Woman Wisdom

A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

30^th July 2023

 

Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

Proverbs 8.1-11, 22-36
 
Who, I wonder, is the wisest person you’ve ever met?
          I won’t ask you to name them, but it’s worth a thought…
 
And who, I wonder, is the most foolish person you’ve ever met?
 
As we continue our journey this week
          through the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible,
we are introduced to a wise woman,
          the Woman Wisdom
and if we were to read the chapters before and after our reading for today,
          we would find that she is contrasted
          with another woman, whose name is Folly (see Proverbs 9.13-18).
 
The setup here is that the book of Proverbs
          is offering its sage advice to a young man,
and it sets up these two female characters, Wisdom and Folly,
          who ply him with their words of perception and foolishness.
 
His task is to learn to listen to Wisdom
          and to reject the wiles of Folly.
 
So, let’s just name this for what it is:
          It’s a highly gender-laden construct,
          that reflects the patriarchal culture in which it was written.
 
The image of female seductress, set on leading young men astray,
          is as ancient as patriarchy
          and as contemporary as workplace sexism.
 
The seductress archetype is present in film and literature,
          from Scarlett O’Hara,[1] to Mrs Robinson,[2] to Jessica Rabbit,[3]
          from Circe[4] to the Sirens,[5] to Lilith,[6] to Eve,[7]
there are no shortage of examples
          of women cast as the femme fatale
          with the sole intention of leading young men astray.
 
And I’m afraid, the juxtaposing of Woman Wisdom with Dame Folly
          is, at one level, just another example of this trope.
 
And those of us who come to this text with post #MeToo concerns,
          about the abuse that arises from gendered objectification and vilification,
          are right to be concerned about what we find here.
 
It’s a problematic text, and we need to own that.
          Ancient literature poses its challenges when read in the modern world.
 
But then again, it’s given us an opportunity
          to talk about this important stuff in a sermon on a Sunday,
so maybe some good can come
          from our engagement with it after all.
 
Anyway, I’ll plough on, and let’s see what else we can unearth…
 
Our readings today invite us to focus on Woman Wisdom,
          who, in contrast to Folly, is a powerful and empowering woman.
 
Like Folly, she too is the product of a tradition,
          which dates back into ancient mythology.
 
The Egyptians worshipped the Goddess Nut,
          the goddess of the sky, the stars, and the cosmos,
often depicted as a star-covered woman
          arching over the Earth.[8]
 
Other cultures contemporary with ancient Israel
          also worshipped female deities of great power,
including Ishtar, sometimes called Inanna or Ashera,
          the Mesopotamian and Assyrian Queen of Heaven
          who gets occasional mentions in the Hebrew Bible.[9]
 
And it’s in this wider cultural context,
          of female deities deeply associated with the created order,
          with the sky, the heaven, and the earth,
that the Hebrew Bible offers us Woman Wisdom.
 
And she, too, is presented
          as embodying creation.
 
Those living in the ancient worlds of Egypt, Israel, and Mesopotamia,
          viewed their lives as participating in a great created order,
          a great living harmony of all things.[10]
 
So, for these ancient theologies,
          justice and wisdom were a matter of creating and restoring
          a sense of societal, political, economic, and religious order.
 
Many of these cultures, in fact, have just one or two words
          that can mean ‘wisdom’, and ‘justice’, and ‘created order’,
all signifying the ability
          to live fittingly in the world.
 
And so when we meet the Woman Wisdom in Proverbs,
          we find that she is described in a way
          that echoes the ‘tree of life’ passage from the creation story in Genesis.
 
Provers 3.18 says that,
          ‘She is a tree of life to those who embrace her’.
 
This puts Woman Wisdom
          firmly in the category of ancient heavenly goddess,
even though the way she is presented in the text as it has come down to us,
          makes it clear that she the pre-eminent aspect of God’s creation,
          rather than the agent of creation herself.
 
Just as Genesis has the Spirit of God brooding over the waters,
          summoning creation into being at God’s command,
so Proverbs present the Woman Wisdom
          as God’s partner in creation, his female counterpart in birthing the cosmos.
 
You can see, can’t you, how the ancient tradition
          of an ancient cosmic couple:
                   the male and female consorts of creation,
          echoes down through the Hebrew Wisdom tradition
                    to give us the Woman Wisdom of Proverbs,
                    God’s creative companion.
 
