In the Bible, the “wisdom” that’s mentioned in our readings today, refers to living well in the here and now of our ordinary lives. Wisdom is practical know-how. It isn’t fancy, or theoretical, or mysterious. It is simply part of the “good life” that God desires for every creature on earth. We tend to think of learning wisdom with age, and in that case, I know that we have lots of wisdom with us in this room and on Zoom today! But children, too, can be taught wisdom. Don has friends who taught their young children to ask “Is this a wise choice, or an unwise choice?” rather than to fret over whether or not it is a “right” or a “wrong” one.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer defines wisdom as “’the gospel in daily life.’”[1] For Christians, “the gospel,” or good news, that we carry into daily life is bound up in Jesus’ death and resurrection, as well as in the way that Jesus lived. As Paul explains to the Corinthians: Christ Crucified is the wisdom of God. It is in the foolishness of the Cross that we are invited to live our ordinary lives. It is in the flesh of Jesus that we find our truth.
Being an orderly person, I love the orderly choreography of the Eucharist. I like that it follows a clear pattern, and that there is a place for everything, and everything has its place. I like the gleaming silver, the beautiful, flowing gestures, the flickering candle flames, the deep purple of the wine, and the neat way that the wafer snaps in two. But despite the words that I say about body and blood, it’s easy for us to forget that flesh and blood and death have anything to do with our beautiful ritual meal. Instead, it’s easy for us to get caught up in the “right” way to follow a rubric or the “wrong” way to interpret a phrase. Children, however, are another story. I’ll never forget the scene my young son made when he got old enough to listen to the words of the Eucharistic prayer. “Eww, gross!” he cried, holding his hand to his throat in a choking motion when the priest invited us to “take and eat” Christ’s body.
If we listen carefully to Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel, they’ll help us adults grasp the magnitude what we claim each Sunday: “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh… Very truly, I tell you, unless you feed on the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” Jesus challenges us. To make Jesus’ words even more jarring, the Greek verb translated in our text by “eat” is a word often used to describe the noisy, gnawing way that animals eat. English is actually the only language I know that doesn’t commonly make a distinction between human and animal eating. I learned my lesson about the difference one day as a new French-speaker in France, when I sweetly asked guests at a fancy university dinner party if they would now like to “chaw” some delicate pastry. I didn’t realize that the slang word for “animal” eating that I had heard people use at home wasn’t acceptable for educated humans in polite company. They were horrified.
In our text, Jesus doesn’t mind at all using the Greek word for “chawing” in polite company--and on purpose: “Those who gnaw on my flesh … Those who devour my flesh will abide in me and I in them,” he says. In Christ, God became flesh that allows itself to be eaten up, a “piece of meat” to be mishandled and consumed. Instead of picturing the nice clean loaf of bread and cup of wine offered at the Last Supper, instead of picturing the silver vessels and freshly-starched fair linens of our own churches, we picture ourselves instead standing before the wooden Cross, before the battered flesh of a God who longs to give away God’s very self.
Jesus’ strong words are meant to bring us to the truth that God became flesh--bloody, suffering, mortal flesh—out of love for us, out of a profound desire for loving relationship with us. In becoming flesh with us, God is promising to be one “with us and for us forever, to stick with us and even in us no matter what.”[2] To use John’s language, God promises to abide in us, as Christ abides in God. And as Martin Copenhaver puts it, “’For those who receive Jesus, the whole Jesus, his life clings to their bones and courses through their veins. He can no more be taken from the believer’s life than last Tuesday’s breakfast can be plucked from one’s body.’”[3]
In a lecture in Kentucky, I heard the theologian Martin Smith once suggest that it’s not all that helpful for us to ask God, “Who do you want me to be today?” It is more helpful to pray, “God, who do you want to be for me today?” I think this spiritual insight applies to our search for wisdom. When it comes down to it, all of the “shoulds” that make us so anxious fade away in the shadow of the Cross. When confronted with all of the dilemmas and decisions of our lives these days, it’s OK to pray, like Solomon, for the wisdom to discern what is right. But even better is to enter into Gospel wisdom: to grasp hold of the God who longs to abide with us and in us. To grasp hold of the God who longs for us to drain from his flesh all the energy and love and courage that we need each day. To grasp hold of the God who carries us when we fail and lifts us up when we fall. To grasp hold of the God who feeds us with the powerful upside-down wisdom of the Cross, the wisdom that comes only from vulnerability and love. Gospel wisdom urges us, with wise researcher Brene Brown, to start every day of our complex lives by putting our feet on the floor and saying, “Today I will choose [the vulnerability of] courage over comfort. I can’t make any promises for tomorrow, but today I will choose to be brave.”[4]
[1] Amy Plantinga Pauw, Church in Ordinary Time: A Wisdom Ecclesiology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017). 16.
[2] David Lose, “In the Meantime: Pentecost 12B, Meeting the Carnal God.” Found at http://www.davidlose.net/2015/08/pentecost-12-b-meeting-the-carnal-god/
[3] Ibid.
[4] Frances Bridges, “Five Ways to be Brave.” Found at https://www.forbes.com/sites/francesbridges/2019/04/29/5-ways-to-be-brave-according-to-brene-browns-netflix-special-the-call-to-courage/?sh=40a3c6a879f4
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