Western     Mission         Cluster

Consultation IV January 18-20, 2002 Spirit in the Desert Retreat Center, Carefree AZ

WISDOM’S FEAST IN THE WEST: BEING OTHER-WISE

Sermon at concluding worship service at Western Mission Cluster Consultation IV
Spirit in the Desert Retreat Center, Carefree, AZ, January 20, 2002

Jonathan Strandjord

This morning’s sermon is focused on two texts.  The first is the Isaiah 49 lesson you’ve already heard; the other is this passage from Proverbs 9:

Wisdom has built her house,
She has hewn her seven pillars.
She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine,
She has also set her table.
She has sent out her servant-girls,
She calls from the highest places in the town,
“You that are simple, turn in here!” To those without sense she says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live,
And walk in the way of insight.” (Proverbs 9:1-6)

The past 18 years have seen a remarkable amount of writing on theological education. In 1983 an author Patricia Killen mentioned in her lecture Friday night,  Edward Farley, published a little volume titled “Theologia” which sparked a discussion of the nature, purpose and structure of theological education which quickly blossomed into an extensive–and still growing–literature.  There is, not surprisingly, great variety in the proposals offered.  There are, at the same time, two points of strong consensus:

       1. Theological education does not aim primarily at the student’s mastery of one or more academic disciplines.  Rather it aims at shaping a comprehensive wisdom.

        2. Theological education is not just–or even first and foremost–aimed at the professional training of clerics but is rather aimed at deepening the wisdom of the whole people of God.  (the triumph of the protestant catechetical principle–all need to have the opportunity to understand the gracious Logos-- over medieval “implicit faith” which reduces the teaching office to authoritative knowledge by and for a few).  This isn’t to say that theological education is unimportant for clergy.  But the goal is theologically wise communities of  believers and not just pastors.

These two points of consensus in the contemporary discussion of theological education ring in Lutheran ears.  Our greatest Lutheran theologians have hardly been prisoners of an academic discipline (just think of Luther, Kierkegaard and Sittler).   These wrote not to satisfy the code of a guild, but for flesh and blood human beings.  And Lutherans have been about general theological education from the git-go–witness the confessional status of popular teaching documents like the Small and Large Catechisms and the rich tradition of Lutheran preaching.

Still, this contemporary talk of theological education aiming at “wisdom” could make Lutherans uneasy.  After all, we not only know but are prone to quoting Paul’s words about the foolishness of the cross bringing to nothing all human wisdom.  And then of course there is that celebrated passage in the Small Catechism’s explanation of the Third Article—“I believe that I cannot by my own strength or understanding believe in Christ Jesus  or come to him”.  And who can forget  Luther’s rather sharp remarks about  “whore reason”?

But before we reject the contemporary turn to understanding theological education as the cultivation of faith’s wisdom, it is interesting to notice that Paul’s diatribe against human wisdom is part of a careful argument which shows his careful study of Old Testament scripture and knowledge of Hellenistic religions and philosophy.  And it is significant that Luther’s insight into the radicality and unfathomability of God’s grace didn’t drive him to give up his academic profession and quit the classroom.  Luther not only stayed in the university, the majority of his reforming work was to be through teaching degree students.

There is a wisdom that belongs with faith. Jesus was a rabbi, a teacher; he called his followers “disciples”—students.  And he sent them out in turn to teach.

Whenever Christianity turns anti-intellectual, it betrays Christ.  Faith and wisdom belong together.

At the same time, it is important to say that faith’s wisdom is more than a little peculiar.  In fact, rather than labeling the theologically educated “wise”, we might do well to call them “other-wise.”

Being other-wise is not a matter of being quirky (though, let me hasten to add, the quirky are not disqualified).   Nor is being other-wise a matter of mastering an unusual or arcane body of knowledge—Greek and Hebrew, the mysteries of exegetical method, details of church history or doctrine.  It is not a matter of being expert in the trade secrets of preaching, worship, church organization or mission strategy.  Neither is it defined by knowing the ins and outs of spiritual practices.

What is truly distinctive about being other-wise is not  the mastery of a specialized subject matter.  Rather, being other-wise is intellect in the service of an extra-ordinary purpose.

Wisdom comes in two ordinary flavors—it usually aims at one of two things. 

First of all, there is the wisdom which serves desire.  I want something, so I learn how to make or otherwise get hold of it.  I fear something, so I try to learn how to destroy or avoid it.  In both cases, an increase in my wisdom is an increase in my power.  Such wisdom is not inherently evil—it is essential to human life.  It is also ambiguous.  Because our hearts are ever restless; our desire limitless.  And so we aim to know and understand more and more so we can control more and more.  The end of this road is, well, Dr. Evil (of the Austin Powers movies) who like just about every fictional genius in American popular culture aims at nothing less than complete and absolute world domination. 

