The Good Life

Mark 9:30-37, James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Proverbs 31:10-31

Who wouldn’t want to live “the good life”?

 

Searching that hashtag on Instagram gives results that are at least two-thirds pool and beach-related. A quick “good life” browse on Facebook trended more toward photos of food.

But the good life comes in many varieties, and lurks in the subtext, if not the actual text, of the scripture readings assigned for today.

 

If you were to ask Jesus’ first disciples about the good life – at least at the beginning of today’s story – they’d probably tell you about being recognized in their rank and status – holding positions of honor and greatness.
Any one among us or our friends with an eye on a particular promotion at work, or an award in our field – or anyone unironically enjoying their “World’s Greatest Coach” or “Grandpa” coffee mug – might be sympathetic to how those early disciples were thinking.

 

Jesus isn’t, of course. He has no hesitation in telling those first followers – and us – that lack of status is an earmark of the holy life – or at least the kind of holy life Jesus expects us to want and to imitate.

(Of course it didn’t take long for the corporate followers of Jesus – the church – to start reinventing servanthood as a status symbol of its own. There’s probably a set of “world’s greatest servant-leader” mugs out there by now. It’s hard to resist imagining some kind of recognition being part of the good life.)

 

And nobody asked James, the epistle-writer, to describe the good life, but he calls it out today, inviting us to display our “good life” rooted in “gentleness born of wisdom” – rooted in the inner peace of a life devoted to God.

And there’s a portrait of that wisdom-life in the final poem of the book of Proverbs, which we started with, today.

 

The one about the amazing woman who does everything well.

The “capable wife” language in our English translation transforms a call to seek a “woman of valor” into a dryly functional, colorless job title. But the job description – the portrait of this woman of valor, the good life to be fervently sought – is full of color and detail.

 

This is the woman who has it all.

Or, maybe, the woman who does it all.

It’s an extraordinary list of tasks and accomplishments: executive management, sharp business leadership, active charity and service, excellent handcrafts, teaching and coaching - a role model – whose lamp never goes out and who is never lazy. No personal days and me time, just success and fulfillment in everything she touches.

 

You see versions of her on Instagram these days – at the head of an “influencer brand” everyone’s supposed to want to imitate.
See versions of this woman whipping up a picture-perfect breakfast for her smiling, prompt children with one hand behind her back prepping a several million dollar presentation at her high-powered job, organizing a food drive at the kids school and a benefit gala for a medical charity, while supporting her husband’s run for governor or something.

 

I

Am

Exhausted

just reading this scriptural portrait.

Or contemplating the current-day equivalent.

 

I’m from a generation that grew up shaped by the expectations that wherever our mothers fell short of having it all, we would cross the finish line and Win Everything.  That we’d be the ones who finally made having a perfect family and high-powered career (and perfect body, but we didn’t talk about that explicitly) all at the same time normal and achievable for every woman, and the promised land of Equality would be come.

 

And when I saw this scriptural Woman Who Does It All coming up in the assigned Sunday readings, I cried.

 

The lived experience of a generation – or a hundred generations – has affirmed that this glorious portrait of the woman of valor is fantasy. A standard to which no actual human woman can live up.

No human person, female or otherwise, honestly.

 

None of these scriptural descriptions of the holy human, the person of wisdom, fit normal human beings, honestly.

James tells us a life rooted in “the wisdom from above” is pure, peaceable, gentle, open and flexible, full of mercy and good results without a trace of bias or hypocrisy.

Raise your hand, would you, if you know people just like that: Universally pure, peaceable, productive and perfectly, constantly objective and always sincere.[know more than one person like that?]

 

We do need ideals to strive for, and a life that’s halfway to peaceful, fruitful, gentle, welcoming, honest and generous is a more pleasant life to live than one that’s a quarter of the way there, or one that’s mostly disrupted, cranky, hostile, shady and distorted.

 

But what James, and Jesus, and the compiler of the book of Proverbs need us to do when we read their words is to desire that good life of wisdom, to seek that fruitful, generous, welcoming life as a gift of God, as the way of life of God’s household that embraces and supports our faithful living. 

Not as some accomplishment or goal we create, achieve, or own for ourselves.

 

The faithful reader and responder of Proverbs is the one who seeks, loves, and makes a commitment to a life with the wisdom of God – the wisdom which is and does all those glorious things. The wisdom of God protects, provides, gives, produces, cares for all – not we ourselves, as individuals. We seek to join her household. To move in to the world shaped by this pure peace, this fruitful gentleness, this wholehearted openness and grace.

 

To let go of having the success for ourselves, and commit to supporting God’s success in everyone around us, participating in God’s generous care for everyone unworthy of that extraordinary glory.

 

In that household of God, we find ourselves becoming more like that amazing woman, more steeped in James’s “wisdom from above”. We become more fruitful, peaceable, generous, capable, oriented to the service of all, not by our individual efforts and achievements, but together, as the household of wisdom we become extraordinary. Together, in the household of God, we become the people of valor. 

 

That good life is waiting for us.
Calling to us.

Inviting us to welcome it as a gift, and to commit ourselves wholeheartedly to join in.

To become a part of the whole of God’s wisdom, protecting and promoting and providing for the strength and joy of all God’s people.