wisdom — Andy James

The Path of Wisdom

May 26, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 for Trinity Sunday
preached on May 26, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Wisdom seems to be a fading gift in our world. In recent years, the volume of knowledge around us has increased exponentially, and we can now quickly Google whatever we want to know from the palm of our hands and have the answer in a matter of moments, no matter where we are.

Yet with all this new information at our fingertips, our ability to process all this knowledge has not increased at quite the same speed. I for one think this is related to the great dearth of wisdom in our world. We just haven’t honed our abilities to sort out all the information that comes our way. Every day, we find new and different options for handling a particular situation and bringing about change, yet we seem to resist it more than ever before, perhaps in large part because we can’t quite process how life might be different if we were think about it differently. Even though there are plenty more people who carry plenty more knowledge around with them, the share of people who possess the wisdom to figure out what to do with that knowledge has not increased quite so quickly.

And yet we hear from Proverbs today:

Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?

This voice of Woman Wisdom cries out from the hills, shouts from the crossroads, and clamors at the gates of the city for all people to heed her voice. This is good news in these days. We need someone stepping up and crying out, offering us a word of warning and hope when are overwhelmed with uncertain messages. We need a new way through the challenges of today. We need wisdom now more than ever before, so it is good to see her stepping up to offer her voice amidst the crowd.

Woman Wisdom then turns to establish her credentials for this kind of incredible action in the world. She doesn’t seem to exactly and directly be God, but it is clear that she is inseparable from God, perhaps embodying and living out an important part of how God interacts with the world or helping us to connect our lives with God’s ways. She has been around since the very beginning, created by God “at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.”

Before all the other stuff came along, before everything that makes life complicated started getting in the way, even before creation began and things started coming together, Wisdom was there. Wisdom was there, waiting for the moment to raise her voice, watching for all the things going on in the world, taking it all in so that she could gain understanding to share with us. As everything took shape and God gave the world its form, Wisdom was there, “beside him, like a master worker,” learning about the world and preparing to share her guidance and understanding as the journey continued. She took delight in what God was doing and rejoiced in the depth and breadth and true wonder of all creation.

But where is she now? Where is Wisdom when we are so overwhelmed with information that we have no idea what to do with it all? Where is Wisdom amidst all the pain and sorrow in our world? Just this week we heard of incredible destruction and loss of life after a tornado in Oklahoma, a violent and gruesome murder in broad daylight on the streets of London designed to bring the terror of war closer to home, and the rise of violence against gay men on the streets of Greenwich Village in Manhattan. All this strange news threatens us with what some have termed “compassion fatigue,” for the more we know about the pain and sorrow in our world, the less that we feel we can do about it. Amidst all this, Wisdom seems to be far, far away, silently watching from the wings, not close at hand, not giving us guidance and wisdom for how to live in these strange times.

Yet if we listen closely, I think we can hear Wisdom crying out in these days. If she has been around since the beginning, Wisdom has seen it all before and can help us sort out what to do. If she has been a part of the creation of everything, Wisdom can give us new insight into how we can work to renew and restore it. If she walks and works beside God, Wisdom can help us join in the things that God is doing to transform our creation.

While it is always a comfort to learn that we are not alone as we try to sort out how to live in this world, this is nonetheless a challenging word for us. If we take Wisdom seriously here, we must let go of our search for truth and knowledge and instead take up the path of wisdom. This path of wisdom steps back from the sensationalism of our world, turning off a news cycle that makes everything “breaking news” and chatters incessantly about nothingness rather than recognizing that silence might be the best response to tragedy or that we may have to a wait a bit before we know the real and true consequences of this moment.

This path of wisdom leads us to encounter people right where they are, listening carefully to their stories, sharing their suffering, and acting with them to bring change to their lives and our world. This path of wisdom shows us that knowledge is not everything but rather than knowledge invites us to a new way of life rooted and grounded in wisdom to sustain us and support us and upbuild all of creation. And this path of wisdom gives us opportunities to cry out with Wisdom’s voice “on the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads…, at the entrance of the portals,” to invite others to join us in this way that points to deep peace in our lives and in our world as we set aside the path of anxiety and take up the road of hope.

