teachings of jesus:
wisdom tradition
Active Listening Concepts and Vocabulary:
Subversive Wisdom: _______________________________________________
Personal Individual Justice: __________________________________________
Aphorism: ________________________________________________________
Guerilla theatre: ___________________________________________________
Purity Code: ______________________________________________________
Jonah 3.10-4.3 (RSV & ESV)
When God saw how [the Ninevites] turned from their evil ways, God repented of
the evil he said he would do to them; and he did not do it. But this was very
displeasing to Jonah, and he was angry. He prayed to the LORD and said, "O
LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I
fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and
merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from
punishing. And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me
to die than to live."
Luke 13.20-21 (NRSV)
And again [Jesus] said, "To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like
yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it
was leavened."
Orientation Readings
Using humor, story, irony and even cynicism, the wisdom tradition is often
associated with the mystical or spiritual aspects of various faith traditions. It
seeks to enable people to cope with the “why’s?” of life without resorting to
shallow, unsatisfying answers.
-- Living the Questions
Saving Jesus © 2006 Living the Questions
Teachings of Jesus: Wisdom Tradition - 1
Wisdom people ask: “Why do the innocent weep? Why do the great
suffer?” Deuteronomy says, “Well, you deserve what you get and you get what
you deserve.” Then Job speaks up and says, “Don’t try to sell me that bill of
goods!”
-- Harrell Beck, Wisdom Tradition
When Jesus tells a parable, what he is doing is making the audience think
for themselves. If Jesus just wants to give a sermon, he can tell them what he
wants to say.
-- John Dominic Crossan, Saving Jesus
People who aren’t comfortable with ambiguity are really stuck. They’ve got
a lot of things they can’t do: they can’t read poetry, they can’t read novels, and
they can’t watch TV. They can’t read the gospels. They’ve really cut themselves
off. They’re really reduced to reading lawyers’ texts. A lawyer is a person who
thinks ambiguity is a bad thing, so you try to define the contract or the will so that
nobody can break it. Well, even legal texts are ambiguous -- that’s why you have
to go to court and solve them. So it doesn’t work. Part of the problem is, if you
really think things have simple meanings, then we have to have interchangeable
brains so that we have exactly the same experience; exactly the same meaning.
That doesn’t happen.
--Brandon Scott on parables,
from an interview for Saving Jesus
As the anger built against Jesus and the radical new kind of community
that he was forming, where no one was unclean and accepting people who are
unacceptable in society, that anger started with those kinds of stories that Jesus
told. People must have been stung.
-- Helen Prejean, Saving Jesus
Systemic and structural injustice is the line item in a budget that
guarantees that half a million kids will be hurt six months from now -- and sort of
nobody “did it.” It just sort of happened. There is personal individual justice.
There is also systemic and structural justice and God watches over both.
-- John Dominic Crossan, Saving Jesus
What we get in churches today is Jesus as mommy. I mean he’s usually
got really good hair and a long white dress and you know that that can’t possible
be historical. He’s gentle Jesus, meek and mild, and what’s not to like? A Jesus
who’s gentle and meek and mild and everybody loves him cannot possible be
historical. Again, he’s got to be edgy enough for people to want to kill him and
you don’t want to kill, you know, mommy Jesus.
-- A.J. Levine, Saving Jesus
Saving Jesus © 2006 Living the Questions
Teachings of Jesus: Wisdom Tradition - 2
Proverbs personifies wisdom as a woman, translated in the Greek as “Sophia.”
In Proverbs 8.5, this feminine voice of God utters words usually reserved for
divinity: "Whoever finds me finds life.” Although solidly rooted in Biblical,
orthodox Christian, and Gnostic traditions (with even the Gospels portraying
Jesus as a purveyor of Sophia or feminine wisdom in Luke and Matthew), the
recent effort to reclaim Sophia as a legitimate expression of the divine feminine
has met resistance.
