Understanding in Search of Courage

Scripture: James 3:13-17

Over the years, the New Yorker magazine has featured a number of cartoons with a common theme. These cartoons depict a guru sitting on top of a mountain. He is bearded, gaunt, and sparsely dressed. In front of the guru sits a truth-seeker, some poor soul who has struggled to the top of the mountain in order to hear the sage’s words of wisdom. And, of course, that’s where the cartoons get funny.

In one, the guru offers this advice: “You do the hokeypokey and you turn yourself around—that’s what it’s all about.” In another, the guru asks this of his student: “If I knew the meaning of life, would I be sitting here in my underpants?” I love the cartoon where the guru is glaring at the student and saying “If I told you the secret of making light, flaky piecrust it wouldn’t be much of a secret anymore, now would it?” But my favorite is the guru who shares this jewel of enduring wisdom with the disciple who has come so far to hear it: “All outdoor carpeting can be indoor carpeting, but not all indoor carpeting can be outdoor carpeting.”

We laugh at these cartoons because they correspond with our experience. We seek after wisdom. We usually find something else.

The importance of seeking and finding wisdom constitutes one of the major themes of the Bible, and particularly the Hebrew Bible. Scholars use the shorthand phrase “wisdom literature” to refer to the books of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. And wisdom has a central place in some of the stories we find in Genesis and Exodus and in the verses of many of the Psalms. The Hebrew Bible tells us that wisdom is worth more than gold or silver or rubies and that it is “a tree of life and a blessing to those who lay hold upon it.”

The Hebrew Bible also provides us with a figure we have come to think of as the very embodiment of wisdom—Solomon. Indeed, Solomon’s name has become so closely associated with wisdom and good judgment that we tend to forget that the scriptures express considerable ambivalence about some of his decision-making—for example, his construction of shrines to the gods of foreign nations and his use of forced labor to support his elaborate building programs. Those of us who revere Thomas Jefferson as an inspired architect of political freedom, but despair over him as a slaveholder, know what it means to have such conflicting sensibilities about someone we want to remember as wise.

Wisdom also plays a significant, if less conspicuous, role in the New Testament. In the parables of Jesus, it is the wise man who builds his house upon a rock and it is the wise bridesmaids who bring oil for their lamps as they wait for the arrival of the bridegroom. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus describes himself as one “greater than Solomon.” And in First Corinthians, Paul calls Jesus “the wisdom of God” itself.

Yet, for all this, neither the Hebrew Bible nor the New Testament has much to say about what wisdom is. The scriptures tell us we must get it, but tell us very little about how we’ll know it when we’ve got it. Wisdom comes across as a valued, but vague sort of thing.

In the same vein, great thinkers throughout the centuries have struggled in their efforts to define wisdom, and, as a result, have described it in very different terms. The ancient Roman philosopher Cicero described wisdom as the capacity to discriminate between good and evil. The nineteenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant said that “wisdom is organized life.” The twentieth century philosopher Dietrich Bonhoeffer defined wisdom as the ability to “recognize the significant in the factual.” And the idea that “true wisdom manifests itself through our instincts” was expressed by that prominent twenty-first century philosopher Oprah Winfrey. Just about everybody has an opinion about how wisdom should be defined.

But wisdom seems to elude definition. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once famously said: “[P]erhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly [defining hard core pornography], but I know it when I see it.” Maybe the same holds true for wisdom.

All of which brings us to the book of James—a book that scholars have described as falling squarely within the wisdom tradition of the Hebrew Bible. But James’s writing is remarkable because he does not simply praise wisdom—he attempts to give us some sense of what it is, and what it is not. In the process, James tells us several things about wisdom that are surprising, revelatory, and immensely useful in our quest after this precious virtue.

Let’s start here. James tells us that wisdom is not “envious,” “boastful,” or “selfish.” Wisdom, he says, is “peaceable,” “gentle,” “willing to yield,” and “full of mercy.” Now, this is deeply interesting because James chooses words that we do not ordinarily associate with wisdom. The words do, however, have a familiar ring. They bear a striking similarity to Paul’s words in I Corinthians 13: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.” Wisdom, it turns out, looks a lot like love.

