2020.02.09 | Spiritual Wisdom

My mother’s mother, Mary Thomsen, was one of the wisest people I’ve ever known. Her wisdom didn’t come from formal schooling, but from the school of life and her ability to draw on life life experience and apply it--and her deeply held faith values--to life’s constantly evolving challenges.

Grandma’s formal schooling stopped at the eighth grade. She enjoyed school and got good grades, but she never thought of herself as intelligent and she always seemed surprised that all of her grandchildren did well in school.

I remember, for example, her telling my sister and me about the day that her country school teacher asked her a question, and after she answered it, the teacher said: “Mary, you know more than I do. You’re the teacher now.” Then she handed Grandma the textbook, and said, “Take over.” Then the teacher smiled at her, and walked out and left her in charge.

Grandma often told my sister and me that she would have loved to have attended high school, but the State of Iowa did not require parents to send their children to school past the eighth grade, and her parents couldn’t afford to keep sending her to school.

So rather than starting high school in 1929, the year that the Great Depression unfolded, Grandma went to work for the neighbors to help support her family.

Grandma was hired out to cook, clean, and care for the wife and mother of the Thomsen neighbors, who eventually succumbed to Tuberculosis.

In 1933, the Thomsen's only son proposed marriage to Grandma. She accepted and in doing so traded in her paycheck for a husband. Grandpa always said that he got the better deal. By all accounts that was true.

Grandma was a loving wife and mother, a hard worker, a good steward of the family’s resources. She was accomplished in all areas of domestic life: cooking, cleaning, sewing, needle work, and mending. She was also a good neighbor, a dedicated church lady, and a reliable friend.

In addition to being humble about her schooling and her intellect, Grandma was humble about her knowledge of Christianity. People who quoted scripture and argued about who was and wasn’t saved made her nervous. She did not engage them.

I often heard her say that the reason she taught the Nursery Sunday School class was because she learned a lot from preparing the lessons, and she could usually handle the kids’ questions.

If you identify with my Grandma’s situation, e.g., because of your limited opportunities for formal schooling, because people who are overly confident about their salvation, or because you can’t explain all of the great mysteries of life, then today’s passage from Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians, and this message, are for you.

Similarly, if you do have a fancy education--particularly a fancy theological education--and we know who we are--this passage is also for us. Because, as Paul illustrates in today’s passage, the Christian life isn’t just about grasping the right information about Christian and being able to talk the talk, it’s equally--and maybe even more importantly--about Christian formation--and being able to walk the walk, like Jesus did.

You see, in today’s chapter, Paul was determined to settle a dispute within the burgeoning Christian community in Corinth. It seems that there were some who thought they were better than others, because they had a fancy education and were more erudite spokespersons on Christian theology. Paul wasn’t having any of this. While he did not discount the value of education, he saw education and formation as a both-and not an either-or, and he was determined to bring some balance to the discourse and the hierarchy of beings in that fledgling congregation.

The way that modern Christians sometimes paraphrase Paul’s teaching here is to say that the Christian life is not just about what you know, it’s about who you know.

Another way to make this point is to paraphrase Marion Wright Edelman, Founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, You can get all A’s--even in seminary--and still flunk the Christian life.

Now what do I mean by saying:

The Christian life is not just about what you know, it’s about who you know.
You can get all A’s--even in seminary--and still flunk the Christian life.

I mean that the study of scripture, church history, doctrine, ethics, and practical theology is great, and can qualify you for a degree in divinity, but it doesn’t make you a Christian.

What makes you a Christian is your acceptance of God’s grace, your openness to the Holy Spirit’s presence, and your commitment to follow the example and teachings of Christ.

Knowing that God is our Creator, that the Holy Spirit exists, and that Jesus was a great prophet does not make you a Christian. This knowledge simply makes you an educated spectator.

Having knowledge of Christianity, but not being a committed Christian, is sort of like being a tourist in a city that’s unfamiliar. Maybe you have a free night during a convention that you’re attending, so you look at the local sports in the paper that’s dropped outside your front door.

You study up on the home team, and decide to go to the game that night. You get more out of the game, because you’ve taken the time to learn how the home team is doing, who’s on the DL and who’s back in the lineup, and what the odds are of the home team winning. But being informed doesn’t make you a hometown fan, much less a starter player on the team. It just makes you an educated spectator.

Similarly, one can have perfect attendance in Sunday School, memorize all of the books of the Bible forward and backward, recite the 10 Commandments and the Apostle’s Creed from memory, and quote scripture like a well-trained parrot, but that does not make you a Christian. Because being a Christian is as much or more about formation as it is about information.

It’s about taking the teachings of Christ to heart and embodying them. To borrow from the late nineteenth century hymn, it’s about letting your prayer be in your deed . It’s about living a life of integrity--a life in which your words and deeds are congruent and consistent with each other, so that others might know you are Christian by your love, by your love.

You see, the Corinthian congregation was situated in a vibrant international seaport. As such, it was teeming with merchants, scholars, and travelers from all over the world. Some, according to Paul, thought more highly of themselves than they ought, because they were wealthy, well educated, and well-traveled. But these factors, made the Corinthians and their visitors no better and no worse--in the eyes of God--than the mendicants, the school dropouts, and the local yokels.

