Proverbs 9:1-6
Ephesians 5:15-20
Howard W. Roberts

A powerful image for God found in many places in Scripture is wisdom. Sophia is the Greek word.  This image of God developed as people struggled with the idea that God was distant, aloof and came to experience God as close as their breathing.  There was a sense of wisdom that developed as they experienced the closeness and immanence of God.  Wisdom was originally introduced into the scriptures to solve a spiritual and theological problem.  Jewish theology emphasized the transcendence of the one God to such an extent that it gave rise to the idea that God is far beyond this world, personally distant, even uncaring.  To offset this conclusion, Jewish wisdom writers introduced a host of symbols to describe this one God’s intimate presence and action in the world: God’s Spirit, Word, Angel, Name, Torah, Shekinah, Wisdom.  Wisdom is the most highly developed of these signifiers.  A collection of writings known as Wisdom Literature grew out of these experiences.  The Book of Proverbs is one of the best known to us.  In the biblical material wisdom is always referred to as feminine and portrayed as a woman.  It helps broaden our images of God and increases our language to talk about God. 

Wisdom is one of the most important concepts for an understanding of what the New Testament says about Jesus.  It is central for two reasons.  On the one hand, Jesus was a teacher of wisdom.  This is the strongest consensus among today’s Jesus scholars.  Whatever else can be said about the pre-Easter Jesus, he was a teacher of wisdom-a sage, as teachers of wisdom are called.  On the other hand, the New Testament also presents Jesus as the embodiment or incarnation of divine wisdom.
           
As a teacher of wisdom, Jesus was not primarily a teacher of information (what to believe) or morals (how to live), but a teacher of a way or path of transformation.  A way of transformation from what to what?  From life in the world of conventional wisdom to a life centered in God. (Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time)
           
The Book of Proverbs teaches daily disciplines for ordering life in just and harmonious ways.  Job points people to a loving, if mysterious, God who promises to be present with us in the adversity our best laid plans cannot preclude.  Jesus’ subversive sayings invite people into a relationship with a Savior who leads us in risky paths in which security and wisdom are not synonymous.
           
Alyce McKenzie tells about her friend, Jean.  Jean called me with tears in her voice.  After a mastectomy and bone marrow transplant, she had just found out that her liver was riddled with tumors.  A new drug offered only a 30% chance of shrinking them.  “Could you come right over?” she asked.  As Alyce sat across from Jean in her living room, she expressed her feelings.  “I’m not angry with God.  I don’t think it’s punishment.  I guess my task is to figure out how best to live out whatever time I have left.”
           
Jean defined the question that drives the human search for wisdom: how best to live. Is this not the question each of us needs to ask whether or not we have a terminal illness?  As someone stated clearly, “We are all terminal.  None of us will get out of this life alive.”  So the question we need to ask and answer is, “How can I best live out whatever time I have left?”
           
Wisdom in the Proverbs is often described as the Way (4:11).  This word is derived from the Hebrew for “to tread: or “to trample.” It suggests a path worn by constant use.  Wisdom is described as the Way in several Eastern faith systems.  By no coincidence, in the early days of the Church, Christians were described as “followers of the Way.”
           
Kathleen O’Connor says in her book, The Wisdom of Literature:
           
Ultimately, biblical wisdom is neither innate talent nor disciplined human achievement; it is divine gift. Wisdom is something, or rather someone, to be sought after, to pursue, to pray for, but finally, it is Wisdom who finds us.
           
The wisdom of Jesus the sage offers specific strategies for thinking and acting based on a counter-order vision of the rule of God.  Many of his sayings challenge conventional wisdom’s advice to listen to one’s elders (“you have heard it said, but I say unto you . . “), hold one’s tongue, and live in a careful way that avoids risk and increases the chances of securing good health, a good living, and a good reputation.  On the contrary we are blessed when we are persecuted, and we are to refrain from condemning as if we have the last word.  We are to avoid the temptation to place foresight above faith, (“consider the lilies of the field”).  We are not to seek retribution (“turn the other cheek”), and not to make self-preservation a way of life (“Those who want to save their life will loose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it”).  Jesus’ own subversive wisdom teaching and living culminated in the cross, whose foolishness, when judged by conventional standards, Paul names “the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:18-31).
           
In our text from Proverbs, wisdom has built a house which is the world.  She prepares a banquet to which all are invited.  By eating the food from this banquet table, people are able to live wise.  Living wise involves leaving the company of ignorant people and following the way of knowledge.  We often are ignorant-that is we ignore what will make life better, richer, deeper for us.  Is there any one of us who does not want to leave our ignorance and live wise? 
           
Ginger Garb offers two examples of ordinary people having the courage, the wisdom, and the integrity to live wise.  Living wise usually is in direct contrast to conventional wisdom.  A story in USA Today (April 18, 1998) told about Eleanor Boyer, who was 73 years old at the time and  living in New Jersey.  Eleanor Boyer won $20 million in the state lottery.  She had played the lottery for many years with no particular desire to win; she did it mostly to be companionable.  She and her best friend bought tickets together, Eleanor Boyer saying that the $2 purchase price was her contribution to the state education fund. 
           
