'Til All Are One

Wisdom, by Wes Talbott

Propers: The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, AD 2023 A

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 the oneness of mind that guides and permeates all things.” That’s according to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Wisdom is oneness. It’s the ability to see the big picture and to apply it to everyday life. In the Bible, God creates Wisdom before anything else. She is the firstborn of Creation, the oneness of Creation, the big idea behind it all before we all went wrong.

You know, I have a photo of my daughter from when she was very small, all smiles and big bright eyes, and no matter what happens—no matter how proud I am of her growth or how patient a parent has to be whenever a child gets lippy—that image of her as pure potential, pure joy, will forever be a part of me. I will always see her like that, however old she gets. That’s kind of like what Wisdom is.

Wisdom is Creation as God sees her: unfallen, perfected, beloved. That’s how she was in His mind when He made her. That’s how she’ll be again at the end of this age. And that’s how she exists in His eternity: already saved, redeemed, and glorified. And we are all her, remember. Wisdom is our best self, our true self, us as God sees us. And she is, of course, always united with Christ. They are inseparable: Creator and Creation, husband and wife, Word and Wisdom.

For indeed, if we hope to understand the big picture of Creation, if we wish to be wise and to possess wisdom within us, then we must seek to understand the Creator. And while this might seem an impossible task—for how can finite minds hope to grasp the infinite?—nevertheless we can know God by His grace, by His love.

Like all monotheists, Christians understand God to be an infinite eternal act of Being, an infinite eternal act of Knowing, and an infinite eternal act of Love. Think of it like this: in one eternal instant, God is. He is reality itself, subsistent existence itself. In that same eternal instant, God knows. He knows Himself perfectly, and thus knows all, because He is all. His Being gives rise to His awareness as a Father begets a Son.

And in that same eternal instant, God loves: loves what He is, loves what He knows. The Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father, infinitely, perfectly, so that the love they pour out into each other is the very life of God, the Holy Spirit of God. And these Three—Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit—are not three gods but One God, who is and who knows and who loves, infinitely, perfectly, eternally. We call this the Trinity, but other traditions have other names for this same basic understanding.

God then is all Good, all True, all Beautiful. He lacks nothing, for there is nothing beyond Him; He is the All and infinitely more. He’s not lonely. He’s not bored. He’s God! And so when God creates, it is pure joy, pure gift, pure art. God creates because He is and He knows and He loves without limit, profligately, superfluously, promiscuously. We are all made in and of love, infinite love.

Now there are many stories of Creation throughout the Bible, which use many metaphors. But surely the most famous is the first: the first chapter of Genesis, whereby God speaks Creation into being. And this is a wonderful analogy. Speaking—or writing, or fashioning art—is how we as human beings take our internal processes and through some astonishing alchemy send them out into the world to manifest as external reality. They say that writing a book is like having a baby.

In Genesis 1, God draws existence from the infinite well of His Being; He then shapes it into forms with His mind, which is to say His Logos, His Word; and this creation is then breathed out and given life by His voice, which is to say His Spirit. Being, Knowing, Loving; Self, Word, and Breath; Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit. This is who God is, and how He as an artist creates.

All of us come from God. All of us are returning to God. And even now, in the midst of this life, we are saturated in God. Yes, He is transcendent and holy, infinitely beyond us. Yet we draw our being from His Being in every moment of our existence, every heartbeat, every breath. We are saturated by His awareness, by the Word of God who knows every atom, every thought, every possibility that makes up our lives. And we are permeated by His Holy Spirit, His love, who is selfless self-giving Life.

Creation is a work of art, an act of love, an instantiation of pure and profligate joy. That’s what we are, because that’s what God is. That’s the big picture. That’s Wisdom. Creation is good and beautiful and true because God is Goodness and Beauty and Truth. Creation is loved infinitely because God is infinite Love, in the most literal sense.

And can you imagine for the barest moment that there is even the slightest chance that the God who birthed you, and who knows you better than you ever could, and who loves you with everything that He is, could ever abandon you, ever forget you, ever relent in His efforts to bring us all home at the last? Because I can’t. And it’s gotten to the point now where I’ve come to consider the alternative as blasphemy. Jesus tells us the Father’s will: that not one of His little ones be lost. And by God, the Son will see that the Father’s will be done.

Now, obviously there’s more to the story, right? If the world is created in perfect being and knowledge and love, and if we are infinitely loved by the infinitely Good, then how did things go so wrong? How did they get so bad, fall so short? And this is a perennial problem not only for Christians but for humanity in general. We know things aren’t right. We know that this is a fallen world, a broken world, which does not work the way that it ought, the way that it was intended.

Yet the conviction of evil is proof that God is good—for if there were no transcendent standard for good, no infinite source of good, then we’d have no conviction of evil, for all things would then be permissible, and morality would be matter of digestion and the weather. Only a madman believes in that, certainly not the wise.

Creation has gone wrong, has gone off track. It has done so through sin, which is separation from our God. Without the Creator, Creation withers. It does not come to the fullness of goodness and beauty and truth He intends. It is not Wisdom. And as far as we can tell, God allows this deviation, this fall from grace, not because it is His will—for if it were it could never be sin—but out of respect for our freedom, for our autonomy as independent beings. We are His children, not His puppets.

Yet this division of the world by good and evil, this provisional dualism marring the canvas of Creation, is clearly not something that God is willing to let stand. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son—the Son who is God, remember, the Word of God, the mind of God—that whosoever believeth in Him might have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that all the world might be saved through Him.

We might wish for God to snap Him almighty fingers and force the world to be good again, cow the cosmos into submission, but that’s now how He works. That’s not how love works. Love does not force. Love only gives, and never gives up. In Christ, God has become one of us. The Creator has entered Creation, the Artist become now one with His art. And Jesus showed us whom we are meant to be, as the New Adam, the God-Man, the Savior of the world strung up on a Cross.

And that love—that infinite, ceaseless, self-giving love—that is what has saved this world. That is what has filled hell up to bursting with the light and life of God. That is what shall bring us all home at last. The Wisdom of God, the ultimate big picture, is that of the Creator united with Creation, of God and His children as one.

Once, long ago in Bethlehem of Judea, the unity of God and Man became instantiated, incarnated, in the womb of the Virgin Mary. She became the Wisdom of God, the manifestation of His plan for us all, united as a Mother with her Son. When that Son grew, He gathered to Himself a community, a group of disciples, whom He would come to call both His Body and His Bride. This was the Ekklesia, the Church. She was Wisdom embodied as a people, as the Kingdom of God.

And someday He will return to gather everything and everyone that He has ever made into His Resurrection, into the New Creation, and then at last will God be one with all His wayward children. Then will Creation be Sophia once again, Wisdom once again, as she is in His eternity, beyond all time and space.

This is the Wisdom that’s hidden from the wise, and which calls us to be salt and light, preserving and delighting and illuminating all the world around us. We know who we really are. We know where we’re going. We know the big picture, the plan behind it all, the oneness of God and of Man.

This indeed is Holy Wisdom. And this we must share with the world.

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