God’s Wisdom for Everyday Living: Wisdom at Creation
Pentecost 11 (Narrative Lectionary 3 - Summer)
Proverbs 8.22-36; Luke 8.22-25
Grace Lutheran, Mankato, MN
August 4, 2013
When doing my doctoral work, most of it was online, but we’d gather for a week two times a year on the campus of Luther Seminary. Part of our schedule was doing daily devotions. One classmate, Michael, did terrific devotion on the wonders of creation using pictures and music in a PowerPoint presentation. It was beautiful, breath-taking, and stirring, extolling God’s handiwork in our world. Afterward, one of our professors wondered why Michael hadn’t included the dark side of creation. Missing were animals devouring each other, hurricanes, tornados, etc. Think of Wild Kingdom meets The Weather Channel. The professor was chided by his co-teacher, but I think his point was valid. What about the dark side of creation?
Today’s passage presents us with a Michael version of creation and the role of Wisdom in it. This is our third of six excursions into the Wisdom Literature and it presents a third major theme. The first week we learned that the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord. Fear of the Lord doesn’t mean quaking in our shoes, and it’s not just awe at God’s power and obedience to God’s word, but rather to be in a right relationship with God. Last week the theme was how the reader of Proverbs is to come to the book as a child learns wisdom from parents. Today, we encounter Woman Wisdom, a feminine figure as the personification of God’s wisdom.
We could do a whole Bible study on Woman Wisdom alone and her counterparts Woman Stranger and Woman Folly. Frankly, no one knows exactly what to make of her presence here. She seems to have many of the attributes of God, so is she a feminine counterpart, meant to soften God’s warrior king image? Is she Israel’s answer to the feminine gods of other national religions that surrounded them? Is she merely a literary device meant to engage the presumably young male reader? How about Jesus’ precursor as the Incarnate Logos, who “was with God and was God” at the beginning of creation? Though these are interesting discussion points, I want to spend the rest of the time looking at the text itself.
There are two main points in the text, but I want to put them in conversation with Michael’s devotion, the gospel story of Jesus’ calming of the storm, and the disciples in its midst. The first point is that God’s wisdom is present in creation, and that we can see it clearly. There is orderliness about creation that makes sense, or will make sense, as we uncover it. We rely on this order and predictability in our everyday lives. The second point is that God delights in what has been created, an assertion that goes back to and even further than the book of Genesis. Not only did God declare creation good, God and delights in us and even delights in our delight of creation. I still remember my internship supervisor, Rev. Dr. E. Gordon Ross, talking about his desire to see as much of God’s creation as he could in the remaining time of his life. God delights in our delight.
Yet, the Wild Kingdom-Weather Channel reality that we all know too well is that there are many times we do not take delight in creation and we wonder if there is any wisdom in it at all. Jesus’ followers are a good example: though some were experienced fishers and sailors, the sea was a source of fear and uncertainty for them, somewhat like the chaotic waters of creation. When a sudden storm blows in and threatens to capsize the boat, they understandably panic. Hurriedly, they waken Jesus, who astounds them with his ability to calm both the wind and the waves.
At the Men’s Bible Study a couple of weeks ago, there was a discussion about the bad things that happen to us. Someone may have even quoted Romans 8.28, “All things work together for good.” However, another person said he didn’t see how good things could come out of his son’s death or his recent horrific accident. I responded that I believed that God was present throughout in all of our circumstances of life, good or bad, and that sometimes it’s hard to see what God’s presence brings about. Often, it is not until we have some distance on an event or when others see for us what we cannot see for ourselves that we are able to see God working.
What is the difference between knowledge and wisdom? I have been hearing a commercial for a mattress company talking about, believe it or not, this very same thing. Knowledge, according to the ad, means knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom means knowing that the tomato doesn’t belong in a fruit salad. For us today, knowledge means knowing that there is orderliness in creation that is discoverable, and that God delights in us and our delight in it. Wisdom means knowing that God continues to be present in, with, and under all creation, creating and recreating, bringing order out of chaos. This includes our lives, whether sunny skies or cloudy, storms or calm, in creation in all its beauty and its terribleness. Where is God present in your life today, creating and recreating? God delights in doing so. Thanks be to God! Amen.
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