Will Willimon, Methodist bishop, teacher and Chaplain at Duke University, described the book of Proverbs as rather a dull book of instructions for young men, saying, “I don’t preach much from Proverbs, I don’t like the book of Proverbs. You know, pick up your socks, take precautions on dates, get up early, don’t drink too much – It’s like being on a long road trip with your mother!” I don’t entirely agree with him, but his analogy is not a bad one -- a road trip with your mother. Mother, because Wisdom is personified in the Bible as Lady Wisdom, or her Greek name, Sophia. There is much we can learn from Lady Wisdom of deep value. It is not book learning, or pop-psychology learning, but deep understanding that Lady Wisdom brings.
What wisdom is not – not smarts – not technical advanced engineering degrees advising Top Hats, and Junk Shots and Top Kills when you can’t stop an oil spill. Wisdom says to keep it simple and balanced from the start. "If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully, I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit." Leviticus 26:3-4
Smarts may tell us to avoid all suffering any way we can, to use our technology and creativity to escape it, to anesthetize our feelings and the possibility for real deep human connections with television, food, Facebook, pornography, alcohol – stuff it down, cover it over, pretty it up, deny it. Wisdom says sometimes suffering is a good and necessary thing. Sometimes, as in words Wisdom inspired in the Apostle Paul, we should even “boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Romans 5:3-5.
Smarts tells us there are three pillars (or 4 or 8 depending on your financial advisor) to financial security: wealth creation, insurance, and tax planning for now and after you are gone. Wisdom says, “Honor the LORD with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will be bursting with wine, ” Proverbs 3: 9-10 and “A generous person will be enriched; and one who gives water will get water.” Proverbs 11:25.
Smarts tells us that the goals of life are to be safe and happy, happy and safe. Wisdom understands that “Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in grief.” Proverbs 14:13
Smarts tells us youth is beauty and brings us lifts, and tucks, and botox and dyes and ointments to hold onto it or imitate it as long as we can. And Wisdom’s laugh lines wrinkle as she winks and says, “Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is gained in a righteous life.” Proverbs 16:31.
Smarts tells us that the way to get ahead at work is to cut corners, and keep our ethics for Sundays and personal relationships, but not our Monday to Friday lives. Wisdom knows that “the person of integrity walks securely, but the one who takes crooked paths will be found out.” Proverbs 10:9
Who is this Wisdom, this one who does not glory in smarts gained from books studied in school but who is able and willing and waiting to school us in the ways of God? Proverbs 8 introduces Wisdom to us in a kind of third creation story, or a commentary or amplification of the first two. You remember the first story in Genesis of the God who brings the created order by combining Speaker, Breath and Word. Or the second story of the God who plays in the mud, gets God’s hands dirty, breathes into the human, a God who seems more experimental, playful, who likes to walk in the garden in the cool of the evening.
And then this story from Proverbs 8. This Wisdom who observes God in the creative adventure and rejoices and gives and receives delight. But she is not just an observer. She was there before creation, right beside God in the project as a master worker. A shared creative endeavor full of joy and moments of “aha” and a mutuality of delight, delight right there at the start of the whole project.
Perhaps that is why this is one of our texts for Trinity Sunday. I won’t make this a sermon on the doctrine of the trinity. I’m not fond of doctrinal sermons, probably because I lack adequate theological depth to sustain a full sermon on a doctrinal matter like the meaning of the Trinity. But I will share what I find most helpful about Trinitarian thinking. It is the focus on the communion, the interrelationship, the communality of God in God’s own Triune life. God has not just created a world of communion, interdependence, a world made up of a deep web of connections for us – but has created that world out of God’s own experience in the Triune Life of God. The life of our Triune God is marked by mutuality, of being lover and beloved, of giving and receiving. Thus, making us in God’s image includes creating at the very core of our humanity the glorious interdependence that is sourced in the Triune God. A God-in-relationship who creates a world-in-relationship and delights in it.
So Proverbs 8 reminds us that God is not alone even in the first act of creation – the model for divine creative activity is not so much pioneer as partner. Not our great American myth of the Western pioneering spirit – not Neil Armstrong with his one step as if it came from his own efforts alone -- but everybody else on the mission, mission- control, and the engineers and the catering service and the first dreamers, Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh and Orville and Wilbur Wright and DaVinci’s dreams of flying machines and even the first little sparrow that first bright day with her wings spread to the sun, even the air that resists them, and the gravity that draws them to earth, and the forces of physics that release them into orbit but do not fling them into the deep heart of the universe – but hug them in close orbit. Perfection does not belong just to Halladay, but Chooch and Doobey, Castro and Jamie, and the guy who washes the uniforms and the woman who cleans the locker room, the whole extended team. Delight and Connection. Discovery and Community. Creation and communion.
Where do we seek this Lady Wisdom? This partner of the divine? Where can she be found? She is calling from on the heights, beside the way, from the mountaintops. We like her up there. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself” are so easy to hear in those mountain top times, especially if we spend them up there alone. Only my thoughts, my prayers, my stars for company. It is easy to hear Wisdom in that clear air.
But our text today is not so much about our seeking Wisdom – but about Wisdom seeking after us – she is the seeker and we are the sought. And she is intrusive, just like the mother on the road trip. Not content to wait up there on the mountaintop so we might meet her in times of deep contemplation, she comes after us. Seeking Wisdom comes to the crossroads where we do our business – right out there in our public places she would have us listen to her voice. Seeking Wisdom searches out the places in our cities where we are called to do justice and cries out to us there. Seeking Wisdom comes after us even to the doors of our homes and calls in to us.
She is insistent and intrusive and will be heard, because she rejoices in creation, she delights in us and knows she holds out for us the way of life, the way of love, the way of interdependence and mutuality – communion and community with the good Earth which she tended as a master worker, communion and community with one another, the human community in which she delights and has delighted from the first day, and communion and community even with our Triune God.
Seeking Wisdom – she is calling to us – let us open our ears and listen!