Sermon: “The Beginning of Wisdom”
Text: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Trinity Sunday (C)
May 30, 2010
Scripture introduction. You may think it odd that our second reading for this morning, a Sunday when we give special emphasis to the basic Christian doctrine of the Trinity, is from the Old Testament, especially from the book of Proverbs, which is best known as a collection of brief, pithy advice about being wise in our daily affairs. But unlike much of Proverbs, our reading for today—from chapter 8—actually tells a brief story. As the chapter opens, the character Lady Wisdom takes her stand in the most public places, in the highways and byways of life, amidst all the hustle and bustle of human activity. There, almost like a street preacher, she calls out to every living person.
Lady Wisdom describes herself, saying, “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.” The verb that is translated “create” can also mean to acquire, to get, to produce, or even to give birth. Several verses later we read that before the beginning of the world Lady Wisdom was “brought forth,” which can also mean to give birth. We should remember that this is poetry, and that the language is symbolic. The writer of Proverbs was not suggesting that God actually gave birth. Yet it’s a powerfully intimate image (as well as a largely female image)—God birthing or begetting Lady Wisdom before the beginning of all time. Despite the female imagery, when Christians first began to explain the relationship between God the Father and Jesus Christ, years before there was a New Testament, Proverbs 8 was one of the texts they found most helpful. Since that relationship between the Father and the Son is central in any discussion of the Trinity, the text has been an important source in discussing that doctrine, too. Hence, its appearance in today’s lectionary readings.
Sermon. On Sundays when we serve the Lord’s Supper, we generally say together the Nicene Creed, which is the most widely accepted statement of belief accepted among Christian churches. The language is ancient and sometimes confusing to our 21st century ears, but the Nicene Creed is important as a statement of the doctrine of the Trinity—that God exists in three persons yet remains one God. The creed begins with the words, “We believe in one God,” and then goes on to describe the three persons of the Trinity. You remember how it describes Jesus: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; though him all things were made.” Early Christians accepted the God described in the Old Testament, and they agreed with their Jewish forebears that there was only one God; yet Christians also affirmed that Jesus Christ was God. The Nicene Creed was an early attempt to explain this apparent contradiction.
Did you hear the similarities between the Nicene Creed and Proverbs 8? (1) For example, the creed affirms that Jesus was the “son of God” and was “begotten of the Father.” In the same way in Proverbs 8, Lady Wisdom tells us that the Lord “acquired” or “got” or “begat” her. (2) The Nicene Creed makes the point that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was “eternally” begotten of God, meaning that there never was a time when the Son was not begotten. So also in Proverbs 8, Lady Wisdom was begotten of the Lord “at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago, . . . ages ago, . . . at the first, before the beginning of the earth.” (3) According to Proverbs 8, Lady Wisdom was there when God created the world. “When [God] marked out the foundations of the earth,” she says, “then I was beside him, like a master worker.” In a similar way the Nicene Creed affirms that through Jesus Christ, “all things were made.” (4) Perhaps the Nicene Creed goes a step beyond Proverbs 8 by insisting that Jesus Christ was “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.” Proverbs 8 never actually says that Lady Wisdom was God. However, the poetry of Proverbs leaves no doubt that a deeply intimate relationship is being described. If we put ourselves in the position of either an Old Testament writer who wanted to express poetically the closest kind of relationship between Wisdom and God, or of an early Christian theologian attempting to describe how God and Jesus Christ, although distinct, could still be one, perhaps we, too, would have used the image and symbolism of an eternal begetting or birth—one that had no point of beginning and had always existed.
You may already be making the connection in your mind between the character of Wisdom in Proverbs 8 and the person of Jesus Christ, described in the first chapter of John’s Gospel as the Word, or logos, of God. The meaning of logos—the rational principal that holds all creation together—reminds us of the way Lady Wisdom is described in Proverbs 8—God’s helper and master worker in the process of creation.
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It’s at about this point that most of my sermons on the Trinity get bogged down in symbolism and abstract thinking. Thank goodness Proverbs 8 suggests another, more artistic way, to think about the Trinity! If we go back to verses 24 and 25 of chapter 8—the ones in which we read that God “brought forth” Wisdom—you’ll remember from the scripture introduction that the Hebrew word for “brought forth” can also mean to “give birth” or to “beget.” That fed into the first half of the sermon, the more analytic part. But this Hebrew word is rich with other meanings. Its basic meaning is to whirl, to spin, to writhe, or even to dance. (You can see the connection with childbirth, which may cause a woman to writhe.) But please focus now on this image—to whirl, to spin, or to dance. It is as if Wisdom is brought forth in the dancing of God! In the poetry of Proverbs, Wisdom was “danced forth” before the beginning of all time! Have you ever watched a couple dancing so fast or so closely that they look almost as if they are one person? They spin; they whirl. Just for a moment, we can focus on one face; but then they turn and it’s the face of the other; and then they turn again. The expression of joy on both their faces is the same, so as they turn, the faces seem almost to merge into one. Only when they spin apart, never letting go but holding each other’s hand at the fingertips, can we see them as separate; yet still they are connected and moving to the same rhythm and with the same purpose and intention.
Is that not the sense we get from the final verses of this morning’s reading? Wisdom was “daily delight,” always rejoicing before God, “rejoicing in the inhabited world and delighting in the human race.” Delight, rejoicing; rejoicing, delight! There’s exuberance and excitement in these verses that should rescue us from the cobwebs of sterile, abstract philosophical thinking about the Trinity. Can’t you feel the spirit of love and joy flowing back and forth between God and Wisdom as they dance creation into existence and then lean back and laugh with joy?
In my article for the Herald this month I recommended to you the book by Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. His chapter on the doctrine of the Trinity is one of the best ones, and he calls it “The Dance of God.” He reminded me that in the early years of Christianity, believers used the Greek word for “dancing” to describe the Trinity of God. I don’t know if these early Christian thinkers had Proverbs 8 in mind, but they might well have. For you see, if we think of the Holy Spirit as the love and joy and delight that flows back and forth between Father and Son, then we have three dancers. I don’t know how it is that Western Christianity has lost this image of the Trinity as the dance of God, but it has never been abandoned in the Eastern Orthodox tradition.
The image of the dancers, distinct but united, powerfully conveys the central idea of the Trinity—that God, in essence, is community. There has never been a time when God was not in community, not even before the beginning of creation and time. Why is community important? Think about it: how could you ever have a God of love without an object to love? Since God is community, love can be given and received—is given and received—constantly. In this dance of love, the persons of the Trinity flow in and out of one another, shifting, merging, sparkling as each one in turn takes the lead in the dance and then gracefully yields the lead to another. Never does one dance alone; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are always there together, no matter which one may seem to be taking the lead.
Because God is a community of love and joy, we know that God did not NEED to create the world or human beings to receive love. God is completely self-sufficient, even in relationship. But what does love do? It wants to love more. It wants to expand and to include others in the circle of love. So God freely chose to create humanity and to include us in the dance. We are still learning the dance. We step on each other’s feet. We lose concentration. We occasionally release our hold on, our connection with, the other dancers. Yet at great cost—the cost of lowly birth in a stable and death on a cross—God lovingly seeks us out and invites us once again to feel the rhythm of love—love for God and love for each other. This is the highest wisdom. This is the principle that holds the universe together.
Come, answer Wisdom’s call and join the dance!