Wisdom means Planning with God!
Wisdom 9:13-18b; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33
In today’s gospel, Jesus could not possibility be praising the calculus of war, as if the death of anyone leaves him indifferent; neither is God happy when family conflicts ensue nor does he rejoice over those who lose their homes to foreclosure for lack of proper planning. The interest of Jesus is somewhere else, albeit, through the use of parables clothed in the vocabulary of family discord, warfare and architectural designs. The interest of Jesus is to address the reasons for the problems of warfare, industrial complexes and family disagreements. If human calculus leave our world in the shape in which it is today, perhaps, there is need to try something else! For, from Asia to Europe, from the Americas to Africa and Australia, humanity is searching for meaning and relevance.
Political theories rival one another as the solution to human strive and competition. In fact, today’s gospel reading concedes that some gains have been recorded in the areas of warfare and architecture. According to our gospel reading, the architects of war and habitations have the mastery and calculus for achieving success in their endeavors; they know how many armies are needed to fight and win a war; how many bricks, wood and monetary budget required for erecting edifices; however, what they fail to know is the supreme importance of relationships that go beyond warfare and architectural designs; they don’t know the logic of life and the mystery behind every human life. Indeed, according to our gospel, human beings have failed woefully to discover the place of God in their lives, and the deference to God expected of human beings.
On the surface, it appears as if God wants us to be master planners in order to be successful in life! Yes, planning is required for success, but it is the Wisdom of God that sustains every planning, without which every planning will remain human and devoid of the Divine. But for those of faith, those willingly to accept that the human person owes its origin and support to a superior being – to God – there is room for Wisdom, there is space for what is invisible as the support of all that is visible. Far beyond human invention, there is the Inventor of the human person, who has a clear reason for creating human beings – and the designs he puts in place provide meaning, happiness and purpose.
Our gospel reading proposes the preference for and deference to God over any other human preoccupations. Family successes, military might, and structural developments take care of the physical and visible. There is something beyond the visible – God. A disconnect with God is what fuels family feuds, sustain arms race and consolidate structural injustices. Only the Wisdom of God, through the Spirit of God, empowers human beings to ascend beyond the physical to the invisible God, who sustains the whole of creation.
To talk about Wisdom is to return God to human enterprise; it is to admit that human life is meaningless and purposeless without God. The admittance that Wisdom goes beyond human intelligence and creativity is to accept the role of God in shaping human relationships and giving direction to human yearnings for love, unity and peace. Indeed, it is God that reins in, through Wisdom, the excesses in human destructive power, and provides the knowledge requisite for corporate existence. It is the importance given to and the space created for every human person, his/her idiosyncrasies, that power the wisdom of God. Every human being is a creature of God endowed with the capacity and ability to love and be loved. The value of the human person is intrinsic, not from the human person’s ability to create and fabricate – human capital, but because every human person is a signpost pointing beyond himself/herself to a Creator, to a purpose or meaning that no one else can substitute for.
The meaning of life is beyond the physical; when we are able to reach out to God, then we find the meaning of life. In the words of our first reading, “For the corruptible body burdens the soul and the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns. And scarce do we guess the things on earth, and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty; but when things are in heaven, who can search them out?” (Wisdom 9:15-16). There is the need, urgent need, to sync human theories with God’s wisdom, if the divisions and hates that plague us would know any alchemy! The liturgical proposal to read from the book of Wisdom, as first reading today, suggests and points to Wisdom as the panacea to human living NOT technology.
According to our first reading, life is a path, it is a journey. It is the acceptance of the Spirit of God – the Wisdom of God – that makes the path, which life is, evident; and it is the Spirit of God that fuels the journey on the path of life. Our democracies, oligarchies and monarchies remain the charade of what is visible and physical; and, like everything physical, they remain ephemeral and transient. The dependence of human persons on God is the root of success and contentment, because the human person has an ultimate meaning and destination far above the physical.
Our theories, not to say our mode of seeing, is very limited just like the structures we put in place. Our anguish and pains come from our limitations and limitedness. Our joy and peace flow from our liberation from the shackles of the mundane and physical. Our spirits must connect with the Divine Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God, in order to see, experience and enjoy the power of true freedom, and limitless lease of life in the bliss of God. But, there is the imperative to see the present physical world as a stepping stone to the eternal and invisible – to God himself. The great men and women of yesterday have become history, incorporeal and invisible; the lessons of their disappearance seem lost to our conviction in the power of the physical and material!
Despite our so-called advancement, we still find ourselves bedeviled by the same machinery of slavery Paul deals with in the second reading of today – some are masters and others are their slaves – the saga of Philemon and Onesimus. Our migrations today are searches for liberations from the manacles of slaveries – mental, physical, political and economical. Not the least is familial slavery orchestrated by structures of abuse. Paul’s solution is the rise beyond the physical structures put in place by human beings and accepting the freedom of the spirit: “so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary. Perhaps this is why Onesimus was away from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother”. Freedom can never be legislated, it is the attitude of the mind, it is the power of the spirit. Breaking free of all kinds of slavery needs the remodeling of the mind towards the power of compassion for one’s perceived captors and slave masters. There will always be many Philemons and Onesimuses, but there will forever be only me and you, free-spirits able to rise up to the Wisdom of God, where freedom comes from the unity of spirits, ours and God’s.
Christianity is about seeing reality the way God sees it: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). To be a Christian is the greatest step towards freedom because God alone defines who and what we are and not human beings. The choice to “prefer” NOT to “hate” everything else, as our gospel reading recommends, is to become gods – we rule over our passions and cravings, we become free. True slavery is attachment to anything else other than God – addictions to food, drinks, power and persons. When we do not live to eat, but eat to live; when we do not live to rule, but rule to live; when human beings live to love and not love to live; then, no one is beyond redemption, all that is needed is a change of mentality regarding the meaning of life, human lives, and the purposes of food, drinks, power and other human beings.
Your slavery and mine will remain to the degree to which our confidence is reposed in human technology and NOT in God’s wisdom. Our calculus will continue to be mirages up until the Spirit of God suffuses all that we do. The Wisdom of God beckons on us today, to invest in the invisible God, to prefer God to everything else because “God made us to know him, love him, and serve him in this world, in order to be happy with him forever in the next world!”
Assignment for the Week:
Adopt a positive attitude all week long, as a sign of unity with God’s Spirit that transcends physical discomforts.