Readings for Proper 20B:
-- the Rev. Leslie Barnes Scoopmire
In the Babylonian Talmud, one of the collections of commentaries and applications of the Hebrew Torah, there is a great story:
It seems that the sage, Honi, was walking along a road, he saw a man planting a carob tree. Honi asked him, “How long will it take for this tree to bear fruit?”
“Seventy years,” replied the man.Honi then asked, “Are you so healthy a man that you expect to live that length of time and eat its fruit?”
The man answered, “I found a fruitful world because my ancestors planted it for me. Likewise I am planting for my children.”
There is much wisdom in this story. What we do now resonates far into the future, and to future generations, like that little child Jesus places squarely in our midst in our gospel. That is one of the truths of our lives, and in particular to consider in this Season of Creation.
Our reading from James this week once again outlines what true wisdom is. James exhorts his readers to act with the wisdom of God, which is a generous, compassionate wisdom. Perhaps we can consider how this text corresponds to our own situation here in late September, 2024.
Do we seek peace and security? Do our actions provide for those things for not just ourselves, but for others? Because only looking out for yourself certainly brings neither peace nor security—not for anyone. You can’t have peace or security by attacking those around you, or by making others feel less-than, oppressed, or vulnerable.
Maybe we do need a call for conversion.
One of the questions we Episcopalians can get asked frequently by evangelicals is when we were “born again.” For some of us, those words might make no sense, for if you are a cradle Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, or from some other liturgical denomination, you have probably never experienced the phenomenon of the altar call. It’s a moment when you are called to give your life to Jesus, when it is done right. When it’s done wrong, it’s only about you and your own salvation. When it’s done right, it’s about how we can join together in repairing the world, or tikkun olam, as our Jewish kindred say.
Here in the Episcopal Church, we believe we are born again when we are baptized. We believe it is a literal rebirth. The way we embody and live into that continual rebirth is outlined in our baptismal covenant—the agreement that was usually affirmed for us at birth and that we then reaffirm at Easter, on Pentecost, on All Saints’ Day, and at the Feast on the Baptism of Jesus—the four greatest days for baptisms to be held. This is our statement of what it means to be converted, to give our lives over to Christ. But it is both inwardly and outwardly directed.
We reaffirm our answers to the eight questions in our Baptismal Covenant found starting on page 304 in the Book of Common Prayer. There we find a “small catechism,” as it were, outlining the basic expectations of someone who follows Jesus. The first three questions are shaped around the Apostles’ Creed: do you believe in the Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit?
Then follow five questions that get down to specifics for an ongoing life of faith for everyone, whether their age is 3 or 33 or 93. And they follow logically, one from another, in practical description of how we demonstrate and grow in wisdom and faith.
Will you commit and continually recommit to continuing in Christian education and apostolic community, in regularly partaking of communion (which is actually required to be a member in good standing), and in daily prayer of some kind, preferably morning or evening prayer, or compline.
Will you practice the self-awareness to recognize and resist the occasions for evils, from tiny to great, that present themselves through our daily lives—and when you fall into the trap of cruelty or contempt or taking advantage of others or petty dishonesty, will you recognize that stumble, will you turn your life back on the path of loving discipleship and rededicate yourself to follow the Way of Jesus?
Having made sure you are always studying and learning about Christ in both worship and educational opportunities, the next questions extends this line of inquiry: Will you ensure that your life, your words, your habits, and your actions and choices proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ? In other words, is your life itself a testimony to your faith and following of the example of Jesus?
How do you do that? The next question suggests a strategy: Will you, when looking upon the neighbor, even if a stranger, see Christ’s face gazing back (even if they are having a bad day), and treat them not only as you yourself would want to be treated, but as you would want to treat Jesus if he were standing before you?
So how exactly do you outline how to treat others as Christ? The final question provides specific goalposts: Will you dedicate yourself to acting with justice and demanding justice from the leaders you support?
Will you act from the understanding that true peace can only flourish when we realize that every right also entails a responsibility to never oppress or deprive others of the sense of security and well-being we all seek?
No matter who those we encounter look like or talk like or come from, and thinking of all those previous promises we just made, do we respect the dignity of all persons as much as we ourselves hope to be able to live in justice peace, and dignity? How we love or don’t love others reflects how we love or don’t love Jesus, as his followers, disciples, and kindred.
We live in the so-called “information age-- but it’s pretty clear that knowledge or information does not produce wisdom. And the definition of wisdom in our world can also be slippery. Literally. When we consider the way that human values too often look at a forest or a river, and only value them as products or means of transportation or disposal, rather than as part of our very existences. When we consider how repeatedly we hear ruthlessness, manipulation and cheating being extolled as being “smart” or “clever,” we have to begin to think that wisdom, especially the wisdom of God that we have been urged to seek in our readings for the past several weeks, has to mean something else entirely.
Living our lives in this way is living by the holy wisdom our readings have been urging us toward these last many weeks, and that our readings from James have been encouraging us to contemplate.
For scripture is not there for us to cherry pick verses to use to hammer our fellow human beings. Scripture is here, to explain to us ourselves to live our lives generously, open-heartedly, as Jesus embodied in his human life for us to imitate.
Scripture is here, as the opening verse of Psalm 1 reminds us, how to be truly happy and blessed, both as individuals and as a community. James lists the characteristics of the wisdom of God we are to seek and emulate: purity, peaceableness, gentleness, being willing to yield and not insist on your own way, merciful, productive, impartial, sincere.
How will the world ever emphasize these values if we ourselves don’t embody them, in our lives and our choices, as our testimony to the love of God in the world. This is how to joyfully submit ourselves to God, as James exhorts us.
In the reading from James we hear today, which probably was at one time an actual sermon, James contrasts holy wisdom with worldly wisdom. Unsurprisingly, he takes a dim view of worldly wisdom. Worldly wisdom, James points out, is characterized by bitterness, envy, selfishness, dishonesty, disorder and wickedness. It is filled with resentment and feeds on grievance and treating people with contempt and dehumanization. Worldly wisdom is the wisdom that the world rewards while destroying the soul, because it values that which tears us apart rather than that which unites us, that denies God’s values because they are not measured in profit. It leads to the kind of competition and rivalry that Jesus condemns in our gospel.
Jesus says, Stop worrying about who is the greatest and getting all up in our heads. Stop seeing others as enemies and competitors for resources.
Instead, get all up in our hearts. Rejoice in the humanity of the people with whom we live in community. See those around us as those whom we love as a fulfillment of our baptismal covenants and as a fulfillment of our discipleship. Treat the people around us, no matter how different, as tenderly and generously as Jesus treats that small child in our gospel.
In our gospel, Jesus points out that the wisdom of God, and the way it orders our lives, turns worldly wisdom upside down. To illustrate this, he places a little child in the center of the disciples, and equates welcoming that little child with welcoming Jesus himself, the Son of God, who is also sometimes referred to as the Wisdom of God. That child, Jesus implies, embodies a generous wisdom, unspoiled by the hardness of the world.
And it is our job to welcome that child and care for that child, starting with the child within us and then to the children around us and to the inner children is all of those around us.
That’s the generous wisdom, rooted in love, at the heart of following Jesus.
Amen.
Image: “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me.” Painting by Hap Rogers, Church of the Servant, Wilmington, NC