Where God Meets Man

Propers: The Second Sunday of Christmas, AD 2021 B 

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Wisdom is where God meets man, wherever we encounter the divine within our world.

This is true whether we’re speaking in a very practical, moral sense—choosing right over wrong, good over evil, behaving in accordance with what is good and beautiful and true—or whether we’re speaking metaphorically, mythologically. Honestly, in the Bible, it can be hard to tell the difference. The Scriptures primarily concern themselves with truth regardless of its form.

Wisdom first appears as a way of life in the Hebrew Scriptures of the First Testament. As with any human society, the ancient Israelites were concerned with how to lead a life of blessedness, a life that is not simply easy, but which is good and true. Solomon is said to have been the wisest of all kings—which is somewhat ironic, given the follies of his later life—and so many works of wisdom are attributed to him.

You’re probably familiar with Proverbs, which is a collection of aphorisms and affirmations about how to live your best life now. The Book of Proverbs gathers wisdom from many sources, all united around the conviction that in a just universe we reap whatever it is that we sow. A good and wise and just person will live a good and wise and just life—which is true, to a certain extent. A lot of suffering in this world stems from the foolish, selfish, and wicked choices that you and I and everyone make on a regular daily basis.

But of course that’s not the whole picture, is it? Plenty of bad things happen to good people, and all too often the worst among us seem to enjoy the greatest prosperity. The Bible neither ignores nor denies this. Entire books such as Ecclesiastes and Job wrestle with that ancient question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” These too are books of wisdom.

Wisdom deals with questions not simply of health and wealth but of meaning, purpose, and value. The pursuit of wisdom ultimately becomes a mystic quest for truth. Why are we here? How ought we to live? What does it all mean? And so over time our understandings of wisdom became, if not more complex, certainly more spiritual. Wisdom, in the Bible, develops a personality—or perhaps it’s better to say, we discover that she had one all along.

Wisdom is both God and from God. She is the firstborn of the Creator, yet exists before Creation. She was there at the beginning, God’s love and God’s delight. Through her all things were made, all things given purpose. She is Goodness and Truth and Beauty. She is God descending to earth, and earth reflecting God’s grace. Woman Wisdom is divinity in daily life.

This is a mystical understanding, a way of expressing in words the ineffable mystery of how God interacts with the universe, how the Creator loves all of Creation. The Greeks speak of Logos, the Chinese of Tao and Te, the ancient Judeans of Word and of Spirit. All of these, I think it’s fair to say, share an attempt to speak of God’s action in the world, God’s presence in the world, without denigrating the mystery that God is truly beyond anything we could ever think or say or imagine.

Wisdom, then, is God made manifest in our world without taking anything away from God’s infinity and eternity in heaven. She is also the reflection in Creation of the Goodness and Truth and Beauty who is God. Now if this sounds familiar, it’s because this is the way that Christians know Jesus.

Wisdom works in this world both as Word and as Spirit, that is, both as the meaning expressed in the mind of God, and as the Life, the Breath, necessary to voice that meaning. The Holy Spirit is God at work in all of Creation, blowing where She may, working as She wills. Because of Her, everything in this and all possible worlds has meaning and purpose and value; everything is created and sustained and ultimately redeemed in the self-giving, life-giving, Spirit and love of God.

And so we should not be surprised when we encounter other cultures, other religions, other faiths—and find things that rhyme. If there is One God, One Truth, beyond and beside and within all things, then of course we would expect reflections of that Truth to be found throughout the length and breadth of all that is. That’s why St Paul says to test all things and keep the good. God is universal. No matter where we go, no matter whom we meet, God is always already there before us, ahead of us, welcoming us. For God is the Spirit of Truth.

Yet at the same time, and with no contradiction, God has also made Himself fully known in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord: in one very specific person, who lived in one very specific time and place. We find reflections of God’s Wisdom everywhere we look, so long as we look with discernment, seeking the Wisdom who is already seeking us. But as Christians we believe in only one true, fully-revealed Image of God—one who is not a reflection of the Light but who is the Light Himself—and He is Emmanuel, God-With-Us.

Jesus is Wisdom revealed for the world: He who is both God come down, and also the perfect reflection of God in the Creation. Fully, truly human, and fully, truly God. It is in Jesus that Wisdom finds us at last, Jesus who is the Word, the Logos, the visible Image of the invisible God. In Jesus we find what is good and true and beautiful, what is life-giving, right, and wise.

In Jesus we are not simply shown how to live but we are given Life itself, eternal life, eternal bliss, in the Body and Blood and Word of God, who is Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit. He gives to us all our meaning, our purpose, and our value.

This then is Wisdom: to see God reflected in every aspect of Creation, in every bird and beast, every rock and ridge, every galaxy and particle and quark; and then to know God manifest in the neighbor, in the brother, in the hungry and the needy, in the homeless and oppressed, in the criminal executed upon the Cross, and in the Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep.

So there you go. We started with the universal desire to lead a good and decent life, and we arrived in the fullness of time to that one perfect life laid down to save us all: a life that was not simply wise, mind you, but who was in fact Wisdom herself.

Everything and everyone in all the world is suffused with the Wisdom and the Spirit and the Love of God Almighty, even while still in our brokenness, even while yet in our sin. And the way we see that—the way we see God in others—is to keep our eyes firmly fixed on Jesus, who is the Word and the Wisdom of our God.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.