Wisdom challenges us to put our knowledge and experience together in context so that we can share a new and different way of life and living with our world, not bound by any the expectations of the past or the institutions of the present but unbound to imagine a new and different way, to discern what God is doing and open ourselves to the creative possibilities of God’s voice of wisdom here and now. Ultimately, Wisdom is one of the great gifts of the triune God we celebrate today, a gift that comes from all three persons, initiated by our Divine Parent, lived out in our world in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and fulfilled in power and glory again and again in our lives and in our world by the power of the Holy Spirit. So Wisdom invites us to join in deep and great rejoicing, celebrating the depth and breadth of what God has created, delighting in the wonder of the whole world which God has redeemed, and giving thanks and praise to the one source of all good things, of all wisdom, which sustains every day.

So may wisdom’s path unfold before us, showing us the fullness of God’s gifts, opening us to the abundance of God’s grace, and helping us to rejoice anew in the gifts of our Triune God, now and always. Alleluia! Amen.

The Capable Wife and Strong Woman

September 23, 2012 By Andy James

a sermon on Proverbs 31:10-31 for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time
preached on September 23, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

I suspect you might call it a unique occupational hazard: anytime I walk into a church service, whether it be for Sunday morning worship or for a special occasion like a wedding or a funeral, I immediately spend a few minutes analyzing the bulletin. This summer I did this a lot—during my sabbatical, I managed to make it to some sort of worship service every Sunday except for one! I read through the bulletin partly for practical reasons: I like to know what is ahead in the service and what to expect in this different context, because I feel more free to worship when I know what is coming up. But part of this could also be called “morbid curiosity.” What hymns have been chosen for the day? How are they related to the scripture reading? What are the scripture readings? Is the pastor following the lectionary? Will the pastor confront a difficult text, or will she stick to the easy way out?

Now whenever I walk into a wedding and see Proverbs 31, our text for this morning, listed as the text for the day, I start to get a bit worried. I begin by wondering who picked the text, the pastor or the couple. But then I start to ponder what the pastor might say or do with these words. Is he—and it is almost always a he when this text shows up at a wedding!—going to use this text to encourage the couple to embrace traditional gender roles in the marriage? Is he going to tell the woman that she needs to pay very close attention to these words as they begin life together? Or is he going to congratulate the man on choosing a woman who is so perfect in this regard because she can cook, clean, and sew as the Bible intends?

This may seem a bit unlikely, but trust me, all of this—and far worse!—has happened! Some readers of this passage suggest that it simply promotes a return to days of old, with women remaining at home to sew and knit, then take their wares to town to sell, among other practices. One Presbyterian minister, Matthew Henry, suggested in the eighteenth century,

This is the description of a virtuous woman of those days, but the general outlines equally suit every age and nation….
This description let all women daily study, who desire to be truly beloved and respected, useful and honourable.

But even more recently, a commentator suggests that a virtuous woman says to her husband through her actions,

Dear, I’m going to town but I don’t need any money because I’m taking some of the fine linen which I have made and will trade it in for some items of food which you will really enjoy.

Is the point of the Bible really to talk about how a woman is to please her husband with little or no regard for how he should treat her? I for one surely hope not!

When we who tend to think a bit differently about these things come upon a text like this, we so often prefer just to leave it alone. We pass off interpretation of these texts to these sorts of readers who promote what at best can be considered an old-fashioned perspective and at worst is an encouragement for women to be seen as second-class human beings entitled to far less than men. However, I think we sometimes need to confront these sorts of bad interpretations head-on and offer something else. We could spend hours dismantling the cultural gender stereotypes and historical concerns that are a part of so many readings of this text, but today I want to lift up three things that can help us see these words differently.

First, the opening line: “A capable wife,” our translation reads—but is that really the best translation? It’s a nice parallel with the husband in the next verse, but an equally good translation of the original Hebrew can be a “strong woman,” a “woman of worth,” a “warriorlike woman.” (Kathleen O’Connor, “Exegetical Perspective on Proverbs 31:10-31,” Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 4, 75) This strong, worthy, warriorlike woman is quite likely—but not necessarily—a capable wife, and she certainly does not exist solely to serve her husband’s every need, whim, and desire.

