Holy Wisdom
A Sermon by the Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams on the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (B), August 15, 2021.
Proverbs 9:1-6; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58
Wisdom has built her house…she has set her table…Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed...lay aside immaturity and live (Proverbs 9:1-6).
Since the beginning of time, people have contemplated the mysteries of life, the vastness of the cosmos, and how we are meant to live this life in relationship with others. Where do we fit in the order of things? Who are we in relationship to God? What’s the right way to live? How am I supposed to treat others? In short, how do I gain wisdom?
Christianity has a very interesting wisdom tradition that is rooted in our Judaic heritage. In today’s reading from Proverbs we get a glimpse of that tradition.
Wisdom has built her house…
she has also set her table…
Come eat my bread and drink the wine I have mixed.
Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.
Wisdom is personified as a woman, a woman who is grounded, whose house is on a firm foundation. She is a gracious hostess, inviting everyone to a banquet, a delightful feast, a feast of delicious food and wine, where people come together to seek insight. This sounds a lot like church! The Eucharistic feast that we are invited to every Sunday. And the early Church fathers, the theologians who codified Christianity in the first 5 centuries after Jesus walked the earth, all had the same thought. That Wisdom’s banquet was like the Eucharist. And they drew a direct connection between Lady Wisdom in the Old Testament and Jesus Christ in the New. In fact our reading from Proverbs was read in the early Eastern Church on Maundy Thursday, the night when we remember Jesus’ last supper with his disciples when he said “take eat this is my body given for you and took the cup of wine and said, this is my blood of the new covenant.” And Wisdom’s invitation to “eat my bread and drink my wine” in the Old Testament is very similar to Jesus’ invitation in the Gospel of John today. Jesus was always inviting people to table fellowship during his ministry. Being in conversation with him during an intimate meal gave them insight into the nature of God and the nature of what it means to be human, to be in right relationship to God, to our fellow human beings and to ourselves. Jesus is the very embodiment of wisdom and by following him on his Way, the way of prayer, worship, community-building and service teaches us wisdom.
Parts of the New Testament are heavily influenced by the wisdom tradition of the Old Testament. The Gospel of John, the Letter to the Hebrews and Colossians all use wisdom language in the way that they convey the truth about Christ. We are most familiar with the prologue to John that we hear on Christmas Eve, the night when we reflect on Jesus’ birth into the world, but also his life with God since before time and forever. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The writer of John took a description of Wisdom’s work with God “in the beginning” that appears earlier in Proverbs and reimagined it as the Word’s work with God “in the beginning”. John was trying to convey that Jesus was with God in the never-ending creative process even before the beginning of time.
As Christians, our search for wisdom is not theoretical. It is relational. Lady Wisdom doesn’t’ live in her head and neither did Jesus. Gaining wisdom is less about belief and more about practice. Wisdom is embodied, grounded. That’s what the Incarnation was about. Christ, the Wisdom from on high, the Word through whom God created all things, coming and being with us “in the flesh.” When we make decisions as followers of Jesus, we use our intellect, but we also pray about the impact on ourselves and the people around us. We ask what God would have us to do. Humility is a big part of wisdom. Recognizing that we need God’s help and we need the help of other people as we discern a wise path forward.
The personification of Holy Wisdom is important for a lot of reasons. Wisdom gives us a feminine image identified with Christ that is deeply rooted in the oldest tradition of the Church, an image that got obscured over the years in the Western Church. We love our familiar, masculine imagery for God, but it’s also important to have feminine language.
A lot of research, thought and prayer has gone into a recovery mission in the last few years to help us reclaim Holy Wisdom imagery in worship. One result of that exciting work is an additional resource developed by the Standing Liturgical Commission of the Episcopal Church called Enriching our Worship. Enriching our Worship is not meant to take the place of the Book of Common Prayer liturgies, but to add to them, to give us additional metaphors for God. In EOW Eucharistic Prayer 3 (that we are using at the 10:30 service today) we ask God to” bring us to feast at the banquet prepared from the foundation of the world” and we praise God “through Jesus Christ your eternal Word, the Wisdom from on high by whom you created all things.” Male and female. And having both is important because it reminds us that God is ultimate mystery and that no language can adequately name God, whether male or female. Expanding our vocabulary challenges us to go deeper in our experience of God.
And it reminds us that Jesus’ Way is the Way of Wisdom. We come together to participate in the Eucharistic Banquet and to reflect on our need to always grow in wisdom. We live in exceptionally challenging times and seeking insight into how we can live as God wants us to live and how we are to treat other people is vitally important. God never gives up on us. Holy Wisdom has issued her invitation over and over again, throughout the ages, the same invitation that Jesus gives us today. “Come, eat my bread and drink the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”