"Woman Wisdom" (Sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday June 12, 2022 – Trinity Sunday

Scripture:  Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

 

 

Who is the wisest person you know?  Is there someone in your life, someone you have met, even someone you have heard of who embodies wisdom?

 

Thinking about wisdom, it is interesting to ponder the difference between knowledge and wisdom.  Someone with a lot of knowledge knows a lot of things.  They may be an expert in a particular field, or they may know a lot about a wide variety of things.  But someone who is wise is able to take that knowledge and combine it with lived experience and a dash of common sense, and then apply it in order to be able to live well.

 

Thinking about the movies, a character like Yoda is wise, whereas the mad scientist archetype generally has knowledge but not wisdom – think of someone like Dr. Frankenstein who had the knowledge to be able to create a human, but he lacked the wisdom to realize that this was a very bad idea.  Or Doc from the Back to the Future movies who had enough knowledge to be able to travel through time, but who didn’t have the wisdom to keep him from making all sorts of silly mistakes along the way.  In both of these examples, the mad scientist’s lack of wisdom is necessary to push the plot forward.  Wise characters generally don’t make good main characters since they tend not to have very exciting plot lines!

 

Wisdom in the bible is all about living a good life – living well with God and living well with your neighbours.  Wisdom in the bible can be shared in the hopes of saving another person from the sometimes painful process of lived experience that can result in wisdom.

 

And wisdom in the bible is personified.  She doesn’t have a name, though because the Greek word for wisdom is “sophia” she is sometimes called Sophia.  Woman Wisdom in the book of Proverbs isn’t some sweet demure submissive woman sitting at home tending the fire and raising her children.  No – Woman Wisdom is out in the streets, at the crossroads, at the gates of the town, shouting to anyone who will listen to her.  She cries out, trying to convince people to follow her voice, persuading them that wisdom is a better path to follow than folly.  It may be more exciting in the short term to follow folly, but in the long term, a life of wisdom, of living well with God and living well with neighbour – that is the good path to follow.

 

And who is this Woman Wisdom?  She was the first piece of creation, created by God before any other thing.  She was with God when God began to create the heavens and the earth.  She witnessed the formation of the mountains and the skies and the oceans.  She worked alongside God as a master worker, bringing creation in to being.

 

As we talked about earlier, today is Trinity Sunday, the day when we especially celebrate God as Trinity – Three-in-One and One-in-Three.  And so I have to ask the question, how does Woman Wisdom fit in to the Trinity?

 

But unfortunately I don’t have a good answer to that.  I’ve got lots of ideas, but no solid answers.

 

Woman Wisdom was with God before any other created thing, before God began to create the heavens and the earth.  Before the beginning, the Holy Spirit moved, hovered, danced over the waters.

 

Woman Wisdom worked alongside God as together they created the heavens and the earth.  God spoke, and by God’s Word all of creation came in to being; God’s Word who is the Christ.

 

And so is Woman Wisdom the same as Christ, the second person of the Trinity?  Or is Woman Wisdom the same as the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity?

 

And yet Woman Wisdom tells us that she was the first thing that God created, while the theology of the Trinity tells us that all three persons of the Trinity are God and therefore not created.

 

The more I think about it, the more muddled my brain becomes.

 

And yet even as my brain feels muddled, I wonder if then I am maybe closer to the mystery of the Trinity than I am at any other time.  For the Trinity is mystery – Holy Mystery that is to be contemplated rather than understood.  Which means that the more that I think that I understand the Trinity, the further I probably am from God!

 

So Woman Wisdom, even if she isn’t God, is very closely connected with God.  She delights in God and she delights in all that God has created.

 

And when we are living our lives with wisdom – when we are living a good life – then we are delighting in God and we are delighting in all that God has created.  We are delighting in the mountains and the rivers and the ocean.  We are delighting in the rocks and the birds and the trees.  We are delighting with every breath that we take.  We are delighting when the sun is shining on our faces, and when the rain falls on our heads, and even when we are out shovelling the snow that has fallen.  We are delighting in each and every human being we meet, recognizing that every person on this earth is created in the image of their Creator.  When we are living with wisdom, we take delight in all that God has created, just as Woman Wisdom does.

 

And part of delighting in creation has to be living with respect in creation – honouring each and every member of the community of creation, as all of us have been created by a loving God.

 

And so rather than trying to puzzle out who Woman Wisdom is, rather than trying to puzzle out how Woman Wisdom fits into the Trinity, instead I think that the better response might be to live with wisdom.  Rather than thinking about wisdom, isn’t it better to do wisdom, to live wisely?!  And may our ears be open to hear the voice of Woman Wisdom so that we can delight in God and rejoice in all of God’s creation each and every day.  Amen.

 

 

Detail from Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam

Note the female figure under the arm of God

Woman Wisdom was with God as God created

Image Used with Permission

"We Can't Go Back" (Pentecost Sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday June 5, 2022 – Pentecost

Scripture Reading:  Acts 2:1-21

 

 

I invite you to imagine yourself into the shoes of those disciples who were there that first Pentecost.  If we look back to the chapter before the one that we heard today, we’ll see that there were about 120 of them – all of them followers of Jesus.  Some of them are named there – we have Peter and James and John and Andrew and Philip and Thomas.  We’re told that Jesus’s mother Mary was among their number too, as well as Jesus’s brothers.  And then there were many more whose names we aren’t told.