But unlike the other ancient Levantine goddesses and creation stories,
          which are often violent and violating of the female characters,
the creative act described in Proverbs
          is marked by the loving, other-person centredness of the creator.
 
The Hebrew take on creation
          is that it is not violent and destined for destruction,
          but that it is declared good by God, and is destined for redemption.
 
And so when we meet Wisdom personified,
          we find that she is busy filling the earth
                    with creativity, generosity, concern for the other,
          and a longing for all of creation to flourish before God.
 
And so we come to chapter 8 of the book of Proverbs,
          where we hear from Woman Wisdom in her own words.
 
This is one of the longest soliloquies given to a female voice
          in the whole of Scripture,
          and so it’s worth listening to it carefully.
 
And Wisdom attributes her origins
          to the beginning of God’s creative work:
 
She says, ‘The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
                   the first of his acts of long ago.’ (8.22)
 
Wisdom, because she was around before creation,
          is able to proclaim her expertise,
having witnessed and even enjoyed the events of creation (8.23-31).
 
The many allusions to the created order in this speech
          express her appreciation for the order and fittingness
          in all that God has made.
 
But she also keeps making the point
          that the world was created with order, with boundaries,
to keep the waters in their place, the land in its place, and so on, (esp. 8.27-29)
          and whilst at one level this probably expresses the fear all humans have
          of the natural world turning against us with flood, fire, or famine,
it is also presented as a theological truth
          that there is some deep order built into the world,
and that Wisdom, personified as a woman,
          is the key to discerning it.
 
Wisdom offers us the key to interpreting the world:
          its beginnings, its purpose, its shape and direction.
She offers to guide us in walking wisely in this life,
          because she already knows the places that God carved out for us.
 
And here we have to be careful,
          because there is a danger that we might conclude from this
          that there is some divinely ordained mechanistic path to success,
                    whereby if we do this, that, or the other, good things will follow.
 
And for many people, this is exactly what they want from their religion:
          this is the way of reading the Bible
                   that treats it as a book of answers to life’s perplexing questions;
          this is the way of approaching God in prayer,
                   where God gives us perfect insight
                   into a divinely personalised perfect plan for our lives.
 
Such religion can quickly become highly controlling,
          as those with a vested interest in the status quo,
use the argument that ‘this is how God ordained it’,
          to justify their ongoing power and oppression of others.
 
But this is not to say that there isn’t a deep wisdom
          that it is good for us to hear and heed.
 
There is something profoundly good about learning to live in harmony with creation,
          and whilst it doesn’t guarantee our freedom from suffering,
          it is nonetheless a wisdom worth seeking.
 
Last week I quoted from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe,
          which I found out this week is going to be
          the Bloomsbury book group book for next month!
 
And I’d like to return to it again this week,
          to see how C.S. Lewis explains this idea of deep wisdom
          or deep magic, as he refers to it.
 
In the world of Narnia, the Deep Magic refers to a set of laws
          placed into Narnia at the time of its creation
          by the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea.
 
These laws were inscribed on the Stone Table,
          on which Aslan will eventually be sacrificed.
 
The law stated that the White Witch, Jadis,
          was entitled to kill every traitor,
and that if she was denied this right,
          all of Narnia would be "overturned and perish in fire and water".
 
However, we find out that unknown to Jadis,
          a deeper magic from before the dawn of Time existed,
which said that if a willing victim who had committed no treachery
          was killed in a traitor's stead,
the Stone Table would crack,
          and Death itself would start working backwards.
 
And so when Jadis made a claim on Edmund Pevensie's life,
          Aslan used this Deeper Magic to save him,
          at the cost of his own life.
 
This idea that there is deep wisdom written into the cosmos
          invites us to listen carefully to creation,
and the groaning of creation in response to the climate crisis,
          is something that humanity needs to hear and hear urgently.
 
But this applies to us on a personal level,
          as well as corporately.
 
Many voices in the Christian tradition portray life
          as a dangerous tightrope,
          a straight-and-narrow line where we dare not misstep.
 
