“Path of Wisdom”

Rev. Marion Millin

Readings : SONG of SONGS 2:8-13    MAT.11:16-19, 25-30            

I want to start off this reflection by focussing on the intriguing phrase Jesus uses “Wisdom is vindicated by her children.” - and what exactly is being alluded to there. The clue lies with the word ‘children’ which could also be a euphemism at that time for ‘learners’ or ‘disciples’. So by this word ‘wisdom’ does Jesus mean ‘knowledge’? In our modern world we do tend to equate the two.

But no, because then we hear of Jesus saying “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to children;” I suspect the word ‘wise’ here means ‘educated’ whereas Jesus’s disciples mostly didn’t fall into that bracket. They were just ordinary folks trying to survive a harsh world of food shortages and Roman oppression.

The next clue is that there was a major strand in Old Testament times called ‘the wisdom tradition’ which ran through prophetic literature and the Psalms, before being focussed in specific books labelled ‘Wisdom Literature’ like Proverbs and the Song of Solomon. Wisdom in Judaism was relational – a gift of God exercised in community with others – less to do with intellect and more to do with discernment evidenced in the conduct of daily life. These books written down by various sages over hundreds of years incorporated three strands – (i) village/folk wisdom characterised by short pithy statements often drawn from nature, (ii) bureaucratic wisdom on how to run things, and (iii) theological wisdom of deep reflection on controversial topics such as the personality of God and existential questions like “ If there is a God, why do such awful things happen?”

As we heard today in our Song of Songs reading, Wisdom literature often used images from creation, sometimes set in beautiful poetry, to highlight God’s caring involvement in the world. Jesus’s own imagery, for instance ‘the bird that falls’ and ‘consider the lilies of the field’, reflects this tradition. The Hebrew word for wisdom is Hokmah – in Greek it’s Sophia. Both are feminine gender words and this aspect came to be personified as one of the feminine faces of God found in Jewish sacred writings, with Ruah meaning ‘breath’ or ‘spirit’ being another well recognised divine attribute.

In Ancient Greece, a Sophist was a teacher who specialised in using the tools of philosophy and rhetoric – our word sophisticated comes from it too. In Judaism people upholding this tradition were often called “Wisdom’s children”. And modern theologians state that there are enough snippets left in the gospels to suggest that both John the Baptist and Jesus saw themselves as prophets or children of Wisdom-Sophia-God – And I would suggest that both deliberately acted out the imagery from Proverbs 8 where Wisdom is calling from the wayside and the town-square for insight and maturity in discerning the way to life. But Jesus goes one step further in picking up on Proverbs 9’s image of Wisdom preparing to host a feast, sending servants into the town to invite people to take time out from their busy lives to engage with ‘divine presence in the midst of life’ in a feasting where people will find themselves nurtured to 'live and walk in the way of insight’.

This directly parallels Jesus’s own imaging of God’s kingdom as being like a wedding feast or a banquet to which all are invited. The gospels also show how Jesus intentionally acted this out in his inclusive table fellowship. It’s as if he is modelling how God’s ‘domain or kingdom’ is, by calling people to relate to each other justly and graciously as loved brothers and sisters in God’s family.

Jesus certainly experienced himself at the core of his being as a child of God in the sense of being utterly beloved, as if by a tender father figure. He deliberately used the affectionate term Abba for ‘God’ to introduce a whole new understanding of the freely given loving nature of God as a ‘fatherly caring kindliness’. It would have been quite a shock to many of his listeners – this was not your usual patriarchal God where a child has to earn their parent’s love, nor your judgemental God needing to be placated with sacrifices. Indeed the only way to come to such an ‘Abba’ understanding of the Father is to see oneself like Jesus did as a beloved son/daughter, and God as a divine presence with us = God Immanuel, involved in the world not separate from it, and yearning for relationship based on mutual intimacy and familiar affection.

So what has all this to do with where we find ourselves in this pandemic world you may well be asking?! We are currently experiencing both a material and psyche-shattering time in history. I’m referring to psyche the Greek word for ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’. As we experience in an earthquake when the earth springs back from being bent under huge tensions, I am seeing new landscapes emerging.

