Advent Lutheran Church

"Living a Wisdom Life"

            Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus.  Amen.

            I heard a Jewish folktale recently about religion.  According to this tale, a rabbi was walking through his village one morning when he was joined by the village soapmaker.  As they walked along, the soapmaker said to the rabbi, “Rabbi, what good is religion?  Look at the world in which we live: poverty and crime and war abound.  And this, after thousands of years of teaching and sermons and prayers.  Tell me, what good is religion?”  But the rabbi said nothing, and they continued their walk. 

Soon, they happened upon a young child, playing in the street.  The child was covered from head to foot with dirt and filth and grime.  And the rabbi said to the soapmaker, “Soapmaker, what good is soap?  Think of all the soap that exists in the world today, and yet this child is covered from head to foot with dirt and filth and grime.  Tell me, what good is soap?”

            “But rabbi,” the soapmaker protested, “in order for soap to do any good, it must be applied and used!”

            “Ah,” the rabbi said, “just so with religion.  If religion is to do any good, it first must be applied and used.”

            That simple folktale has to do with religion, but it could just as easily be applied to wisdom.  Heavenly wisdom, if it to be of any earthly good, must be more than a collection of ideas in a book; it must be applied and used amid the grit and challenge of everyday life.  And according to the Bible, that’s exactly what Wisdom herself wants.  It calls out to us, shouts after us: “On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads Wisdom takes her stand: To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live.”

            It turns out that Wisdom was the primary building tool that God created and then used in the subsequent creating of the world.  All of the various acts of creation – the seas, the mountains, the forests and hills and deserts – all were sources of delight for Wisdom.  But of special joy was the human race: “I was rejoicing before God always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.”  It is that humanity to which Wisdom calls, cries out with an almost pleading urgency.

            I was in Nashville for a conference recently, and I heard some urgent pleading.  Every morning as I walked from my hotel to the conference venue I passed a man who had positioned himself on a street corner and who was shouting at the top of his voice.  The first time I encountered him it was a little unnerving, until I spotted the bundle of newspapers under one arm and listened to what he was yelling.  He was hawking a downtown neighborhood newspaper, and was shouting out the headlines.  Must have been a weekly paper, because the headlines were the same every morning, Monday through Friday.  I never saw anyone actually buy a paper from the man, despite his enthusiasm and the apparent urgency of his message.  Some cries for attention are more valid than others, just as some bits of wisdom are more compelling than others.

             God’s Wisdom is very different from human wisdom.  That’s not to say that human wisdom doesn’t have its value; it certainly does.  Some bits of human wisdom are essential, like attitudes about money that help us control it rather than letting it control us.  In Thornton Wilder’s play “The Matchmaker,” one of the characters says, “Money is a lot like manure: If you hold onto it, it starts to stink.  But if you spread it around, good things can grow.”  Now, that’s sound financial stewardship wisdom!

            Some human wisdom has a definite shelf life.  During the social unrest of the 1960s in this country, a young man named Mario Savio became famous, briefly, when he said, “Never trust anyone over 30.”  I assume Mario subscribed to that bit of wisdom only through his 20s.

            But God’s Wisdom applies to all times, all places, and all people.  “My cry is to all that live.”  This was the wisdom that was brought to life in Jesus.  The dictionary describes wisdom as a combination of knowledge, experience and understanding.  But God’s Wisdom reaches beyond the human limitations of those qualities into the deep intentions and desires of God.  The only way to receive that Wisdom is through the Holy Spirit, and that’s exactly what Jesus promises.

            In our Gospel lesson, as Jesus says farewell to his friends, he prepares them for his absence by telling them that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, will come to take his place with them.  That Spirit would guide them, just as he had done while he was with them physically.  And that Spirit would have a special function: “to declare to you the things that are to come.” 

            “To declare the things that are to come.”  That’s strange phrasing; it sound like fortune-telling, but it isn’t.  Rather, the Holy Spirit would interpret the significance of what Jesus had said and done for each generation of believers so that they could live faithfully; it would equip believers by giving them a deep understanding of what Jesus means for each believer in his and her own time and place in the grand sweep of history.

            The Holy Spirit would get busy doing exactly that.  Just after Jesus’ Resurrection and ascension into heaven, the disciples assumed leadership of the Church.  At that time it was believed, based on their reading of Scripture, that only Jews were to be the focus of the Church’s mission and ministry, that in order to be a follower of Christ one first had to be or become a Jew.  But Peter, one of the leaders of the early Church, received a revelation from God in which it became clear that all people were to receive the good news of the love of God through Jesus Christ, that no one was to be excluded; and so the Christian movement radically expanded its mission to include Gentiles, or non-Jews.  In fact, you could argue that we are here this morning as followers of Jesus because of that revelation to Peter.  (You can read the original account in Acts, chapter 10.)

            But the Spirit didn’t confine itself to the internal workings of the Church.  In the 1700s human slavery was a long-established component of many nations’ economies, and it was accepted partly on the basis of people’s reading of Scripture.  But through a fresh reading of Scripture and the movement of the Spirit, the Church began to realize that slavery was not only not in keeping with the will of God; it ran counter to God’s intentions.  So the Christian movement led the way in the push to abolish slavery.

            Closer to our own day, back in the 1950s and 1960s it was unthinkable for a woman to be in a position of leadership in most mainline Protestant churches.  And that position was supported by a traditional reading of the Bible.  But through a Spirit-led rereading of Scripture it became increasingly clear that God intended the privilege and responsibility of church leadership to be open to all believers based on their God-given gifts.  So now women occupy the offices of pastor and bishop in a number of mainline churches, and the move toward that change continues in the Roman church.

            Let’s bring this into our own day, into our lives.  Where do you find yourself holding onto the past?  If you’re truly honest with yourself, where do you find yourself to be closed-minded?  Where do you find yourself to be hard-hearted?  Identify those places in yourself, and you may well have identified the places where the Spirit of Truth is calling you into a new day.

            And if you really want to get to the bottom of this, there’s really only one place to go.  You look no further than the cross of Jesus Christ.  It was there, in Jesus’ giving up his life for the sake of all humanity, that God declared his unconditional love for us, his eternal determination for restoration and the rescue of humanity.  Ever since original sin separated us from God, God has wanted us back.  And in the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, he accomplished the ultimate act of reconciliation.

            That Spirit of Truth still comes, still calls out to us.  Just as the Wisdom of the Old Testament called out her invitation, Jesus calls out to us, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me … .”  Learn from him, Jesus says, and what we are to learn is nothing less than how to live.   

            “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” he told us, blessed are those who know just how much they need God.  Blessed are those who mourn over the sin and brokenness not only in their own lives but in the whole world.  Blessed are those who hunger after a right relationship with God.  Blessed are those who show mercy.  Blessed are those who make peace. 

            When Jesus spoke those words he was painting a self-portrait, one that he wants each of us to conform to in our own lives.  The world might call it a lifestyle for suckers, but God calls it Wisdom, Wisdom that flows from this God we know as one God in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. 

            It’s a Wisdom that proves its value only as we apply it and use it.  So may the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of Christ, give you the courage of his convictions, so that you might live in Wisdom.

            Amen.