This tells us something important about the nature of wisdom. Wisdom must have compassion. Indeed, the idea of "heartless wisdom" is oxymoronic.

And this also tells us something important about the nature of love, at least as our faith defines it. For, just as James describes wisdom by using words we usually associate with love, so Paul describes love by using words we usually associate with wisdom—as you’ll remember, Paul goes on to say that love “rejoices in the truth.” Love is not warm and fuzzy and soft and mushy and cuddly and gelatinous. It has more spine than that. Certainly, love means caring about others. But it means caring about the truth as well.

James also tells us that wisdom does not consist simply of an internal thought process. Wisdom must show itself. It must make itself known through the “good fruits” of our “good lives” and our “good works.” Wisdom acts. It engages with the world. It does not sit on top of a mountain in splendid isolation. It does not wait around for things to change.

Perhaps you’ve heard the joke about the couple who had their first child and were very excited to hear him speak. Unfortunately, the child said absolutely nothing for the first year, or the second year, or the third year, or the fourth year of his life. Then, one day in his fifth year, the boy looked down at his breakfast plate and said “The toast is burned.” His parents rejoiced that he had finally spoken, but asked why he had chosen this as the occasion for his first words. “Well,” he said, “everything’s been pretty good until now.” Wisdom isn’t like that. Wisdom isn't passive.

I think that James tells us something else about wisdom, although he makes this point less directly. In my view, James also tells us that wisdom cannot act, cannot engage with the world, and cannot make a difference without courage. Think about it. James tells us that a life of wisdom is one “without a trace of partiality.” That requires us to put aside our comfortable biases and familiar prejudices. And that requires courage. James tells us that a life of wisdom is one without “hypocrisy.” That requires us to put aside our easy compromises and to embrace a life of integrity. And that requires courage.

Perhaps this explains why the great hymn of Harry Emerson Fosdick prays for God to “grant us wisdom, grant us courage.” Wisdom without courage is pointless intellectual self-absorption. And courage without wisdom is an unguided missile.

In reflecting on this over the past few weeks, a phrase kept running through my mind that I think has some utility here. The phrase, in its original Latin, is “fides quaerens intellectum.” It is St. Anselm’s definition of theology, and it means “faith in search of understanding.” It occurred to me that this may suggest a potential definition of wisdom, a definition completely consistent with what James tells us here. Wisdom, I propose to you, is understanding in search of courage.

So, would you be wise? Well, there are your marching orders: just stop being selfish and ambitious and boastful and false and earthly and unspiritual and partial and hypocritical; and just start being good and peaceable and gentle and merciful and righteous and pure. Does anyone have any questions?

Well, that leads us to James’s final point: wisdom—true wisdom—comes “from above.” It comes from God. We know it exists. We know that because we see it and sometimes we are the beneficiaries of it and occasionally we even have it. And we know we can’t achieve wisdom on our own. We know that because we know a bit about ourselves and about what human nature is like. That much wisdom, if no more, God has already conferred upon us.

So this passage from James can lead us to a better understanding of wisdom and can help us know it when we see it. I’d like to demonstrate this by telling you a story that is somewhat obscure in this context, but makes the point. As many of you know, I teach law school classes and am an enthusiastic student of legal history. So here’s a story from that history for you to consider.

A number of years ago, a suspect was arrested and charged with committing a serious crime. The defendant was tried and convicted without much ado, because there was no question of guilt. There was also no question about what the law required. The crime was a capital offense, so the defendant was sentenced to death and brought before the judge for the imposition of that punishment. The judge prepared to announce the sentence, but before doing so paused for a moment and offered these words to those who had come to observe: “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.”

There you have it. Wisdom. Not boastful or false to the truth. Not earthly or unspiritual. Not envious or selfish or ambitious. Not partial or hypocritical. Just peaceable and gentle and merciful. And pure. And courageous.

