Hearts of Love and Despair
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 20) - September 21, 2003
By The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland
- Wisdom 1:16-2:1,6-22
- Psalm 54
- James 3:16-4:6
- Mark 9:30-37
Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” He said this at least in part to let the disciples know that he knew what they had been talking about even though they wouldn’t fess up to it. They’d been walking along through Galilee on their way to Jerusalem from Caesarea Philippi, and this was the second time Jesus had predicted his own betrayal and death. This unnerved the disciples to no end I would imagine, and so after an awkward silence they changed the subject and began talking amongst themselves.
When Jesus asks them later what they’d been talking about they clam up like children caught doing something naughty. Then Jesus drops that line about the first needing to be last, just to let the disciples know he knew what they’d been talking about and that as usual they were way off. They knew they were off, but they had no idea just how far off they really were.
Meanwhile, in the reading from the book of Wisdom, we have a very interesting passage that my favorite commentary calls “The Speech of the Wicked.” Wisdom literature is often concerned with two opposing parties: the Righteous and the Wicked. In this reading, the author of the book of Wisdom gives first person voice to the Wicked who then present the argument for their understanding of life in words both poetic and persuasive.
To summarize, the Wicked first state the place from which their outlook originates: the suffering and mortality of human life. It is in this experience of the fleeting and capricious nature of human life that the Wicked find justification for their actions. From there, the Wicked conclude that we ought to take what pleasure we can from life, as it is so temporary. This is said in very poetic language, and is not entirely without merit. Human life is temporary, and suffering is an experience common to us all. Why not take pleasure where we find it? Why not enjoy the good of God’s creation when we have the opportunity?
The third step in the argument of the Wicked takes a nasty turn. From taking personal pleasure they move on to seeking power over others, particularly over widows, orphans, and the elderly, common examples of the powerless in ancient Hebrew society. In the final step of their more and more evil argument, the Wicked advocate opposition of the Righteous, and outright killing of the Righteous person who opposes them in their way of life.
Clearly, the Wicked are an evil bunch of people. What is interesting to me is how persuasive their argument is in its beginning, and how similar it is to the arguments of other heroes of the Wisdom literature, Job and the author of Ecclesiastes. Job has in the extreme the experience of human suffering that we all experience. In the book of Ecclesiastes, the author recommends the same thing the Wicked do: life is fleeting, take pleasure in God’s creation where you find it. The difference between Job and the Wicked is the source of their feeling when faced with suffering.
For the Wicked, every action they take is motivated by despair. They have seen the suffering of human life, they have seen the inevitability of human death, and from these comes despair, and from that despair springs all their seeking after empty pleasure, all their rationalization for seeking and abusing power, and all their love of injustice. Faced with their own despair they first seek to escape from it, then to bring it to others, and finally to inflict it on the Righteous.
The reason Job is a hero of the Wisdom literature, and one of my favorite Biblical characters for that matter, is that he experiences the same human suffering that the Wicked do, and yet reacts not out of despair, but out of hope. Despite the incredible suffering inflicted on Job for absolutely no reason, Job continues to have faith in God, and to act, speak, and live in hope. If you have not read the book of Job, or have not read it recently, I conditionally encourage you to do so. Conditionally, because once you remove the tacked-on happy ending that the biblical scholars mostly agree you should remove, the book of Job is not very happy. There is no simple answer at the end, and God comes of as a rather indifferent bully in the beginning. It is, however, in my opinion, the best the Hebrew scriptures have to offer on the problem of human suffering.
On to the letter of James. James has more to say on the problem of human suffering, and some very good advice to Christians seeking to decrease the suffering amongst themselves. There are several theories on who James was, who he was writing to and why. My favorite is that James was writing to new Christians. The community that received James’ letter was already Christian, he was not seeking to convert non-believers. However, they were new Christians. They had converted, but their conversion was new, and their habits and actions were not yet friendly to God.
James, who apparently knows some of the situation in which these new Christians are living in, says that their problems, the conflicts and disputes among them that are leading to suffering, stem from the envy in their hearts. Like the Wicked whose every action stems from a heart of despair, these new Christians have not yet learned that their actions must stem from a heart of love for God rather than from the heart of envy they have inherited from the culture of their time.
It sounds to me that the culture of their time was not all that different from the culture of our time. In chapter 4 verse 2 James says, “You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder,” and I think of news stories about children who kill other children in order to have their Chicago Bulls parka, or Michael Jordan shoes. The culture of envy is one we are very familiar with. It is just one more manifestation of the heart that acts out of despair, and it lives not only in the lives of James’ audience, not only on television commercials in the 20th century, but in our very own hearts. Like it or not, each of us has been taught to envy. In some cases we are taught to envy not only things, but youth itself, and in this the heart of despair again shows its fear of death and mortality.
And so James urges his new Christians to learn that God can give them new hearts. Hearts not of despair or envy, but of love. James seems to know that this is not a one time conversion, but a long and sometimes difficult struggle to be continuously converted from our own hearts of despair to God’s heart of love.
I think Jesus was trying to say that to the disciples. Just like the new Christians in James’ letter, the disciples were taught envy. They knew the heart of despair embraced by the Wicked of the Wisdom literature. Jesus had been telling them about the new heart he was seeking to give them: a heart of love for God that would replace their envy and despair with love, and teach them to hope as Job did.
He did it this time by taking a child and telling them that if they wanted to accept him as God, they would also have to accept the child as him. It is hard to capture the impact of Jesus’ words today, for children are thought of much differently now. Even those adults who get grumpy when children make noise in church know that children are important, that they are incredibly valuable to us all. It was not so in Jesus’ time, I am told. Children were not thought of much at all, they were non-persons, invisible. For male disciples to be told that their leader was worth no more than a child would have been a shock.
And so Jesus sets up a way for us to measure our new hearts of love. Not by rank in the church, not by success in business, and not by accumulation of the fruits of envy. Our hearts of love are to be measured by how we treat the least. Those least are not children anymore. Maybe they are the homeless or the very poor instead. It is one thing to write a check to a charity. It is another thing to serve lunch in a soup kitchen. It is still another, and greater thing, to treat those you serve with dignity and respect. It is another thing again, and the greatest thing of all, to treat those you serve as if they were Jesus Christ himself.
Jesus sat down to teach the disciples. He showed them someone they didn’t care about, someone they were far more important than. And he told them, that if they could love this person, then they could love him. And if they could love him, then they could love God. And if they could love God, then God would give them hearts of love, and they could live in hope. AMEN.
