Wisdom from Above

 Wisdom from Above

Do you remember the episode of Star Trek: Next Generation when the Enterprise were sent to meet an alien race whom had a distinct communication style that the language computers couldn't translate? And Captain Picard and their captain were beemed down to the planet as the two starships prepared to open fire on each other believing the other has killed their captain?

Oh, not a Star Trek fan, remember when the Fellowship of the Ring was formed and Legolas, an elf, and Gimli, a dwarf, hated each other and couldn't stop themselves from hurling insults at each other until the hardships of the journey formed an inseparable friendship?

Oh, not a Lord of the Rings fan, remember in the first Avengers movie when Steve Rogers (Captain America) and  Tony Stark (Iron Man) didn't see eye to eye about how to deal with the threat against the world and almost came to blows until... I think I have lost most of you.

What about Grey's Anatomy when Derrick Shepherd's best friend Mark Sloan from the East Coast came and Derrick slugged him because he slept with his wife and hit on his current girlfriend? What about the Gilmore Girls when Loraline and Suchy...?

Not a fan of popular culture? How about when Achilles sat out the war until Patroclus was killed in the Illiad? Ishmael and Captain Ahab in Moby Dick? 

Going back to Star Trek, the Captains fought off a huge creature together on the planet and learned to trust each other and began to communicate because they finally had a common reference point. 

Do you remember the story of the Jesus trying to tell the disciples that he was going to his death and the disciples spent the time of the journey trying to decide who was the greatest of them, assuming that they will take over when Jesus' dies?

We are a fairly homogenous group in this church and have many common points, maybe not sci-fi and tv shows. But what ties us together about all else and ties us to Christians and churches all around the world are the stories found in the Bible, which is how many books? 

When Jesus was walking and teaching and healing he used the stories from the Hebrew Bible and also common things around him: A man was scattering seed, a woman lost a coin, there once was a father with two sons...

I would be fairly surprised if the early apostles didn't also tell some of the those stories and shared stories of Jesus, but they didn't have even the Hebrew Bible as it wasn't formally a Bible until 100 AD, and they didn't have the Bible which didn't become official until about 300 years later. So the early church, especially with all these Gentiles (those who weren't Jews) coming into the church, this community didn't have those common stories and were just beginning to learn about each other and trust each other. 

The majority of the Epistles in the Bible deal with the struggles of the early church. Many of them are instructive, trying to lay down the ground rules and share the common story, and almost every letter has to deal with some type of conflict. A treasurer in my North Dakota church said of the UCC, "Where two or three are gathered, you will find 4 or more opinions." 

So James, in his letter to this church or churches, tries to keep things pretty simple that everyone can relate to and clear so there are no misunderstandings. Last week we hear him write about welcoming people to worship and how we should treat the rich man and the beggar the same if we truly are followers of Christ. This week James talks about wisdom. There is wisdom from above and wisdom from below. If he had access to the Gospel of Mark he could point out that the wisdom from below is the disciples arguing who is the greatest and that wisdom from above is entering the kingdom of God like a child, not with power, status, maturity, wisdom, but with innocence and humbleness. 

James points out that envy and desire cause us to act in unhealthy, unChristian, unloving ways. When he is talking about murder and adultery, I don't imagine that he is talking metaphorically here, but hearing reports of one or more churches where maybe the followers believing they are going to heaven and forgiven can now do whatever they want. Even Paul wrote in his letters to the Corinthians, "All things are legal, but not all things are beneficial." So James is writing about the ethical behaviors of Christianity, the wisdom from on high.

As churches and Christianity grew, more and more writings became available until the 4th century when the leaders of churches decided to create the Bible and started to figure out what was the criteria for a book to be in the Bible and which ones would they use. So they choose the 66 (well actually they included the 14 books of the Apocrypha so the original Bible had 80, not 66 books. 

Now, those 66 books didn't always agree on who God was, who Jesus was, or how the story went. The leaders of the early Roman Catholic Church put in 4 different gospels so that future generations wouldn't think that any one Gospel was perfect. So we don't have to believe that the Bible is accurate, inerrant, or written by Jesus, the Greatest American Ever, as a recent Facebook post proclaimed. But knowing the stories does give our church and all Christians, believers, followers and friends a common reference point. 

No, we don't have to believe that Adam and Eve were the first "two" humans and kicked out of Eden. But it does give us a way to talk about if God is so good and God created us in their image, why is there such evil in the world? We can say this is what I like about the story, this is what I disagree with, and this is what I don't understand? Capuche??

 In the Bible, we get to hear stories of people and families and nations who got it right, who got it wrong, who struggled and triumphed, and about a God who loves us, created us, seeks a relationship with us, and cares about what happens in our lives and in the world. 

James writes, "But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, accommodating, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial, and not hypocritical. 18 And the fruit that consists of righteousness is planted in peace among those who make peace. (NET). 

This is what we strive for, wisdom full of mercy, good fruit, and peace. Knowing the stories of the Bible, studying them, discussing them, and having them bring us together so they become our stories too is why we have the Bible. And if we seek that wisdom from on high, we will find ourselves becoming the story of God's love, of the good news, of healing and justice in this world, in our country, in our community, and in our hearts. Amen.Let