Yearning for Sophia

Midweek Worship

Sixteenth Week after Pentecost

A Reading from the Book of Proverbs:

Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? Give heed to my reproof; I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you.

Because I have called and you refused, have stretched out my hand and no one heeded, and because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when panic strikes you, when panic strikes you like a storm, and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but will not find me.

Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD, would have none of my counsel, and despised all my reproof, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way and be sated with their own devices. For waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them; but those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

A Reading from the Book of Wisdom:

For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness. Although she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets; for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.

She is more beautiful than the sun, and excels every constellation of the stars. Compared with the light she is found to be superior, for it is succeeded by the night, but against wisdom evil does not prevail. She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

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.

What is wisdom? It is more than knowledge, certainly. We have more knowledge, more data, than we know what to do with. Indeed, we are inundated with information. And none of it is wisdom.

Perhaps knowing what to do with all this knowledge is wisdom; that is, having good judgment, discerning purpose and value and meaning in a sea of facts and figures, experiences and ideas. Yet there is a separate term for the wisdom of everyday life, and that’s prudence. Prudence is our ability to apply wisdom on a situational basis.

So what then is wisdom itself, true wisdom? Classically speaking, wisdom is knowledge of higher things, indeed of transcendent things. Wisdom has to do with goodness and beauty and truth as such. And these are categories above and beyond the merely physical, literally super-natural. We may disagree on specific instances of beauty—which lies, after all, in the eye of the beholder—but the experience of beauty is both universal and transcendent.

Music, art, literature, philosophy, not to mention mathematics and the sciences; these all take us beyond ourselves, beyond our world, even beyond our minds, into realms of spirit, realms of the eternal and unconditioned infinite. One can never have enough of beauty; we are always longing and hungry for more. And the same holds true for goodness and for truth. Indeed, the three are one. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

This holds true for hard-bitten rationalists as well. What good scientist could ever tire of truth, would ever say, “That’s enough for me. No more truth, please. I’m full”? Even numbers are realities beyond the physical. Two and two are four, even if there is nothing in the universe to add together, and no universe in which to add them. Math is thus supernatural, in a very literal sense. So don’t think all this talk of wisdom applies solely to the liberal arts. Everyone needs goodness, truth, and beauty.

Wisdom then is knowledge of the divine; and not just knowledge but communion, participation. We want to be one with goodness and truth and beauty. We want to live our whole lives suffused in goodness and truth and beauty. That’s why philosophy is the love of wisdom, not just the study of wisdom.

Wisdom is the longing for God, our need for God, our yearning for God; for communion with Him, for participation in His own infinite, eternal, divine being, divine life. And so, unsurprisingly, wisdom is important in the Bible. There’s a whole corpus of literature—Wisdom Literature—about how to live a life that is beautiful, good, and true; in short, how to lead a godly life.

The different books may disagree on how to go about this, but they all agree that it’s important: wisdom is the apex of human endeavor and the meaning of human life. So crack open one of the wisdom books and let’s see where it takes us. Savvy?

Then something fun happens. Throughout the course of the Bible, starting in the Book of Proverbs, wisdom takes on a life of her own. She becomes Holy Woman Wisdom: Sophia, in the Greek; the same as in philosophy. And scholars have mused that perhaps Hellenistic Judaism found inspiration in Egyptian goddesses such as Isis, goddess of wisdom, or Ma’at, goddess of truth. Yet it’s clear in Proverbs that Wisdom is a literary figure, a personification, not a goddess.

Woman Wisdom, in the Bible, is not esoteric. She is neither hidden nor mysterious. She stands in the public square, in the middle of the street, and shouts to passers-by: “How long will you simpletons spurn me? How long will you live like beasts?” Wisdom isn’t complicated. You know what’s right; you just don’t do it. And when you don’t know what’s right, you don’t even bother to learn.

Wisdom is for everyone. She is open, honest, and true. Proverbs will go on to encourage young men, as they come of age, to marry Woman Wisdom rather than Lady Folly. Oh, Folly talks a good game. Folly is easy, seductive, and fun. But the bed that she perfumes for you is only perfumed with myrrh—which is to say that her marriage bed is your death bed. Commit yourself instead to Woman Wisdom. Commit yourself to a beautiful life suffused in what is godly, good, and true.

Any man married to Wisdom is a man who knows, through her, his God. And while Proverbs generally does not appear to be addressed to the young women of its time—apologies, but it was written a few thousand years ago now—clearly the lessons imparted hold true for man or woman, young or old, rich or poor. Trust in Wisdom, follow Wisdom, for she shall treat you true. Thus Proverbs.

But this figure—this wise, strong, divine figure of Sophia, of Holy Woman Wisdom—proves awfully popular with readers. For if indeed wisdom is communion with God, participation in God, doesn’t that in some sense make Sophia God as well? And so in later books, such as our reading this evening from the Wisdom of Solomon, Sophia is variously described as God’s breath, emanation, reflection, mirror, and image. Now, God’s breath is literally God’s spirit, as in the Holy Spirit. As for the visible Image of the invisible God, well, that’s who Christians know as Christ.

The very language of the Christian Trinity, in which Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit are Three and yet are One; in which the Word, in the beginning, was both with God and was God; these are Jewish ideas drawn from Wisdom Literature. “Wisdom,” Jesus says, clearly referring to Himself, “is vindicated by Her deeds.”

For Christians, Christ is Wisdom, for it is through Him, with Him, in Him, that we participate in the divine life of God, the life of Word and Sacrament, in which we are given His Holy Spirit, who is the life and breath of God, and we are made into His Body, which is the holy Church. To live in Christ, to be one in Christ, to be Christ for our neighbor: This is Goodness and Truth and Beauty. This is the fullness of Wisdom, the fullness of life. Jesus is true Wisdom; His Spirit is our Wisdom.

And when we participate in union with Him, as well as one another, we ourselves become reflections of our beloved, reflections of the Image of God. The beauty God intends for this fallen, broken world shines through Christ in us. And so we become Sophia, a creaturely Sophia, the divine within Creation reflecting her divine Creator. And this Sophia, this Bride of Christ, is the Church and all the world as God intends for her to be, and as she will be once again.

All of Creation is Sophia: participating in the life of God, reflecting the Image of God, marrying the Son of God; for Christ is the wise one who weds Woman Wisdom. If Mother Nature is the world as she is, red in tooth and claw, then Sophia is the world as God sees her from eternity; as He made her in perfection, redeems her by His Blood, and raises her to life everlasting at the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb! Hallelujah!

Okay, so, I got a little metaphysical with you there.

To recap: I started out by saying that wisdom is our longing to participate in God. Then we talked about Sophia, Woman Wisdom, as a literary figure, a metaphor for a life that is beautiful, good, and true. Next, we affirmed Jesus, who is both God and from God, as the divine Wisdom for whom we all yearn and pine, even if we don’t fully realize it yet. And finally, I said that you, the Church, and all the world, are remade by the love of Christ to be His Holy Bride, a creaturely Sophia reflecting the love God has for all.

And I know that can seem like a lot. But I promise you, it’s the Truth—and the Goodness, and the Beauty.

Wisdom is our longing to participate in God. And Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of this and every prayer.

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