We are returning this week to the theme of wisdom, which I felt the Lectionary led us to last week. You may remember last week we looked at the story of Solomon, his prayer for wisdom as he ascended to into his throne, and how it pleased God that Solomon prayed for wisdom. And the story of his great, wise decision with respect to the to mothers, who both claimed the parentage of the one child.

 

And this week, the Lectionary lifts up the ninth chapter of Proverbs, which Bill correctly identified as one of the wisdom literature books. These verses, one through six, and then verse ten. They are wonderful verses that we don’t read in church very much. At least not in the American tradition. I want to read them again to you, this time out of Peterson’s translation, The Message, in which he makes it clear that this is wisdom pictured as a lady.

 

 

Last week, I lifted up not Lady Wisdom, but Solomon and Jesus as examples of wise people. But Proverbs joins those texts in considering wisdom saying that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

 

And it just raises the question for us again, What is wisdom? What does it mean in the Christian tradition to be wise?

 

What is wisdom? The Bible, especially here in Ephesians and John and Proverbs, tries to make it clear that wisdom is not simply knowledge or intelligence. That’s why I like so much MaryJo and Jim’s daughter’s answer to the question “What does it mean to be wise in The Children’s Sermon. She said, “It isn’t just being smart. It’s also knowing the right thing to do.”

 

History, especially the last three hundred years, shows us that simply gaining more and more intelligence without bringing wisdom to bear on it, almost always results in destruction. We have demonstrated that we can know a lot, and not know the right thing to do with it.

 

Wisdom is not simply more intelligence. As Lady Wisdom Miss Lauren Williams said, “It isn’t just being smart. It’s also knowing the right thing to do.”

 

From century to century, we have learned that somehow knowledge has to have an ingredient added into it to be rich, to be helpful, to be good for us.

 

I want to share with you a couple of quotes from a great Christian thinker of the last century, a theologian named Paul Tillich. You likely have heard the name before. He taught at many years at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and then taught at Harvard University as the Professor of Theology and Philosophy there for the last third of his career.

 

Dr. Tillich says that the Bible teaches us fundamentally that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. That’s the tenth verse that we read from Proverbs. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. But he says the Bible doesn’t mean by that simply the experience of being frightened by God, as a child might be frightened of consequences. But rather, Dr. Tillich says, the Bible always means in this the experience of encountering the Holy.

 

I know you have some sense of what this encounter is like because of your reports to me. You encounter the Holy and you report about it to me from time to time.

 

I was at a big open house at the high school across the street this week, and I walked outside afterwards with several parents. It was Tuesday night when it just poured great buckets. Nevertheless, people showed up for the open house. But during the time we were in the school, it went from being day to being twilight. And when we stepped outside of the school gym, across the western horizon, was the most glorious sunset. A kind of vibrant red with dark storm cloud towers framing it in such a way that it dramatically enhanced the beauty of the sunset. Two people pointed it out to me; they wanted to tell the preacher, “Now how can you look at that and not know there is a God?”

 

They were reporting to me that in seeing that kind of beauty in nature, they encountered something of the Holy. And that, says Tillich, is what the Bible is talking about when it says, this encounter is the beginning of wisdom. It is the growing knowledge that we are not alone. That, fundamentally, we are creatures in relationship with a Higher Being. That, says Proverbs, is the profound truth about us.

 

So when parents take young people up to a college, as many of our parents are doing this weekend, and (especially that freshman year,) go through the tough emotional work of having to walk away and leave their children there, they know that somehow, that is a holy moment. (I’m thinking of several parents we have amongst us this week, doing this work.) They sense that there is someone else they are involved with there, and they are trying to entrust these growing, young adults to that higher power.

 

The scriptures witness that the fear of the Lord, which is the knowledge that we are not alone, is the beginning of wisdom. The encountering of the Holy.

 

Dr. Tillich goes on to say, in words that seem very powerful to me, “There cannot be wisdom without this encounter with the Holy, because it creates awe. This encounter with the Holy shakes the ordinary way of life and thought. Without the experience of awe in the face of the mystery of life, there is no wisdom. And most removed from wisdom are not those who are driven by desire for pleasure or power, but those brilliant minds who have never encountered the Holy, who are without awe, and know nothing sacred, but who are able to conceal their ultimate emptiness by the brilliant performances of their intellect. No wisdom shines through the knowledge of many with great minds and great talents, but no awareness of the Holy.”

 

This is what wisdom is like, says Dr. Tillich, in a kind of a powerful litany: “Wisdom is like teachers who, in their teaching, are aware that they are not teaching alone. They are partnering with God in the raising up of the life of the mind of students.”

 

“Wisdom,” says Dr. Tillich, “is present when there are pupils who, in their growing independence, do not reject the heritage of their ancestors and the gifts of their teachers, but see the heritage as being presented to them in the legacy of the past, in the traditions of the community.”

 

“Wisdom,” says Tillich, “is present whenever there are people who realize the limits and the necessity of all their learning, and who recognize the need for the superiority of love over simple knowledge.”