But the Woman Wisdom testifies to the harmony and order
          that can be seen in a large and open landscape
 
She points us to a freedom within form,
          to a way of living where each day is a new adventure,
          to be explored joyfully with wisdom as our map.
 
The reduction of religion to rules and regulations,
          is the opposite of what is in view here.
 
Woman Wisdom’s response to her experience of creation,
          humanity, and the order of God’s world emphasises joy.
 
The end of the passage leaves us with three key images:
          Firstly, that God delights in her,
          Secondly, that she dances before him,
          and Thirdly, that she delights in humanity.
 
The whole poem is full of love, compassion,
          intimacy, and exuberant joy and playfulness.
 
Cosmic wisdom assures us that the good life
          is one of joy, and of love for creation.
 
And this is the message that Wisdom shouts aloud,
          raising her voice on the heights, beside the way,
                   at the crossroads,
                   beside the gates in front of the town (8.2-3).
 
This wisdom is not for the holy elect, or the faithful few,
          it is wisdom which is good news for all,
and if I were to sum it up, I think what it boils down to,
          is the message that God is love, and that God loves us.
 
And those who respond to God’s love
          by living according to the grain of creation,
          are those who embody the wisdom of God.
 
And as we saw last week,
          the key to such wise and harmonious living
          is life lived in the light of what God has already done for us.
 
Wisdom is an invitation to alternate our gaze
          between God and God’s creation,
living simply, that others might simply live,
          loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength,
          and loving our neighbour as we love ourselves.
 
It’s no coincidence that within the Christian tradition,
          the image of wisdom personified
          becomes fused with the eternal Word made flesh.
 
And so, to conclude, let us hear from that great gospel of Wisdom,
          John’s prologue.
 
 In the beginning was the Word,
          and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 
² He was in the beginning with God. 
 
³ All things came into being through him,
          and without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being ⁴ in him was life,
          and the life was the light of all people. 
⁵ The light shines in the darkness,
          and the darkness did not overtake it.
 
Amen.

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarlett_O%27Hara
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Graduate
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Rabbit
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circe
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siren_(mythology)
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_(goddess)
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Heaven_(antiquity)
[10] The following draws from Bartholomew and O’Dowd, ‘Old Testament Wisdom Literature: A Theological Introduction’. pp.86ff

The greatest of these is love

A sermon for the wedding of Jonathan and Frazer

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

Saturday 22nd July 2023

Zephaniah 3.14-20
1 John 4.7–19

This morning I was at the optician’s having my eyes tested,
              because, having not been since a couple of years before lockdown,
              I have become aware that the writing in books and on menus
                            has been getting mysteriously smaller and blurrier.
 
I don’t have my new glasses yet,
              that’s a task for another day,
but it strikes me that they offer us an interesting analogy
              for the way we see the world.
 
If I wear sunglasses, the world seems darker,
              if I wear reading glasses, the world seems clearer,
and I’m hoping that my new glasses, when I get them,
              will help me see the world a bit more as the world really is.
 
And all of us see the world through a lens.
              For some of us, it’s a refractive lens of glass that sits in a frame on our nose,
but we have other lenses available to us,
              lenses of ideology, methodology, or theology.
 
We all have our own ways of looking at the world,
              and none of us truly sees clearly, even if some see more clearly than others.
 
St Paul comments, in his letter to the Corinthians,
              that despite his best efforts, he still only sees through a glass, darkly,
                           and that now knows only in part, rather than fully. (1 Cor. 13.12)
 
And today, as we have gathered to witness, to see, the making of a marriage,
              I wonder what lenses have been operative for us this afternoon?
 
There are some who might look at a marriage between two men,
              and see something amiss, something to disapprove of,
              because their lens, their way of seeing the world,
              is distorting the truth of the love that we have witnessed.
 
Well, in our readings today,
              the scriptures offer us two lenses that we might consider using
              when we view the world around us.
 
Firstly, the reading from the prophet Zephaniah,
              and the lens he offers us is the lens of hope.
 
Zephaniah lived in Jerusalem at a time of great social difficulty in ancient Israel,
              people were turning away from the worship of God,
              and violence, suspicion, and oppression stalked the streets.
 
Zephaniah names these evils for what they are,
              calling the rulers of Israel to account for their moral and political failures.
 
