Wisdom or Commandments Sunday
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-25, 21-23
Last Sunday, August 23, 2021, I drove to St. Louis Hospital, Zonkwa, Kaduna Sate, Nigeria, to visit the corpse of my late Father, having just arrived in Nigeria the previous day. It was a sad day for me, but a bad day for the residents of Mabushi and Samaru. About 13 of theirs were shot dead using AK 47 by Fulani herdsmen and 16 of theirs were in Zonkwa hospitals with different gun wounds. I could see, first hand, not only the ravages of hatred, but also the danger of knowledge: humanity has considerable knowledge about killing and destruction, but poor inkling of the WISDOM of life and living!
This Sunday is WISDOM Sunday. The only way to life and living is wisdom from the Creator of life! Death is the opposite of Wisdom and the synonym of knowledge. When “knowledge” kills, Wisdom must replace it! But what is WISDOM?
Our first reading makes “wisdom” the practice of the commandments of God. The knowledge of God’s commandments is useless unless it is practiced. If it were not for the killings and slavery in Egypt, we may probably not have God’s Commandments! The human propensity and pleasure in killing necessitates Wisdom Sunday — the giving and respect of God’s Commandments.
“Wisdom” has its source in the practice of God’s Commandments. Here is the testimony of our first reading: “In your observance of the commandments of the Lord, your God, which I enjoin upon you . . . Observe them carefully, for thus will you give evidence of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations, who will hear of all these statutes and say, ‘This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.’” A nation that kills at home and abroad displays the science and knowledge of death and not the Wisdom of God and the defense of life and living.
Wisdom Sunday emphasizes virtues and the power of God that operates in those who obey God, unlike the Original Disobedience that brought us death. By Wisdom, God counteracts the knowledge and the power of death – “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:17).
Our gospel today makes disobedience the origin of human rebellion against God: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts. You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition”. The easiest way to cling to destructive knowledge is to make oneself and others more important than God. Human narcissism obliterates God’s Commandments.
Long before physical death, spiritual death and divorce from God makes itself evident through sin: “From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile”. A return to fidelity to God’s Commandments is the resurrection from the experience of death created by human narcissism, and it encourages focusing on God’s Commandments.
Wisdom Sunday proposes God as the source and sustainer of human life. How to keep in mind this reality is the point of our second reading: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this . . . to keep oneself unstained by the world”. The “stains” from the world are all our narcissistic tendencies.
On this Wisdom Sunday, it is imperative to question our motifs and pretensions — on what foundations do we base our actions, from the “stains” of the world or God? Yes, we pride ourselves about our democratic traditions, but whose interests do they serve? We hold onto our religions, but whose agenda do we promote through them — God’s or ours? Even in our expressions of “love”, whose definitions of love founds our loving creeds?
Wisdom Sunday is very practical, it involves life-saving technics – “to care for orphans and widows in their affliction”, says our second reading. In the day of St. James and in our democracies, these financially weak and poor widows and orphans, are those we have denied the right to life because our capitalistic selfishness has earmarked them for death — how knowledge via human tradition kills! What is your involvement and participation in this life-snuffing machine called “human tradition” and how do you intend to get out of it?
Assignment for the Week:
Could you choose a virtue that shows God’s goodness to any human being and practice it this week?