Knowledge and wisdom

This is my homily for this weekend, August 18-19, 2018.  The readings are here.  Fun fact: I was scheduled for the early Sunday morning masses.  I was also scheduled for the Saturday evening mass, but didn't expect to preach that one because the presider was a visiting priest, and our rule of thumb is: visiting priests always preach.  But this particular priest asked me to go ahead and preach.  I usually preach from a print-out of the homily text, but hadn't printed it yet (truth to tell, hadn't completed writing it yet).  But I had emailed it to myself after drafting it on that 1% chance that I'd need it for Saturday evening, and so I preached the draft from a smart phone screen instead of a paper document.  First time I had ever done that before.  At any rate, here is the text.



Last Sunday, I rented a U-Haul truck, drove it over to our storage unit, loaded it up with furniture, and then drove it 350 miles to Ames, IA to move my son into his college apartment.  And just like that, in the middle of August, our family transitioned from summer mode to school year mode.   A couple of days later, one of my daughters, who is a teacher, went to work for her school’s first day; and the next day, my youngest had his first day back at high school.  Chances are that nearly all the children of school age in this faith community already are back in school for the year, growing and learning; and the many teachers and catechists among our community are helping our children to learn and grow.

The common understanding of the purpose of school is to impart knowledge to our children.  Knowledge certainly is important.  We want our children to be educated rather than ignorant, and so we send them to school. 

My parents sent me to school for 13 years, and then they sent me off to college, and then I sent myself off for more college, and my then employer sent me out for technical training and management training, and then the parish sent me to deacon school.  So I’ve been to school a lot, and I’ve acquired a lot of knowledge, and I’ve been awarded a small pile of diplomas, degrees and certificates.   That learning and those accomplishments have helped me - in my career, as a deacon, and as a person.  But for all that, I’ve done some very foolish things in my life, and I’ve committed some serious sins.  It’s probably fair to say I’m educated; but all that schooling doesn’t seem to have made me any wiser or holier.   School doesn’t impart all virtues to us.

Wisdom is one of those virtues.  Just as the opposite of education is ignorance, so the opposite of wisdom is foolishness.  Education is not quite the same thing as wisdom, and ignorance is not quite the same thing as foolishness.  While education is valued highly here in our human community, wisdom is prized in the kingdom where Jesus is king.  Wisdom is extolled in today’s readings.  The author of Ephesians cautions us to be careful to live wisely rather than foolishly.  And in our first reading, from Proverbs, Wisdom is pictured as a noble woman who builds a great house in the city, and then invites the foolish of the city to partake of the feast she has prepared for them.  Eating at her table, and listening to her conversation, will transform them from foolish to wise. 

This accords with the ancients’ understanding of how one became wise.  One wasn’t packed off to college, but rather one became the follower of a wise teacher.  We might understand Jesus’s disciples that way: as those who followed a master of wisdom.  By staying close to the master, clinging to him, they hoped that they could acquire wisdom, too.   And Jesus wasn’t alone in the ancient world in having disciples.  Greek wise men like Socrates and Pythagoras had disciples.  So did the wise men of ancient Israel, prophets like Isaiah and Elijah. 

Perhaps you can see the difference between knowledge and wisdom: knowledge is the knowing of things; wisdom is knowing God.

Because the source of all wisdom is God, if we wish to be wise rather than foolish, we should get to know God.  We should wish to dine at the table with him.  We should wish to listen to his words.  We should be his followers, and cling to him.

This brings us to the mysterious and mystical words of Jesus in our Gospel reading.   God’s son Jesus, master of wisdom and source of all holiness, wants to make us wise and holy, wants to bring us close to God, by giving himself to us – giving us his body and blood to eat and drink.  This is the paradoxical wisdom of God – it sounds foolish to those who don’t believe, but for us who believe, it is divine wisdom.  We are called to partake of the body of Christ, and partake of the blood of Christ, and if we do this, we will live forever.  We will be with God, and see him face to face.  That is God’s wisdom.  And he’s inviting us to make that wisdom our own by drawing near to his son – so intimately near that we actually eat his flesh and drink his blood.

This food which makes us wise and holy is not the kind of food that we get at the grocery store or a restaurant.   Rather, it’s true food, true drink.  We don’t eat it for proteins and carbohydrates and fats; we eat it to become wise and holy.  True food is holy food, divine food.  We become wise and holy by taking part in the sacred repast, which is God’s own son, whose body and blood are offered up for us.  God loved us so much that he gave us his only son.  And his son loved us so much that he gave us himself – still is giving us himself.  He gave – is still giving - his life for us.  We would be wise to partake of that wondrous gift. 

We can go to school and learn many things – about math, history, literature, science and many things besides.  We can even learn about God.  There are entire academic fields devoted to knowledge about God, entire libraries filled with books about God.  Knowing about God is a good thing, but it can’t substitute for knowing God.   If we want to know God, reading books about God isn’t enough.  We need to encounter him personally.  It’s an encounter of love and forgiveness. 

You don’t have to go to school to get to know God.  You don’t even have to be very smart.  But wisdom isn’t the same as being book-smart, and it’s not the same as intelligence, either.  Going to school is fine.  I encourage all children and all adults to continue to go to school and learn things.  But it’s even more important that we become wise - that we get to know God.  We do that by being his son’s disciples, by gathering around the table with him as we are this morning, listening to his words, and then eating his very body and drinking his very blood.  Perhaps that sounds foolish.  That’s okay.  The world’s foolishness is our wisdom.