But then his prophecy changes gear,
              and it moves from words of condemnation
              to one of the Hebrew Bible’s great articulations of hope.
 
Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;
    shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart!
 
Zephaniah goes on to speak of a time
              when God will deal with the oppressors,
                            and gather the outcast,
              changing shame into praise
                           and bringing those outcast home.
 
He invites the people of God to put on the lens of hope,
              hope that their God has not forgotten them,
              hope that they are still valued, loved, and welcomed.
 
Too many people in our world live with shame, exclusion, and oppression,
              for reasons of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and social standing.
 
And to those who feel abandoned,
              Zephaniah offers the lens of hope,
              an invitation to discover hope in the midst of difficulty.
 
And then we come to the other lens that is before us this afternoon,
              the lens of love.
 
In the reading we had from the New Testament, from the first epistle of John,
              we get one of the most profound statements of theology
              to be found anywhere in the Bible:
 
‘God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God,
              and God abides in them’
 
Where do you go to see God?
              Well, says John, you see God when you see people abiding in love.
 
Where love is, God is.
 
The lens of love allows us to discover God in places that we might otherwise have missed.
              God is not only found in the holy, or the wealthy, or the powerful,

              God is not only found in churches or cathedrals,

God is found wherever people abide in love.
 
And today, at this wedding, we have seen God,
              because we have seen love.
 
So my prayer is that today, by faith,
              we can put on these lenses of hope and love.
 
As St Paul puts it, again from his letter to the Corinthians:
 
‘Faith, hope, and love remain, these three,
              and the greatest of these is love.’ (1 Cor. 13.13)
 
And so we sing:
              Here is love, vast as the ocean.

The Way of Wisdom

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

23rd July 2023

Proverbs 1.1-7; 3.1-8
 
I wonder, does your family have proverbs?
            Mine does – and I made a list of them a few years ago.
Some of these I can hear in my Dad’s voice,
            and some I’ve added to the list as the years have gone by.
 
And so as we begin this morning a short summer series
            on the Wisdom Tradition of the Hebrew Bible,
I thought I’d share some of the ‘not-so-wise’ sayings of the Woodman family,
            and I offer these not because they have any spiritual or indeed material wisdom,
but because I’d like to invite each of us
            to think about what the principles are that we live by,
            what is the wisdom that guides your life,
            what proverbs have come down to you through your family or cultural tradition?
 
Anyway, here you are, in no particular order, Woodman Wisdom:
 

• The world does not owe you a living.
• You can make your own luck.
• Sometimes you’ve just got to be in the right place at the right time; but sometimes you can plan this.
• Success is often about just turning up.
• Genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.
• Knowledge is power.
• Moderation in all things.
• The hardest part of swimming a mile is picking up your kit bag.
• How to write a book: one sentence at a time.
• If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
• If you don’t have the right tool for the job, the first job is to make the right tool.
• Measure it twice and cut it once.
• Don’t try to make up on the road what you have lost elsewhere.
• Don’t be in a hurry to get to your own funeral.
• Give a new job three years, before deciding whether to stay or not.
• Don't measure your personal progress over the last year: look back five years to see if you're in a rut.
• You’ve got a brain: use it.
• I am organised because I am lazy - it's less work to do the job efficiently.
• I don’t look busy because I did it right the first time.
• Procrastination is the key to success: it’s amazing how many jobs you have been meaning to get around to, can be accomplished by the simple task of avoiding the one job that you really don’t want to get around to.
• Don’t spoil the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar.
• Always quit while you’re ahead.
• Always leave a party early, whilst it’s still fun to be there.

Now, you may not like all of these,
            and I’d be very surprised if everyone agreed with all of them,
but that’s not the point;
            the point is that we all live by our own inherited wisdom traditions,
and in the Book of Proverbs,
            we have the inherited wisdom tradition of ancient Israel.
 
And whilst we may not like some of what is in there,
            and whilst we are very unlikely to agree with all of it,
there is nonetheless wisdom here that we need to hear,
            to weigh, to consider, and possibly to make our own.
 
There are certain characteristics of biblical wisdom
            that set them apart from the secular sayings of personal proverbs. [1]
 
Firstly, the quality that the Hebrew Bible calls ‘wisdom’,
            finds its meaning in relation to God,
and so, as we heard in our reading this morning,
            wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord (Ps 111.10; Prov 1.7; 9.10).
 
