Wisdom’s house – 13 August 2021

 

Wisdom is a special word in the bible.  We have encountered her before.  Wisdom is always feminine – in the Hebrew cochmah, and in the Christian scriptures the lovely Greek word sophia[1].  So it is that the lectionary alternative OT reading for next Sunday takes us to the Book of Proverbs:

Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars.
She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine,
she has also set her table.
She has sent out her servant-girls,

she calls from the highest places in the town,

“You that are simple, turn in here!”
To those without sense she says, “Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”  (9:1-6)

Now, sitting a lifetime in the pews you don’t get to hear much about Lady Sophia, Lady Wisdom, because it seems hardly to belong in the familiar biblical message, we never heard of it in Sunday School…  This writer personifies Wisdom as a woman to be reckoned with, equipped with her team of female servants.  She builds a house of wisdom, with seven pillars – seven signifies completeness in Hebrew thought.  She has meat and wine… and she vigorously invites in the simple, those without sense…  Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.  It’s an astonishing image in the patriarchal culture of Judaism. 

But it’s more than that…  Lay aside immaturity… walk in the way of insight.  Lady Sophia is inviting us to grow up.  St Paul writes: Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise… because the days are evil.[2]  It is not a time for nominal, conventional faith, what Bonhoeffer called cheap grace[3]; it is not a time for reliance on any tribal god of miracles, rewards and punishments, a god who has to be placated and beseeched, who keeps a running score of merits and demerits.  We must no longer be children, writes Paul[4], tossed to and fro… but speaking the truth in love, we must grow up[5] in every way into him who is the head, into Christ… 

In Lady Sophia’s house, as it were, we learn to set aside infantile religion and to walk as Jesus taught.  We shed our fears of change and of mortality… and discover one sunny morning that we are not so charmed, not so anxious, about ourselves.  We learn to pray in a suitable, simple, disciplined way, and we learn the riches of silence, and the distinctive way of Christ. 

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[1] חָכְמָה (cochmah), σοφία (sophia).  In both languages the noun is feminine, and wisdom is personified as a woman.

[2] Ephesians 5:15.  Paul distinguishes between unwise (asophoi… ἄσοφοι) believers, and wise (sophoi… σοφοί).

[3] Bonhoeffer: The Cost of Discipleship -- …billige Gnade, eine Gnade ohne Nachfolge, ohne Kreuz, eine Gnade ohne Jesus Christus, die Quelle der Gnade. Cheap grace, a grace without discipleship, without the Cross, a grace without Jesus Christ the source of grace. 

[4] Ephesians 4:14-15

[5] auxanō (αὐξάνω), to grow up, in this verse contrasts with nēpios (νήπιος), an infant.  Even in the 1^st century church Paul has found that some believers are already preferring to remain in infantile dependency, which may be religion but is not faith.