Proverbs 31:10-31, Psalm 1, James 3:13 – 4:3, 7-8a, Mark 9:30-37
Psalm 1 depicts two paths, and what’s striking about the path of the wicked is that we are never told what makes them “wicked.” Did they lie, steal or cheat? We don’t know. Instead, we are told they are like “chaff that the wind drives away” (v. 4).
Chaff is a light, dry substance that, when caught by the wind, carries through the air in a flurry of aimless, spinning activity.
In a time when many find themselves frequently overwhelmed and exhausted – endlessly carried by the winds of political favor (or disfavor), markets, and marketing – this image feels particularly resonant. And humbling. Because wickedness is not simply characterized by the big, bad obvious sins. It can be as simple as busy rootlessness, aimlessness and emptiness.
We are invited, of course, to embrace the other option. That of the “blessed” in Psalm 1 — a grounded state of life that is deeply satiated, unburdened and at peace, regardless of the prevailing winds. We read that the blessed meditate upon God’s law, a verb far more active than it might first suggest.
I was reminded of this many years ago when I visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and I saw dozens of Jewish men meditating in the biblical sense. With Scripture in hand, they stood at the wall and read in a low murmur as their bodies swayed back and forth. Their very manner of reading made clear that faithfulness to God’s word is about full, active and living embodiment.
Today’s lectionary Scriptures bring forth two unlikely people from the ancient world to help us see what embodied faithfulness can look like; the first is a woman, and the second is a child.
The woman (the Hebrew word for woman and wife is the same – isshah) in Proverbs 31 gives us a powerful picture of embodied faithfulness. She procures food and clothing for her family, does real estate, runs her business, actively cares for the poor, and teaches with wisdom and kindness.
However, despite the incredible amount of activity, she is not compared to chaff blowing in the wind but to both “jewels” and “the ships of merchants,” images suggestive of great strength, substance and value. Indeed, she is declared chayil in verses 10 and 29. Scholar Wil Gafney notes that this description ranges in meaning from “military might/power” to “physical strength.”
To be sure, many have noted that this woman seems too good to be true. She is perhaps even a dangerously impossible standard born of a highly patriarchal imagination. Others, Amy G. Oden notes, have suggested that her real identity is “the ideal of Woman Wisdom herself,” who gives several speeches in the opening nine chapters of Proverbs. She is, then, Wisdom embodied and living — granting us a glimpse of the flourishing possibilities when Wisdom is unleashed.
The second striking image from today’s lectionary Scriptures arrives amid an all-too-familiar conversation.
As much as our constant pursuit of titles, brands, zip codes, schools, memberships, number of followers, and more reveal our ongoing desire for status, so too, the disciples were having it out on the status front while walking with Jesus.
Jesus’ response to their desire for great status?
He brings forth a child — one who, C. Clifton Black notes, “epitomizes the most subservient human in ancient society, one with the slightest status.” And he makes clear that the truly great and faithful are the ones who welcome such a person. Which is to say, true greatness embodies the kind of hospitality that procures no perceptive worldly status at all. Moreover, as the cross makes clear, following in the way of Jesus may mean the world sees you as inferior.
If we’re left wondering how we might (re)ground ourselves in that blessed reality in which the Wisdom of Proverbs 31 animates our movement and we even risk losing our reputations for the sake of love, James 3 is our guide.
James makes clear that the “wisdom from above” manifesting in “righteousness” (embodied, godly action) is a reality that is “sown in peace” (3:18).
Graciously, regardless of how imperfectly we are cultivating the soil of shalom in our congregations, we can take heart that by grace Christ counts us among the faithful, which means we are “like trees planted by streams of water” (Psalm 1:3).
More, just as water cannot help but nourish the trees, Christ cannot help but nourish even the most frazzled, frayed, and forgetful among us. Even now, God’s Wisdom from above is arriving to us and through us from streams below.
Questions for reflection
- Where have you seen an overlooked person(s) embody God’s Word in recent days?
- How can children help the church (re)discover that the status-seeking story is really a chaff-in-the-wind story?
- In our ever-busy and often-overwhelmed society, what are creative ways the church can cultivate shalom-filled space so that hearts can rest and receive the wisdom of God flooding in?
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