A world in which we crave always more knowledge for ourselves and fear it in others is not a happy place.  And so, this sort of wisdom is followed everywhere by its contrary—a wisdom which seeks to reduce craving, which aims to replace hot desire with cool detachment.  This  intellectual strategy interrupts desire with a skeptical question—“Wait a minute. Is that thing, that relationship, that accomplishment, that power, that whatever—is it really worth seeking?”  The wisdom of detachment aims at the freedom of being, above all, self-possessed.   Instead of rushing to grasp, in detachment you step back to critically evaluate.  Such wisdom is not inherently evil—it is essential to human life.  But it too is ambiguous.  For the only complete safety is in stepping all the way back to absolute detachment in a criticism that won’t quit, that is never willing to commit and say—“There, there is something worth pursuing, worth risking your freedom for or staking your life on.”   The end of this road is the killjoy critic who cannot allow meaning or worth anywhere, who cannot smell anything but a rat. 

Wisdom comes in these two ordinary flavors–it typically serves desire or detachment.  Being other-wise is something else again.  It may pick up the tools of either power or critical distance—indeed, it necessarily uses both.  But it can lay those tools down too.  Because being other-wise is not driven by the itch for power and possession or by the quest to be free, above the fray.

It is, instead, essentially born of wonder.  While pursuing desire or seeking freedom through detachment, we are surprised by grace, blindsided by the Gospel which gives nothing less than the Kingdom, surpassing all desire , which gifts us with freedom so complete it makes the freedom of detachment appear as the prison it is.

This wonder is an ecstasy in the literal sense, making us stand outside ourselves, expelling us from the captivity of self-concern.  An ecstasy which takes us out of ourselves--but not out of the world.  Quite the contrary, it places us before the neighbor.  There we are both free and called to be thoughtful.  This simple word “thoughtful” has a double meaning.  When we use it, we ordinarily mean either that someone is thinking deeply (“My, Adriane sure looks thoughtful this morning”) or we mean that a person  is showing consideration for someone else (“How thoughtful of you not to doze off while the Division for Ministry staff person drones on and on!”).  When both meanings are operating at the same time, we are getting to the essence of what it is to be other-wise.   It is deep thought for the sake of the other.  It is mindful generosity.  It is wisdom as a feast for whoever could use the nourishment.

We have been discussing collaboration in  theological education in the Western Mission Cluster.  In short, the banquet arrangements for wisdom’s feast in the West.  Like all banquets, this feast requires considerable resources, careful planning, skillful preparation, excellent invitations and first-rate table service. An extraordinary feast requires all these to an extraordinary degree. 

I have two daughters–21 and 17–and they regularly come home from the video rental place with a particular movie they enjoy watching as a family.  They think this film is wonderful fun.  For me, though—well, let’s just say that I find it more terrifying than Psycho.  The movie is Father of the Bride.  What makes me so tense is not just the prospect of son’s-in-law.  It’s all those arrangements!  I identify only too much with Steve Martin’s character as he fumbles along, deeper and deeper into a mysterious morass, clueless and overwhelmed.

Well, the feast of wisdom we’ve been thinking about for the last three days makes Father of the Bride look like ordering out for pizza.  We’re talking about an enormous investment here!

And then, after we work so hard, what makes us think that anyone will come?  The lament in the center of our Isaiah text this morning-

“But I thought, I have labored in vain, spent my strength for nothing and vanity.”

-this sounds a disquieting note.  Is there anyone here who is not personally familiar with this particularly fierce form of disappointment and pain?

But just as the apparently failed prophet is given not early retirement but a bigger, wider call, so are we who grieve our failures in gathering scattered Lutherans.  Wisdom’s feast is for the nations.  Particularly in our time and especially in the West, all those nations are here.

Which means that only a world cuisine will do at the feast in the West.  The Logos is the Logos is the Logos, of course.  But it reveals a multitude of savors in different cultural preparations and presentations.

There’s a whole lotta kinds of cooking required for the feast in the West.

Which makes the work of everyone here even more challenging.  But also more interesting.  And far more promising.

It even makes it easier to collaborate.  For when no one is sure how to proceed, everyone is motivated to listen to everyone else.  And to value the resources the others have to bring, to receive them into a mix which, when all is said and done, is not of our own making.

So much to do!  We’d better eat first, coming to the table where we receive the source and destiny of all wisdom, the overflowing generosity at the heart of creation, the Word made flesh.  For you.  And yes, for all those nations.

Amen.

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