A Sermon for XVII Pentecost (Proper
20) All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC September 23,
2012 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
What
is the wisdom that informs you about what a good life looks like?
There is this commercial on the tube that compares two men who make
the same amount of money, but one has the wisdom to sign up with a
particular wireless phone network, and he is able to save so much
money that he can buy an animatronic bear and have a life-sized
portrait by a famous artist painted for him. I remember the old
commercial about how if you became a blonde you would have more fun.
I remember another commercial where a particular beer is consumed and
the announcer tells us that “life doesn’t get any better than
this”. I remember a filmed version of the Victor Herbert operetta,
Naughty
Marietta, where
Nelson Eddy sings “Ah!
Sweet
mystery of life,
at last
I've found thee; Ah!
I know at last
the secret of it all”. Last year I heard it sung in the high
school production of Thoroughly
Modern Millie.
But I cannot get out of my mind the scene in Mel
Brooks’ film Young
Frankenstein where
Elizabeth, the leading lady played by Madeleine Kahn, corners
Frankenstein’s monster and sings lustily, “OOOHHH Ah! At last
sweet mystery of life I’ve found you!”
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Religions,
therapists, advertisers, ponzi schemers and snake oil salesmen have
have been trying to sell the wisdom of the secret of the “good
life” for years. The task of wisdom is being able to separate the
wheat from the chaff. The Book of the Wisdom of Solomon was probably
written in the 1st
century BC in Alexandria, Egypt where there was a dynamic tension
between Hebrew Prophetic and Greek Philosophical thought, especially
Epicureanism, about what is wisdom as it pertains to living a “good”
life.
The
Hebrew prophetic world view was there was only one God, and a “good
life”, one that clung to the wisdom of the tradition, was centered
in relationship with that God and meant that one lived one’s life
listening to God, enjoying God’s creation, and caring for neighbor.
In this relationship, we are called individually and corporately to
confront evil and injustice and care for the victims. The prophets
were not usually ascetics that condemned the good things of life; in
fact, all of life was to be enjoyed, but the deeper purpose of life
was to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with one’s God. Some
of the Hebrews - but not all - believed in a life after death, but
the real point of life was working here and now so that God’s
Kingdom on earth will be like God’s Kingdom in Heaven. Jesus comes
out of this Prophetic tradition. Whenever Jesus, following the writer
of Wisdom, talks about “righteousness”, he is not talking about
following all the rules but about living a commitment to God and
neighbor. To use Flannery O’Connor’s term about the South, the
Hebrew’s culture was “God haunted” in that God was always
present in daily life.
On
the other hand, the Epicurean belief about “wisdom” was that
there might or might not be Gods, but if there were, these gods were
not doing much to contain the evil in life. Life is short and the
only meaning in life, the only wisdom, is in centering oneself to
what pleases the senses - “Life is short, go with the gusto!” The
Epicureans got bad press and were characterized by their enemies as
predators, drunkards, and gluttons, but they were not because those
practices dulled the senses. They believed in enjoying each taste,
each moment, and each person and pushed for a simple life
unencumbered by the foibles of the world. They were not bad in and of
themselves; they just didn’t care about anybody else. Epicureans
were not hedonists living only for pleasure, but rather, followed
their own self-interest, much like the way Ayn Rand defines “a good
life”. Love is an illusion, and any care for the poor is a waste of
energy. And as for justice - come on, get serious - there is none.
The Epicureans saw all those Hebrews trying to help people as deluded
fools. While the writer of the book of Wisdom calls the Epicureans
“ungodly”, it was not that they didn’t believe in Gods, they
just thought all that was irrelevant. They were free from the “God
haunt”. As the character Hazel Motes declares in Flannery
O’Connor’s Wise
Blood,
“Nobody with a good car needs to be justified".
I
don’t want to point an accusing finger at the Epicureans because my
dark side is Epicurean. There are times when I just want to get away
from people and satisfy my desire to wallow in sybaritic pleasure,
telling God to find another boy and let the world go hang. Usually
that particular desire is only present in days ending in the letter
“y”- so it is a constant struggle.
In
the Epistle from James, the writer struggles with the “wisdom” of
what it means to live a “good” life, and he continues in the
Prophetic tradition. He writes: “Show by your good life that your
works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.” He suggests that
war inside oneself, and in the world, comes from the selfishness of
ego - meeting one’s own desires first and not walking humbly with
God. Life is not about trying to get into heaven by following all the
rules, but in living as if heaven were right here and now in the
space between us, and out of that wisdom lived in the real world
instead of written in books, the world changes and peace begins with
each one of us. James is not pushing for a “sack cloth and ashes
ethic”, for life is to be fully enjoyed but always lived in light
of the needs of our brothers and sisters.
In
the Gospel story from Mark, Jesus notices that his disciples are
arguing about who is the greatest among them, comparing the sizes of
their egos. Here they are walking with the humble one who empties
himself out to be a servant, and they are arguing about who is the
greatest. Jesus reminds them that they are missing the point, and he
sets a small child in the midst of them. Now, you have to understand
that children at that time and in this culture were not viewed as
full human beings; rather they were the property of their parents
developing into potential people. With the high rate of infant
mortality, it was thought wise not to invest too much in each child.
Children were useful to a family because they could grow up and
support the parents and keep their memory alive. In that context,
Jesus embraces the child he had placed in the middle of the
disciples. According to the wisdom of the world which asks, “How
does this help my self-interest?”, this was a waste of time. This
was not Jesus’ child or theirs, just a kid on the street, so there
was no advantage for any of them in caring for this child - no ego
gratification, no demonstration of testosterone in what was seen as
women’s work, there would be no reward, only the hard work of love.
Jesus is indulging in foolishness, but the foolishness of God is the
deeper wisdom that Jesus follows.
Jesus
is teaching his disciples that the world does not revolve around
their ego needs. All of life is to be enjoyed, but we are to care for
those who are our neighbors, even when it is not based on our own
self-interest. We belong to a much larger family than our blood ties,
and since we have been embraced by God, so also are we to embrace
even the humblest of God’s creatures. Jesus is following in the
Hebrew prophetic tradition; “What does the Lord require of you; to
do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with their God.” Where I
come from that is wisdom.
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