“Beloved: Who among you is wise and understanding?”

James opens up today’s scripture with a question (Jas 3:13-18). My sense is that the term ‘wisdom’ has become one of those words that we throw around in a way that perhaps doesn’t allow us to really consider the true depth of its significance. When we say someone has ‘wisdom,’ we many times are referring to a reservoir of experience, which has been gathered and cultivated over a number of years, if not an entire lifetime. We speak of sages and wise ones who can offer ‘answers’ are at least tidbits of information that can make us look at things deeper, or considered something that we thought we had figured out with a new set of lens. I wonder if this idea of wisdom as a container of information and experience that one transmits to another is only the beginning to a fuller sense of wisdom.

In my own life, there have been several times when I have sensed that someone has been responsible for a new and fresh understanding about something with regards to my life. When this happens, many times the person who seems to be the vehicle for the ‘wisdom’ may not even be aware of it. There is a spontaneity that co-emerges in the interaction between the person, myself and any other host of environmental or circumstantial elements.   This is a very different experience from that of a person who considers themselves to be wise and exercises much effort to convey this wisdom to those who may not ‘have it’ yet.

What if Wisdom is not simply an accrual of experience, or a container of time-honored lessons, but rather the newness and surprising possibilities that is constantly available to us moment-to-moment, but we just aren’t tuned in to it most of the time? James speaks of the wisdom from above in his epistle:

But the wisdom from above is first of all pure,
then peaceable, gentle, compliant,
full of mercy and good fruits,
without inconstancy or insincerity.
And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace
for those who cultivate peace.

At first glance, this description may seem to be flowery, but we must be careful to pay attention to what is being said here. The purity of wisdom as characterized by peaceable-ness and gentleness is only such by its constancy and sincerity. Wisdom here is not seen as perfunctory solicitations that come and go in our lives, but instead wisdom is this dynamic process of openness to, cultivation of, and deliberate intentionality towards mercy and peace. This is not for the faint-hearted. It is work that we seem to be called to participate in all the time and everywhere. James speaks of this wisdom from ‘above,’ yet this vertical wisdom crosses the plane of our horizontal existence in time at every moment. And when we only see Wisdom as a possession, James is quite clear as to what this looks like:

“if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts,
do not boast and be false to the truth.
Wisdom of this kind does not come down from above
but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.”
For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist,
there is disorder and every foul practice.

Mark’s Gospel (Mk 9:14-29) picks up this same theme in terms of Jesus’ seemingly ostensible irritation and annoyance at the chaotic environment going on around him in the story of the son possessed by a mute demon. The son’s father points out to Jesus the lack of efficacy in the disciples’ attempt to drive out the demon.

“I asked your disciples to drive it out, but they were unable to do so.”
He said to them in reply,
“O faithless generation, how long will I be with you?
How long will I endure you?  Bring him to me.”
They brought the boy to him.
And when he saw him,
the spirit immediately threw the boy into convulsions.
As he fell to the ground, he began to roll around   
and foam at the mouth.
Then he questioned his father,
“How long has this been happening to him?”
He replied, “Since childhood.
It has often thrown him into fire and into water to kill him.
But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”
Jesus said to him,
“‘If you can!’ Everything is possible to one who has faith.”

This demon really has a hold on the boy, and really has a hold on the entire crowd. The situation goes on for a good while it seems, with the possessed boy convulsing and foaming at the mouth. There is a high level of expectations floating above the heads of the crowd. ‘Since childhood’ is a phrase that sticks out for me in this passage. “How long has this been going on?” The answer comes, “since childhood!” I wonder if this could not be seen as a diagnosis of the entire crowd’s maturity level in consideration of faith. You can hear Jesus’ frustration when he returns to them their own words about how the boy may be healed… ”IF YOU CAN!”

This is a loaded gospel for sure, but what if we focus here on how no one ‘knows’ how to get rid of the demon?! Even if we look at Jesus, we see that there was not this auto-miracle that sometimes seems to be present in other parts of the gospels. There is a real struggle going on here and it has as much to do with the inability of the crowd and the disciples to understand the level at which the wisdom of healing and mercy demands authentic participation and what Jesus will call ‘faith’ and at the close of the Gospel passage, simply ‘prayer.’

Being present, being in prayer, sustaining openness to wisdom in its radical newness and radiant healing capacity requires us to stay with it. This is a working with grace that calls for full engagement and purified intentions (‘purified’ here meaning without malice). It is work, and often times painful, because it ‘works’ on us. This is what full participation and authentic engagement seems to call forth. This is recognizing the Spirit of Wisdom in our midst and surrendering to it, with willingness to let it ‘work’ us. Make no mistake, this has nothing at all to do with capitulation or acquiescence, but rather radically honest engagement directed toward compassion and wholeness.

If we are closed off from the creative engagement of wisdom with one another – perhaps operating out of our notion of God and faith that we have had ‘since childhood’ – we are probably right there in the crowd of the Gospel, in the demon-possessed son, foaming at the mouth, and being thrown into convulsions many times when we catch site of the ‘truth.’ We have only to look around at what is going on in our world today, politically, socially, religiously, to see how this demon operates, and how we refuse to let it go. We want to be rid of it, but everything we seem to be trying doesn’t seem to work. We search for wisdom in a closed container of only time-tested truths, and in so doing cut off the real work of wisdom waiting for us in each living moment.

“How long will I endure you?” Jesus asks the crowd in his exasperation. But that is precisely the point. Divine endurance is faithfulness and beckoning us forth from our ‘childhoods’ towards perhaps a yet unimaginable yet fully hopeful future. Simply because we don’t know What it will become, does not exclude the knowledge of wisdom of knowing HOW it will become. Committed constancy, cultivation of peace, and convicted compassion…or put another way, as Jesus told his disciples….

“This kind can only come out through prayer.”