Rev. Kevin M. Pleas

Proverbs 9:1-6 August 16, 2009

Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table. She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls from the highest places in the town, "You that are simple, turn in here!" To those without sense she says, "Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight."

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There's an old Zen story, included in the collection "Song of the Bird," by Anthony de Mello, which goes like this.

Kakua was the first Japanese to study Zen in China. He did not travel at all. He just meditated assiduously. Whenever people found him out and asked him to preach, he would say a few words and then escape to another part of the forest where he would not be disturbed.

On his return to Japan, the emperor heard of him and commanded him to preach at court. Kakua stood silent and helpless. Then he pulled out a flute from the folds of his robe, played on short note on it, bowed profoundly to the emperor, and disappeared.

What do you make of that? What occurs to me is that even if the story didn't say it was a Zen story, we would still know it was simply by the fact that is doesn't seem to make much sense. A lot of the Zen stories are like that. But this one caught my attention because in his book, de Mello gave this story the title, "One Note of Wisdom." The wisdom, I think we're meant to understand, comes from Kakua's knowing that there is simply no way to put into words most of the things that are really important in life. He could have told the emperor what he had experienced, but because the emperor hadn't experienced it for himself, the words wouldn't have any meaning. So Kakua pulled out his flute, blew his "one note of wisdom," and hit the road. Much better, he must have thought, to leave the emperor scratching his head than to let him imagine he could understand Zen second hand.

The book we're reading for my current class, The Shack, makes a similar point. Halfway through the story the main character, Mackenzie, is talking with God about having the right answers to the questions he's been asking. God responds by saying, "There are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of right things from their brains because they have been told what the right answers are, but they don't know me at all. So really, how can their answers be right even if they are right, if you understand my drift ... even though they might be right, they are still wrong." (page 200)

That's pretty much the nature of wisdom isn't it? We start off by teaching our children all the things we think they need to know in order to get by in life: "Wash behind your ears," "Don't talk to strangers," "Do your homework." If we were ever to make a pile of just the basic knowledge we need to survive in the world, it would be a pretty huge pile. But as kids, we soak it up like sponges. I remember reading once that a child of, I think it was six years old, knows more about his mother's kitchen than could be written down in a work the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I don't know how you would ever prove that, but the idea alone is pretty amazing.

Still, no matter how much knowledge we gather, it isn't going to make us wise unless we figure out the right ways and times to put it to good use, without becoming overly impressed with how much we think we know. Pam reminded me of a song we used to sing when our children were young. It came from an album called "Family Vacation," by RosenShontz. There was a time we would listen to it in the car whenever our own family took off on vacation.

There was an Owl so wise. He had his head in the skies.

He thought he knew the answers, all the how's & why's.

"I'm smarter than smart. My IQ's off the chart."

'til he met someone who cut him down to size, size, size.

The Owl was questioned by a Crow.

"Hey Bud, what's the shortest way to go?"

The Owl had no reply. The Crow he winked his eye.

"The shortest way to go is how the crow flies.

Nah! Smarty Pants. Nah! Smarty Pants.

You think you know it all.

Nah! Smarty Pants. Nah! Smarty Pants.

You're headed for a fall...

I used to love how we would all sing that song at the top of our lungs while cruising down the interstate. There were at least a couple of times, when I thought my kids were getting a little too full of themselves, that I reminded them of that song. Then there was the time they thought the same of me and returned the favor. I suppose it happens to the best of us. Clearly, knowledge and wisdom are related to each other, but they're not the same thing.

That is a very old idea. The scripture reading that Essie shared with you just a few minutes ago comes from the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament. Proverbs is mostly a collection of pithy statements that were gathered together over a long period of years. They represent things that people thought were important enough to write down so people could pass them on to their children. Proverbs is part of what we today call the Wisdom Literature, and there is a lot of this stuff around, not just in the Bible. The writings of the Ancient Near East contain quite a lot of sayings about what people felt were the best ways to live our lives. The things that we should do and the potholes we should try to avoid.

This literature has been handed down through the generations as a way of encouraging us to be the best kinds of people that we can be. But just calling it Wisdom literature doesn't mean it is always consistent or that it always rises from the same assumptions. Karen Armstrong wrote a book called, "The History of God," in which she talks about this wisdom literature. When the Jews were sent off into exile, she says, after the destruction of the Temple, one of the things they encountered, perhaps for the first time, was Greek philosophy, which of course is all about wisdom.

They eventually discovered though, that the philosophical ideas of the Greeks were sometimes at odds with the wisdom of their own tradition. Greek philosophy, they felt, was the wisdom of the world, whereas the wisdom in the Bible was the wisdom of God. It is the fear of God, the Bible says, that is the beginning of wisdom. I found it interesting to read Armstrong's book and discover this conflict of perspectives between the wisdom of the Bible and ancient Greeks.

Somewhere along the way, in all this gathering of wisdom, someone came up with the idea of bringing wisdom to life. Biblical wisdom became personified in the character of Sofia. Sophia was said to be the consort of God. She was God's presence; God's glory in the world. And there are a fair number of biblical passages that present her in this personified way.

The passage from this morning talks about the Wisdom's House. Sophia had constructed a house with seven great pillars where she could entertain people who were interested in learning God's truth. This image of a courtyard in the house of wisdom is apparently a reflection of a common practice in Greek culture. Wealthier householders would sometimes invite people in to hear a lecture from one or another of the great philosophers. In the house of Sophia, as it is envisioned in the Bible, Wisdom herself extends an invitation for people of faith to "lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight." Presumably, any philosophy that did not begin with the fear of God was immature, if not downright dangerous.

There is a song that has been popular among the choir here in the last couple of years. It's called, "Wisdom, My Road." The lyrics are from the book of Ecclesiasticus (51:13-22) which is part of what we call the Apocrypha. Listen to how "Lady Sophia" is envisioned.

Long before my journey's start, when in my youth I searched in my heart,

I would pray for her, wait for her. Wisdom, my road, my goal, and my star.

From the blossom to the seed, long has she filled my cup in need,

May I cling to her vine, taste of her wine, Wisdom, my life, my perfect design.

When I stretched my hands to the sky, when in despair my soul raised a cry,

I was saved by her gaze, led in her ways. Wisdom, my love, the light of my days.

Isn't that beautiful? The truth is, we relate better to ideas when they are given a body. We relate better to the notions of what it means to be human when they're brought to life in a personal way. This "lady wisdom," and the writings about her, were very popular in Old Testament times. But something not a lot of people know is that this image of a personified wisdom later became the model the early church used for understanding Jesus.

Lady Wisdom was the heart of God. She was with God from the beginning. All things were created through her. Does any of that sound familiar? It should. The Gospel of John says exactly the same thing about Jesus. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. He was with God from the beginning. He was in fact the wisdom of God.

Although it's a catchy saying, brevity is not actually the soul of wisdom at all. Obviously, we can be very brief and still be very wrong. On the other hand, piling up a lot of words doesn't guarantee wisdom either. Wisdom, as an idea, can be hard to get a handle on. It can change so much from one situation to another. What is wise in one circumstance is not necessarily wise in another. But what the early church knew, and what we need to know also, is that, for us, it is the Spirit of Christ which is the soul of wisdom. It is that wisdom personified in the life of Jesus that will guide us into a personified wisdom in our own lives. And that's a whole lot easier to get a handle on just the abstract notion of the brevity of wisdom.

Amen