Secondly, true wisdom is found within the covenant community of God’s people,
            through Israel and the church, and their story of Salvation and acts of mercy.
 
As the book of James in the New Testament puts it:
 
‘Who is wise and knowledgeable among you?
            Show by your good life
            that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.’ (James 3.13),
 
And thirdly, wisdom is not always readily apparent:
            sometimes, true wisdom is the very opposite
            of what our human reason and intuitions conclude.
 
As Paul puts it in his letter to the Corinthians:
 
^‘God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.’ (1 Cor 1.25).
 
But whilst Godly wisdom,
            made known through the people of faith,
            and distinct from the wisdom of the world,
might be a fair summary of the Biblical wisdom tradition,
            its interpretation within Christian history is far more murky,
so we’re going to take a dive for a moment
            into the world of what is known as allegorical interpretation.
 
The wisdom literature boasts the must unusual history of interpretation,
            because unlike almost all other biblical texts,
                        and with only a few exceptions,
            wisdom, in the first fifteen hundred years of the church,
                        was interpreted allegorically.
 
Sometimes wisdom was interpreted as an allegory for the church,
            or the Spirit, or the human mind,
sometimes it was an allegory for Mary the mother of Jesus,
            or some other spiritual ideal,
but rarely was it understood as advice
            on how to literally live life in the world.
 
This was largely because of the dualistic way the early church was inclined
            to oppose spiritual things, to physical things.
 
The third and fourth centuries CE
            were critical for this so-called Neo-Platonic development in the church.
 
During this time, churches at Antioch
            practiced what we would call a more ‘literal’ reading,
while the churches at Alexandria
            practiced spiritual, moral, and allegorical reading.
 
The differences between the two are subtle,
            and it would be a mistake to think of ‘literal’ and ‘allegorical’
            in only their modern senses today.
 
For example, in the last century it has been common
            to think of ‘literal’ in a scientific or mathematical way.
Thus, when the Bible speaks of God, ‘coming in the clouds’,
            contemporary literal readings often believe
            that this must mean those physical sources of rain in the sky!
 
In the ancient world, ‘literal’ carried more of a literary meaning,
            with a broader appreciation for poetic and symbolic ideas.
The clouds could be the literal ones we see,
            but they could also be a sign
            of God coming from a higher place that we cannot see.
 
It may be helpful for us to have this second, ‘literary’ interpretation
            in mind as we come to our reading of the Hebrew Wisdom tradition.
 
Jerome, however, the late fourth- to early fifth-century theologian,
            favoured a more allegorical or spiritual way of reading the wisdom literature,
            and this set the tone of Christian interpretation for the next thousand years,
before Martin Luther and a few others
            started writing commentaries and sermons
            that rediscovered the literal, or literary, approach.
 
More recent interpreters, informed by the disciple of Biblical Studies,
            tend to read these texts primarily against their ancient background,
            rather than as allegories of the church, or instructions for living in the present.
 
But this doesn’t mean these texts can’t still speak to us,
            because of course our humanity intersects with the common humanity
            of those who first wrote and received this wisdom.
 
The context may have changed, and so we need to be cautious,
            but a careful engagement can still draw us into a world
            where true wisdom is found in God,
                        and is enacted through the community of faith
                        in ways that challenge the wisdom of the world.
 
And the opening verses of the book of Proverbs
            which we heard earlier,
certainly set up the reasons why we should spend time with this book.
 
The claims that are made for the benefits of studying wisdom are immense,
            leaving the reader in no doubt that wisdom is of great value.
 
We are told to appreciate the many benefits of wisdom,
            in gaining wisdom and understanding (1.2),
                        in living a disciplined and just life (1.3),
            in enabling the immature to become mature (1.4),
                        and the wise to become wiser (1.5).
 
Proverbs not only provides wisdom instruction,
            but it will also teach one how to interpret the sayings of the wise (1.6),
            because it seems reading the proverbs requires wisdom too.
 
And the object lesson par excellance, of course,
            is the individual to whom the authorship of these proverbs is attributed,
            none other than the wise and wealthy King Solomon himself!
 
