“Good Advice, Bad Advice, No Advice”

Proper 20, Year B

September 20, 2009

It’s tempting for many to view scripture as a rule book, a how-to guide, with advice on how one ought to live one’s life. Of course, even for those most committed to such a view of scripture, there is much in scripture that they would and do ignore. For others of us, scripture is little more than a relic of a long-gone age, ill-adapted and irrelevant to contemporary culture. Perhaps many, or most of you, had that reaction while you were listening to this morning’s reading from Proverbs. Not only is it irrelevant, it seems at times downright dangerous.

Now, I could have taken the easy way out and used the alternative reading for today. In fact, there are two alternative readings, and either would be less jarring to contemporary listeners. But you may as well know now that I am not one to avoid a difficult text, or a difficult issue, simply because there’s an easier way. No, I like a challenge, and today we all are challenged by this image of the ideal wife.

Well, I’m not going to preach on that trope. And I will refrain from making any jokes about wives, ideal or otherwise. Rather, I would like to step back and take a look for a few minutes at where we’ve been in scripture these past few weeks, and where we are going. This September, we’ve been reading from the Book of Proverbs, and shortly we will shift from there to another book, the Book of Job for our lessons from the Hebrew Bible. Scholars put these two books, along with Ecclesiastes, and some apocryphal texts into a category called Wisdom literature. Wisdom is more than a genre or type of literature. It is also a world view.

What sets Wisdom literature apart from the rest of the Hebrew Bible is the approach its authors take. They are not interested in the Mighty Acts of God, salvation history. They are not interested in the exodus, or covenant, or even the law given by God at Sinai. Instead, they look closely at themselves, at the world around them, and try to derive principles for living from their analysis of human life. In Proverbs, this can be a very optimistic a very cheery look at life. Do this and you will be rewarded. The rules are clear, straightforward, and relatively simple to follow. As we will see when we begin reading from the Book of Job, there is another, rather pessimistic side to Wisdom literature.

Wisdom literature doesn’t downplay the importance of God. Rather, it assumes that one can see God in the workings of creation, human society, and in the mind. Earlier in Proverbs, in Chapter 8, there is the beautiful and famous, hymn to wisdom. It begins, «The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago… when he established the heavens I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep… I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always. It is significant, especially given the way our text talks about the ideal wife, that in both Hebrew and Greek, the word for wisdom is a feminine noun, in Greek, sophia.

When early Christians began to reflect on their experience of Jesus Christ, one of the important images they used was that of wisdom. So in the first verses of the Gospel of John, we have the famous hymn to the logos, the word, or reason.

We may not like the particular advice that Proverbs provides us with today, but we need to remember that it is conditioned by its historical and cultural context. The advice was probably the sort of common-sense advice that in an earlier age, but there is an important lesson for us to remember. The underlying notion that the universe as created by God is reasonable and its laws and ways can be understood rationally is a lesson that needs to be relearned time again. For the authors of wisdom literature, especially an author like that of Proverbs, or Ben Sirach, whom we hear occasionally in the lectionary cycle, natural law is subject to reason, to wisdom, and thus ultimately to God.

But there’s a tendency in the Christian tradition to downplay reason, to claim that human reason and wisdom are no match for God, that our reason will fail in the attempt. Often, supporters of such views will quote the words Jesus says in today’s gospel, “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” But that’s a misreading of this saying. There are several ways in which this has been reinterpreted. In Matthew’s gospel, for example, the parallel saying is transformed into the statement that “unless you become like a child, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” So when we hear Mark’s version, we tend to interpret it in light of Matthew.

There’s more to it, however. The Aramaic word that presumably underlies this saying, the language Jesus spoke, the same word is used for child and servant. So by drawing his disciples’ attention to a child, he is making the same point he made when he used the image of a servant. Thus we come back to the central point of this section. In today’s gospel, we have the second passion prediction by Jesus. Last week we heard the first, and in a few weeks, we will hear a third. Mark has shaped these into a very tight narrative pattern. Three times Jesus predicts that he will go to Jerusalem, will suffer and die, and be raised from the dead.

After each of these, the disciples make clear that they don’t understand what he is talking about. Last week, it was Peter. This week, Jesus embarrasses them by asking them what they had been discussing. Each time, Mark then follows it up with Jesus saying something about discipleship. Last week, it was “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” This week, an equally difficult saying, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

I have to confess that this section of the Gospel of Mark among my favorites. It is also one of the most important sections. When I used to teach Bible, we would spend a day on these three chapters. When we came to the end of the gospel that we heard last week, That verse I just read to you, I would read it aloud to my students, most of whom were fairly conservative Christians, and ask them what they thought Jesus was telling them to do.

They would look confused for a moment, a common response to my questions, and then invariably, someone would try to explain. Well, Jesus is telling us that in order to be saved…” I would stop them right there and point out, that the saying goes, “whoever would save their life… will lose it. With these two sayings we are at the heart of one of his central teachings in the gospels.

Scholars often call it “reversal” or turning things upside-down. When Jesus teaches about discipleship or about the nature of the kingdom, the reign of God, he emphasized that what matters in the reign of God is a completely different value system than that which operates in our daily lives. What do we hold most dear? What is most important to us? Our life? Our family? Our health? Our wealth? Eternal Life? Whatever that is, the reign of God, according to Jesus, turns that value on its head. Whoever would be first will be last, the last will be first. Whoever will gain his life will lose it. Whoever would be greatest will be the least.

Hard as that may be for us to hear, and it is hard, because it challenges almost everything we hold dear—status, position, wealth, power, if you really think about what Jesus is saying, he is challenging even those things that we would do, those things we would give up for the kingdom. He is challenging even our deepest religious values. Whoever would save his life will lose it.

Proverbs would give us advice about human life. There are self-help gurus with infomercials, and how-to books who offer us the same. Oprah and Dr. Phil are ready with easy steps for happiness, and wealth, and weight loss. Jesus offers us none of those things. There is no twelve-step path for discipleship or for realizing the reign of God. Instead, Jesus confronts us with a call and a challenge: Whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all. That’s not a recipe for success, survival, or recovery. That is the mindset of a disciple who walks with Jesus to the very end.