mark – julie vieira

Wednesday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 343

Sirach 4:11-19
Psalm 119:165,168,171,172,174,175
Mark 9:38-40

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

― T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land and Other Poems

Look around you. Look within you. Gathered in the beautiful and fragile pieces of our lives, Wisdom is here.

Wisdom is in the wood and stone of our homes that have stood witness day after day to our joys and sorrows, praises and lamentations.
Wisdom is in the books and rosary beads worn smooth from decades of prayer.
Wisdom is in our tired bodies that often creak like wooden pews yet persist, nevertheless, in holding the spaciousness that welcomes God.

Wisdom is here.

In the time of the Hebrew Scriptures, wisdom was traditionally associated with rulers. In Proverbs 8:15, for example, it says that it is through Wisdom that “kings reign and princes decree justice”. Leaders such as Solomon were known for their wisdom and for praying that God might help them support and guide the people.

Yet in today’s passage from Sirach, something new is unfolding. The Wisdom about which Sirach speaks goes beyond this traditional understanding of Wisdom. Wisdom is something that not located in one leader or person but is present in all of creation.

Wisdom is here. Wisdom is in you, wisdom is in me, and wisdom is in the “we”.

Jesus echoes this turn in understanding Wisdom when in Mark 9:38-40 John confronts him with the news that non-disciples are healing people in Jesus’ name. Jesus’ response is open and spacious, unthreatened and sure. He affirms the power of God within not only those “officially designated” to act in his name, but all who embrace that deep inner call to follow the path of the Gospel. Like Sirach, Jesus understands that the gifts of God are not for the designated few, but for all.

Wisdom is here.

This Wisdom that we hold, and which holds us, is indeed the greatest of all gifts. Recall how Solomon, who as King could ask for anything and make it happen with all his power and money, asked only for this – Wisdom – not for self-serving rewards like long life or the death of his enemies, but for Wisdom.

My dear sisters and brothers and kin, we live today in deeply troubled times. It seems that Wisdom itself has been fired from its job. It is understandable that in the face of chaos and overwhelm, we respond again and again with the words, “I don’t know”.

“I don’t know what to do”.
“I don’t know how to survive this”.
“I don’t know how to help”.
“I don’t know how to make a difference”.

It feels awful to say, “I don’t know”, yet these three words are not words of resignation, nor of weakness, nor of inaction. No. In fact, these words are powerful beyond measure.

“I don’t know” is the doorway to Wisdom. It is the soul opening up to the more, the depths, the spaciousness within which we must dwell always, but most especially in troubling times.

Wisdom calls us to discern, to see things from God’s perspective. We must trust that what we need to know, what we need to do, will emerge. And as Sirach writes, when we trust Wisdom, wisdom will reveal to us “treasures of knowledge and an understanding of justice.” (Sirach 4:17-18)

Wisdom is here. Wisdom is in you, wisdom is in me, and wisdom is in the “we”.

Remember who you are, and whose you are. Speak the power of the words “I don’t know” and allow yourself to sink deeply into the Wisdom that is breathing within you. Speak the words “I don’t know” again and again and explore that emptiness – “Wisdom’s inmost chambers” as scripture says – within which God reveals Godself. Speak the words “I don’t know” in the solitude of your heart and in the midst of community.

Wisdom is here.

image : “Worn Wisdom” by Aaron Greenwood on Unsplash

Memorial of Saint Boniface, Bishop and Martyr
Lectionary: 353

Tobit 1:3; 2:1a-8
Psalm 112:1b-2, 3b-4, 5-6
Mark 12:1-12

Today’s readings are difficult ones. There’s no easy way to find a word of hope without doing a disservice to the reality of life which while certainly beautiful, is also fragile and broken.

Not all stories have a happy ending, not every cloud a silver lining.

We cannot gloss over the the realities of poverty, racism or the willful destruction of Earth. We cannot give a passing glance to oppression of LGBTQ+ people. In fact this month of June, we remember particularly the Stonewall Riots of June, 28, 1969, when the queer community broke out in spontaneous protests to a police raid targeting their community at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village of New York City.

We humans are no stranger to the harshness of life. Sometimes we are its victims, and sometimes we are its aggressors.

In our readings today we hear from both classic antiquity and the time of Jesus about the struggle we have to live justly and in right relationship with one another.

In our first reading, Tobit shares with us about his desire to share a meal with “a poor person from among our kin exiled here in Nineveh” only to receive word from his son Tobiah that one from among the poor had been murdered and left lying in the marketplace.

And in the gospel, Jesus shares a parable with the chief priests, scribes, and elders about how a vineyard owner’s servants, and even his own son, were abused and killed out of a sense of disrespect, entitlement and greed. The parable of course is a way for Jesus to point out the hardness of heart that some people had toward Jesus’ message of the radical inclusivity of God’s love.

Far from happy endings, these stories hold only tragedy and heartbreak. There is no dramatic turn of events that saves the day.

“But hope is on the way!” we might cry out in protest. “Jesus does save the day!”

Yes.

But not on that day in Nineveh. Not on June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Riots, and not on March 13, 2020, when a Black woman, Breonna Taylor, was murdered by police in her Louisville apartment.

That these stories do not end on a hopeful note does not mean that there is no hope. Rather they are an invitation for us to stay present in the moment, in the here and now, tending in a very personal way to one another in the hour of our greatest sorrow and hopelessness. This we must do, even while at the same time we long for and work on behalf of a new creation, “a new heaven and a new earth” (2 Peter 3:13).

Tobit models for us what this might look like. Let’s go back to what happened in Nineveh that day. Upon hearing of the murder of his kin, Tobit says:

I sprang to my feet, leaving the dinner untouched;
and I carried the dead man from the street
and put him in one of the rooms,
so that I might bury him after sunset.
Returning to my own quarters, I washed myself
and ate my food in sorrow….

And I wept.
Then at sunset I went out, dug a grave, and buried him.

Looking at Tobit’s response symbolically, we might ask ourselves:

what experiences urge us to “spring to our feet”?
what rooms in our home can we open up for others?
when are we called to accompany others – or give permission to ourselves – to lament and to weep?
what actions are we compelled to take that emerge out of our heartbreak and our deep faith and commitment to God?

Perhaps in the absence of finding a word of hope within these stories, we might instead follow Jesus and become a cornerstone, a foundation of the new heaven and new earth that all of creation longs for.

Image Credit: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Tag: mark

where is wisdom?

no word of hope