Proper 15b.06                                                        August 20, 2006

“Immortal, invisible, God only wise,” the hymn goes,       

        “In light inaccessible hid from our eyes.”
“Wisdom has built her house,” Provers tells us.

        “She has hewn her seven pillars . . .
        She has mixed her wine, she has set her table. . . .
        She calls from the highest places in town, . . .

                ‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of my wine.
                Lay aside immaturity, and live,
                        and walk in the ways of insight.’”

The earliest Jewish images of God
        were images of natural power, usually violent power

                – earthquakes, storms, and waterfalls.
The awesome power of nature spoke to these primitive people,
        telling them something about God.
This is the kind of God we see in the Law and the Prophets.

But around 500 B. C., they began to see other things
        as images of God, images of peace and order,
        images of paradox and mystery.
God came to be seen as the one who orders creation
        instead of disrupting it

        – as the fashioner of Wisdom,
                the deep foundational order of reality,
       what other religions call the Tao or the Dharma.
This is the God we see in the final third of the Hebrew Scriptures,
       called the Writings or Wisdom Literature.

Knowing and practicing Wisdom,
      the Bible says, is the way to real life

             – not just existing, not just getting by,
                      but really living in touch with reality

       – instead of lost in illusions and chasing the wind.
In today’s lesson, Wisdom is the intermediary
      between God and humanity.
She is inviting people to a feast of Wisdom.

She goes to the highest places in town and invites the people

        – not just the smart people or the scholars –
        because Wisdom isn’t about being clever,
                 but about being sane –
she invites the people to her banquet.
“Come, eat of my bread and drink of my wine,” she says.

Of course, Wisdom isn’t literally serving bread and wine.
Bread was a symbol of wisdom or knowledge.
Wine was a symbol of life and the enthusiasm to live it fully.
So she says,

         “Eat my bread. Drink my wine.
         Lay aside immaturity and live.”

Proverbs 16:22 says, “Wisdom is the fountain of life.”
And at the end of today’s lesson, Wisdom says straightforwardly
                what she means by eating her bread and drinking her wine.
She says, “Walk in the ways of insight.”

In the Narnia stories, Aslan is the keeper of “the Deep Wisdom.”
And he grows the children up by teaching them his Wisdom
        little by little as they go.
This is what we are being offered in Proverbs,
        the Deep Wisdom of God, the way of life.

Our Gospel lesson is a Christian paraphrase
        of our lesson from Proverbs.
Our Lord’s sayings in John’s Gospel
        are not as likely to be the words of the historical Jesus
        as what we read in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
John tells us from the get-go that this is a book
        about what Matthew Fox calls the Cosmic Christ.

But John calls him “the Logos.” We translate it “the Word.”
But “the Logos” isn’t just a word.
It’s the Greek philosophical term for the divine order of things.
It corresponds to what Proverbs calls “Wisdom.”

So this is the voice of Wisdom speaking through Jesus.
Offering flesh and blood, bread and wine,
       to give us real life, to put us in touch with reality.

These images of flesh and blood may seem strange
       if we think of Wisdom as ideas we carry in our heads,
       as abstract truths, or good advice.
But this is a deeper Wisdom than any of that.
This Wisdom isn’t anything we can read in a book.
It isn’t something clever people know in their heads.

The Deep Wisdom is Heart Wisdom.
It’s in our bones and in our breath.
It isn’t something we know
       as much as a way of seeing.

The Psalmist sang:

       “My mouth will speak wisdom
       and the mediation of my heart will be understanding . . . .
       So teach us to number our days
       that we may present to you a heart of wisdom.”

Proverbs says,

       “Wisdom rests in the heart of one who has understanding.”
And Chronicles says that all the world called on Solomon
       to hear “the wisdom God had placed in his heart.”
The Deep Wisdom isn’t in our heads, but in our hearts

Study is a good thing.
Reading the Bible along with Commentaries is a good thing.
Knowing the ideas of great theologians is a good thing.
But we can do all that till the cows come home
       and still be fools in our hearts.

Heart Wisdom comes through practice.
Kneeling at this altar rail with open-minded hope
       of receiving grace is practice.
Listening compassionately to a suffering person –
       just listening without trying to fix them – just listening –
               that’s practice.
And prayer is practice – especially the prayer of solitude and silence.

Dr. Ron Roth in his book, Prayer & The Five Stages Of Healing, says,

       “ . . . . (O)ur state before entering the place of solitude (is like)
                 a patient preparing for a heart transplant.
      Our human heart, which has been weakened . . .
                 by the negative energy of jealousy, resentment, bitterness,
                 and a reluctance to forgive,
                and our vital arteries which have been cogged
                        with selfishness, loneliness, and grief
                are about to be replaced by a new heart and arteries
                cleansed by the fire of the Holy Spirit.

               When we face our own demons,” he writes,

               “encounter God in the silence and solitude,
               our heart is strengthened and infused with . . . compassion . . .
               We are then better able to help others, to read their hearts
               and become one with them in their grief and sorrow;
               . . . we can offer them comfort and consolation. . . .”

Dr. Roth is describing Heart Wisdom.
That’s what today’s lessons are about.
With Heart Wisdom, we really live.
As John puts it, we really “have life within us.”
Without it, we are just marking time and keeping ourselves entertained.

Our lessons don’t mean this ritual we do today is magic,
       that we, who celebrate this sacrament acknowledging
               the Presence of Christ,
       are the chosen few going to Heaven,
       while Muslims, Jews, and Baptists are not.

This sacrament is one of our ways – it is our primary way –
       of opening to the Deep Wisdom of God.
It is our primary way of sharing in Wisdom’s feast.

But this sacrament isn’t magic.
It is a practice of opening to the transforming grace of God.
The Lord said through his prophet Ezekiel,

        “I will take the stony heart out of their flesh
               and give them a heart of flesh . . .
        And they shall be my people and I will be their God.”

There’s the transplant Dr. Roth was talking about.
That’s Heart Wisdom.
The wisdom to hear another person’s pain
       and the wisdom to know God’s love is deep enough
               to swallow that pain

       – that’s something you can’t just know in your head.
It does precious little good in your head.
You have to know in the very fiber of your being.

This sacrament we celebrate today,
       the sacrament of the body and blood of Our Lord,
       achieves its purpose when it arises out of prayer,
               deep prayer, the prayer of solitude and silence

       – and it achieves its purpose when we live out of the sacrament,
               in a practice of serene service to each other.

Prayer, sacrament, and service – together –
      these things are the ways of insight, the ways of life.
They are our way of touching the Deep Wisdom of God.

                                                    Amen.