Now, here we have to engage our critical faculties for a moment,
            because it is remote to the point of profoundly unlikely
                        that Solomon actually wrote this book.
 
But thankfully that’s not really the point!
 
Ancient Royal figures such as Solomon
            were renowned for their expertise in exercising judgment.
The ultimate court of appeal in those days was to the king,
            and so an ideal king was supreme in wisdom, justice, and law.
 
Solomon was Israel’s only king to reign in a time of prolonged peace,
            and so the stories about him described him as embodying these traits
            more than anyone else, and wisdom most of all.
 
In Israel’s historical writings, he is remembered not only for his wisdom,
            but also for his building of the temple (1 Kings 3-6),
            which is itself depicted as an act of wisdom.
 
The story of his solving the conundrum of the child with two mothers,
            by threatening to cut the child in half to reveal the true mother,
            is the stuff of fable.
 
And so it makes sense that the collected proverbial wisdom of Israel,
            came to be associated with this most wise of ancient rulers,
even though a close look at the stories of Solomon’s life
            might suggest that he was less able to live out his great wisdom
            than he was to impose it on others.
 
So, after introducing us to Solomon as the source of the proverbs,
            and after spelling out what they will do for us if we attend to them,
we come, in 1.7, to the foundation of wisdom.
 
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
    [but] fools despise wisdom and instruction.
 
Wisdom comes, ultimately, not from Solomon,
            but from God,
and we are told, intriguingly, that one must ‘fear’ God
            in order to obtain wisdom.
 
In the Hebrew Bible, the theology of ‘fear’
            is a much richer concept
            than our modern notion of trembling and terror.
 
In Deuteronomy, fearing God is equated with loving God,
            with obeying God’s commands, and walking in God’s ways (Deut 10.12-16).
 
In fact, the use of the phrase the ‘fear of the Lord’ in Exodus to Deuteronomy
            is always in the context of the redeemer and law-giver ‘Yahweh’,
            who loved Israel and redeemed her from slavery (Ex 3; 6).
 
By this understanding, ‘fearing’ God was the appropriate response
            to an experience of salvation (Ex 20.20)
 
Fearing God thus refers
            to a loving reverence for the Lord,
                        the one who has brought us close,
            and also to a way of living
                        that fits with such an attitude.
 
It’s the fear of the LORD
            that Mr. and Mrs. Beaver describe to the children
            in this scene from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:
 
[Mr Beaver said to the children,] “Aslan is a lion—the Lion, the great Lion.”
 
“Ooh” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
 
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or just plain silly.”
 
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
 
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver … “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
 
The fear of the LORD,
            the fear of the God who created the universe
            but who deigns to be in relationship with us,
                        is the prerequisite for wisdom.
 
Such proper fear teaches us our place in the world
            and how to live well in it.
 
And so the fear of the Lord is the ‘beginning’ of wisdom:
            fearing God is both the starting point of the journey into wisdom
            and it is also the foundation on which a life of wisdom is built.
 
It is both a response to what God has already done for us,
            and also the means to continue our lifelong journey
            of using wisdom to find God’s ways in life every area of creation.
 
And it is this idea of wisdom as a journey
            that takes us to our second reading:
 
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
    and do not rely on your own insight.
⁶ In all your ways acknowledge him,
    and he will make straight your paths.
⁷ Do not be wise in your own eyes;
    fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
⁸ It will be a healing for your flesh
    and a refreshment for your body.
 
The key idea here is that wisdom is good for us,
            it is the path of healing and refreshment.
 
Godly Wisdom is concerned with life
            lived according to the grain of creation;
this isn’t some abstract philosophizing about ethical concepts,
            it’s about seeking to draw our lives into harmony with the created order.
 
God is in all things, and through all things,
            and God’s wisdom puts us in tune with creation.
 
So today, my challenge for us,
            is to consider the basis on which we live.
 
What voices do we listen to, attend to,
            in the real-world decisions of our lives.
 
What newspapers do we read?
            What social media do we engage with?
What voices fill our ears and engage our eyes?
 
What space to we make to hear the voice of the Lord
            whispering to us the counternarrative of godly wisdom?
 
Where do you go to hear the voice of God?

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[1] What follows draws extensively from Bartholomew and O’Dowd, Old Testament Wisdom Literature, A Theological Introduction, 2011.