol. 85, p. 245.  Academia.edu.http://www.academia.edu/235449/Rivalry_and_Resignation_Girard_and_Qoheleth_on_the_Divine-Human_Relationship

[3] Professor Timothy Sandoval, “Where Can Wisdom Be Found,” Ecclesiastes Lecture, September 1, 2012.

[4] Professor Timothy Sandoval, “Wisdom’s Worth,” Ecclesiastes Lecture, October 15, 2005.