 

All of them had been with Jesus when he was alive.  They heard him speak, they travelled with him, they watched him heal people, they watched him walk on water and calm the storm.  And then 7 weeks ago – 52 days ago, to be precise – they had watched Jesus be nailed to a cross, and they watched him take his final breath.  Everything that Jesus had done on earth had come to an end.  The disciples were left alone without their teacher, their leader, their friend.

 

But then two days later, they were witnesses to the empty grave.    Some of them encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus, and recognized him when he took, blessed, broke and gave the bread to them.  Others met him when he appeared behind their closed and locked door in Jerusalem, and he shared a meal of fish with them.

 

For 40 days after his resurrection, Jesus was with his disciples, but it was different than it had been before his death.  They didn’t travel around; Jesus didn’t speak to large crowds; there aren’t even any recorded healings or miracles that he performed in this period of time.

 

And then 10 days ago, Jesus told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem, and then, as they watched on, Jesus was carried up into heaven leaving the disciples alone again for the second time.

 

I can only imaging what those 10 days must have been like for them.  I suspect that time dragged by very slowly – you know that feeling when you’ve been told that something is going to happen, but you don’t know exactly what is going to happen or when it is going to happen.  Time seems to move like molasses, and a sort of inertia sets in – you don’t want to start anything new, in case the think that you are waiting for begins.

 

And so for 10 days, these disciples hung out in Jerusalem, waiting.  Waiting.  Waiting.  And then the day of Pentecost arrived.  The word “Pentecost” comes from the word fifty – it is now fifty days after the Passover festival, and it is now the festival of Shavuot.  This is a celebration of receiving the Torah, what we know as the first five books of the bible.  And it is also a harvest festival, celebrating the first harvest of the year – the winter barley harvest.

 

And so just as Jesus’s disciples had gathered together to celebrate Passover just before Jesus was arrested, they are now gathered together 50 days later to celebrate Shavuot or Pentecost.

 

And then we heard about what unfolds – a rush of mighty wind blowing through the room, tongues of fire resting over each of the disciples, the ability to speak in different languages so that all of the pilgrims who had gathered to celebrate Shavuot could hear the message proclaimed.  The Holy Spirit made her presence known that day in Jerusalem.

 

I love the Pentecost story.  I love the energy of it, the mystery of it, the mingling of joy and fear that comes when we draw close to the Holy.  But I think that what I especially love about this story is what comes next.

 

Beginning at Pentecost, all of the disciples were equipped with what they needed to share Jesus’s message with the world – they were given courage, they were given the words to say, they were even able to be understood in different languages.  We are only at the very beginning of the book of Acts, and if we keep reading, we will see these same disciples going out and spreading Jesus’s message to every corner of the known world.  We will see the church growing and spreading like wildfire.  The full title of this book in the Bible is the Acts of the Apostles; but those of you who were with us on Facebook Live a couple of years ago as we read this book might remember that I suggested that a better title for the book might be the Acts of the Holy Spirit Working through the Apostles.

 

In the time after the day of Pentecost, the message of Jesus spread in a way that it wouldn’t have been able to spread when Jesus was still alive.  The disciples are never going to be able to go back to the way that it was when Jesus was traveling around teaching and healing; they aren’t even going to be able to go back to those weeks of intimacy with Jesus after he rose from the dead.  But what comes next is even bigger, is even more exciting than what came before.  God is always doing a new thing, and we see that in spades with this Pentecost story.

 

I also wonder if we might be at a Pentecost moment in the church right now.  Back in mid-March 2020, the way that we churched came to an abrupt halt.  We couldn’t gather together in-person.  We couldn’t sing together.  We couldn’t share meals together.  But in the past 27 months, the Holy Spirit has been working in and through us, inspiring us with creativity, and helping us to figure out how to be the church in new ways.

 

This week, I have been thinking about all of our new ways of churching in the past two years – parking lot coffee hours, and outdoor worship services, and our Mission and Service mural fundraisers, and our Romero House Gratitude challenges, and Webex and Zoom and Facebook Live, and I’m sure that I’m missing a bunch of other things too.

 

We’ve also said goodbye to members of our church and members of our community.  We all know how many funerals we’ve had in the past couple of years.  But at the same time, we have also been welcoming new people to our communities and to our churches.

 

We can never go back to the way that things were before, and it is OK to mourn what we have lost; but at the same time, I think that we also have to look forwards as a church.  What are we going to be able to do as a church – how are we going to be able to carry out God’s mission of loving the world – in ways that we wouldn’t have been able to do three years ago?

 

Because I do think that this might be a Pentecost moment.  The Holy Spirit is gifting us with creativity and newness.  We can’t go back to the way things were, but we can lean in to this newness and follow the Spirit wherever she is leading us next.  If we were to write our own book of Acts, what stories will be written down about how the Holy Spirit is working in the people of Two Rivers Pastoral Charge?

 

Because the Holy Spirit is working in us, and thanks be to God for this newness that is here!  Amen.

 

 

A Pentecost Blessing:

We are sent out from this worship,

            just as the early disciples were sent out from Pentecost,

not to keep the good news to ourselves

            but to share it with the world.

As you go from this place,

            know that the Holy Spirit is with you,

                        encouraging you,

                        equipping you,

                        comforting you,

                        guiding you,

and blowing you to newness.

And may the blessing of God,

            Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit,

                        be among us, and remain with us always.

Amen.

 

 

The church is not the building.

How is the Holy Spirit calling us to church

beyond these walls

in new and exciting ways?