by Patricia D. Nanoff
I don’t want to be “that guy.” You know the one. He is the one who is too cynical to believe the small miracles in life. She is the one who manages to see the frayed edge of every cloud. Never a silver lining. Never a good intention. Never good news. Yet, this is a place to which I can too easily go.
I find myself complaining heartily when I bring work home, forgetting to thank God for the amazing blessing of beautiful, challenging work. I feel put upon when a friend needs my time and attention. I am just too busy, too important to be bothered!
I easily slip into competition for toughest life ever. I forget that staying in the place a friend calls “medium miserable” can lead to a point of view that is terrifying in its spiritual poverty.
Sunday’s first reading from the book of Wisdom showcases the attitude of those who think life is short and sorrowful and find the good life an end in itself. Their attitude of privilege and self-righteousness expresses cruelty and power, a willingness to put the just to shameful deaths.
Wisdom put these attitudes in malicious words, “Let us lie in wait for the just whose lives inconveniently oppose our actions.” “Let us test their forbearance with insult and torture.”
The reading highlights the consequences of self-will running out of control, of self-justification leading to self-righteousness and bitter rage toward those whose who believe they are children of God and live the law simply and justly. The socially outcast and invisible among us face these terrifying attitudes each day, especially now that hard times have arrived. When my ordinary misery and drama clamor in me, I find them too close to these attitudes for comfort.
Bible scholars comment that these frightening lines of poetry have an embedded lesson: our dignity comes from God. Our dignity does not come from ourselves any more than we are self-created or self-justified.
The reading from Wisdom reminds us that God’s word will prove true. God will take care for the just. The Spirit of God breathes through challenges and breathes in us, no matter how small our world has become, no matter how closed down we are to possibilities, no matter how closely we resemble the cynic. May we always be willing to see that this is true.
Wisdom speaks.
Let us lie in wait for those who are righteous because they are inconvenient to us
and oppose our actions;
they reproach us for sins
against the law, and accuse us
of sins against our training.
Let us see if their words are true,
and let us test what will happen
at the end of their lives;
for if righteous people are
God’s children, God will help them
and will deliver them from the hand of their adversaries.
Let us test them with insult
and torture, so that we may
find out how gentle they are and
make trial of their forbearance.
Let us condemn them
to shameful deaths, for,
according to what they say,
they will be protected.
Wisdom 2.12,17-20
- With what or whom are you too busy to bother?
- How life-giving is your ordinary misery and drama for those close to you?
- What tests your faith and forbearance?