Sermon: The Way of Wisdom

“THE WAY OF WISDOM”
Proverbs 1:22-33
Faith United
September 17, 2006


The voice of Wisdom speaks,
in Chapter 8 of Proverbs, verses 22-36:
“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work;
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up, at the first,
before the beginning
of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth
when there were no springs abounding with water
Before the mountains had been shaped
before the hills, I was brought forth—
When he had not yet made earth and fields
or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens
I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
When he assigned to the sea its limit
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
When he marked out the foundations of the earth
then I was beside him, like a master worker
And I was his daily delight
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race
And now, my children, listen to me:
Happy are those who keep my ways
hear instruction and be wise,
and do not neglect it,
Happy is the one who listens to me
watching daily at my gates
waiting beside my doors.
For whoever finds me finds life
and obtains favor from the Lord
but those who miss me injure themselves
all who hate me love death.”

Does any of that sound familiar?
It reminded me of the Gospel of John, ch. 1:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God
And the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him
And without him not one thing came into being
What has come into being in him was life,
the life was the light of all people
The light shines in the darkness
and the darkness did not overcome it.”

The Word was in the beginning with God. alll things came into being through that Word . and what came into being was life. Wisdom, according to Proverbs, was also in the beginning with God, there at creation. The creation of Wisdom was the first of God’s acts;
before there were springs of water, before there were depths --no earth, no fields, no soil --
Wisdom was there, when the heavens were made, when the skies were formed and the seas given its boundaries….
There Wisdom was beside God,
like a master worker
daily God’s delight,
dancing and rejoicing….
So, who is Wisdom?
Well, when I decided to preach on this passage, I don’t think I realized what I was getting into.
This is too huge a subject for just one sermon, so consider this only a brief introduction.
Another reason I felt intimidated by this passage is because of its connotations.
Wisdom is the English translation of the Hebrew word, “Chokmah,” or the Greek word, Sophia….
Some of you may remember, back in 1993, there was huge, nasty controversy over a women’s conference in Minnesota that focused a lot on Wisdom, or Sophia. Some national officers of the United Methodist Women were there, some Presbyertians-- many from other mainline churches were there-- and they returned homefrom that conference to a firestorm. I wasn't there, so I don't know the particulars of what happened, but I saw the fallout. The media got ahold of this conference and made it out to be some sort of pagan festival that people were worshipping a goddess named Sophia. It was plastered all over the papers and the news. Churches threatened to pull their support of United Methodist Women and their Presbyterian sisters, just because these women attended this conference.
I was in my first year of full-time ministry out of seminary serving way out in the middle of nowhere in Guide Rock, Nebraska. At the time, I'd only heard about this controversy via the media, and it was far removed from life in a little town of just 200 people…
You know how the media can crucify people and events …
So to many in the Church, the very word “Sophia” is a frightening thing and conjures up only the madness of that time in the mainline church. But Sophia is the Greek word for Wisdom, which if you start looking, is everywhere in the Bible. In Proverbs 1, she is crying out in the streets, at the gates of the city where prophets speak, where prostitutes call to potential customers. In other words, she is where the action is, where all of life is. Wisdom is in the center of life, in the everyday-ness, calling out for people to listen. Nobody can claim that he or she has not heard Wisdom’s voice or that they did not know, for she is everywhere, calling to all God’s people.
Wisdom, or Sophia, is anything but new…but she hasn’t been talked about much for a long time and lately that is changing…Wisdom literature in the Bible began this feminine reference to Sophia between 33 B.C. and 4 A.D. --within the decades leading up to Jesus’ birth. Joyce Rupp, who is a Christian spirituality author writes that there are only 4 other figures who are mentioned more than Sophia in the Old Testament: and those are Yahweh, Moses, David and Job.
That’s all..
So how come we’ve never heard of her?? How come she’s been so well-hidden?
Looking further into the subject, I learned that Sophia was a key figure in the early church --the church during the first two centuries after Jesus’ death and resurrection. At the same time, there were many Greek and Egyptian cults that prayed to pagan goddesses. The early church was afraid that people would get Sophia mixed up with the goddesses of the pagans. Also, there were other religions that were considered heresy at the time, and the church didn’t want to be confused with those heresies.
The Jewish philosopher named Philo, who lived during the first century, wrote a lot about Sophia… he wrote that Yahweh created Sophia first and then God created Logos, The Word, as a balancing companion to Sophia. In other words, God created male and female manifestations
of spirit, of word… and Philo envisioned those two working together in shaping creation:
Sophia, the feminine manifestation of God, and the Logos, or Word, the masculine manifestation of God, whom we believe came into physical incarnation in the person of Jesus
So, essentially, Sophia or Wisdom was hidden, or thrown out because as the Early Church was forming in those first few centuries, it was trying to distinguish itself from the pagan cults around it, and leaders of the Church were afraid that the teachings about Sophia would make them resemble some elements of pagan heresies. As such fears grew through Church history, good things were thrown out, or buried away in the attic of history. It is nothing short of miraculous that the writings in the voice of Wisdom were saved in the books of Proverbs, because much of Proverbs has a negative attitude toward women. But the voice of Wisdom promises true life for all those who seek her and follow her ways. Chapter 3 of Proverbs says:
“My child, do not forget my teaching
but let your heart keep my commandments
for length of days and years of life and abundant welfare
they will give you.”
Verse 15 of chapter 3:
“She is more precious than jewels
and nothing you desire can compare with her.”
Those are words that have been used in reference to Jesus…

Verse 18: “she is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her,
those who hold her fast are called happy.”

