June 12, 2022 – First Sunday after Pentecost / Trinity Sunday

Did you notice the oddities of today’s readings? A most unusual character steps forth as we listen to the words of scripture — so unusual that no one seems to be able to explain who (or even what) she is — except that she is definitely a she, this woman called “Wisdom”.

Some authors note this mysterious figure’s familiar connections with poetry, creation, and God’s own attribute of wisdom. But scholars also associate this mysterious figure with ancient echoes of goddess worship, as well as with the Word in the Prologue to John’s Gospel (that is, with Jesus Christ), and with the Advocate (the Holy Spirit) in that same Gospel.

You may recall that the Hebrew Scriptures were the only “Bible” that Jesus and the first Christians read, so let’s spend a bit more time exploring those stories and figures that had such depth of meaning for our ancestors in faith, and for our lives as well.

I’m sure that most of you know what a “proverb” is, even if you’ve never opened the Bible to the book that carries that name. And in fact, I suspect that if I gave you a proverb, you could tell me whether it shows up in the Bible or not. 

“By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established.” Prov 24:3
“Pride goeth before the fall.” Proverbs 16:18
“Whenever you are able, do good to people who need help.” Proverbs 3:27
“God helps those who help themselves.” Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack

And in fact, there are plenty of proverbs in this book of the Bible, although they don’t really begin until after we’ve had the stage set by nine chapters of a long, introductory poem, a part of which we hear today. In these introductory chapters, the listener is told to learn the “proper” way to live so that good things — prosperity, success, security, fairness — will follow. The Book of Proverbs balances the seeming injustices and mysteries we find in life (found in the Book of Job) by giving voice to the paradoxes of life. We all know that there is much that is true and proven in Proverbs, but we share the questions that Job has about life.

Some of the familiar virtues commended to us by Proverbs sound like things that lead more to good citizens than to faithful people — good discipline (of children), hard work, prudent financial transactions — but there is a repeated refrain that “the fear of the Lord” is the starting point for right living. I interpret that as an appropriate reverence and awe of the One who made us and is the source of all wisdom.

Poetry is often used in Biblical writings because it appeals to our more expressive sense of self, our intuitive sense of what is most real and good, and it allows us to relate in a different way. So it makes sense that this book of “wisdom” is introduced by a poem.

As God has created, we often find ourselves wrestling with the dichotomy of an almighty, transcendent, distant God and a God who is present and active and known right here, right now, in the physical creation that we can touch. Today’s reading from Proverbs, I think, helps us to understand this dichotomy a bit better. It’s kind of like a song, where the message is better delivered in lyrical melody, has a power we can’t quite explain, and still reaches deep within us.

And the source of this wisdom, this understanding, is Lady Wisdom who stands in the most public of places — at the crossroads, at the city gate, in the doorways — and not in some out-of-the-way secluded place where secret teachings are shared with a select few. This teaching is clearly for everyone, for her cry is “to all that live” (8:4), and she stands in the busiest part of town speaking to the crowds as they go about their business.

In Eugene Peterson’s version, The Message, we hear this image brought to life for us today:  he writes,“Do you hear Lady Wisdom calling? Can you hear Madame Insight raising her voice? She’s taken her stand at First and Main, at the busiest intersection. Right in the city square where the traffic is thickest, she shouts, ‘You—I’m talking to all of you, everyone out here on the streets!’”

Today’s lectionary then jumps past some long exhortations and claims, and we hear verses in which Lady Wisdom reminds her hearers that she was present with God, and even assisted God, way back at the beginning of creation. Right from the beginning, Lady Wisdom was in on the beauty and rightness and purpose of everything God made, so she must understand how it all works — or how it SHOULD work.

The poet’s words personify Wisdom as a female, and they suggest images of a God who gives birth. While this imagery (seeing God as not only Father, but also Mother) is quite beautiful, there’s also a duality in the text that often contrasts “good” Wisdom with her “evil twin” Dame Folly. In fact, the entire book of Proverbs contains both positive and negative images of women as it teaches what it means to live “the ‘good life’” (“Proverbs,” The Women’s Bible Commentary).

This passage is filled with the sense that God’s Wisdom established the way that things are: not chance, not random events, not even the outcome of some primeval conflict, or a detached or evil god. Our job, rather, is created by a good and orderly God. In Psalm 8 today, we hear of the psalmist who looks up into the sky and beholds the stars and the moon and understands just how small we mortals truly are.

We do not worship a God who begrudgingly grants us gifts and issues forgiveness grumpily. The triune God is a joyous, dancing God who gladly pours out overflowing gifts to all creation. And what does Wisdom do as this happens, as God creates? “I was daily … rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race” (8:30b-31). It’s a different way of hearing the creation that happens in Genesis, which is liturgical and  grand, as God pronounces creation “good”; Wisdom has captured this creation as a graceful, joyous dance.

So what is it that we might take away from this reading from Proverbs today? I think it’s a starting point and inspiration for a spiritual practice that is so often neglected in our frantic, overly-electronic world: paying attention to creation in order to deepen our relationship with God. Quiet time. Listening. Being observant. Being. Not being on our cell phones, just BEING.

Normally rectors ask seminarians or postulants or others to preach on Trinity Sunday because trying to explain the Trinity is a notoriously difficult thing, and it’s easy to start preaching heresies from the pulpit. I’ve really completely avoided the Trinity, but I’m still going to step into heresy, because I, like John Philip Newell and Barbara Brown Taylor, am going to remind you that classes, meetings, and even worship services in our church are not the only (or even best) way we might connect with God. 

In his book The Book of Creation, Newell suggests that we don’t have to find God by leaving our daily lives to go to church or worship services, or looking to an invisible, “spiritual” realm, but by “entering attentively the depths of the present moment. There we will find God, wherever we may be and whatever we may be doing.” Barbara Brown Taylor writes in her book An Altar in the World of twelve different ways that we might encounter God in our everyday lives, including practices like walking on the earth (groundedness), paying attention (reverence), getting lost (wilderness), and waking up to God (vision). She writes that Wisdom “atrophies if it is not walked on a regular basis.” And yet she clearly doesn’t expect us to take her literally, because she believes one of the best practices is to simply “sit down somewhere outside, preferably near a body of water, and pay attention for at least twenty minutes. It is not necessary to take on the whole world at first. Just take the three square feet of earth on which you are sitting, paying close attention to everything that lives within that small estate” (An Altar in the World).

So, my friends, the question becomes how each of us takes the time to connect to God. During the coming week, where can you go or what can you do so that you can just BE? And how might that simple act of BEING allow you to encounter God’s creation in new ways that will enhance the relationship you have with one another?