We don’t often spend a whole lot of time in the book of Proverbs. There are probably a couple of different reasons for that. For one, the short couplets of advice and counsel that make up a significant portion of the book don’t really lend themselves to sermons and preaching. One scholar said they should be read like a box of fine chocolates, savored slowly, enjoyed in small bits, picking this one, skipping that one. And then there are other segments of the book that have been pushed aside for centuries in the Western world in particular because of our intensely patriarchal focus. In these segments that Divine Image, the creative spirit and the wisdom of the Word is personified as feminine, as a woman, Woman Wisdom. The dominant scholars and church leaders for much of the history of Western Christianity have just not known what to do with these images of a divine feminine, and so they have been, at best, largely ignored, and, at worst, actively suppressed.
That’s just part of why I couldn’t resist reading the whole chapter, rather than just the shorter excerpts recommended by the ecumenical lectionary for today. But also, this poem is just too rich to chop up into bits and pieces. When we were discussing the passage in the staff meeting this week, some colleagues looked at the skipped verses for some context, and they were just too good not to share.
Wisdom literature as a category includes the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job in the Hebrew Scriptures. These books are unique in that they don’t really contend with a specific time in the history of Israel. They aren’t telling us what the matriarchs and patriarchs were up to like Genesis. They don’t recount the details of the law like Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They aren’t concerned with inept kings and bloody battles and devastating empires and exiles, like most of the historical books and the prophets. Even the Psalms, the song book of Israel, connects its hymns to the teachings and history of the people of God.
But Wisdom literature isn’t really connected to a specific people in a specific time, or the worries of a particular nation-state. Instead the sages were interested in the human person, what drives us, what motivates us, how we operate in the world as part of God’s creation, how we live with each other reflecting the divine will and purpose, how we orient ourselves to the holy and how that orientation compels us to live and move and have our being, to borrow from the apostle Paul. This is accomplished largely through two different classes of literature that I mentioned are a part of the book of Proverbs – practical advice to the young on how to attain a successful and good life, and reflective probing into the meaning of life. This morning’s poetry is an example of the latter – in this case still focused on living a fulfilling life, defined as a relationship with the divine Woman Wisdom.
Woman Wisdom, we hear her tell us, is an ancient voice, as ancient as ancient gets, really. She was with God at the very dawn of creation. We hear echoes of the opening verses of the gospel according to John, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” Or as Sophia says it (Sophia being the Greek word for wisdom), “The Lord created me at the beginning of the divine work, the first of God’s acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.” She is not new on the scene. She is not a passing fad or a fleeting temptation or desire. She is not some fly by night philosophy. She speaks what God has always spoken. She goes where God has always gone. She cried to those to whom God has always cried. She desires from us what God has always desired, and she calls to us from where God has always been.
On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads, Woman Wisdom takes her stand. Beside the gates in the front of the town, at the entrance of the portals, she cries out. Do you hear where isn’t mentioned? The church. Of course, in the older testament there were no churches. But the temple isn’t mentioned. The center of religious life doesn’t come up. The place of ritual and organized worship doesn’t appear in this passage. I don’t think that’s because Woman Wisdom dislikes the temple, but instead I think that’s because she’s telling us she is not confined to it.
Her history, her work, and therefore her call predates the existence of the stone temple in Jerusalem, even the wood, linen, and hide tabernacle in which the Hebrew people and Israelites worshiped before a permanent structure was built. The work and word of Woman Wisdom moves more freely than building represents and instead she calls from the hills so everyone can hear. She stands at the intersections of the busiest streets. She goes to the city gates, the place where judicial cases are decided and judgements are handed down, and also the place where those who are left out of justice, those who are poor and lacking resources, those who are excluded from places of power and privilege wait for someone to notice them, to have mercy on them. From these places and with all people – ALL people, not just the super religious and the ever-faithful – with all people she shares her wisdom.
So what is this precious wisdom? What are these eternal and ancient truths? The centerpiece of this poetic rendering is that tricky English phrase “the fear of the LORD.” Our words and the baggage we bring with them do us a disservice here. I don’t want us to think of a cowering fear, an anxiety about punishment, or a worry about the anger of God. Instead, fear might better be understood as respect, or faithfulness or devotion to God. Unwavering commitment. To be committed to the LORD, to honor all that God is, all that God does, all that God desires of us, in this chapter we are told, is to hate evil. (Do not hear me say we are called to hate people. Jesus has something else to say about that. But to hate evil, the very forces that counter all that God desires.) Rather than pride and arrogance, Sophia tells us, we should live with love for God which looks like walking in righteousness, following paths of justice.
This is the call of Woman Wisdom – to seek her diligently wherever she may be – in order that we will find knowledge, not all of the facts that fill books or bytes of information that occupy the internet, but knowledge of God’s love, knowledge of God’s grace, knowledge of God’s desire for justice and right governance, knowledge of God’s abundant life. This seeking, author and minister Frederick Buechner says, is curiosity. “To be wise is to be eternally curious.” To be wise is to be unsatisfied with knowing only our own story. To be wise is to wonder about the experiences of others – the good, the bad, and the ugly. To be wise is to be open to the truth that we do not hold the right answer to every question, we are not the experts in every situation, and we can’t solve every problem on our own, but we need the whole of humanity, the whole of creation, and that which is beyond creation, we need God’s divine wisdom in order to follow God faithfully in the world.
This is the call of Woman Wisdom – to seek her diligently and to follow her steps and her way. It is not enough to gather wisdom and pack it away in our minds or in our hearts, because that would be missing the point of what wisdom is for, what God’s love is for, what the divine call is for. It is not just for some, it is for all. It is not just for the faithful who go to the tabernacles, the temples, the churches. It is not just for those who understand. It is intended to be for all. It’s for the simple and the knowledgeable, the subjects and the rulers, those lacking wealth and who have gathered it.
And so for those of us inside of the building, who hear her cry, who claim to walk her path and seek her diligently, wisdom is what we must carry outside of the building – to the crossroads of Cedar Crest and Tilghman and beyond, to the edges of our cities – metaphorical as much as literal – the gates where people on the margins dwell, those outside the centers of privilege, looking for a just chance at achieving stability and inclusion, as well as to the halls where rulers sit in power. Wisdom, knowledge of God’s love that is put to use for God’s purposes, knowledge of God’s delight in humanity that calls us into the redeeming work God is doing in the world, knowledge of God’s desire for the riches of justice and wholeness to flourish throughout all of creation, this should also be our cry, our message, our motivation as children of God, disciples of Jesus, the Wisdom Word made flesh, bearers of the Holy Spirit.
