September 20, 2009:  WISE GUYS AND SUBVERSIVE POLITICS      
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Mark 8:30-37; Psalm 1                        
Eileen Parfrey -- Springwater Presbyterian Church

            The talent competitions on TV have modeled a strange new wisdom for our times.  In a world where winning is everything, and a body can be “voted off the island” for being a drag on the rest of the team, Susan Boyle’s story is a welcome surprise.  You may remember Ms. Boyle as the Scottish singer on “Britain’s Got Talent,” who knocked the socks off the judges and the rest of the world with her superstar singing voice in a frumpy package.  YouTube gave her instantaneous notoriety as her performance literally circled the globe within hours.  She was what every kid putting in parent-imposed piano practice sessions dreams of.  What every junior high kid to get an A on her art project hopes for.  What every young man who comes up with a better way of moving the hay into the barn believes could happen.  What every mother concocting leftovers into something the kids will eat suspects Pillsbury’s bake-off will discover.  Finally the world will notice—your talent, your inventiveness, your sparkling wit.  It’s as if Susan Boyle, unassuming church choir member with a spectacular voice, is the opposite of the bad wisdom James talks about—envy, selfish ambition, disorder.  If you had to choose a winner for your kids to be like, would you rather it was Susan Boyle, or that Survivor who was arrested for tax evasion and public drunkenness? 
            Speaking of kids, doesn’t is seem like, whenever the Dunderheads start playing the First Century version of Survivor—“Jerusalem’s Got Talent”—doesn’t it seem like Jesus drops everything to get some kid to make his point?  It’s not as if children in the First Century were the sole purpose of their parents’ existence.  Adults did not spend their week ends shuttling the kids between lessons and practice and games.  In the middle of a teaching tour, on his way to the crucifixion, Jesus drops everything to put a child on his lap.  Once again, a child is the metaphor for kingdom living—a person with no pre-conceptions, no expectations, not even rights or a voice.  Winners in God’s kingdom are the ones who welcome someone like that.  You’d think the disciples would get it.
After the fact, I they noticed (kind of).  A writer in Christian Century quotes a story from the Gospel of Thomas to explain why Jesus uses a child in today’s story.  In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says his students are “like children who live in a field that doesn’t belong to them.  The owners appear and demand, ‘Give us back our field!’ but the children have no sense of what ownership means, and nothing to defend.  Instead, the children strip themselves and stand before the owners naked, demonstrating that they truly are without possessions.” 
            The story is told of South Africa women protesting during the struggle against the apartheid policies of racial oppression.  At one point, a group of women were confronted by fully armed police in riot gear.  The women had no weapons, were literally defenseless as they faced soldiers aiming automatic weapons and tear gas at them.  What the women did was to simply strip and stand there, facing the soldiers naked.  Their simple action stopped their opponents.  The soldiers backed down.  The women modeled the subversive kind of wisdom the writer of James describes:  “The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”  Wisdom that is naked and without possessions.  This is the same kind of subversive wisdom that Mahatma Gandhi used to fight Britain’s salt tax in India.  This was the practical model that Martin Luther King Jr used in the civil rights movement.              
            It is a subversive wisdom, the kind that Jesus taught.  It is a practical wisdom that comes at a cost.  It usually comes with a life of persecution.  Jesus’ teachings are a far cry from arguing about who’s the greatest and who’s going to sit closest to him when he’s made king.  Which is what the disciples usually do when he mentions his upcoming crucifixion.  “We all end this life naked in a field,” that Christian Century interpreter writes.  He believes “that in inviting the disciples to reckon with his approaching passion, Jesus was asking them to trust beyond what they could know and grasp, beyond what they could hold in place with human will and effort.  The possibility that he extended to them was to do the stripping now, to do the unclenching now, so God’s presence could be lived without being fully revealed and understood.  In the midst of the dark, heavy discussion of his pending passion, in the midst of the bickering of the disciples over position and power, Jesus dropped everything to hold a child in his lap.”
            In other words, it’s not about hospitality, this child-on-lap teaching of Jesus.  Jesus means his disciples to learn a spiritual practice.  It’s a spiritual practice that St Francis and his followers called Lady Poverty, something we characterize as roots and wings.  We talk about roots and wings in child-rearing, meaning that we give our kids values by giving them a sense of place (knowing where they come from).  We give them roots, but we also give them a sense of independence (the ability to mature beyond that place).  Roots and wings in spiritual practice are about knowing whose you are, of letting go of the things that get in your way of fully living that.  When Jesus took the child on his lap, he modeled the spiritual practice of dropping whatever else we’re holding.  The addictions we cling to, the pretenses that protect us from unpleasantness, the hurry and rush to accomplish that keeps us from our nakedness.  To embrace a child (literally or the single-mindedness that child represents) completely, we have to let go of whatever else we’re holding.  As a mother, I’m aware that many of the day-to-day functions of parenting require two-fisted holding—a kid in one hand, the laundry or cooking implement or rake or steering wheel in the other.  But there comes a time when two-fisted isn’t appropriate.  When we set aside all the other things the child gets our undivided attention.
            The gospel-writer Mark uses stories to unpack wisdom for us.  Wisdom for him isn’t “what you know.”  All through his gospel, understanding and wisdom are not how powerful you are, or how persuasive.  Wisdom isn’t about a big following or success in the polls.  For Mark, understanding is “who you are.”  Wisdom is how we live.  In Mark, to follow Jesus means a life of service, of relinquishment and other-centeredness, a life of risk.  These are not “wise” strategies, according to the earthly wisdom James describes, the kind of wisdom that has to do with ambition and accomplishment.  What Mark values will not get you very far in a competitive world.              “Relinquishment”—voluntarily giving up something you value—won’t get you to the semi-finals of “America’s Favorite Idol.”  Being other-centered—caring more about others than about yourself—will not win you the million bucks on “Survivor.”  These wisdom strategies Mark advocates will not accomplish the kind of compromise that will resolve the American health care crisis.  They are subversive strategies.  They are the very roots and wings of God’s reign.  And that reign starts as soon as we let go of our agendas of power and ambition.