The appointed texts for this day, Sunday September 12, are poignant and pregnant with possibilities. The first reading from the First Testament is one of my favorites:
Proverbs 1:20-33: Lady Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: ‘How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? Give heed to my reproof; I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you. Because I have called and you refused, have stretched out my hand and no one heeded, and because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when panic strikes you, when panic strikes you like a storm, and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but will not find me. Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, would have none of my counsel, and despised all my reproof, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way and be sated with their own devices. For waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them; but those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.’
Note it is LADY Wisdom - the feminine heart of the holy - speaking to the masses. She calls out not the uncomplicated nor those who choose simple living, but rather "the simple" - pthiy in Hebrew - meaning the willfully naïve and/or those who choose to ignore realty and truth. This is one of the Biblical passages that sounds like karma: you reap what you sow. It is an earthy wisdom sharply shared so that we might wake up and smell the coffee that Mother Earth, Gaia, Lady Wisdom has brewed for us. She does not suffer fools gladly. Rather, she has grown weary with our hubris, angry with our greed, and broken-hearted over the way our selfishness brings pain to the innocent. It seems the more life changes, the more it remains the same, yes?
The gospel lesson in St. Mark 8 is equally bold: "Jesus called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?" Too often these words from the second testament are spiritualized, robbing them of any incarnational connection with the Messiah who loved to feast, and was chastised for hanging-out with drunkards. Too often these words become a denial of our flesh when Jesus doesn't say that - then or now - his focus on the Cross is a challenge to the self-absorbed life not contempt for our bodies. Yet, as the late James Nelson wrote back in the 1975:
In the Christian West, theology has too often been a disembodied enterprise. It has been understood as preeminently a rational discipline, a matter for the head. There have been, of course, exceptions... (but for the most part) there continues to lurk a deep suspicion of the body... Suppose on a Sunday the minister were to announce as the day's text Romans 12: 1: 'I appeal to you, therefore... to present your bodies as a living sacrifice holly and acceptable to God as your worship.' Would bodies be interpreted by most hearers as the entire self (the body-mind-heart self as Paul intended?) Probably not. Would the mood conveyed by that text be the prospect of wholeness, joy, ecstasy? No, more likely it would be heard as the injunction addressed to the mind or spirit to engage in the dreary duty of disciplining and controlling one's body imposing upon it from outside and alien willpower. (Embodiment, pp. 30 and 41)
How does our distorted hatred of our flesh empower us to listen and heed the cries of Lady Wisdom? How does despising the flesh into which the essence of the holy was incarnated advance the cause of compassion? A spirituality of embodied trust is the antithesis of traditional Western Christian spiritual formation. As I walked around Montreal today with Di, whose body hurts and has slowed down considerably, I prayed that we might both rest in what has been given and make the most of our time together. We walked and rested. We talked and watched the beauty of the world move all around us. It was a quiet festival of incarnation that nourished my soul.
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