As a kid at church, I would sit in the pew on the north side of the sanctuary a few rows back and I would take out my bulletin. And during the sermon I would meticulously flatten out that bulletin and then carefully fold by fold turn it into a paper airplane, each crease pressed sharp with the back of my thumbnail against the old blue hymnal.
Fold by fold… the order of worship and the scriptures, and the hymns…Fold by fold…the names, the many, many names, and the dates and announcements and reports…Fold by fold… and all the many words of the church readied themselves to take flight once the service had ended.
Fold by fold.
The task of the church is nothing less than making known the “wisdom of God in its rich variety” says our text from Ephesians (3:10). The wisdom of God we’re called on to embody and make visible is described as rich in variety or diverse or myriad or variegated. But my favorite translation into English of this verse is the old King James Version that renders it the “manifold wisdom of God.”
Many folds, many times over, through countless pathways and possibilities we’re called to make visible the hidden, to make tactile the mysterious, to fold and fold again the substance of our lives into something resembling the love of God in Christ.
Now that’s a high calling for a bunch of people as ordinary and quirky and riddled with failings and conundrums as the church is and always has been.
But our texts for today don’t point us to the need to be superhumanly wise gurus. Instead we’re called, as the body of Christ, to glimpse how God’s infinitely diverse Wisdom is gathering up all things in Christ (Eph 1:10). God’s wisdom through Jesus is gathering us up along with all things God has made. Our calling is to embody this richly diverse, manifold Wisdom of God.
One of the first ways we embody wisdom is by corporately discerning what we do and say as a church. The good news of Jesus never comes disembodied – but comes to us right now and lodges itself in all the particularities of our lives. And we embody wisdom by discerning what we’ll do and say in response to Christ’s call.
Our texts from Acts jolts us with its immediacy. The band of Jesus followers in Jerusalem has been growing and the distribution of food to the needy within their community was part of their practice of faithfulness. But in this particular moment a dispute arose – the Aramaic-speaking disciples confronted the Greek speakers that their widows were being neglected in the communal food distribution.
And so the twelve disciples call a meeting with everybody – the entire community and appoint seven men to a new role overseeing food distribution, or more literally – table servers – where we get the word deacon. People tasked with making sure all are served materially and spiritually just as Christ feeds us at his table. The community, empowered by the Spirit – makes these strategic leadership decisions so that both the crucial work of feeding and wealth distribution and the work of prayer and preaching may continue and grow.
The church continues to embody the wisdom of discernment whenever we ask ourselves: Where is God working right now? Where is their injustice that must be addressed? Who is being fed and who is being neglected? What needs or possibilities might we call and organize ourselves to respond to?
As CHMF – we’ve been practicing that recently in decision-making in our congregational life meeting as we created frameworks to faithfully use some of our reserve funds. And last week, people who had attended the Mennonite Action national training held a meeting to share about what faithfulness looks like in this authoritarian moment and how we can prepare and mobilize our church through mutual aid and rapid response.
Wise discernment asks where is the good news of Jesus present here and now…and discerning together what we are called to do and say in response.
In the summer of 1979, the farmer and poet Wendell Berry found himself arrested for trespassing on the site of an under-construction nuclear power plant in Indiana. Concern over radiation contaminating the future of generations to come moved Berry to this act of nonviolent civil disobedience. But Berry reflected later how his involvement with this movement was nevertheless an incomplete action.
It raised a voice against the harm he saw – but did not address his and others very real indebtedness to energy production and overconsumption – coal-power or nuclear power to keep the lights on and gasoline to drive a car to the protest. Wrestling with this conundrum, Berry lifted up how actions such as planting and tending a garden are complete actions. Something like gardening embodies constructive change while also being a protest against the degradation that first moved him to be arrested. Berry called the simple and humble small garden as a “solution that leads to others solutions”
Wendell Berry is a kindred spirit to the apostle James – in that they both call their hearers to go beyond solely words of acclamation or protest, but to embody wisdom by putting faith into action through daily justice. Our text from James encourages us to, “show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom” (3:13).
If collective discernment of how the church proclaims the gospel in word and deed is one way that we embody divine wisdom, then another is living a “good life” as James puts it. Or by doing “complete actions” as Wendell encourages.
We embody the manifold, diverse wisdom of God by living good lives. There are so many ways to go about this. You don’t have to be a gardener to live the good life. But all of us in our own unique ways are called to be a part of the work of God who is a gather-up-er, a restorer.
The church flourishes because of the diverse ways that each of you pursue wisdom and compassion in your daily rhythms. You build friendships with your neighbors. You spend hours and hours caring for your family member who is aging. You tend your gardens as a vining, flowering protests against all that is evil or unjust. You take and pick up and clean up after kids so they can grow and move and learn and thrive.
You call your legislators and remind them, as part of the powers and principalities of this world, of that deeper well of wisdom to which they are accountable. You make food and you show up when someone is hungry or someone has just been born or someone has died…and you do the dishes at home. You come with strong backs when someone needs to be moved. You check in on your friend you’re worried about. You send a text at just the right time, brimming with thoughtfulness, sowing seeds of encouragement.
This kind of wisdom is practical and everyday. James calls this wisdom from God as “pure and peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy…those who make peace sow the seeds of justice by their peaceful acts.” (3:17-18).
These daily acts of embodying God’s manifold wisdom inevitably move us to prayer. Or the songwriter Carrie Newcomer puts it, “Holy is the familiar room, and quiet moments in the afternoon, folding towels like folding hands, to pray as only laundry can.”
As a church not only do we collectively discern the manifold wisdom of God, not only do we seek the good life in daily acts of peace and gentleness and bravery and compassion – but we are also moved to prayer by Wisdom’s call. Wisdom invites us to be in conversation with her.
Wisdom reminds us that unfurling a protest banner or turning scraps into the compost pile or creasing our bulletin so it can fly – all these and more – at their heart – are acts of prayer. As the body of Christ – with this audacious task to make visible the diverse wisdom of God – we must stay in conversation with the One who gives us life.
The prayer of Colossians is a prayer for our church, “we have not ceased praying for you and asking for you to be filled with all wisdom and spiritual understanding.”
We pray for wisdom for ourselves and we pray for wisdom for others. We pray for wisdom because our daily lives bring us to the edge of our certainty and the beginning of God’s mystery. Prayer sharpens our awareness of the wisdom of God that murmurs and calls out in the world. Prayer lifts to God our needs and hopes and struggles and dreams.
When we have no clear discernment of what to do or say and we can think of no wise daily practice to lean on, we can still embody the manifold wisdom of God who just wants to be in conversation with us.
So may God fill us with wisdom, manifold wisdom! And may the diversity of our lives reflect the richness and wisdom of Christ’s love.