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Pilgrim Uniting Church, Doncaster Vic. |
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God's Wisdom Provides New Understanding Preached by Mary Edgar at the World Day of Prayer Service on Friday 7th March 2008 Scripture: Job 28: 20-28 Our culture doesn’t seem to understand wisdom. Sometimes to be wise seems to be equated with being shrewd or lucky, backing the right horse being a wise choice. Or it identifies wisdom with knowledge or qualifications, highly valuing degrees and commercial success. The worldly-wise know how to get what they want, what jobs to go into, networking, dealing and contracting so that personal profit follows. But when the motivation is power, pride or personal ambition, people begin to cut corners, make unethical decisions, and trample over others. We have seen many tragic results.
Our
service has provided a rich exploration of biblical wisdom applied in the
country of Guyana. Wisdom is not intelligence, information or knowledge,
although these are important. In Choruses from The Rock, TS Eliot wrote
that
endless invention, endless experiment, brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; knowledge of speech, but not of silence; knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, all our ignorance brings us nearer to death, but nearness to death no nearer to GOD. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the Wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the Knowledge we have lost in information? After nearly a century, these words resonate even more deeply. The Christian’s aim is to grow in wisdom, as a whole person, to develop spiritual maturity and stability of character. While all of Scripture refers to wisdom and understanding, the Wisdom books specialise in dealing with human experience in all its forms. They give us 2 contrasting polarities. The first describes the extreme suffering of Job, inexplicable to him, and an encounter with Yahweh that blows him away but doesn’t answer his questions, that confronts him, and us, with God’s mystery, but also calls his life, and ours, into question; in our falling-apart crises, we find that it is only by confronting what we don’t want that we are thrown back on to God, when we fall – again, and can’t rise again, that we are never closer to being held in his presence; that wisdom is gained by learning perseverance, enlarging our belief and trust. Set in contrast with Job are the down-to-earth everyday routines of Proverbs, in matters of work, family, money, sex, relationships, emotions, eating and drinking - sharpening our observations and insights; inviting us to live well, skilfully and with ethical clarity; there we discover that responding to God and Wisdom personified as Sophia is the most practical thing we do. The second polarity consists of the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes; the ecstatic experiences of sexual love, the glories of discovering far more in life than we ever dreamed of, in a created pattern of joyful physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy, convincing us that God blesses the best that human relational experience is capable of; in contrast is the Teacher’s pessimistic description of the futility of making life-meaning from the pursuit of excitement, pleasure, success, wealth, even wisdom, for their own sake, and on our own terms, exposing our incapacity to make it on our own without taking God into account. The centre of Wisdom is the book of Psalms, bringing us to attention before God, pulling every scrap and dimension of human experience into God’s presence. Anything that is human qualifies. We can pray any experience, feeling or thought. We must pray it all, if it is to retain or recover its essential humanity. Wisdom says that nothing in human experience, no detail, can be outside the arena of God’s presence if we decide to take him seriously, respond to him believingly, with all our outrages, regrets, worries, distractions and joys. With God as companion for the journey, we can live more profoundly and truly. There is a beautiful saying: I said to the almond tree ‘Speak to me of God’. The tree blossomed. According to the 2nd Century Irenaeus of Antioch, The glory of God is man fully alive. Aliveness, not knowing or explaining everything. If we wish to get rid of uncertainty, tension, confusion and disorder from our life, there is no point in getting mixed up either with Yahweh or Jesus of Nazareth. Faith is less about do’s and don’ts than about wonder, less about problem-solving than about presence. Keats used the term negative capability - when a person is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Job’s friends clearly lacked this capacity. Without it, there is no room for the unpredictable, unexpected; for the soul; for love; for God. Real wisdom comes from God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the fountain of life. Not being afraid or terrified of God, but the God-fearingness of reverence, awe, trusting wonder and passionate desire to follow him, the God of grace, the God of love, so personal and holy, worthy of our willing surrender. This is the attitude of Moses praying for God’s perspective ‘teach us to number our days aright, to apply our hearts to wisdom’. It is the attitude of Mary of Bethany, sitting at Jesus’ feet, thrilling to his word, treasuring it in her heart, as Mary his mother did. Paul writes that all the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in Christ, God’s great mystery. The amazing revelation is that Wisdom is more than a concept, but is embodied in Jesus. Everything of God is expressed in him. He has become for us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. In our new understanding of God’s revelation through Jesus who calls us friends, we enter, not a performance relationship, but a love relationship with the Holy Trinity, opening our hearts to receive others. The wise person builds the house on this rock. The letter of James is full of practical wisdom, his theme being ‘It’s the way you live, not the way you talk that counts’. He must have learned that from being Jesus’ brother, as well as follower. James says that wisdom is not primarily knowing the truth; it is skill in living it. What good is a truth if we don’t know how to live it? What good is an intention if we can’t sustain it? What is required is head and heart together. Wisdom applies knowledge to its best use, in dependence on the Spirit. It distinguishes good from evil and gives us courage to make radical choices for good and to take costly action. It enables us to bear ambiguity and paradox, without sinking into passivity. It requires a teachable heart, an attitude of humility, where we are vulnerable, open to self-criticism and ready to change. It is founded on genuine love, not being two-faced, wanting what is best for everyone and doing the necessary hard work of community, taking responsibility, giving self with hospitable generosity, meaning what we say, saying sorry, saying I forgive you, practising justice and peace-building, and facing challenges with hope. According to church traditions, James carried the nickname ‘Old Camel Knees’ because of thick calluses built up from many years of committed prayer. The prayer is foundational to the wisdom and its living. It is the answer to TS Eliot’s observations. It requires the spiritual practices of stillness to develop detachment from our normal roles and preoccupations, to create inner space for awareness; of silence to face our distractions and learn reality’s own truth, about God and the world; and of solitude to confront our dependencies and our inner true self. Contemplative prayer deepens our awareness of God and self, an experience of knowing and of loving, which opens us up to profound relatedness with others, making possible true community and service for others. Scripture-soaked prayer, continually renewing our God-connection, is always foundational to wisdom. Understanding comes only when head and heart are inextricably bound together. Spiritual life is not a taste for spiritual comforts. It is a commitment to faith where we would prefer certainty. It depends on readiness. It demands faithfulness. It flourishes in awareness. It emerges in living. For me, it has been tested most recently these last few weeks with the possible cancer of my granddaughter and the tragic death of my nephew by his own hand last week. At such times like these, I discover whether in my heart, I truly trust a God who is, who is with me and who is for me for my good, no matter what. And will I be for him, no matter what? That is the wisdom of life. The ancients say that Once a disciple asked the elder, “Is there anything I can do to make myself wise?” And the elder answered, “As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning.” “Then what is the use” asked the surprised disciple, “of the spiritual practices you give?” And the elder said, “To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise”. May God’s wisdom through Jesus and our committed responses to him enabled by the Spirit, keep us awake, in mutual loving responsibility in God’s world, until the Sun of Righteousness dawns
on those who honour his name,
bringing glory to God. Mary Edgar is a psychotherapist and returned missionary. Her life has been immersed in international mission, being born in China, giving 30 years involvement with The Leprosy Mission and most recently serving for 6 ½ years as a counsellor and college lecturer in Nepal. She is a member of Bulleen Baptist Church, currently serving as Kids Hope Co-ordinator. She lost her husband to cancer when he was 50, and has 2 daughters and 7 grandchildren. |
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