Once we start to see this “capable wife” a little more clearly as the “strong woman” that she is, we need to step back and put this text in its broader context. So the second thing we must recognize is that Proverbs 31 does not stand on its own—it serves as the conclusion of a book of wisdom sayings. Several times earlier in the book, Wisdom itself has been portrayed as a woman, and in the broader context of the book, it makes as much sense as anything that this concluding poem simply lifts up this woman Wisdom once again, pointing us to the way of life that emerges from the guidance of Wisdom. The poet is clearly out to make a poetic, not overly realistic, statement here—in the Hebrew, these twenty-two verses form an acrostic poem, with each line beginning with the next consecutive letter of the alphabet. The resulting poetry, then, seems to suggest a lot less about the behavior of a wife standing subordinate to her husband and fulfilling his every whim and desire and a lot more about the benefits for anyone who lives in the way of wisdom—anyone who makes a lifelong, “full-fledged commitment akin to the decision to choose a partner for life.” (O’Connor, 77) What a fitting conclusion to a book that has lifted up the ways of Wisdom from its very beginning—and what a wonderful change it is for even this ancient text to suggest that the model for this kind of Wisdom might actually be a woman!

Finally, this poem can serve as helpful instruction against the kind of attitudes that pervade those old-fashioned interpretations of this text that I read earlier. It can remind us of the countless faithful women who are lifted up throughout the Bible, like those we sang about in our last hymn, who stand with the strong woman Wisdom of Proverbs as examples of the kind of life all of us, male and female, are called and invited to live.

These women are far more than capable wives. They are brave in the face of violence that threatens them, their families, and their communities. They take decisive and hopeful action when there seems to be no way out. They stand up to bigoted men and oppressive systems—anyone who suggests that they are anything less than human. They show the kind of hospitality needed to make space for new and different things to take hold. And they share the kinds of good news that come from an empty tomb, even when no one else dares to speak up.

While there remain plenty of less-than favorable words about women in the Bible, these faithful women, marked especially by the strong woman Wisdom of Proverbs, open the way to a different way of thinking about women in the life of the church and our world, not living as second-class citizens or left only to be “capable wives” but rather to be welcomed as full embodiments of God’s justice, love, and grace for all humanity and full bearers of God’s image in their own lives each and every day. Those places in the Bible and in history where we see something different are quite likely to be reflections of the culture of the time rather than of God’s way of life with humanity, and we should be proud to keep working toward fully embodying the call of the apostle Paul:

There is no longer Jew or Greek,
there is no longer slave or free,
there is no longer male and female;
for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

So may all of us, men and women alike, be like the capable wife and strong woman of Proverbs, enjoying the benefits of Wisdom in our lives and our world:

living in trustworthiness and hope,
doing good and not harm each and every day,
working fairly and productively for justice and peace for all creation,
making good investments of our time, talent, and labor,
strengthening ourselves for the sake of others,
keeping our lamps burning for safety through the night,
offering a hand to all who are in need so that all might be safe and fulfilled,
being a productive partner in life and work,
speaking wisdom and kindness in all our words,
and living in the happiness of God each and every day.

So may the Wisdom of God come to dwell more fully in us each and every day until she comes to dwell with us forever. Amen.

Wisdom for Our World

September 16, 2012 By Andy James

a sermon on Proverbs 1:20-33 for the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B
preached on September 16, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

We know more about our world today than ever before. Scientists are discovering things about our universe that seemed unimaginable even a hundred years ago. The giant retailer Wal-Mart handles more than 1 million transactions every hour, and the resulting databases contain 167 times more information than the Library of Congress. In 2010, The Economist magazine reported that Google processed as much information in five hours as the US Postal Service handles in a year’s worth of letters, and I suspect that the information available on the Internet has only grown larger since then. With the right equipment and a bit of expertise, we can turn to a computer or smartphone and get an almost immediate answer to nearly any question. Knowledge is everywhere and more accessible than ever before—and as the old saying goes, knowledge is power.

Yet something seems a bit strange these days. While we know more than we have ever known before, our ability and capacity to process that information hasn’t changed quite so fast. So I think there is some sort of distinction between knowledge and wisdom, maybe that knowledge is all the “stuff” we know, and wisdom is how we sort out all that information to make our world a better and more faithful place. So in this day and age, when we have more knowledge than ever before, we don’t necessarily have any more wisdom than we did, partly just because we are reasonably struggling with how to process all this information but also because we ignore the incredible gift of wisdom that we need to understand it all.

Our reading from Proverbs this morning offers us a powerful description of this wisdom and challenges us to seek it in new and varied ways amidst all the knowledge of our world. Here, Wisdom is not just a tangible thing but a person, depicted as a woman who can cry out on the street and raise her voice in the square. Wisdom doesn’t just speak in the quiet corners of the believer’s heart or even in the beautiful sanctuary of the faithful, but she offers her challenge to the world at the busiest corner and at the entrance of the city so that everyone can hear her. Her words call out to everyone:

How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?

