Scripture (Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31) can be found here…
I invite you to close your eyes, just for a moment. Now picture the person who epitomizes wisdom to you, whether you know them or not, whether they are dead or alive. Imagine them. See their face. Hear them speaking to you. What do they say? How does it affect you?
Whether you pictured the Dalai Lama, or Maya Angelou, or your grandmother, each of us has our own understanding of what constitutes real wisdom. How would you define it? Is wisdom a gift given to us by God? Is it something we gain by surviving painful experiences? Is it something we are granted by virtue of education, or voracious reading? Is it passed down generation to generation? Or is it something children already possess that they can teach us?
A conversation with friends this week showed some variety of wording, but several points of agreement. We agreed that wisdom is not simply knowledge, nor is it experience. But it might be found in the place where knowledge and experience intersect. Wisdom is something we agreed can be gained with age—but not always. We all know youth with wisdom beyond their years, and people full of years whom wisdom seems to have studiously avoided. And we agreed that one of the gifts of wisdom is that it affords us a broader view, allows us to see the Big Picture.
This morning we encounter Lady Wisdom, a poetic personification of this attribute found in the Book of Proverbs. Scholars believe Proverbs was intended for use in the Temple education system, in which promising boys and young men were trained as scribes, experts on the scriptures. We have received a tradition that the Book of Proverbs was written by King Solomon. The story goes: when he was young and passionate, this king who had 100 wives wrote the Song of Songs, that collection of beautiful erotic poetry that’s right there in the middle of our Bible. And when he was a world-weary old man, he wrote Ecclesiastes, whose theme the Common English Bible translates as: “Perfectly pointless... Everything is pointless.” (Eccl. 1:2)
That’s not the Solomon we find here. This is the book, tradition tells us, composed by the king who was middle aged and thinking about his legacy, and who sought to pass along his wisdom to the young. Here, the man who famously determined which woman was the mother of a particular baby by very unusual means, provides a book whose goal to help young people to learn to value wisdom above everything else.
Our passage begins with a list of places we might find Wisdom calling out to us: She is on the heights—and of course, anything on a hill or mountain is easy to see. She is beside the way; which is to say, on the road or the path, a place that is well-traveled, with lots of people coming and going. She is at the crossroads, the place where people from different places can encounter one another—a place of learning, of discovery, where we find out that not everyone is like we are—that there are all kinds of people, from all kinds of places. She is beside the gates to the city or town, the traditional place for business to be conducted and contracts to be finalized—so, a place where you might arrange a marriage or sell a piece of property. The gates of the city are also the place you go for justice: the elders come to the gates to settle disputes and accusations. And finally, she is at the entranceways—doorways, tent openings. These are what we call liminal spaces: places where a person is neither here nor there, neither in nor out. Places of transition and change.
Wisdom is out there, mixing it up with the public, in pretty much every way she can. She makes herself widely available. Wisdom isn’t just for a few—her treasures are intended for “all who live,” she says (Prov. 8:4). Wisdom is for all of us.
We learn that Wisdom was with God at the time of creation. She says, “God created me at the beginning of his work,” which can also be translated “brought me forth,” or “produced me.” The specifics are a little foggy, but she was there, either AT the beginning of God’s work of creation, or AS the beginning of God’s work. It’s complicated. But it does ring a bell. Remember those words from the Gospel According to John:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… All things came into being through [the Word], and without [the Word] not one thing came into being. ~John 1:1, 3
According to John’s gospel, the Word—Christ—was with God at creation. Indeed, the Word was the means through which creation emerged—and the Word is Christ.
This Proverbs passage about Wisdom reminds Christians of Christ, the Word who was with God, and through whom everything was created. Wisdom describes how she was there, before the mountains were formed, before the seas and springs were filled with water, before the skies and the heavens were fashioned above the earth. As all these and more were created, she says,
then I was beside [God], like a master worker,
and I was a daily delight,
playing before [God] always,
playing in this inhabited world
and delighting in the human race. ~Proverbs 8:30-31
In Wisdom, with Wisdom, God created the world. Wisdom was delighted to be a part of it. Wisdom is playful, like a little child. And most crucially, Wisdom delights in the human race. And the human race, in turn, is invited to delight in Wisdom.
The early church took all its experiences with Jesus and mined the scriptures to be able to understand them and him more deeply. The early church surely mined Proverbs, and this passage about Wisdom in creation. While it might be going too far to say, “Wisdom and the Word are the same! It’s Jesus!” there’s no question that we hear echoes of Wisdom in our New Testament texts. In the gospels we read that “The child [Jesus] grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him” (Luke 2:42). Later, we read that people, after hearing Jesus, asked one another, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him?” (Mark 6:2).
On the other hand, the New Testament also tell us that wisdom and the Spirit can be found together—as in the search for deacons who would be filled with the Spirit and with wisdom (Acts 6:3).
Sometimes Wisdom seems to suggest the essence of Christ. Sometimes Wisdom echoes what we believe about the Holy Spirit.
Despite the day about the doctrine, I hesitate to tie this all up with a bow and offer us all a neat Trinitarian package to take home, Doctrine in a Box. God cannot be put in a box—if anything, God explodes through every claim we try to make, defying us to define the Divine. All the faithful have had to go on—from the beginning—is our experience of God. And Christians have experienced God, as we sang in our open hymn:
Glory be to God, Creator;
Glory be to God, the Son;
Glory be to God, the Spirit.
Known as three, yet God the One.
We can give God glory. And we can mine the scriptures, just like our forbearers. And we can trust that God will be revealed to us in the consummation of all things. But for now, we have glimpses, and today, that glimpse looks like Lady Wisdom.
What about you? What do you believe about Wisdom? If you take nothing else from this passage, this day, let it be this: Wisdom is not some esoteric attainment meant only for monks and mystics. Wisdom, the one who is with God at creation, delights in you, is calling your name. Wisdom is precisely for the likes of you, and by calling you to know her better, Wisdom is calling you home to God.
Thanks be to God. Amen.