Sermon 1.19.26 The Tale of Anansi the Spider

Sermon Begins @ 22:14

This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about people who have gone before.

This week, we have lost both our beloved Mary Herring of St. Andrew’s and The Rev. Deacon Top Borden, who served so faithfully at St. Simon of Cyrene, our sister church in Lincoln Heights.

We also buried Jeanne Hayes on Wednesday morning.

Last week, I learned of the passing of a dear friend in St. Louis, David Everson, who was the first person to sign-on, when I floated the idea of starting an Education for Ministry group at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Webster Groves, Missouri.

This weekend, we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. King in the midst of tumultuous waters,

And I can’t help but feel that if we’re headed to the mountain top, flood waters seem to be following us up the hill.

As I think about the saints of my life, including St. Andrew, who we see in the gospel lesson from John today, one of the first people to join the Jesus movement as a disciple and recruiter,

I’m moved to wonder: what should we do with our wisdom?

In our reading from 1 Corinthians this morning, after introducing himself, the Apostle Paul encourages his new community in Corinth about how they are growing in the Lord.

Specifically, he tells them that they are growing in “speech and knowledge of every kind” and that they are being “strengthened, so that they do not lack any spiritual gifts.”

His whole letter, as I mentioned back in Advent, is a preparation letter for the coming of the Day of the Lord.

In this letter, Paul is telling the Corinthian church that they have the tools necessary for salvation, they just need to hone them properly.

The question for the Corinthians is just this question that I have put forward, what should we do with our wisdom?

Before moving to our other Scripture lessons, I’d like to tell you an African folk-tale.

It’s called the Tale of Anansi the Spider.

You see, there was a spider named Anansi, who wanted to be wise.

So, Anansi went to God one day and said, “God I want to have all of the wisdom in the world.”

God told Anansi, “very well, I will give you all of the wisdom in the world.”

And so God took God’s wisdom and put it into a clay jar and then gave the jar to Anansi.

The spider was so happy to have all of God’s wisdom, that he immediately gathered up the jar to take it back to his web, which was high on a cliff top.

But before Anansi could go even a few steps, God called out to Anansi, “Now that you have all of my wisdom, you must give it to everyone that you meet and spread it throughout the earth.”

This irked Anansi, who had almost made off with all of God’s wisdom.

Anansi wanted it all to himself.

What good was it to have wisdom, if you had to share it with people.

So, with a lot of consternation, Anansi resolved to pretend that he had not heard God and not to follow God’s final instruction.

When Anansi carried the jar to the cliff face, where his web was, he started to try to climb the cliff face with the jar in tow.

He tried to have the jar in a few of his legs, but that didn’t work.

He tried to put it on his head and balance it as he climbed, but it was too awkward and kept tipping as if it might fall.

He tried and he tried, but he couldn’t climb the cliff face with all of God’s wisdom.

From around a corner, a young spider came up and asked Anansi what he was doing.

Anansi told the young spider what he was trying to do.

After thinking for a minute, the young spider said, “we are spiders, we can strap the jar to your back, that way when you climb you can use all of your legs and the jar won’t fall, because it will be fastened securely to your back.”

Anansi figured this would be worth a try.

“by the way,” the young spider asked, “what’s in the jar.”

“nothing,” said Anansi, “just some things I need to get home.”

The young spider thought this was a reasonable answer, and so she didn’t ask anymore questions, but helped Anansi secure the jar to his back, so that he could climb.

The trick worked, and as he climbed, Anansi was so excited about all of the wisdom that he had, and how no one else would be able to surpass him in wisdom.

When he reached the top of the cliff, Anansi stopped to survey the land below and to think with satisfaction at all that had transpired.

He thought about the young spider that had given him such wise advice, when he couldn’t figure out how to get his jar up the cliff face.

Suddenly, Anansi became distraught and then he became angry.

He looked at his pot of wisdom, and said, “God couldn’t have given me all of the wisdom, otherwise I wouldn’t have needed that young spider’s help to get up the cliff face with this jar.

Anansi got so angry, in fact, that he took the jar and the hard-fought wisdom that he had attained and he threw it off the cliff.

If he couldn’t have it all to himself, what was the point.

And so, in the end, God’s will was done, because when the jar hit the ground, all of the wisdom inside burst out and spread across the earth.

As we read our lessons from this morning, I can’t help but see that the wisdom of God is shown to be something that is to be shared and not hidden,

Something that is meant to be given and proclaimed to all and not just a few.

Isaiah begins in this 49^th chapter giving a dialogue between God and the people of Israel, whom Isaiah represents.

God tries to reassure this servant that he is “Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”

In his current political climate, a time of great upheaval and suffering for the Hebrew people, Isaiah laments that if Israel is meant to be God’s glory, then everything seems to have been in vain.

