Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost; 19 September 2021; Proper 20B (RCL); Proverbs 31:10-31; Psalm 1; James 3:13 -4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37.
Wisdom literature is typically addressed to an audience of young men of means, who are getting ready to make their way in the world, and often at court. It provides life lessons in how to avoid messing up. The book of Proverbs opens with Lady Wisdom inviting the young men to submit to her, rather than following Lady Folly. And the book ends with a paean to the good wife — perhaps Lady Wisdom in the flesh.
As someone at Bible study observed, “When does she sleep?” Apparently, never. The poem is an acrostic, so we can allow some poetic license, but still, it sets an impossible standard. It is interesting that she can make property deals on her own, not something we usually associate with women in biblical times. Perhaps part of the lessons here is that her husband would have to have an intact ego not to be threatened by her. If this is addressed to young men of privilege on the verge of marriage, the message is clear: charm is deceitful and beauty is vain.
The passage from the letter of James also speaks of wisdom, and not necessarily the wily sort that would help a person get ahead in this world. Wisdom is gentle, pure, peaceable, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits. The analysis of the divisions among us is spot-on. In the verses left out, the author accuses us of being adulterers, being friends of the world, rather than friends of God. Most of us would object and say that we are not murderers, we have never killed for what we want. But it is not too much of a stretch to see our own self-interest as responsible for so much damage to the world that murder is not too far off the mark.
In Mark, Jesus again predicts his passion, and as he so often portrays the disciples, they totally fail to understand. They are arguing among themselves who is to be the greatest. Jesus takes a child and places it in their midst and then embraces it, and says that whoever welcomes such a child welcomes him, and whoever welcomes him welcomes the one who sent him.
We have romanticized childhood. When we picture this, we picture a precious child, clean and charming. In my visits to Africa (especially South Sudan), I have gained a whole different appreciation of this passage. Children are almost nuisances to adults, rarely clean, never well-dressed, and pretty much free-range. The child mortality rate was around 50% before the age of 5, so parents didn’t get too attached even to their own children. Under the mango trees, there was always a bevvy of children raising dust with their play, and subject to discipline by any adult who happened to be near, sometimes even whipping with a switch.
It would have shocked Jesus’ disciples for him to have grabbed the nearest one of these urchins, and embraced it, and said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” This is not the wisdom of the world, and would certainly have demonstrated that the love of God extends to the very least of these.
God’s wisdom stands the wisdom of the world in its head, and directs our attention to the margins. We will not likely get ahead if we school ourselves in that wisdom.