The Burden of Wisdom
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The greatest illustration of the burden of wisdom, to my mind, is Cassandra in the classical literature. Cassandra is the daughter of Priam of Troy and Hecuba. To win her love, the god Apollo gave her the power to prophesy. But when she, perhaps wisely, rejected Apollo's love, he cursed her by saying that no one would believe her prophecies. We all know people who tell us after the fact that they told us so, but Cassandra knew beforehand that she would be disregarded. Still, her job of prophecy was to speak out, discern the signs of the times, warn people even if they didn't want to hear it.
A Christian reading of Cassandra would be that she wanted so much to change others but could not change herself. The famous Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, says this of many false prophets, that they call others to make changes they are unwilling to make. Tolstoy himself was willing to free his serfs-even though it meant that his family almost joined them. Despite his genius and sincere, eloquent witness, influence on Gandhi, perhaps Tolstoy could not detach from his culture's pattern by which he was unilateral head of the household.
A feminist reading of the ancient myth might say that all women, to the extent they are disregarded, are Cassandras, especially in wartime. Camille Lane, listening to our speaker Monday night on war, noted how male the viewpoint was. One Episcopal minister, not in the OMA, noted that it was all men in the leadership. (We had noticed that ourselves, but we reflected the otherwise quite impressive diversity of religious leadership that exists in Ossining and Briarcliff). People will often pick at some small part of an argument or presentation when they can not deny its overall validity.
The Cassandra story may also suggest that in haste to be right-which is more the tendency of Hebraic prophets, you can awaken resistance in those you seek to reach. The burden of wisdom, then, is how your truth can be heard, as well as lived with integrity. I want to speak about what wisdom means to us as Christians, partly because I sometimes lack it-and a small failing, or a slip on the inner banana peel, can reveal much about the heart's weakness. When wisdom goes wrong, it casts spells that cloud the mind, often lull it to sleep, even as emotions can be awakened. True wisdom awakens both heart and mind. It begins in humility, which is part of fear of the Lord.
I will say a bit more about Monday night's Martin Luther King, Jr. service, and then give an illustration about wisdom from the story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Then I will conclude with what Paul says about wisdom and the Gospel in our First Corinthians passages.
Back on Monday night, we had a very insight-filled meditation by Chris Hedges of The New York Times. Yet because he seemed detached from the congregation, and ended by reading from his own book, he lessened the impact of his message. I do not deny this, even though I stand by the wisdom of bringing his perspective on war into our MLK service. I am very grateful to all of you who helped and came to that service, and you know how our friend, Rev. Al Lewter from Star of Bethlehem Baptist, livened up the congregation with his charge. That charge, though it looked at the story of the three boys put in the fiery furnace in the book of Daniel, was full of the hope and joy of the Gospel. Lewter compared those Hebrew boys standing up to King Nebuchadnezzar to King standing up to Jim Crow discrimination. In a wisdom sermon, we might also remember that "the monk's cell is that furnace of Babylon in which the three children found the Son of God..." (Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert, p. 34).
Solomon is considered the author of the Book of Proverbs, from which Cory read wise words about not speaking in haste and yet reproving fools. Solomon was reportedly very wise, and yet, according to the traditions of the Ethiopian Church in the Kebra Nagast, he wanted the love of a woman equally wise. So he sent for the Queen of Sheba (considered to be Ethiopia in their tradition). We do not have time for many stories about her, and about their love, such as I told yesterday at a wedding. But one story tells of how wisdom works:
The Queen of Sheba consented to visit Solomon and, by gifts exchanged, she comes in both peace and power. Yet, though she is considered the most brilliant woman in her kingdom and the most beautiful, Solomon has heard that she has one weakness-a club foot. So, though he already loves her in his imagination and at a distance, he has her come through a room that has a beautiful pond or pool of water on the floor, covered with clear glass. When the Queen steps into the room, she thinks it is real water, and lifts her hem to keep it dry-revealing her foot. Yet, such is the wise and loving gaze of Solomon, in that instant of revealing there is also healing. This is a story of how love makes us whole, and her presence also brings healing to Solomon, though they do finally part. (Barbara B. Koltuv, Solomon & Sheba, pp. 46-9)
And so we come to Paul writing to the Corinthians in the book that has as its climax the hymn to love in chapter 13, though it is a brilliant book overall. Paul is dealing with a people attracted to teachers of wisdom, gnosis, knowledge, often gained through secret initiations and revelations (Gnosticism in this direction, later in the church's life). There is some truth in this, but it is not the Bible's wisdom-Sophia in Greek or Hokmah in Hebrew-because it "puffs up" or inflates the bearer with self-importance, even arrogance. The problem is that it stops at self-knowledge, glorying in the self of the knower. Even much self-understanding is not the Gospel, which is about our repentance and salvation. "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up," (as Paul says in I Cor. 8:2). If the wise of Jesus' time-then or now-had known who he was, had been able to recognize Him-"they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (I Cor. 2: 8). They could not understand the path of love that Jesus was on-even though or perhaps because it went to the cross, that sign of God's own humility and humanity.
Paul turns to the source of the transformation of viewpoint and of life: the work of the Holy Spirit, both in our consciousness and in our unconscious. This is the place where we sense and then recognize a Spirit of love in us ungraspable who yet grasps us. This is not the spirit of the world, or even, sometimes, the spirit of the church ecclesiastical. This is the Spirit Who connects us to God, Who invites us to explore mysteries-and these mysteries are not problems to be solved. Mysteries involve ourselves, they bring us self-knowledge as a by-product of this encounter with God. There is a sense of providence here, of God's good leading, but Paul knows that some will never seem to see this. But is Paul then a Cassandra, especially for his own people, who seem to resist, some of whom stick with the persecution and war he left?
No, Paul approaches us with words of acknowledged foolishness and humility and great power: "Let us come among you, let us be seen by you ... as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God" (I Cor. 4: 1). By wonderful co-incidence or God-incidence, two months ago, after I had just drafted a statement for the Presbytery taking this text as its title, "Stewards of the mysteries of God," a friend in our church came to the Congregational Life meeting. She had been reading the Book of Confessions and found this phrase-this is amazing-in the Second Helvetic Confession, where this phrase is lifted up. It was Camille Lane, reading for herself some of our rich but sometimes intense Reformed Christian history. Why is this phrase so powerful? Because Paul is not claiming his own wisdom, but the wisdom given him by God's Spirit. He knows he will reveal his clubfoot to them, perhaps his thorn in the flesh, but he fears no one's judgement- because he knows God knows him so much better.
Paul comes, then, claiming to be a trustee, a steward, asking for their trust-a relationship forged in ministry together. The Day of the Lord, when all will be revealed-will it be terrifying, like the great IRS audit, the great UN inspection, a time of shame and humiliation. No, this sense that God's Spirit knows us and is at work in us gives confidence. Because in Christ that moment of revealing is the moment of healing, just as Solomon's loving gaze was to the Queen.
The points of wisdom are subtly shared by humor, but the burden of wisdom is only truly borne by love. Amen.
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