Do We Need More Love or More Wisdom?
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Associate Pastor Beth Henricks
January 30, 2022
24-26 He told another story. “God’s kingdom is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. That night, while his hired men were asleep, his enemy sowed thistles all through the wheat and slipped away before dawn. When the first green shoots appeared and the grain began to form, the thistles showed up, too.
27 “The farmhands came to the farmer and said, ‘Master, that was clean seed you planted, wasn’t it? Where did these thistles come from?’
28 “He answered, ‘Some enemy did this.’
“The farmhands asked, ‘Should we weed out the thistles?’
29-30 “He said, ‘No, if you weed the thistles, you’ll pull up the wheat, too. Let them grow together until harvest time. Then I’ll instruct the harvesters to pull up the thistles and tie them in bundles for the fire, then gather the wheat and put it in the barn.’”
I was taken by a post of Richard Rohr near the end of 2021. He wrote “On the last day of the year, I generally withdraw to pray. A few years ago, I asked myself: What should I pray for this year? What do we need in these turbulent times? Naturally I was strongly tempted to pray for more love. But it occurred to me that I’ve met so many people in the world who are already full of love and who really care for others. Maybe what we lack isn’t love but wisdom. It became clear to me that I should pray above all else for wisdom.
We all want to love, but as a rule we don’t know how to love rightly. How should we love so that life will really come from it? I believe that what we all need is wisdom. I’m very disappointed that we in the Church have passed on so little wisdom. Often the only thing we’ve taught people is to think that they’re right—or that they’re wrong. We’ve either mandated things or forbidden them. But we haven’t helped people to enter upon the narrow and dangerous path of true wisdom. On wisdom’s path we take the risk of making mistakes. On this path we take the risk of being wrong. That’s how wisdom is gained.”
This really set me back as I often pray for more love in our world, more love for our community, our families and friends, more love for our enemies. Jesus said that we must love our enemies as ourselves. I’ve always looked at this as a commandment to embrace self-love and compassion because if we don’t have this, we can’t love anyone else. And I still believe that. Self-love is crucial in our journey.
But maybe even more than love which seems like it could be a more fleeting emotional response, we need to pursue wisdom. Wisdom within ourselves as a way to deeply experience God, our neighbors and our world.
When we are children, we usually don’t think our parents are very wise. We feel like they are old fashioned and out of date and their words of wisdom seem limiting in how one wants to pursue life as a young person. But as each of us lives through the pain, the heartbreak, the joy, and the fullness our parents words often echo back into our minds, and we realize the depth of wisdom that they had.
How do we acquire wisdom? I’ve asked a number of folks and I hear the words time and experience again and again. We need to go through a lot of experience, pain, heartbreak, joy, darkness and light though our years to come to a limited place of wisdom. But does age dictate experience? I have experienced much younger folks that have great wisdom – and some older folks that don’t seem to have much wisdom at all.
Both the Old and the New Testament offer great wisdom for us to explore and embrace. The book of Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes and Job include kernels of wisdom and guidance to shape our lives. The great rabbis of the Jewish community spend a lifetime reading, reflecting and experiencing to share the wisdom of the truths held in the Bible. I’ve become a fan of Dwight Wilson, Quaker writer, minister and activist. He has a book called Modern Psalms in Search of Peace and Justice and he gives his own version of Psalms of wisdom, and I share Psalm 40 from the book :
On my road to nowhere, I turned back.
In the moment of enlightenment, You were there.
As I matured, I realized that during my lost period You had been within,
Calling in a still, small voice unrecognizable by those who choose not to hear.
Forgive me my overbearing pride even as you forgive those who learned self -hatred,
thus despising gifts that You had awarded.
Society teaches that one from my background is best seen as an outcast.
Thank You for your unedited praise messages far beyond pages, screens, factories, offices, shelters, courtrooms and prisons.
I hear them validating my essence, clearing the way for each wounded return.
Of course, the greatest wisdom teacher in all of the Bible was Jesus. Rohr shares that “Jesus came to teach us the way of wisdom. He brought us a message that offers to liberate us from both the lies of the world and the lies lodged in ourselves. The words of the Gospel create an alternative consciousness, solid ground on which we can really stand, free from every social order and from every ideology. Jesus called this new foundation the Reign of God, and he said it is something that takes place in this world and yet will never be completed in this world. This is where faith comes in. It is so rare to find ourselves trusting not in the systems and -isms of this world but standing at a place where we offer our bit of salt, leaven, and light. It seems so harmless, and, even then, we have no security that we’re really right. This means that we have to stand in an inconspicuous, mysterious place, a place where we’re not sure that we’re sure, where we are comfortable knowing that we do not know very much at all.”