Eleanor Boyer gave away every single penny of her winnings to church and to charity, keeping nothing for herself.  This all happened about fifteen years ago.  At the time Eleanor still drove her faded yellow 1969 Chevy Malibu with the peeling white vinyl roof, and she still lived in the same gray Cape Cod style house where she was born in 1924.  Her action was so unusual that it attracted considerable media attention; in fact, she was besieged by reporters and TV cameras, but Eleanor Boyer did not want celebrity.  She insisted that there be no celebration or even mention of her generosity, and no praise from the pulpit.  Eleanor Boyer once hung up the phone on the Monsignor of her church because he asked her if she would appear on the Today show.  He also received an enormous check from her for the Sunday offering, amounting to more than eight years’ worth of Sunday collections.  He said that most of the parishioners at their church had no idea who their benefactor was; “She just says her prayers and goes about her business.”
           
Eleanor Boyer was not seduced by the temptations of this world.  In a fame-driven culture that separates fame from merit, Eleanor Boyer refused all publicity and attention.  In a society that venerates greed and proclaims the gospel of consumerism, Eleanor Boyer lived comfortably in her old home.  In a culture that has elevated shopping to an art form and the shopping mall into a contemporary cathedral, she was content to drive a 30-year-old car, a clunker in the best sense of the word.  In a culture that tempts and torments with visions of life-transformation through sudden wealth, Eleanor Boyer did not want her life to change.  She liked it the way it was.  “I have my pension and Social Security.  I have everything I need.” She is quoted as saying.  Eleanor Boyer offers an example of someone who does not conform to the wisdom of this world.  She is living wise.
           
Another example of integrity and courage in the face of the pressures imposed by the wisdom of this world occurred in Switzerland (The Nation, 6/13/99).  Christoph Meili, a young married man with children, worked as a night watchman at the Union Bank of Switzerland in Zurich.  He led what is usually called an ordinary life.  Then on January 8, 1997, as the 28-year-old Christoph was making his rounds checking the different bank offices, he saw on the floor of the shredder room “two big containers overfilled with books—old books, really museum pieces.  “I had this feeling,” he said, “that something was wrong.”
           
Christoph remembered recent newspaper stories about the Volcker Commission which had been searching for funds deposited by people who became Holocaust victims.  He examined the books and found that among the bank ledgers destined for the shredder was one for the year 1945, documenting properties in Berlin in the 1930s and 1940s, including the properties of people who became Holocaust victims.  The banks in Switzerland had steadfastly denied that such records existed.  Christoph realized what he had in his hands and, he said, “I more than understood why they’d be shredding them.”  He smuggled these records out of the bank and took them home.  Christoph’s wife, Guiseppina, supported his decision to go public with the documents. 
           
Although the bank’s intention to destroy the documents was illegal, the police opened an investigation of Christoph for violating the bank secrecy act.  The public outrage that should have focused on the banks was directed at Christoph.  He was suspended from his job, vilified in the press, and personally harassed.  He even received death threats.  Their friends turned against Christoph and Guiseppina Meili.  No one would give Christoph a job.  Unemployed and facing prosecution and jail, Christoph agreed to testify before the Senate Banking Committee in Washington in May of 1997.  “I know (testifying) will make me an enemy of Switzerland, a traitor.”  In July, 1997, Christoph became the first Swiss person to receive political asylum in the United States, where he and his family now live.
           
As a result of Christoph’s courage and integrity an important piece of European history was not destroyed.  Christoph’s courageous action also paved the way for a $1.2 billion settlement that Swiss banks agreed to pay Holocaust victims and their heirs.  Potential beneficiaries include, in addition to Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies, homosexuals, physically or mentally handicapped people, and people who performed slave labor for entities that may have deposited revenues in Swiss Banks.
           
What enabled this young bank guard, who had never met a Jewish person, to stand up and do what he knew was right in the face of the united pressures of a whole country?  Christoph and Guiseppina Meili listed three factors that they believe influenced his decision.  One was Christoph’s mother, a political activist who taught Christoph as a child about social justice.  Another was seeing the movie, Schindler’s List, just a few months before the night he found the ledgers in the shredding room.  “When I saw them,” Christoph said, “I saw Schindler sitting on the horse looking into the Krakow ghetto-seeing the Germans take the people away.  For me this was the same story-that’s the property that has ended up in the Swiss bank.  I had the feeling I had to do something.”
           
Christoph’s courageous action was also inspired by hearing the sermons of a pastor that Christoph and his wife did not know personally and had never even spoken with.  These sermons gave Christoph the idea of resistance to unjust authority.  The message they heard from Pastor Sieber, Guiseppina said, was that “if you are going through the world without faith, you are in the frame”—the frame of law and custom—“but if you are going with the cross you are out of the frame.”  In other words, it is not inevitable or necessary to be conformed to the wisdom of this world.  There exists another wisdom-the wisdom of God-that can be discerned, that can give courage and strength to do that which is good and acceptable, that results in living wise.
           
Wisdom is perception, understanding, discernment, discretion, and good judgment.  Wisdom knows how to interpret and utilize real-life facts, as well as philosophies.  Wisdom requires native intelligence, but not necessarily as measured by tests.  True wisdom cannot be quantified on paper; we only know that there are varying degrees and manifestations of giftedness, to be found among all people.
           
T he good news is that every child of God may have sons and daughters who will bless the whole world with their wisdom.  Even more importantly, every child of God has in herself or himself the wisdom to live an abundant life, within whatever limits or handicaps may be arbitrarily set against them.  Every one of us has the potential to live wise.  Will we?  That is the question each of us must answer.  How can we best live out whatever time we have left? Will we live wise?
(The Living Pulpit, July-September 2000, source for some of the material for this sermon)