17th Sunday after Pentecost

 

Proverbs 1:7-8, 20-27; 8:22-36; 9:7-12

So we are back for week 2 of our Season of Women.  And I unfortunately didn’t give myself any easier of a task than I did last week.  Because this week we are reading from Proverbs and we are studying Lady Wisdom, also known as Woman Wisdom or Holy Wisdom.  This section we read from today spans the first 9 chapter of the book of Proverbs.  And is constructed as a sort of a teaching tool, a way for a mother and father (who are perhaps dying) to pass on knowledge to their young son.  It represents the basic urge still present in all of us to ensure that knowledge and right living are passed on to the next generation.  And the book of this book is old, really old, more than 3000 years old, so late bronze age humanity, before invention of iron tools, sailing ships, or horseback riding, and only shortly after the wheel and importantly for us durable writing systems, which also begs the question, which actually came first the Proverbs or the ability to write them down for us find?  But what is amazing to me is that something written at the actual dawn of civilization still carries so much knowledge and wisdom that is still relevant for us today, that for all that the experience of humanity has changed, maybe we’ve stayed more the same than we think.  And there is much that we can still learn from this enigmatic figure.  So Lady Wisdom returns to us today, to teach yet another generation the divine truths she holds.

But as we continue our series on Women Leaders in the Bible, this particular woman presents a uniquely difficult task because well, she not actually even a woman.  She isn’t a historical figure or even a character in a narrative story like we will find later with Ruth, Esther & Hannah.  Instead Lady Wisdom is more of a literary devise or a metaphor.  She is a lens through which we can better understand our world.  And throughout history she has rarely been given her due.   Some material in Proverbs and even in what we heard today was pretty blatantly stolen from other antient Mesopotamian and Egyptian mythology.  Much was probably based on older folk tales and legends, oral history told in tents and around campfires.  Lady Wisdom may even have been worshiped as a goddess at various times during ancient Israel’s early struggles with monotheism.  And even much later in various times throughout the history of Judaism and Christianity, she has played various different roles and been placed in different boxes.  Rabbinic Judaism has tended to equate personified Holy Wisdom with the Torah.  Early Christianity tied her role to Jesus, seeing the first Chapter of John which states “In the Beginning was the Word” as a restatement of what we heard in Proverbs 8, giving Jesus her role.  Because well the church has never been shy about giving men credit for women’s work.  Even in the last century or so, she has experienced a bit of a resurgence as feminist theologians have latched on to her as they scour the bible for more feminine aspects of God.   But despite all that she is perfectly capable of standing on her own as a teacher and messenger we can still learn from her and follow her path.

Now I figured you didn’t all want to sit here for a half hour while we read a whole 9 chapters out of the bible so I selected just a few highlights of the story, for us today which is set up largely as a show down between Wisdom and Folly both personified as women.  And even from the very beginning we can sense Lady Wisdom’s frustration “Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:”  And yet the foolish ignore her.  To their own demise.  Everyone must face a choice do you to listen and follow wisdom or folly?  And according to the Bible the choice is clear.  Though perhaps hard at first, listening to Wisdom leads to favor, rejoicing and fruitful years on your life.  Whereas failure to head the calls of Wisdom ultimately leads to calamity, death, destruction and pain.  Wisdom, the right path is right there for the taking, but it is hard to convince people to follow it.  Then and today.

But there is still hope, because there are deep lessons we can learn from Lady Wisdom.  Chapter 8 tells us beautifully about the close and intimate relationship she has with the divine. “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.”  She has been there since the very beginning.  She been alongside God since the creation of the world.  And what does she do?  “I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.”  She rejoices.  She rejoices in everything.  Proverbs creates no illusion about the nature of humanity, there is no mistaking our sinful nature and stubbornness and penchant for poor choices.  And yet Divine Wisdom chooses to rejoice.   What a remarkable revelation, that the wise thing to do is rejoice.  The first relationship that God has with a created being is one of rejoicing, that our ultimate stance is to rejoice in the wonder of creation and delight in the whole human race.

What if we decided to do that?  What would it mean to rejoice first?  At a moment of challenge, at a difficult decision, when we are in search of divine wisdom.  What if decided to rejoice?  To find what is beautiful in God’s creation, in nature, in the human family, in what is right there around us and to lean into that?  What if we were to find ways to rejoice rather than looking for the negative.  And then to find ways to move forward from there.

Because then Lady Wisdom has more to teach us, she goes on to teach us another great lesson about personal accountability.  That everyone must choose for themselves.  People choose Wisdom or people choose folly and the consequences of it, and no one can choose it for them.  Chapter 9 tells us starkly “Whoever corrects a scoffer wins abuse; whoever rebukes the wicked gets hurt. A scoffer who is rebuked will only hate you; the wise, when rebuked, will love you.”  I feel this saying.  I feel this deep in my bones right now.  I bet a lot of you feel this too.  Yet it is the way of the world.  Ancient wisdom literally as old as civilization, you can only do what you can do.  You can only be who you are and live with wisdom and integrity no matter what others say or do.  Sometimes you can’t fix stupid.

And yet she tells us “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. If you are wise, you are wise for yourself; if you scoff, you alone will bear it.”  So we start here with ourselves, with the fear of the Lord, respecting God’s teachings and searching for relationship through Christ with the whole of the divine.  And we begin with rejoicing, with the Eucharist literally thanksgiving, where we give thanks and rejoice for all the Lord has done for us.  And then following Holy Wisdom we can move out from there, to spread the Wisdom of the Lord to all who are willing to hear.  Amen.