Cynthia Bourgeaut describes how Jesus guides us to wisdom through Metanoia in her book, The Wisdom of Jesus. “Metanoia, usually translated as repentance literally means to go beyond the mind or into the larger mind. It means to escape from the orbit of the egoic operating system, which by virtue of its own internal hardwiring is always going to see the world in terms of polarized opposites and move instead into that nondual knowingness of the heart which can see and live from the perspective of wholeness. This is the central message of Jesus. This is what his Kingdom of Heaven is all about. Let’s get into the larger mind, he says. This is what is looks like. This is how you do it. Here, I’ll help you….” (pg 41)
This idea of Metanoia and moving out of our ego minds into the knowing of our heart and living in wholeness seems to be a key to wisdom. And the path to this knowing is by kenosis which is emptying ourselves of our ego and embracing the Divine that brings a completeness to our being. I think much of Jesus’s target of his wisdom is not the Pharisees as we usually believe but it’s our own ego mind. When Jesus was tempted in the desert by the Devil at the start of his ministry, he had to face his own ego and took the path of kenosis and emptied himself completely to God. And became our wisdom teacher.
There is so much wisdom in Jesus’ teachings and parables. Take some time this afternoon to read through the Beatitudes again in (Matthew 5:1-12). It is chock full of wisdom and really turns around the system of opposites, rewards and punishments and how we set our goals and intentions for each one of us. There is also such wisdom in his parables. Parables are proverbs but even more than that in the way Jesus utilizes them. Bourgeult shares “His parables are much closer to what in the Zen tradition would be koans – profound paradoxes (riddles, if you like) that are intended to turn the egoic mind upside down and push us into new ways of seeing.”
The parable that we read today is an example of this paradox. A field of wheat was planted but an enemy came and sowed weeds in the wheat field. So, when the plants grew there was wheat and weeds together. When the slaves that worked the field asked if they should pull up the weeds the owner said no because in pulling up the weeds there was no way to not pull up the wheat also. Let both of them grow together until harvest. Jesus is describing this as the kingdom of heaven. Sounds like the wheat and the weeds live together. We have both wheat and weeds inside each of us. Another paradox that turns my ego brain upside down.
I have been participating in the gathering on Thursdays each month that reflects on the gnostic gospels and discussing these writings that were part of the early Jesus followers. We have started to review some of the gospels like Thomas, Mary and others that are not included in the closed Biblical canon that we read. It’s been fascinating to consider these other writings. As preparation for the class, I have also started reading the book After Jesus Before Christianity by Erin Vearncombe, Brandon Scott and Hal Taussig for The Westar Christianity Seminary. These authors explore what the early followers of the Anointed One were called in the first and second century. The early followers were not a monolithic group but a significantly diverse group with different practices, stories, organizational structures and beliefs. They did not call themselves Christians which is a term that came later likely to brand them as threats to the Roman Empire. For most of them Jesus was a teacher, and they became students. “Drawing on this association, he is also called Wisdom, because he personified the wisdom characteristic of teachers. This identification is also more nuanced and more clever than being smart, but it also names a divine figure in Israel’s holy writings. Sophia in Greek can mean a wise divine figure as well as the quality of being wise. The Greek noun Sophia is also feminine, opening up other ways of imagining Jesus. Calling Jesus Sophia, a feminine divine term, is very different from the patriarchal vocabulary normally applied to Jesus. Likewise, the followers of Jesus, the wise teacher, are the “wise ones” or potentially the “wise women”, given Wisdom’s gendered identity.” (pg 26)
The Gospel of Thomas is an interesting book that has 114 short sayings, not much of a narrative but offers much wisdom to us. I share the 22nd saying from the book with you:
When you are able to make two become one, the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, the higher like the lower, so that a man is no longer male, and a woman, female, but male and female become; when you are able to fashion an eye to replace an eye, an form a hand in place of a hand, or a foot for a foot, making one image supersede another – then you will enter in.
How do Quaker’s practice wisdom in their faith communities and their spiritual journeys? I have observed many wise people in this Meeting and in other Quaker circles and one of the most important aspects to witnessing wisdom is by listening. I think for Quaker’s wisdom begins with silence. First, we listen for that still small voice of God inside us and then we listen to each other.
Quaker wisdom is also about letting our lives speak.
I appreciate Robert Lawrence Smith, the longtime head of school at Quaker Sidwell Friends in Washington DC writing a great little book titled A Quaker Book of Wisdom. In the opening chapter he describes his dad’s writing of 4 generations of Quaker that were physicians in small towns in New Jersey. “There were no Nobel laureates in my mother’s family. Although generation after generation of the Stokes family produced doctors, there were no secretaries of state, five-star generals, literary luminaries, glamorous movie stars, bank robbers, long-distance swimmers or counterespionage agents. No one the media would consider newsworthy….Rather my father was providing a record of men and women who lived active, useful lives, and who gave to their nation and their communities the best that was in them.” (xi) Sounds like men and women living lives of wisdom, consistent action, nothing earth shattering or exciting but letting their life speak.
I invite you to enter a time of reflection and unprogrammed worship. Please consider the following queries:
How can I follow my path to more wisdom?
What wisdom can I receive from unlikely places?
Where do I need to empty myself to allow more of the Divine wholeness inside of me?