Of course, we are a frail and faulty species. So we will spend more time going up the mountain than sitting on top of it. We will spend more of our hours seeking wisdom than finding it. But we can take some consolation from knowing that there is wisdom in the search as well. In this connection, it might help us to remember that there were once three wise men who went on a quest; that they were wise even at the beginning of their journey; and that we therefore do not call them wise because of what they found, but because they had the understanding—and the courage—to go looking for it.

Let us go and do likewise.

Amen.

Blessed Restlessness

Scripture: 3 John 11, 13-14

Inscribed in stone on the south wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. is the text of one of the most famous speeches ever given—Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Over time, the words of this short speech have become ingrained in our national DNA. We know its first sentence: “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” And we know its last ringing phrase: “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Indeed, the speech is so familiar that we often read past a curious statement that appears right in the middle of it. The statement seems out of place in light of what the speech has come to mean to us. And the statement seems marvelously ironic in light of the fact that it is etched into the Indiana limestone of one of the most impressive and recognizable monuments on the planet. The statement is this: “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here.”

This statement was no show of false modesty on Lincoln’s part. In his vast biography of the President, Carl Sandburg says that Lincoln feared the speech would not “come up to public expectation.” And Sandburg reports that, after delivering the address, Lincoln remarked to a friend: “It is a flat failure and the people are disappointed.”

Indeed, many were. A Chicago newspaper suggested that “The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dish watery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.” And a Harrisburg newspaper expressed the hope that “the veil of oblivion [might] be dropped over [the President’s remarks so] that they [would] no longer be repeated or thought of.”

Of course, it didn’t quite work out that way.

Over time, it became clear that Lincoln’s brief, simple, elegant remarks captured something essential about the aspirations of democracy and the nature of self-sacrifice. The speech that everyone thought no one would remember became immortal. And, to compound the irony, the two-hour long oration of Edward Everett, the man actually charged with giving the principal address at Gettysburg that day, has been largely forgotten.

In the second and third letters of John we find a statement even richer in irony than the one that appears in the middle of Lincoln’s famous address. For, in both letters, the author laments the inadequacy of his correspondence and expresses the hope that he will soon have the opportunity to converse with the people to whom he is writing. “I would rather not write with pen and ink,” John declares; I would rather talk with you “face to face.”

It is quite wonderful, really. The author apologizes for the shortcomings of his letters—letters that will find their way into the Holy Bible; letters that will be translated into every known language; letters that will become a part of the best-selling book in the history of the world; letters that will show up in homeless shelters and hospitals, in the mansions of the rich and the tenements of the poor, in obscure rural bus terminals and major urban airports, in spacious hotel rooms and cramped prison cells, in the foxholes of our soldiers, and the foxholes of our allies, and often the foxholes of our declared enemies.

And, while we may smile at John’s statement, we understand it, just as we understand Lincoln’s. For we know what it means to wonder whether we’re making a difference, whether our efforts are changing anything, whether our words are moving people’s hearts, whether anyone hears what we’re trying to say or sees what we’re trying to do or will remember what we have said and done. We know what it means to harbor doubts about whether the good we have done has finally done any good at all.

But there is something inside of us that keeps us at it. There is something in that spirit of ours—which, like the rest of us, is made in the image of the spirit of God—that urges us to keep trying. There is something that moves us to throw our good words and our good works and our good will out into the world despite our doubts. Because it turns out that faith does not just bring us rest. It also brings us restlessness, blessed restlessness, what the great poet George Herbert calls our “repining restlessness.”

Some of you may know a song by the rock group U2 called “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” The title pretty much describes its theme. A while back, I heard an interview with Bono, the lead vocalist of the group, who said that it was a “gospel song.” I knew exactly what he meant. For it is in the nature of faith to look, to seek, to try, to aspire, but also to remain unsatisfied and unsettled, living, as we do, in the unsatisfying and unsettling world as we find it. Our blessed restlessness is the God-given God-driven impulse to refuse to accept conditions as they are and to do the things we can to try to make them better.

Sometimes those will be big things. Sometimes they will be small things. But we persist in doing them because we understand that, at some level, they matter.

