Fourteen Sunday In Ordinary Time
B. July 9, 2006. Our Lady of Grace 9:30, 11:30, 6PM. Ezekiel
2:2-5. 2 Corinthians 12: 7-10. Mark 6: 1-6.
A few months ago I was at a concert with a family from the
parish. Their little four year old was sitting next
to me and it soon became obvious that he was very bored by the
music. The little boy poked me and said, “Do you have a cell
phone?” His mother who was sitting on the other side of him heard his
request and whispered, “He wants to play computer games.” I
said, “There are no computer games on my cell phone.” The mother
told me to give the little boy my phone anyway, and I did so. A few
moments later I looked over and the four year old was playing a computer game on
my cell phone. I not only didn’t know that there was a computer game on
my cell phone, I probably didn’t know how to play the computer game
either. Yet, just because the four year old knows more about computer
games and cell phones than I do, when the phone rang with an emergency call from
the hospital, should I have said, “You handle the call kid; you obviously
know what you are doing?” Would the little boy who knows cell
phones be able to help a woman whose husband was dying?
Knowledge is about facts. It
about the science and the math, the technology and the engineering that makes a
car, or a train or an airplane ride or fly well. Wisdom is about applying
knowledge and facts to life. Wisdom is what the driver of a car or the
pilot of a plane has to have to drive on an icy road or fly through a violent
storm. The best designed car or airplane in the world will crash and burn
if the driver or pilot is not experienced and wise. I have no doubt that most
teenagers have better eye to muscle coordination and better reflexes than I
do. They may also know more about cars and airplanes than I do. At
the same time, they may not have the wisdom to handle unusual circumstances or
the good sense, coming from experience, to slow down on a sharp curve to keep
themselves and their passengers safe. A person can stand on the diving
board at the edge of a pool knowing how to do a double flip, but if he doesn’t
have the wisdom to check out the depth of the water in the pool he may end up
with a broken neck no matter how beautifully executed the double flip
was. Knowledge is about the facts. It is about science and
technology. Wisdom is about lived experience. Wisdom is about facts
put into practice. Wisdom is the art of living well. It is possible
to know all the facts and to get straight “A’s” in school and to fail miserably
in the wisdom of daily life.
When Jesus entered the synagogue in his home town of
Let me give you two examples. When Jesus healed
hurting and crippled people on the Sabbath Day, he knew that both the Ten
Commandments and many other texts in Scripture forbid working on the Sabbath –
and healing was working. Jesus knew more than the facts taught in
the Bible, Jesus also knew the mind and heart of God. Facts about God
understood and experienced in daily life made Jesus truly wise.
When a woman was brought to Jesus who had been caught in the very
act of adultery, Jesus knew that the Law of Moses demanded that such a woman be
stoned to death. Jesus protected the sinful woman, not because he didn’t
know the commandments of God’s law. Jesus knew the law and believed in
the law of God, at the same time that he was wise in mercy and compassion
because of the way that he had experienced God in daily life.
People were amazed because Jesus didn’t apply religious
teachings blindly. We have all met people who know all the commandments,
rituals and rules, but they don’t seem to know the compassionate God who has
given us these teachings. We have all met radical fundamentalists and
extremists, Christian, Moslem, Hindu, or whatever, who know the teachings of
their religious sect or denomination well, but they do not understand the mind
and heart of God or the truth lived by the holy people of their own
tradition. Jesus not only knew his religious facts, but he also knew the
mercy and goodness of God. His experience of God made him wise. His
prayerful experience of God made all the difference in the world.
Religious facts are very important. Yet facts applied
without wisdom can be very dangerous. How do we turn knowledge into
wisdom? At the end of the Second Vatican Council Pope Paul VI wrote an
encyclical letter on the needs of the Church. He focused on leisure as
one of the primary needs of the Church and the world in which we live.
The pope said that leisure is the mother of wisdom, friendship and
prayer. Busyness creates a world in which friendships
do not go deep because we do not take time, even waste time, in getting to know
those we love. Our religious commitments do not go deeper because we do
not take time to experience God in prayer. Our knowledge of God never
becomes true wisdom because we do not take the time to ponder the meaning of
the things we know in the context of the world in which we live.
If we want to be wise, we need to guarantee that we have
leisure time every day and a day of leisure, that is a Sabbath day, every
week. Wise people cherish Sabbath and leisure time. Summer is a wonderful
time for leisure. We all need a break from school and from work to ponder
the deepest realities of life. To many Jesus was just another citizen of