Maybe as you cast your mind back over your life you can think of other earth shattering events– some will have been personal like the death of a loved one – I know the sudden death of my father in my last year of high school completely reframed my life not only in terms of borderline poverty but more so in terms of my time of wilderness searching. However this led to a deep sense of spirituality very different from orthodox Christianity aided coincidentally by two key books coming out in paperback version at the same time –  namely “Shaking of the Foundations” by Paul Tillich and “Honest to God” by the Bishop of Woolwich.

And of course there have also been community earth-shaking events in our lifetime. The oldest amongst us will have depression and wartime memories of a reshaping of society formerly dominated by class systems and colonial arrogance. And I suspect everyone here over the age of seventy can name exactly what they were doing when they heard President Kennedy had been assassinated. Perhaps if he had lived on there would have been no Vietnam War with its continuing repercussions in terms of PTSD in American and Australian former soldiers, effects of minefields and napalm gas in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Anyone over thirty years old can also recall the date 11 September 2000, when two jets flew into the twin towers in New York which in turn led to the Iraq War.

Now I am not saying that major world conflict is an inevitable outcome of this current earthshattering pandemic time but rather that long accepted value systems are being upended once again. Those who espouse oppression, power and might are being defeated by a tiny virus. Ordinary people are realising more and more that what is needed for healthy community living are value systems based on co-operation, care and respect for others and not those based on bullying or dominating force. And I very much see this as a factor in the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

However, there are some like the President of the US who are bewildered by this upturning and unable to cope. Perhaps he should pick up on the cryptic suggestion of the future president of actually opening that bible and reading it!  The problem then would become what would he read? So much of it is meaningless to our contemporary world or as American Professor of Theology Ben Witherington lll, states “A text without a context is just a pretext for what we want it to mean” (The Indelible Image p 41). In other words, without the proper context for understanding a biblical text, we can make it say whatever we want which is what more traditional style churches tend to do and is exactly what is bringing Christianity into disrepute.

We should always ask ourselves what the text meant to the people who were receiving it at the time it was written. And what meaning does it have, if any, for us today? How do we make sense of God in all this?  Which is where our church reflections and blogs, and the reading the books of informed scholars like Marcus Borg come in. But the majority of people don’t seem to have time or don’t want to engage with this way of insight or have lost sight of the path in this psyche-shattering time. However, there is certainly a growing spiritual and psychological hunger in our world. Carl Jung long maintained the two are linked. 

Surely our churches have a part to play in how this hunger gets effectively fed? As Karen was picking up on in her sermon last week, churches do so very much have a role to pay in helping people to gain a fresh sense of meaning and purpose as they move forward into an unknown anxious world.  And I know she has plans for a slightly different worshipping perspective which you can read about in this month’s In Touch. I take this opportunity to acknowledge once again the great ministry Karen is providing for our congregation here at Wembley Downs and especially the connecting leadership she has provided with the support of the Church Council and Pastoral Care team over these difficult few months.

 There is a treasure-trove of wisdom in the bible but there is also some pretty horrendous and alienating stuff. I have come to question whether slavishly following a lectionary does not in fact become too restrictive. There are reasons for having it in place including remembering as a teenager hearing different local preachers favouring similar Pauline texts over and over. However, the reality is that when leading worship I have avoided having some texts read out loud. Ironically I had just written all of the above when Karen’s email came in outlining her plans for a theme based approach to preaching and affirming that as a faith community we have (and I quote) “a role to play in the world, a way of life and a way of being with one another that can offer hope and light in dark times.  That we are not just a thing from the past, but something for the future too. “

So I look forward to this new shaping, whilst remembering that we can always trust that God’s presence will continue to sustain despite what happens in our rapidly changing world. We are never alone – we can trust and rest in that assurance as set out in today’s much loved gospel verse “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Though this in turn is also linked to the challenge to29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. In other words take my way of insight upon you and learn from me 30 For my yoke is easy compared with all the burdensome pharisaic rules, and my burden is light.” It’s as if Jesus is saying ‘Know yourself and others as I do, as God’s beloved – it’s that easy to walk or even dance along this path of wisdom.’  Amen