Wisdom is an important virtue. It is the ability to make good decisions and the willingness to carry out those decisions. A wise person determines what is most good and the best way to achieve it. Such a person tends to be caring and practical and is thus concerned about safety but they are not timid. Wisdom is not about avoiding risks. A wise person is willing to take risks if they are truly necessary to accomplish what is good. Jesus is encouraging wisdom and the risks it entails in this Sunday’s Gospel.
Jesus is specifically encouraging wisdom that risks family status.; living independent of “father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters.” Family status provides privilege and protection. Jesus is encouraging wisdom that risks privilege and protection. He is asking disciples to step out into the public eye when goodness is being threatened. He is encouraging wisdom that risks earthly possessions for the goodness of earthly communion. Such wisdom was described by Dietrich Bonhoeffer as the high cost of discipleship. Bonhoeffer was writing about the cost of discipleship during the threats of Nazism. The Reich strikes us as particularly evil. But discipleship has its costs throughout all ages. Sometimes the cost of discipleship is not physical death as it was to Bonhoeffer. Sometimes discipleship costs men their status in patriarchy. It costs those who are white their privilege in the U.S.’s white supremacist culture. It costs those who are wealthy their possessions and status in this classed society. Discipleship costs those of us who aspire to roles or privilege or possessions or status the desire for such things. Growing beyond the desire is difficult. We who seek to follow wisdom figures like Jesus are seduced by such baubles in never ending advertising campaigns by the fools among us; religious fools who ordain status and break communion, political fools who legislate privilege and marginalize conscience, capitalist fools who glorify possessions and denigrate character. We are being challenged to live beyond foolish desires to give witness to wise decision making.
Jesus, in his wisdom, is always showing us another way. It’s a risky way of communion, conscience, and character. Are we wise enough to follow it?
Prayer: Dear Jesus, grant me wisdom.
Question: What is the foolishness of this culture and my life in it that I need to wise up about?
September 8, 2013 Gospel Luke 14:25-33 Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time