The prophet says, “I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.”

As the dialogue continues and God promises that the fortunes of his people will be restored, God then says that the restoration will not just be for a small select group.

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servantto raise up the tribes of Jacoband to restore the survivors of Israel;

I will give you as a light to the nations,that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

And so we see in this reading from Isaiah the prophecy that God would spread the light to the whole world.

If – through Isaiah - we understand that wisdom is meant for all, then our psalm answers the question, what should we do with that wisdom that we have received.

Unlike Anansi the spider, who gets up to the cliff top and accidentally does God’s will because of his anger,

The psalmist says that once we have been brought up from the desolate pit and the mire and clay,

Our job is to proclaim the Good News of trusting in the Lord.

I want you to notice that from verse 5 on this psalm shows the irrepressible spirit of one who must proclaim the goodness of God.

“Great things are those that you have done, O Lord my God…

I love to do your will, your law is written on my heart…

I proclaimed righteousness in the congregation and did not restrain my lips…

Your righteousness I have not hidden in my heart…

I have spoken… I have not concealed.”

As I think of all of the people in my life, who have given their wisdom and their love to me,

I reflect on people who spoke and did not conceal.

People who didn’t see wisdom as something simply to attain for their own enjoyment,

But something to be given away freely with joy.

Too often, we may feel discouraged by all of the noise that surrounds us to feel empowered to share our wisdom.

It can be too tempting to share our grievances, our anger, our fears, our hatreds.

It can feel so righteous.

On the other hand, we can also be tempted to hide the wisdom that we have received, either because we think people will scoff at it, or we like to have it as our little secret;

Like having a favorite restaurant that you don’t want everyone to know about, because then it might be hard to get in later.

This week, we shared the wisdom of our tradition with our brothers and sisters from Lincoln Heights Missionary Baptist Church, and they shared theirs.

A divide that is rarely crossed, our two churches came together to proclaim a unity of faith and mission in these troubling times.

Neither church is a stranger to the hardships of this political moment, or the ones that preceded in generations past, when Dr. King was marching for freedom.

But, in the intervening decades, when so many churches thought that civil rights had been won, so many of us went into a shell and kept our wisdom to ourselves.

We wanted to make sure that our churches grew and that we took care of our own people.

But in the meantime, the forces that have been working to dismantle civil rights have continued to push us toward regression.

Our churches can no longer afford to be insular self-satisfied places that hold their wisdom to themselves.

The wisdom of a world that is ultimately in the hands of a righteous God

The wisdom of our shared humanity, which means respecting the dignity even of those whose actions we abhor.

The wisdom of non-violence in our protests, because as Dr. King so often reminded us, “hate is too heavy a burden to bear.”

This is a new civil rights era, where we must remember to proclaim the dream,

We must break our jars wide open.

I proclaim to you today the wisdom of my saints;

Mary Herring taught me what love and humility looks like.

She did so much behind the scenes work at this church, when she had stronger health.

She was our liaison to the neighborhood before we were getting back out into the neighborhood.

She paved the way for our reintegration into neighborhood life. A move that just this week led to a mom on the block telling her children, “if you get off of the bus and have nowhere to go, go to the church, because it’s a safe place and they’ll take care of you.”

Deacon Top Borden was the first African-American woman ordained to the diaconate in Southern Ohio in 1991.

Her gifts to the diocese are too many to number, but think about this…

When she became a deacon, she went and served at two predominantly white parishes; Trinity, Hamilton and Ascension and Holy Trinity in Wyoming.

She bravely stepped across the racial divide in our diocese and brought love and humanity to spaces not her own.

She wrote letters to get Medicaid expanded to cover uninsured children.

She shared her wisdom by leading bible studies and trips abroad.

My friend David Everson, who insisted to me often that even if we only had the Sermon on the Mount, we would have reason enough to love and cherish Jesus.

As a retired lawyer, he spent his waning years putting his all into the Innocence Project, which helps to free men and women who have been wrongly convicted for crimes they did not commit.

And, Jeanne Hayes, who brought so many babies into this world.

Who loved children, and always gave my children a welcome place when we would go to take her communion.

She was always ready to share her wisdom.

In fact, at her 100^th birthday party, she was so full of joy that they just came pouring out of her the whole night.  She wanted to share what she had earned by her perseverance in this life.

What we have to celebrate this weekend, what we have to live up to in our weeks ahead,

Are those people who have shared their wisdom, their love, and their abiding sense that those who trust in the Lord, even in these trying times will stand in awe when they see what God can do.

We are witnesses to the wisdom of God, the Christ whom John proclaimed as the Lamb of God.

What we do with that wisdom is up to us.

For my part, I aim to proclaim.

I hope you will also do the same.

Amen.