The great preacher and author Frederick Buechner seems to delight in stories about small things—often done spontaneously or without fanfare—that end up making a big difference to someone. One day, he says, he was walking along Central Park South in New York City, working his way through the crowds on the busy sidewalk, when a woman going past him said “Jesus loves you.” Buechner reports that she said it in a casual, ordinary voice and kept on walking, but this random gesture had a profound impact him. He writes:

"I [wanted to] catch up with her and say, ‘Yes. If I believe anything worth believing in this whole world, I believe that. He loves me. He loves you. He loves the whole doomed, damned pack of us.’ For the rest of the way I was going, the streets I walked on were paved with gold. Nothing was different. Everything was different … For a moment it was not the world as it is that I saw but the world as it might be, as something deep within the world want to be and is preparing to be, the way in darkness a seed prepares for growth, the way leaven works in bread." (Buechner, The Kingdom of God)

But my favorite of Buechner’s stories concerns one Lyman Woodward, a man about whom you probably know nothing, and about whom Buechner knows only one thing. In 1831, a steeple was added to the New England church where Buechner often preached. The written history of that church reports that, when the construction was finished, “one agile Lyman Woodward stood on his head in the belfry with his feet toward heaven.” Buechner writes:

"That’s the one and only thing I’ve been able to find out about Lyman Woodward, whoever he was, but it is enough. I love him for doing what he did. It was a crazy thing to do. It was a risky thing to do. It ran counter to all standards of New England practicality and prudence. It stood the whole idea that you’re supposed to be nothing but solemn in church on its head just like Lyman himself standing upside down on his. And it was also a magical and magnificent and Mozartian thing to do." (Buechner, The Clown in the Belfry)

So even this ridiculous off-hand stunt ended up making a difference. It found its way into the history of a church. More than a century-and-a-half later, it found its way into a sermon and then it found its way into a book. And, now, it has found its way to you.

I suspect we all have stories like this—stories about little things that people did out of restlessness or impulse but that made a real difference to us. I have an abundance of them. I’ll share a recent one.

There is a family in our community who, within the past few months, suffered a terrible tragedy. I don’t know the family, but about a week ago I happened to be driving past their house. As I did, I glanced over and noticed that someone—maybe a family member, maybe a friend or neighbor—had hung a basket of flowers on the front porch of their home.

Now, on any other day, this might not have had an impact on me. But on that particular day it seized my attention and left me absolutely amazed. Just think about it. Here is this little family, living in a home that must still be haunted by a dark and unrelenting and inexpressible grief. And yet, and yet on every single day someone goes out onto that porch, walks into the light, cares for the flowers, and throws a clear high note of grace and hope and joy out into the universe.

In a way, the basket embarrassed me. It shamed me to think of the weak and self-indulgent ways I wallow in my own struggles—struggles that seem so trivial compared to what that family has endured. Indeed, the basket even seemed to embarrass the world itself, to call it to task for its meanness of spirit, to shame the petty, profane, bickering, banal culture that surrounds us.

But, much more than this, that messy little scramble of flowers woke me up. It shook me up. It elevated me. It blessed me. And, stranger still, I am sure that, in this, I am not alone.

Oh, all the directions our blessed restlessness can take us. It can call us to give a speech, to write a letter, to remind someone that Jesus loves them, to stand on our heads in celebration, or to hang a bright bundle of flowers on a tired old porch. We do these things, not knowing if anyone will hear what we say, or will read what we write, or will believe what we declare, or will share in our displays of joy, or will be moved to smile by the small splashes of color that we toss out onto the world.

We do these things because God made us to do them, and because when we honor that principle life is good and full, and because when we dishonor that principle life is sad and empty, and because in the end it really isn’t any more complicated than that.

We do these things to sustain us until we can see the ones we love—and, finally, the One who loves us—“face to face.”

We do these things without keeping count or expecting repayment.

We do these things understanding, at some basic level, that there is holiness in our unsettledness, that there is blessedness in our restlessness, and that there is gospel in our struggle to find what we are looking for.

We do these things without waiting for the blessings that follow because, deep down, we know that in the doing of them we are already blessed.

So has it always been.

So will it always be.

And the people said: Amen.