In my Bible, the Oxford Study Bible in the New Revised Standard Version, it has books in the middle of the Testaments called the Apocrapha, which means “things that are hidden.”
These books are still a part of the Roman Catholic Bible . Many of them were written during the same time as the books of the Bible that we’re more familiar with. For the first 1500 years, they were a part of the whole Bible, until the Protestant Reformation when these books were taken out of the Protestant bibles. There are still other books that are resurfacing, that were literally buried by monks centuries ago to keep them safe from those who would burn them, and are only in the past few decades coming to our attention. Books like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel of Thomas ...
But in the Apocrapha, which is still an accepted group of books in the Roman Catholic Church, there is still more about Wisdom or Sophia. In Chapter 10 of the Wisdom of Solomon,
Wisdom is described as being there at the creation; in the beginning, when man and woman was first formed. When the first murder was committed. At the tower of Babel. Wisdom was with all those whom we know about --Abraham, Jacob, the Israelites, Moses, and the people wandering in the wilderness. She gave guidance, it says. She gave life and protection and commandments. She was there with Joseph, She was in the burning bush that spoke to Moses.
She guided the people in a flame by night and a cloud by day….
So who is She?
Who is Wisdom?
Like I said, I can’t possibly do justice to the subject in one sermon, but once you start digging, you find many, many treasures; as is true any time you start digging deeper into the vast abundance of God.
Why does Sophia make people so nervous? Is it because we’re so used to images of God as an old white headed, long bearded man in a tunic? Think of the people in your life that you think of as wise. People whom you trust to guide you in life, give you help in finding your way.
Perhaps it was a grandfather or grandmother, or aunt or uncle or family friend. The people whom I trust the most as wise are people who have been there, been through it, who know what pain and struggle is and yet have come out the other side knowing a whole lot more about hope and God. Some of them are male, and some of them are female. I am a woman, but I am a lot like my father. I share a lot of characteristics with my Dad (and trust me, I didn’t always want to acknowledge that!) I’ve taken the best of both of my parents , male and female, mother and father, and together they made me. They are a huge part of who I am, for better and worse.
Girls need strong women in their lives to help them on their way, and we also benefit from the perspective of men. Boys need strong and good male role models in their lives, but they also need the influence of a strong female presence. We all need both in order to be whole and healthy, and obviously we don’t always get it from our parents, but from the many people God puts in our lives to help shape us into who we are. So why would God be any less?
I am not in any way saying that God is not Father but that God is more than Father. And the introduction of Holy Wisdom or Sophia reveals some of that to us. Jesus-- according to Paul in Corinthians-- Jesus is the Wisdom of God. So many people believe that the Word in John and Wisdom in Proverbs are two parts of the same thing, working together, balancing each other. Because God created us all in God’s image. God created us male and female.
Someone once asked me, if God created us male and female, and God created us in God’s image, how can God just be male? Or, this woman asked, if God is male, how can I be made in God’s image?
And it’s true that for many centuries, people believed that only men were made in the image of God, since God was believed to be male. What we believe about God powerfully impacts what we believe about each other, after all…. and how we see the world.
Some of us know the hard way that talking about God can be a very dangerous thing
Wars are fought over it. Churches can be split over it, the media can destroy people’s lives over the subject. But Wisdom in Proverbs 1 cries out in the midst of life, in the midst of real life, everyday life,
“How long, o simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing?
And fools hate knowledge?
I will pour out my thoughts to you
I will make my words known to you…”

In Chapter 8, Wisdom calls on the heights, beside the way at the crossroads….
Have you ever been at a crossroads? That place where you know you can’t keep going the way you’ve been going or it’ll kill you, and yet there are still so many possibilities in front of you, how do you know where to go? How do you know which turn to take? How do you keep from making another mistake?
Wisdom, a mouthpiece for God, a voice for God, stands at the crossroads, calling to us, seeking to guide us in the way that God wants us to go; luring, loving, inviting, seeking, and calling.... but if we keep shutting the voice of wisdom out, we’ll only have ourselves to blame. If we choose to not seek knowledge, to not look diligently for God, and trust God to direct our paths, than we will not find life… the life that comes in seeking out Wisdom with everything we’ve got,
like the treasure hidden in a field,
like the pearl of great price.
Wisdom calls us to seek God, to risk everything in that search, to risk being changed and redeemed, to risk growing beyond what we can imagine, to discover the treasures of life that God keeps on revealing to us if only we’ll listen….
If you read much of the literature that speaks of Sophia or Wisdom, you can hear the echoes of Jesus. You can see the influence of this mysterious Wisdom on the one we call the Word of God in the flesh. God is so much more than we can imagine -- it helps to have a poet’s heart when speaking of the things of God. We will never get anywhere near the end of the riches of God and all there is to know and discover of God. Documents written at the same time as the Gospels are still being unearthed, revealing to us simply that there is always so much more … when it comes to God’s wisdom.

The Wisdom of Solomon Chapter 7: 24-30:
“For wisdom is more mobile than any motion
because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates
all things.
For she is a breath of the power of God
and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty;
therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her.
For she is a reflection of eternal light
a spotless mirror of the working of God,
and an image of his goodness.
Although she is but one, she can do all things,
and while remaining in herself, she renews all things;
in every generation she passes into holy souls
and makes them friends of God and prophets;
for God loves nothing so much as
the person who lives with wisdom.
She is more beautiful than the sun,
and excels every constellation of the stars.
Compared with the light she is found to be superior
for it is succeeded by the night,
but against wisdom evil does not prevail….”

And I would add… Thanks be to God.