-- Living the Questions
The tremendous influence of the wisdom literature in the Old Testament
meant that Saint Paul could use the word Christ, Word, & Wisdom
interchangeably.
-- Harrell Beck, Asking the Big Questions
Wisdom literature is concerned for the meaning of life, mostly by an
appeal to experience. Strictly speaking, wisdom is something more than
intelligence but includes it, more than knowledge though needs it, more than
information though often depends upon it.
Wisdom is little concerned for traditional
religious thought, being mostly focused on
human solutions or, as we might say today, with
a humanist perspective.
-- Culver “Bill” Nelson, essay:
Wisdom Literature in the Hebrew Scriptures
“The less I seek my source
for some definitive,
the closer I am to fine.”
-- Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine
The whole wisdom tradition is that nobody gives you the answers. The
search for God is a quest that you and others with you go on.
-- Stephen Patterson, Saving Jesus
The poet Rilke says we should live the questions -- let them seep into us.
And so “not knowing” is very appropriate. We’re living in a time of great upheaval
and great peril -- and our species obviously does not have all the answers. No
one religion has all the answers. No one tribe, ethnicity or anything else has all
the answers. We need to draw out all the wisdom we can get at this time in
history. Living the questions and posing the questions to our various wisdom
traditions is a very valuable exercise at this time.
-- Matthew Fox, Saving Jesus
Saving Jesus © 2006 Living the Questions
Teachings of Jesus: Wisdom Tradition - 3
Questions for Personal Reflection
What are some of the characteristics of “wisdom” teaching?
How is a parable different from a sermon?
What might be some of the differences between “mommy Jesus” and
“Sophia Jesus”?
Discussion Questions (following each DVD chapter or entire program)
Chapter 1
According to Scott, what are some examples of ways the Jewish tradition
“pokes fun” at itself?
What does Borg mean when he says that “the path of Jesus is the way
that leads beyond convention”?
Chapter 2
According to Crossan, how does the Parable of the Mustard Seed suggest
that it might just be safer to keep God out of one’s affairs?
Chapter 3
Describe the difference between “personal individual justice” and
“systemic and structural justice.”
Chapter 4
Why can’t “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” possibly be historical?
How are some of Jesus’ sayings discussed by Levine different than how
you may have interpreted them in the past?
Saving Jesus © 2006 Living the Questions
Teachings of Jesus: Wisdom Tradition - 4
Chapter 5
How is the story of the Good Samaritan an example of the kind of radical
wisdom being taught by Jesus?
Chapter 6
Why is the Parable of the Leaven so radical for Scott?
Additional Questions
One element of the Deuteronomistic code is that riches and wealth are a
reward from God for living a righteous life. What contrasting values do
Jesus’ wisdom teachings present?
Matthew 5.45 has Jesus say: “God makes the sun rise on the evil and on
the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” In what ways does
this sentiment fit into the wisdom tradition?
Scott suggests that there are two ways to approach the spiritual life: guilt
and fear as the motivator, or love and life as the motivator. Explain.
Saving Jesus Theme Question
What element or learning from today’s session will be most important in “Saving
Jesus” in the 21st century?
Contributors in DVD Session 6:
Marcus Borg: Jesus scholar, author of "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time" & "The Heart of Christianity"
Walter Brueggemann: Old Testament professor, author of "The Prophetic Imagination" & "Finally Comes the Poet"
John Dominic Crossan: Jesus scholar, author of "Jesus, a Revolutionary Biography"
Amy-Jill Levine: New Testament professor, Vanderbilt Divinity School
Stephen Patterson: New Testament professor, author of "The God of Jesus" & "Beyond
the Passion"
Helen Prejean: Roman Catholic Sister, author of "Dead Man Walking"
Bernard Brandon Scott: New Testament professor, author of "Hear Then the Parable"
Saving Jesus © 2006 Living the Questions
Teachings of Jesus: Wisdom Tradition - 5