Wisdom 9:13-18b Philemon 9-10, 12-17 Luke 14:25-33

Under the umbrella of Wisdom, prudence is typically the first or chief of the traditional Western virtues both among the Greeks and the Jews. One can assert then that all of God’s Wisdom is prudent. Today’s first and third readings are about Wisdom and the prudence that it engenders among those who embrace it.

Our text from the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon is comprised of most of the final six verses of a famous prayer by Solomon in which he asks God for Wisdom as a coronation gift. (See 1^st Kings 3:1-15 for the story in a fuller historical-lore context.) Today’s text consists of the more obtuse and subtle lines of the prayer; indeed had the lectionary included the entire prayer the proclamation might have been more understandable and insightful, and even more encouraging. But, these lines focus on the inscrutability and profundity of God’s Wisdom. The New Testament will essentially re-name Wisdom as the Holy Spirit. In today’s text all credit for goodness and correctness, and for all power that saves and assists the human race, is attributed to God and Divine Wisdom. This prayer, out of context as it is, has lost much of the exhortative quality which it probably had. Homilists and others wanting to reflect on the better text would do well to read and dwell upon the entire 9^th Chapter of the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon. Having roots (by tradition) in Solomon’s own life, this book is found among the Apocrypha (aka the Deutero-Canonical Books) of the Old Testament. Catholics, and other Christians of late, find great spiritual value in this work and the others in the whole Apocrypha (e.g., 1^st and 2^nd Maccabees). Together they hand on a vast amount of wisdom and insight, both practical and idealistic, including the examples of noble and heroic personalities and some heroic (even if incredible) public witness-giving. All this contributes to the profoundly nuanced message of God’s pre-Messianic Word.

The Gospel lesson is one of those riddle-like hyperboles Jesus occasionally used in order to provoke his disciples into more critical thought. He used an exhortation to extreme detachment from some of the practical cares of the real world (i.e., that one “hate” intimate family and even one’s own life) very much in contradiction to the 4^th Commandment of the Decalogue as well as in flagrant violation of familial good sense for both ancients and moderns! Jesus’ point was not to subvert one’s familial society, but rather to examine more closely how and in what ways genuine Wisdom was required within them. Using examples of planning for both construction and for battle, he proposed that thoughtful consideration was morally obligatory for any worthwhile endeavor. To embark without planning was nothing less that foolish and lazy. The metaphor of “carry one’s own cross” would have had little meaning yet for his disciples at that stage of his chronological life, since this sermon was delivered by Jesus well before his own passion, crucifixion and death. Only after Pentecost did “the cross” come to be appreciated for it’s fullest theological insight. While, yes, the cross was for Jesus – and for many of his disciples in the next few centuries – truly a brutal instrument of torture and death, it has since then appropriated a much deeper and larger meaning. It has come to be a metaphor for engaging life fully and completely, engaging in all life’s messiness and challenge, even and especially in the more painful and less-inviting parts of life. As Jesus said in John 10, he came “that they may have life and have it fully.” The Cross as metaphor is about having life as fully as possible. Healthy disciples must have full lives. Healthy disciples are neither detached pacifists towards nor mere observers of reality. Healthy disciples participate in and engage in all the things life requires. They (We!) are interested in all aspects of constructive life. We must therefore engage and wrestle with all that comes our way. Why? Because we love and are loved; we believe and hope; we have been blessed with the entire created universe and ought to appreciate it! And, yet, Jesus expected his disciples to be profoundly thoughtful and reflective. He preached against being possessed by one’s possessions. Hence, the renunciation of possessions was another intense conundrum for the true disciple. The modern spin to this might be, if your home were suddenly on fire and you had only a moment to take those things from it which really matter, then what items would you embrace? Leaving most things in the fire is a style of renunciation of them, at least by default. What would you take for the sake of further and fuller life at that moment? A wise disciple might occasionally give thought to this exercise even without the urgency of a fire. Then, rethink the exercise, changing the house to your life. At your life’s end, when you finally must depart, of what will you be most mindful? This entire riddle text from Luke is a part of the Wisdom Tradition which Jesus used frequently in his ministerial teaching and preaching.

In the second reading, Paul, who described himself as an old man in prison, had met and evidently made a Christian of a runaway slave named Onesimus. In the shortest book in the New Testament, he was returning Onesimus to his rightful yet Christian master, Philemon, at great risk to Onesimus. By Roman law, Philemon could inflict tremendous punishment upon Onesimus. But, Paul pointed out and counted on the Gospel fellowship among the three of them to begin a new relationship between master and repentant slave: “as no longer a slave, but more than a slave, a brother ... as a man and in the Lord.” While we have no written follow-up report on this plan to mediate between master and slave, this was an example of the serious nature of reconciliation in the early Church, one nearly impossible for some of us to imagine today. What the Gospel of Reconciliation expects us to do is to insert the active Gospel fellowship among ourselves into our own such similarly important situations. Reconciliation is possible only among people of serious theological and spiritual depth. Superficial believers are generally unwilling to wrestle with all that Gospel Reconciliation requires as is demonstrated by how long and how deeply run religious disputes among Christians even after they become irrelevant and silly.

However, there are other and equally dangerous power relationships today in which reconciliation is both necessary and useful, and which often seem impossibly difficult. Between spouses, among friends, among siblings, within families, among church ministers, even in the hierarchy of the Church – reconciliation is the sine qua non for true Gospel fellowship and full life. What happens to a family during and after a divorce? What happens in a parish when a significant issue erupts and resolves in one way rather than another? What happens when one family suffers a tremendous loss due to misuse of power and authority and trust by someone? We have lived through decades during which terrorists have raised the level of anxiety and insecurity at great cost to everyone in terms of time, money and emotional anguish; in which financial leaders have seriously and greedily injured the lives of billions of people on the planet while they themselves suffered by being only half as rich as they once were; in which corporate business executives have conjured up environmental disasters heretofore unimaginable in a first world nation (although it seems a regular occurrence allowed without scruple in developing nations!); in which some church leaders have for generations dealt capriciously and scandalously with the abuse of power and persons, but who themselves have subverted Gospel reconciliation, and imposed draconian punishments on some in a blanket fashion in order to protect themselves and their institutional offices; in which some governors, senators, representatives and other political leaders have betrayed public trust and expectations, some of whom have behaved so badly as defy description, and who then pandered to the angers, fears, ignorance, bigotries and foolishness of others. Society and Church have become so abjectly poor for want of the Wisdom of Gospel Reconciliation.

Wisdom, including any and all wisdom we claim from being disciples of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, demands and requires that we reject the craziness and foolishness of such terrorists, leaders, bigots, and of the greedy, ignorant, and thoughtless persons of all types. Wisdom demands reconciliation and forgiveness. Wisdom does not allow for revenge, greed, bigotry, fear, anger, ungraciousness or hatred . . . ever! Who among us are the wise? Let them demonstrate true wisdom! Let us not pander to angry ignorance, political idiocies and idiotic ideologies. Rather, let us work to be true agents of active and loving wisdom, knowledge, and reconciliation (and not merely cheap, wordy apologies)!!

Come Holy Spirit! Fill the hearts of your faithful! Enkindle in us the spirit of your Divine Love!