Formation—not just information—was an essential element that was necessary for one to become a mature Christian, Paul explained.

III

My Grandma Thomsen has always been, for me, both a humble student of Christianity and a great example of the Christian life well lived. Ask yourself, who is that person for me? And while you’re mulling that question, I share another example of a person who was both a humble student of Christianity and a great example of the Christian life well lived. Her name was Fannie Lou Townsend Hammer. If you are a student of the Civil Rights Movement, an American historian, or a political junky, you may recognize her name.

Fannie Lou Townsend was born October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She was the granddaughter of slaves, and the twentieth and last child born to Jim and Ella Townsend. Fannie Lou’s parents were sharecroppers, who primarily raised cotton on a plantation in Sunflower County, Mississippi (1).

Though education was important to her parents, Fannie Lou did not have the benefit of more than four months of education over the course of a six-year period. School for African American children, in those days, was only offered in the winter when the ground was fallow and there was less farm work to be done (2). By the time she was twelve, Fannie Lou dropped out of school to help her family full-time on the plantation (3).

The Townsend family attended Stranger’s Home Baptist Church, where Fannie Lou studied the Bible, sang in the choir, and participated in worship. According to one biographer, she regularly prayed that one day she would be able to improve the situation of her family and all African Americans (4).

In 1942, Fannie Lou Townsend married Perry “Pap” Hamer (5). The couple were sharecroppers, like her parents, on the W.D. Marlow plantation, near Ruleville, Mississippi (6). Mrs. Hamer was later promoted to time keeper once the owner discovered that she was literate. She also worked evenings as a domestic, cleaning the Marlow’s home (7).

Mrs. Hamer attended several annual conferences in the 1950s of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) in the town of Mound Bayou. In 1962 (when she was 44-years old) the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) came to Ruleville on a voter education and registration drive. Mrs. Hamer learned through this meeting that African Americans had a constitutional right to vote, and she was moved to volunteer to register to vote the next day (8). She knew that this would be a dangerous decision, but she did it anyway (9).

When Mrs. Hamer and others went by bus to the Montgomery County Courthouse in Winona the next day to register to vote, they were immediately taken off the bus, jailed, and beaten (10). Mrs. Hamer suffered long-term psychological effects, permanent kidney damage, and partial blindness from the beatings she received in the jail that day.

Upon her release, she was also thrown off the plantation where she had lived and worked most of her adult life, and began receiving death threats and was shot at. Still, Fannie Lou Hamer would not relent in her work for justice. She became a SNCC Field Secretary and traveled around the country speaking and registering people to vote (11).

Mrs. Hamer went on to co-found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), and in 1964 the Freedom Democrats challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention to admit persons of color to their delegation (12). The Freedom Democrats' efforts drew national attention to the political oppression of African-Americans in Mississippi, and presented a formidable challenge to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was then seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for a second term. Johnson feared that admitting the Freedom Democrats to the convention would cause the traditionally Democratic South to vote for his Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater (13).

Mrs. Hamer was invited, with the rest of the MFDP officers, to address the Convention's Credentials Committee about their concerns. She accepted the invitation and recounted the problems she had incurred in registering to vote, and the ordeal of the jail in Winona. She also said that if the Freedom Democrats were not seated for the convention, that she questioned whether America was truly the land of the free and the home of the brave (14).

After much prayer, Fannie Lou Hamer walked to the front of the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey (15). She described for conventioneers and for millions of viewers the ways that African-Americans in many states across the nation were being prevented from voting on account of illegal testing, poll taxes, and intimidation tactics (16). Then, at the end of her speech, Hamer began singing “This Little Light of Mine,” a song which became her “signature song” in the civil rights movement (17). Many were moved to join in the singing, and many were encouraged in the struggle by her faith, her witness, and her singing.

As a result of Fannie Lou Hamer’s speech, two delegates of the MFDP were given speaking rights at the convention that year, and the other members were seated as honorable guests (18). This decision unleashed a wave of change within the Democratic party, so that by 1968, the party adopted a clause in their rules demanding equality of representation from their states in their convention delegations (19).

Mrs. Hamer did not have the benefit of much formal education, and she died young (at the age of 59) (20) but during her lifetime she did inspire numerous people to join her in the struggle for justice through her direct discourse, her hymn singing, and her uncommon courage (21).

We would do well to learn from her Fannie Lou Hamer and from whoever those spiritual wize people have been for us. We would do well to reflect on their examples, consider what values they adhered to, and what steps they took--especially in the face of hardship and opposition--so that we, like them, might become spiritually wise, and have the courage of our convictions to live the Christian life with great boldness and perseverance. Amen.

Footnotes:

(1) http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/hamer.html

(2) http://www.beejae.com/hamer.htm

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer

(4) http://www.africawithin.com/bios/fannie_hamer.htm

(5) http://www.fannielouhamer.info/fannie_lou_hamer.html

(6) http://www.africawithin.com/bios/fannie_hamer.htm

(7) http://www.africawithin.com/bios/fannie_hamer.htm

(8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer

(9) http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/hamer.html

(10) http://www.beejae.com/hamer.htm

(11) http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/hamer.html