Wisdom demands to be heard. She alone can guide us through the challenges of sorting through our extensive knowledge amidst our quickly-changing world. She alone can offer us thoughts and words and actions that bring us transformation and possibility and hope.

Yet too often, Wisdom says, people have ignored her call to a different way. She has cried out, and so many have refused. She has offered a hand, and no one reached out. She has spoken generous advice and counsel, but it has been ignored. Instead, people have trusted themselves and missed the opportunities and possibilities that she offers.

Since people have stopped listening, Wisdom has nothing to do but simply sit back and wait and watch.

I will laugh at your calamity;
I will mock when panic strikes you…
They will call upon me, but I will not answer;
they will seek me diligently, but will not find me.

She hasn’t really turned against anyone but now simply leaves us to our own devices and lets us face the consequences of our actions instead of continuing the seemingly impossible battle to bring us back around.

These words from Proverbs are a stinging indictment of those who ignore Wisdom in all its forms, but we’re in church, so they surely don’t apply to us, right? Well, I’m not so sure. Amidst all the knowledge of our days, we so often think that we can sort out the best option for ourselves, without listening to the guidance of anyone or anything else. This is the core of the challenge Wisdom offers us here: she cries out in the streets, in the squares, at the busiest corner, at the city gate so that we might not just listen to ourselves but live in a different way and follow in a new path, recognizing that we don’t know everything and can’t figure it all out on our own. She longs for us to might make our relationships right and order our priorities as God intends. Her words set the tone for all that follows in the book of Proverbs—even the most quotable words offered here should impart this kind of knowledge and hope. She challenges us not to use our knowledge in the service of power but rather in the service of God and neighbor (Kenneth H. Carter, Jr., “Pastoral Perspective on Proverbs 1:20-33,” Feasting on the Word, Year B Volume 4).

Wisdom is less concerned about what we say than about how we live. She seems to care less about our words that directly acknowledge God and more about how we use the many gifts that God has given us. She cares less about the particulars of religious practice and more about how we relate to God and creation. She calls for “the fear of the Lord,” not because we should shake in our boots out of worry about what God might do to us but so that we can offer righteous living that shows awe, respect, and obedience. As commentator Kathleen O’Connor puts it,

People who fear the Lord have their feet planted on the ground, see around them truthfully, and live in harmony with God and world. (“Exegetical Perspective on Proverbs 1:20-33,” Feasting on the Word, Year B Volume 4)

And most of all, amidst this “fear of the Lord,” Wisdom says that we don’t—and can’t!—have all the answers! She says that we don’t need answers to the questions of life so much as we need guidance to find and live in this new way, and so she promises us exactly that if we will just listen to her.

So how can we follow in this way of Wisdom? How do we respond to her cries to listen and act? What might this new way look like in our world of information overload, where we so often struggle to make sense of even the most basic things as they become more complicated and wonder how we are to respond in the face of such changing ways?

First, I think we must listen for the guidance of Wisdom amidst all the words of our world. Sometimes Wisdom speaks loud and clear, making it impossible to miss where we should or should not go. But just as often, we are pulled in many different directions, and the best option is not so obvious. And so Wisdom demands that we listen for God’s voice amidst the din of the world, in the words of scripture, in the voices of others who walk this path of wisdom with us, even in the still, small voice of something new rising up with each one of us.

But Wisdom also demands that we not just leave things there. She says that we have to make that new way of life real and clear and here and now. She calls us to participate in her ways of listening and living that affirm anyone who will step up and join in. And so she calls us to set aside the power and comfort that we find in knowledge and instead trust in the confident gift of a new way of life from God. With this, she offers us the gifts of true security, trust, and freedom from fear. When we listen to and make Wisdom’s way of life real in our lives, the relationship that emerges opens us to a pathway of grace and hope. As Kathleen O’Connor puts it:

She will not merely lead [us], but will live with [us], reveal her thoughts to [us], be in kinship with [us]. She will accompany [us] and keep [us] secure.

And so Wisdom challenges us to walk in this new way and to trust in this new path, not by trusting ourselves or the knowledge that we can accumulate in this world but rather by trusting God and the possibilities of all that God gives us so that we can set aside all our fears and embrace our wildest dreams as we join in God’s work of making all things new.

Friends, may the Wisdom of God be real among us and show us the way to new life, now and always. Amen.