 

Then, in a remarkable sentence, he says, “Wise are those men who are aware of their intellectual and emotional limitations when, as men, they encounter women.” That brings one into an encounter with the Holy. “And wise are those women who acknowledge their limitations as God’s creatures as they encounter men, the other pole of their common humanity. That’s an experience of encountering the Holy. And both show wisdom. If they are able to accept each other without anxiety, without hostility, without abuse, without dishonesty, but in the power of love, which is rooted in the awareness of the Eternal.”

 

Wisdom is the encounter of the Holy. The memory, the knowledge, that we are not alone, that we exist in relationship with God, and through the prism of the divine, in relationship with one another.

 

When my mom graduated from high school, (the same high school from which  a number of you here, her peers, graduated) they held that year the baccalaureate of that high school in this sanctuary. I honestly don’t remember the year of that graduation. I’d have to ask Joann Dawkins that, but it’s somewhere around 1950. But they had that baccalaureate here. My mother was a member of a small Methodist church that was very important to them, so they didn’t regularly worship in this sanctuary. But they came to the baccalaureate, and my grandfather came of course, as parents do, to the baccalaureate with her. He heard the preacher speak from this pulpit. The preacher at the baccalaureate was the pastor at that time of this church, The Rev. William Kadel. His sermon made such an impression on my grandfather that he (of course, never having any knowledge that I would one day stand in that very pulpit,) took a Bible and presented it to his daughter, my mother, and inscribed in the front of that Bible the title and the theme of that sermon, which was this: “Always remember God.”

 

Always remember God. He gave it to her as she went off into adulthood, because in some way he knew it was at the heart of wisdom. Remember God.

 

When you find yourself in life suddenly coming on a moment when you have abundance, great wealth, and you didn’t know you were going to have as much as you had, and it brings you enormous opportunity. Even the opportunity for extravagance and great joy, and the chance to bless your friends and those around you, remember God. Always remember God.

 

When you find yourself in life at a moment of great discouragement, where you just feel you’re at the end of your rope, and you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, and you don’t know where help is going to come from, and it seems like failure is going to win the day, remember God. Always remember God.

 

And if you come to a moment where you have to take your spouse of over fifty-something years, and with whom you have shared life and broken bread and walked through this journey together, and you have to turn her over to the Great Unknown, into the hands of God, at that moment, remember God. Remember you are both in relationship with God.

 

And when you come to a point in your journey where you suddenly have a great opportunity, an opportunity unlike any other opportunity before, and it might bring you fame, and it certainly is going to bring you success, and you seize it. At that moment, always remember God. Remember God.

 

When you have a granddaughter who is struggling with a chronic illness which seems to bite at the very soul of her life, and it certainly seems cruel and fair, and you wonder what possible help there can be for her, remember God. Always remember God.

 

When you find yourself, John, worried about a church, the larger church, that seems to bicker and dwell in contentiousness, and can’t find peace and unity that the Scriptures call it toward, and you think, What is going to come of it? Remember God. Always remember God.

 

When you find yourself without your organ. They’ve taken your piano away from you, and they’ve given you this monkey-grinder thing, and put all this construction up, and you think you’ll never get to make beautiful music in the church again, do not give up. Remember God. Always remember God.

 

No one ever lived with a more consistent and pervasive awareness of the Holy, of the presence of God, than Jesus did. In the community’s memory reported in the gospels Jesus was so aware of it he brought it to bear in every facet of his life. He brought it to bear on everything he did and everything he said. He was so connected with the Holy that people saw the Holy revealed in him. He was so aware and so revealing of the Holy, that about him the community said, “This is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. In this one we see the Holy. In this one we see God.”

 

John remembers that one day Jesus trying to help the community around him stay connected with their awareness of the Holy One said to them, “I am the bread of life, and if you take me into you, you walk with me, and follow me, and receive me, you will never be separated from God.” Nothing can separate us from God in Christ. Not even death.

 

This is Christian maturity. Growing up in Christ. Growing up into a consistent awareness of who we are and whose we are. We see it in people around us, at different times. At different moments some exhibit it in a greater way than others. None ever perfectly. None ever fully. But now and then, like great lights amongst us, lamps are lifted up, individual lives, that witness to us of the ability of a person to grow in Christian maturity. And their awareness of the presence and the power of God seems to say to us “Remember God! Do not lose faith in God! We are in the presence and purposes of God!”

 

This is Christian maturity, growing up in Christ. Coming to a consistent awareness of the presence of the Holy One. “Skilled living gets its start in the fear of God. Insight into life comes from knowing a Holy God.” (Proverbs 9:10 The Message) Until we come to this wisdom, “Nothing can separate us from the presence of God through Christ.”

 

And the Letter to the Ephesians in this morning’s lectionary text affirms that this awe, this knowledge of the presence of God, is the beginning of wisdom. And that those who gather around it are drawn to worship there. And when they find that encounter and they are drawn to worship and acknowledge that relationship that exists most fundamentally, most profoundly, that they are people in relationship with God, then that wisdom always leads forth into.............. song. That wisdom always is going to end up rejoicing in music and gratitude, and the singing of psalms.

 

This is the beginning of wisdom. Always remember God.

 

©John T. DeBevoise 2006