June 15, 2025 Sermon

Sermon title:  “Wisdom Came First”

Scripture:  Proverbs 8:1-4 and 22-31

(Other lectionary suggestions include Psalm 8, Romans 5:1-5, and John 16:12-15)

Proverbs 8:1-4 and 22-31

The Gifts of Wisdom

1Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? 2On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; 3beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out: 4“To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live.”

Wisdom’s Part in Creation

22“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. 23Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. 24When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. 25Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth— 26when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world's first bits of soil. 27When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, 29when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, 31rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.”

          One of the things one learns as a minister is that certain regular holidays or Holy Days follow as certainly as night follows day. For instance, after Easter we soon celebrate the Ascension, and after Ascension comes Pentecost and after Pentecost comes Trinity Sunday. There is a certain logic to all this, certainly. If we believe Jesus was raised from the dead, we also believe he didn’t hang around forever, so he had to leave the scene. But he declared that he wouldn’t leave us comfortless, and so he and God sent their Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And after Pentecost, you really do need a Trinity Sunday to try to explain how our one God is actually three in one. Not that we can ever explain it, but we do try!

          In our opening hymn today, “Holy, Holy, Holy” there is a Scriptural reference at the top of our hymnal. It says Revelation 4:8-11. If you look up those verses, you find these words:  “And the four living creatures.... never cease to sing, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.’” And the Scripture continues by saying that 24 elders fall down before the one who is seated on the throne, and they cast their crowns before him. This, of course, is all part of John’s vision, and the author of the hymn, the Rev. Reginald Heber wrote this in 1826. The music came later, in 1861, and it was written by John B. Dykes. What they are trying to do is put into words and music the idea of our God in Three Persons. As we mentioned on more than one occasion, we are talking SYMBOLS here, and the question is, How do you describe the Indescribable? That is what we ministers try to do on Trinity Sunday: explain how God the Father, who created heaven and earth, is also God the Son and also God the Holy Spirit.....and God has always been that way, whether we recognized him in the Old Testament or not! Could God be God in MORE than three persons, three masks? Let’s not go there, but the possible answer is YES, because God can do or be anything he wants!

          So much for Three in One. Now consider this:  the sermon title is “Wisdom Came First.” Did you listen to the reading from Proverbs this morning? It’s almost as if Wisdom and God were together from the beginning! How could that be? You and I know how Genesis begins:  “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Nothing about WISDOM helping God out! But you know what the problem may be? You and I think like scientists, and so we have no room for MYSTERY in our thinking.

          And again, remember that we are talking SYMBOLS here. GOD IS maybe all we need to know, and it has never crossed our tiny little brains that God is bigger than we ever thought, and maybe more COMPLICATED.

          A Lutheran minister by the name of Michael J. Wollman in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, points out that in the ancient languages of Hebrew and Greek, the word we translate as “wisdom” is a FEMININE noun. What he says is that having a word that is feminine means that it is able to be used more precisely, more carefully, more effectively, and maybe even more powerfully. He says, “The reading from Proverbs 8 attempts to speak of a power greater than what the ancient Hebrews were seeing in the foreign lands and peoples that surrounded them. This power existed before the world was created, and this power had a name:  Wisdom. Sophia in the Greek. This is not human wisdom; not even the wisdom of the elders of the tribe or village or family. This wisdom was God’s own wisdom, the brains behind the brawn, the smarts and wits that drove the word to explode the cosmos into being with a single utterance. What was made by God is beyond brilliant because it is from God’s wisdom.”

          A short while ago I mentioned that the concept of God – when you attach the concept of Wisdom to it -- is complicated. Listen to this from the first chapter of Genesis:  It’s Genesis 1:26, and in my Bible it’s on the very first page:  “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...’” Did you hear that? OUR image after OUR likeness! Did a scribe make a mistake and write down the PLURAL instead of the singular? I don’t think so, but what’s happening? I first learned that the Genesis writer or writers were influenced by the Babylonian writers in thinking of God as plural. That makes sense to me because we humans tend to BORROW from each other, whether it’s SALSA from the Mexicans, or fragments of speech, such as NO MAS for NO MORE!

          But what if the PLURAL got in there because Wisdom and God existed together? Some Christians have tried to suggest - INCORRECTLY, in my view - that those plural references to God in Genesis 1 are actually references to the TRINITY. Again, that’s wrong, in my view, but I have been wrong before! But again, we are talking SYMBOLS here, and how does one speak of the Ineffable or the Indescribable in language that we just don’t have?

          Here is a point that Michael J. Wollman makes, and it’s a good one. “One thing translators have long known is that there are just some things about some words and texts that cannot be translated into other words. They have to be translated by how the words are written and expressed. You know about this:  you know it as music, or maybe poetry.”

          My late mother-in-law knew this, and sometimes she would say, “There’s no word for this in Jewish.” She meant YIDDISH, but she said “Jewish.” And she was right.

          There is something about music or poetry that says more than mere words can ever express. How could Beethoven TELL you about his 5th Symphony? How could Mozart TELL you about a piece he had written? Perhaps we need to understand the concept of Wisdom as a poem or love song that God has written to us. Pastor Wollman concludes his remarks about today’s Scripture reading this way:  “Wisdom sings to us from Proverbs 8:29-31:  When he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world, and delighting in the human race. It may not mean much to you if I say that your existence makes God happy. But doesn’t it mean so much more if Wisdom sings that humanity delights God’s wisdom? And because that is true, God’s Wisdom sings for joy.” Amen, and thanks be to God.

Pastor Skip