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June 3, 2007 Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 Don Evans Greetings to the faithful saints of Bethany United Church of Christ; I bid you the peace that Christ so loving bestows on all of us. Before I get into the body of the sermon I would like to take a minute to discus the greeting I use at the beginnings of my sermons. St. Paul often started his letters in a likewise fashion. Now, I am not putting myself on a plane with such a great disciple but I find his greetings to be very uplifting. It is out of my admiration for him that I emulate his greeting. I am also very much drawn to his use of the word saint. That is saint with a lower case "s", not the saint with a capital "S" we associate with persons who had sainthood bestowed on them by the Catholic Church. Saint as used here simply means "believer". The saints are people called out of the world to be God's own people. As God's people we are called to live our lives as such because we saints, lower case now, are the church. I cannot think of a better way to remind us all, me included, of what we need to be about. I give God thanks for this blessing and St. Paul for reminding us of it. Today I am going to start with your homework assignment. Since it is the start of summer it will be a very short assignment. Today's sermon is untitled. So as you listen and meditate, listen for a word or phrase that means something to you. Maybe you will hear a word or phrase that will remind you of how God is speaking to you today, through my humble words. I mean humble sincerely folks. I often feel that I am not worthy of standing in a pulpit and I most assuredly am not a biblical scholar. The words I write simply would not come from me unless so by the grace of God. So let us see what God wants us to hear today, as we explore together his message. It is a message most often attributed to have been written by Solomon. The Old Testament, or as I prefer to call it Hebrew Lessons, is divided into three categories of instruction. They are of course, the books of law, the books of the prophets and others known as writings. It is this latter category that Proverbs is a part of. It is a writing about life and about living it in sensible ways. God created Wisdom first and Wisdom was with him helping in building God's creation and is the author of the living instructions for all people living in God's awesome and Glorious creation. If a person follows the instructions of Wisdom they will find themselves fitting quite nicely in this world and that Wisdom will help them in their daily efforts. Having "Fear of the Lord" is the first step toward obtaining wisdom. I am not talking about fear in the sense of being scared. It is not the fear in our traditional sense of the word. It is the recognition of the boundary between what is ours and what is God's. More so, it is the respect we must grant God. It is the realization of God's presence in our lives and the reverent awareness of that reality. The essence of the entire book of Proverbs can be summed up in as written by Charles Martin; "If fools despise wisdom and instruction they come to ruin in all the tragic and colorful ways Proverbs describes. Those who read and practice, those who listen to the wise father, will prosper in the end, and generally now as well.". After reading that, I think that I will be rereading the entire book of Proverbs real soon. In our text portion of Proverbs today Wisdom is calling out to all people. It is truly a plea to all people everywhere. There is no mention of creed or nationality. There is no mention of any other human qualifications. I cannot help but think that those who came up with the United Church of Christ's motto "That all may be one" must have had this scripture in mind as they were developing it. No one is beyond Wisdom's calling. In using "she" as a pronoun for Wisdom, Solomon is the only Biblical author I know to use what we now call inclusive language. I wonder who and what kind of women were in the life of the author for him to so respectfully use a feminine pronoun. They must have been exceptional persons of goodness. In these few short verses we also find that God's focus in Creation was humankind.. The world was created for them. And Wisdom delighted in them. (repeat) This account of creation is quite different from the Genesis stories. It is where we hear how our God exalted Wisdom. It is a newer calling for us to relish the beauty, pureness and freshness of what God created for us. As the scripture continues beyond today's reading it becomes clear that Wisdom is only asking us to hear and heed. John F Kennedy once said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" That was and is good advice for dealing with human government. But for our spiritual and moral government, Wisdom in contrast asks us to do nothing for her. If we hear and heed we are doing it for the glory of God. Her joy is with humankind. Her joy is seeing us live as God intended. This passage is often read as if it referred prophetically to Christ, the wisdom of God and by whom all thins were made. I'll simply leave that thought for your personal pondering. For me, many of the Hebrew Scriptures are stories that were used to explain things that the people of the time had little or no understanding of. It was easy for people then to remember stories, just as it is easy for us to remember stories today. Even though nothing in my reference books supports it, I have a feeling that what is suggested in this story is that Wisdom is synonymous with God's Holy Spirit. Maybe this is just my feeble attempt at getting a handle on what the awesome glory of God gives me. It is by his Holy Spirit that we accept the gift of God's wisdom. It is wisdom we can obtain through simple acceptance, prayer and through the love and support God provides us in our daily trials. Wisdom, or Holy Spirit is of God, was created before anything else. That alone should tell us how import it is. It is this wisdom that makes us better persons and strengthens our resolve to be God's children and Christ's disciples. Like the wind makes trees stronger, living our lives guided and upheld by God's wisdom also makes us stronger. A few weeks ago we celebrated earth day. As part of that celebration the Associated Press asked several astronauts what it felt like as they looked back at earth from outer space. Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders who is credited with taking the famous picture entitled "Earth Rise" put it this way. "We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing we discovered was the earth." End quote. Forty years ago we became awestruck at the complexity and mystery of nature. We became aware for the first time the true vastness of space as well as the intricacies of things like DNA. Think for a moment of your favorite landscape (pause). Now look at your hands and think of what they can accomplish. (pause) Got your images? Now in unison say "WOW" ----. How can we not marvel at what God created for us. By the mighty hand of God all was created and by God's gentle hand all is held together. In the vastness of the universe we are unique creations. This is our place for us to care for. Anders was further quoted "The earth was the only color we could see in the universe. . . We're living on a tiny little dust mote in left field on a rather insignificant galaxy. And basically this is it for humans. It strikes me that it's a shame that we are squabbling over oil and borders". This was said forty years ago and it is still true today. What a sad commentary on human affairs. As our seemingly unending war on terror rages on we long for peace. We long for the simple joys of security and safety in our homes and schools. We long to be able to enjoy the simple beauty in nature. We long for simpler lives. What would Wisdom tell us today? Better yet, what is God's wisdom telling us today? We continue to damage our environment through resource exploitation and abuse it further with our pollution of all kinds. We are experiencing global warming and the destruction of our rain forests. These Forests not only contribute significantly to a healthy atmosphere but also provide sources of countless important pharmaceuticals. Listen to Psalms 8 verse 6-8, "You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and beasts of the fields, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the sea". If that is true, then must it not include animals who have lost their habitat, others who have become extinct and even the polar bears who are suffering? We have the power to destroy. Maybe we aught to honor God's creation by having earth day every day and use our creative power to repair the damage we have done. With the Spirit at work within us, as a community of faith, as the church, we have extraordinary power to care for the dominion we have been given. So far I have spoken to things of nature. What else fills you with awe and delight? Are you awed by the laughter of children or the loving touch of a grandmother? Are you awed by just living regular days with regular activities and regular weather? Are you awed by living in peaceful neighborhoods? Life in deed has regularities we come to depend on. Often however, we face issues that upset those regularities. We were rightfully upset with the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. We were rightfully upset with the devastation left by hurricane Katrina and the Kansas tornados. We are rightfully upset when loved ones, or ourselves, face life threatening illnesses or have serious accidents. These are indeed tragic. There are however, many adults and children in the world who have different regularities. The have violence and explosions around them daily. They struggle to find enough to eat on a daily basis. There are children growing up deprived of food and family because of warring factions. There are children growing up in areas decimated by the AIDS virus. Where is our place, now, today, in God's creation? We have the power to destroy ourselves and the world. We also have the power to create , repair and make new. God gave us self will. A will we can choose to do good with. Guided by the Holy Spirit or Wisdom if you will, we can support activities that can bring hospitals to where there are none. We can support the many AIDS missions that the UCC sponsors. We can help our schools thrive and we can build schools where there are none. We can support efforts to keep our schools and communities places of safety. We can do simple things like recycle or we can become involved in the complexities of fighting for world peace. There are some who say that global warming is a natural cycle of nature and they do have some scientific evidence to support that. But, science also tells us we are contributing significantly to accelerating it. This is not an easy issue to comprehend. The solutions are as varied as the problems associated with it. We as a world body need God's Wisdom in addressing it. Through prayer we can find wisdom; wisdom to make informed choices and wisdom to urge others to do the same. Glory belongs to God. We live in a society where wealth, power and position seem to be ultimate goals. What would the world look like if we worked for the Glory of God every day. Imagine the transformative power it would have in our lives, the life of the church and in the life of the world. Our call here today is to do some reflection: 1. We can re-examine our relationship with creation and responsibility to it. 2. We can re-examine our delight in creation and what we can do to help others find that delight. 3. We can re-examine what part Wisdom has in our lives and what we can do to heed her directions. 4. We can re-examine what we can do so that God will take delight in his creation of us. As I close listen to the words found in Proverbs 8:34&35. Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway. For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the Lord. AMEN. |
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