In about two weeks I will be done with seminary. Not long after that I will receive a piece of paper in the mail saying that I have been awarded the degree of Master of Divinity—a name that really needs to change, because if there’s one thing that’s literally impossible for a person to master, it’s divinity.
It’s taken me four years to complete my program. I won’t lie, it’s been a long four years. By its very nature, seminary provides space to deconstruct and reconstruct one’s theology, one’s sense of purpose in the most macro, balcony-level sense. Every seminary paper you write, every class conversation whether it’s over scripture, theologians, providing care, or doing justice calls on one to put words to who one wants to be and what provisional understanding of God sits beneath that aspirational identity. It’s exhausting! And I’m so grateful for the privilege of four years to devote to having very smart and dedicated teachers and fellow students exhaust me over and over again.
It’s been four years of spending time with the words of the wise, which Koheleth, the sagely author of this month’s readings, compares in our last reading in this month’s series to a goad. Now, if you’re city folk like me, maybe you’re not familiar with the origins of this word, goad. I had to be taught during my Hebrew Bible class that a goad is a tool used by shepherds: a stick with exposed, pointy nails used to persuade a flock to go where the shepherd wants them to go.
It’s an interesting choice of metaphors on Koheleth’s part, comparing wise words to goads. In our culture it’s much more common to think of wisdom like a treasure, to be handled with care and reverence. Or like the pearl of great cost: a thing that we sacrifice things of value in order to gain. Or maybe like a birthright passed down to us whether we want it or not that becomes a part of us, our identity.
Entering seminary, my relationship with wisdom was definitely reverential. I thought, I want to lead churches, so obviously I need data—wisdom—from scripture and the Christian tradition, the ability to cite the thoughts and interpretations of major theologians in order to preach, guide folks on their spiritual paths, you know, be a pastor. I went to seminary, at least in part, to receive those pearls of great price, that Christian birthright, in order to qualify myself to pass those pearls on to others.
What’s funny is that, even though I didn’t attend church growing up, I had internalized the idea that the primary thing that happens in church—the biggest thing church is for—is that you receive this special, life-enhancing, ancient wisdom. It was so internalized that, even when as an adult I actually spent time in a church and had a direct, embodied experience of church that involved some transmitted wisdom, sure, but was much more about how to live lovingly in community, I still entered seminary focused on the transmission of the tradition’s wisdom.
So, I had to go to seminary to learn again, to relearn that wisdom isn’t primarily a pearl or a birthright; it’s a goad, a prod that’s there to get us to confront things that we don’t actually want to confront, to go places where we’re afraid to go. Because it’s in those scary places where we learn who we are, which, as I suggested last week, leads us to our true identity in and from God. It’s like Father Richard Rohr writes:
It is religion’s job [feel free to substitute “wisdom’s job” here] to teach us and guide us on this discovery of our True Self, but it usually makes the mistake of turning this into a worthiness contest of some sort, a private performance, or some kind of religious achievement on our part, through our belonging to the right group, practicing the right rituals, or believing the right things. These are just tugboats to get you away from the shore and out into the right sea; they are the oars to get you working and engaged with the Mystery.[1]
What Father Rohr describes is the difference between religion and wisdom as something you “have” versus something you “do”; something you possess on a resume versus something that you wrestle with. A transactional reward versus the kick in the pants that starts you on a journey of discovery.
In our reading, Koheleth also warns against this offramp into wisdom as an end in itself. “Against them, my son, be warned! The making of many books is without limit and much study is a wearying of the flesh.” (12:12)
Remember, the tension motivating the book of Ecclesiastes is how life is fleeting. Throughout the text, he searches his life experience for something more lasting but rejects the accumulation of wealth and the seeking of pleasure as wind, vanity. Here in the very last verses of the book, the author cuts off another avenue to what one might hope is a safe and lasting pursuit: the accumulation of wisdom. But he dismisses that pursuit, too, as a wearying of the flesh, a sapping of the life energy that the author says numerous times that we should use and enjoy while we have it.
“The making of many books is without limit.” We have this insatiable curiosity to learn, coupled with the faculty to comprehend life’s complexity. Our brains want to inventory the world, fit it together, explain and document all that at first seems incomprehensible. It feels so good to move things from the unknown column to the known that we can convince ourselves that coming up with new wisdom is life’s whole goal. That the point of psychology is the Manual of Mental Disorders itself. That the point of politics ends once you identify your policy position. That you’ve won the game of church when you accept its teachings.
Koheleth reminds us here at the end of his teaching that wisdom isn’t the end goal, any more than wealth or power are. The end goal is the messy, uncategorizable, mysterious terrain of following God’s commandments to care for each other. And while wisdom can be the thing that guides you into that mystery, he teaches, don’t get the impression that knowing the right answer is a substitute for doing the answer.
The Hebrew Bible, the apostle Paul, Jesus all have teachings for us to receive, but that’s not the point. As Black liberation theologian James Cone wrote from the context of the Black Power movement of the early 1970s,
It is so easy to make [Jesus’] name mean intellectual analysis, and we already have too much of that garbage in seminary libraries. What is needed is an application of the name to concrete human affairs. What does the name mean when black people are burning buildings and white people are responding with riot-police control? Whose side is Jesus on?[2]
Cone’s words resonate for me as I end my seminary experience. All those papers, all that personal deconstruction and reconstruction, all goads nudging me back to community. To doing love and justice after I’m done saying love and justice. To trying things and making mistakes and hurting people and taking responsibility and sometimes getting it right. To full participation in my own unique, flawed, small way to something that will outlast me: us.
May we be nudged together by wisdom, and once together, may we reclaim our identities, our power as beloved children of God. May we not settle for the comfort of finite accumulation or the illusion of control, rather may we be guided by our Shepherd into mystery, into growth, into love. Amen.
[1] Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, (Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 2011), p. 98.
[2] James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, 50th Anniversary Edition, (Orbis Books: Maryknoll, NY, 2020), p. 40.