4 Epiphany B Sermon

What does it mean that Jesus spoke with authority? What is wisdom? I explored these questions taking from the Gospel, Psalm and New Testament readings.

4 Epiphany B

Transcribed from a sermon

By Valerie Ann Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

January 29, 2012

Mark 1:21-28

Psalm 111

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

I wonder what it was about Jesus that touched the people in Capernaum. Mark writes that they said that he spoke with authority, not like the scribes.” I wonder what that means.

Now I understand that the scribes back then were a lot like my college professors when I was getting my Ph.D. When I was working on m Ph.D. anything you wrote had to be footnoted. You couldn’t write your own idea. It had to be an idea that somebody else had written and then you applied it. I am sure you have read that sort of thing or been to a lecture where someone is analyzing what someone who lived twenty years ago thought about what someone who lived a hundred years ago had to say about something that was written five hundred years ago. You’ve been there. You know. Today’s version of that is, “And this is my first slide of 123, let me read it to you. ‘Slide Number 1’.” That is how the scribes taught. 

Now Capernaum was not a backwater, it was right on the intersection of two major trade routes, and the synagogue in Capernaum was famous for the scholarly work that was done there. In fact it is believed that much of the Kabala was written in Capernaum. So the scribes there were intelligent and well known, but also had a style of looking to others rather that speaking from themselves. Jesus was different. They said he spoke with authority.

I wonder if what he spoke with might have been described as wisdom. Wisdom is an odd thing. It is kind of like great art. You can’t really describe what it is, but you know it when you see it. The same is true of wisdom. It is hard to say exactly what wisdom is, but when someone is speaking or writing with wisdom we recognize it. Think in your life, did you know anyone that you would say was wise? It could have been a teacher, it might have been a grand parent or an aunt or a neighbor. It could have been a book you read or someone you saw on TV, but somehow you just sensed that that person spoke with wisdom.

Now we know that wisdom is more than intelligence. We have all met very intelligent people who aren’t very wise. It is that absent minded professor kind of thing. People who you know have brilliant minds but somehow they haven’t translated that brilliance into how they interact with the world.

We also know or have known people who have a lot of knowledge. They know a lot about a lot of things but we wouldn’t call them wise. In fact that is what Paul says in the reading today. That sometimes people with some knowledge who think they know say too much. Today we might say - TMI - too much information.

The way Paul describes it is so beautiful and accurate - he says that knowledge puffs up. What a great way to describe someone who takes their knowledge but doesn’t apply any wisdom to it, as being puffed up.

In this letter he is probably talking about people who were part of the Christian movement called Gnostics. Gnostic is spelled with a Gn and it comes from the Greek word to know. The Gnostics believed that there were some things that some people knew that other people didn’t know. And of course the Gnostics believed that they were the ones who knew. There are people around that might described as Gnostics today, but I won’t decide who they might be. I’ll leave that to you.

Now they believed, they were certain, that there were no idols so there was no problem in eating meat offered to an idol. You have to remember that back at that time animal sacrifice was the source of meat. You didn’t just go and kill an animal and eat it, it was always sacrificed to something. So, they said that there is nothing wrong with eating meat sacrificed to an idol because idols don’t exist. Paul writes, “Yes, you are right. Idols don’t exist, and so eating meat sacrificed to an idol is really not a big deal. But, some people don’t know that . Some people still think that idols are relevant. So if they see you, someone who is so knowledgeable (Paul had a wonderful way of writing letters) eating food sacrificed to an idol it might hurt them. They might feel that it is okay to worship an idol.” So knowledge can puff up.

But where does wisdom come from? If wisdom isn’t intelligence, if wisdom isn’t knowing a lot, what is wisdom? And how do we recognize it?

The psalm for today says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” But what does fear of the Lord mean? Now there are many books and articles written about the words that are translated from Hebrew and Greek into fear and exactly what they mean. They all have an aspect of the kind of fear you might have if there was a lion that escaped from the zoo or you knew that there was a problem and there was someone who was dangerous out in the world. There is an aspect of that kind of fear but it is much more than that. If you look at the psalm where it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom it also says, “Great is the Lord.” So there is a fear of the Lord because God is so great. Then it says in the fourth verse that God is gracious and full of compassion. We don’t need to be afraid of something that is gracious and full of compassion. Later it says that he gives food to those who fear him. We have to assume if he gives food to those who fear him it is not those who are scared of him. There must be something more. And then in the seventh verse it says that the works of his hand are faithfulness and justice. Done with truth and equity. So this fear of the Lord is much more than being afraid of him, it is about respecting God. Acknowledging how great and powerful and wonderful God is.

 One of the places where the fear of the Lord is talked about is with Abraham. Paul at one point wrote that Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son was seen as righteousness because of his fear of the Lord. In that case fear of the Lord was doing what God wanted him to do, even when it wasn’t something that he particularly wanted to do himself. And yet Abraham is described as a friend of God. He is called God’s friend. He is the only person who is described as God’s friend. God and Abraham had a particularly intimate and close friendship. So we can’t say that Abraham was afraid of the Lord. He had an intimate friendship with the Lord. So fear of the Lord has to do with not wanting to disappoint. Respect, revering, fearing the Lord. So that is the beginning of wisdom.

There is another thing to consider here. Where Paul says that knowledge puffs up, the next line he writes is, “love builds up.” So wisdom is not about knowledge or intelligence, but definitely has a lot to do with love, with relationship with God, with love for the people around you and love for God. We recognize wisdom, the wisdom that comes from a deep walk with God, a respect for God and a love for God and for people. That is what we see with wisdom. That is what we recognize in a wise person, and that is the wisdom that we should seek for ourselves.