Wisdom Calls Proverbs 9:1-6, Ephesians 5:15-20 August 16, 2009

“Wisdom has built her house, she has cut the seven pillars. She has slaughtered the animals, she has mixed the wine, she has also set her table. She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls from the highest places around the town “You that are poor, come in here! To those with no sense she says “Come, eat my bread, drink my wine. Lay aside immaturity, and live and walk in the way of insight.”

Since Proverbs wasn’t listed in the bulletin as one of today’s readings, you probably wonder why I decided to throw this in. Hmmm, well - Ephesians talks about living wisely - but in a boring and constrained sort of way. The Ephesians passage, on the surface, probably has been one of those used to convince Christians that anything which smacked of having fun was a no-no. The John passage is another of Jesus’ references to the bread of life, and it’s the third or fourth this month. Proverbs doesn’t usually get preached - but in fact, it reminded me of the parable of the banquet in the Gospels.

Back in the fall, Norio and I received a call, late on a Saturday afternoon, from friends in the west end. Would we like to come and join them in the local street festival, and then go for some dinner? It meant putting aside everything, leaving a sermon half-finished, in order to join them. It would have been easy to say no, I have too much to do, Saturday nights aren’t good. That’s what I usually say to invitations for Saturdays. But we hadn’t seen our friends for a long time, and the evening sounded like it would be fun. So we went. All the way there, I kept wondering if it would have been better to refuse, to spend more time on the sermon, to beg off. Was it a wise thing to do? I don't know - but had I not gone it would have been a missed opportunity for something important.

The Book of Proverbs is a collection of sayings, speeches, lectures which were accumulated over time. They were shaped by the wise leaders in the court, and the temple of Israel an early Judaism. Wisdom is personified as a woman, the spirit which was beside God at the beginning of creation, the feminine principle, the breath of God.

In the time of Jesus, there was a group of religious ascetics called Gnostics. In general to be a gnostic means to make a claim to an esoteric knowledge that no-one else has. If you wander into Chapters, you can find a self-help book purporting to be knowledge no one else has. It is a kind of modern-day gnosticism, in that each of the self-help gurus purports to have a knowledge no one else has. To the ancient Gnostics, wisdom was something they had access to because of their esoteric knowledge. Ordinary people didn’t.

In this selection from Proverbs, Wisdom prepares a banquet and goes into the town calling to the poor and the simple to come to the table. I think this is the important part, and draws the parallel to the Gospel. Virtually everything Jesus taught had its roots in Hebrew scripture, and he would likely have been familiar with this passage, so to tell the banquet story would draw on this scripture. In fact it is totally contrary to both the Gnostic understanding of wisdom, and the temple understanding. The passage from Proverbs is telling us that wisdom is a free and fabulous banquet, equally generous to all. The table is set, and the banquet is there.

The Proverbs text gives us a great feast set in the house of Wisdom. The slaughtering of animals for the feast is directly connected to the traditions of Israel. Wine is “mixed”, perhaps a product of different fruits, maybe the fruits of the spirit. Everyone is invited to come. Wisdom offers a pattern for living.

There is a pretty clear message in this passage. Each of us is given the opportunity to live a blessed and fulfilled life. It says that it is God’s intent for the human race. Here, in this passage, Lady Wisdom offers wine and a banquet for enjoying. It is reminiscent of the story of the wedding at Cana, when Jesus’ mother is portrayed as a wise woman - in some ways wiser than Jesus.

There is another message in this passage. Too often we do make excuses for not participating in the banquet. For the gathered church community, it says to us that we have to ask if we live out a mature faith, if we are answering the call fully, what kind of future do we envision and what choices will we make. As we come to the end of summer, it is a kind of fallow period where we can do some reflection and assessment, as individuals and as congregations. Miriam Therese Winter wrote a song “I Cannot Come”. It refers to the wedding banquet story, but I think it fits here too.

I CANNOT COME.

A certain man held a feast on his fine estate in town,
he laid a festive table and wore a wedding gown.
He sent invitations to his neighbours far and wide.
But when the meal was ready, each of them replied:

I cannot come, I cannot come to the banquet, don't trouble me now
I have married a wife, I have bought me a cow,
I have fields and commitments that cost a pretty sum
Pray, hold me excused, I cannot come!


So, my question to you today is, what are we going to do as we go forward into the next church year?

Sources:
1. Material from essays by Thomas R. Steagald, and Susan Vande Kappelle in the book “Feasting on the Word”, Year B Volume 3. Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds.

2. The Wedding Banquet, by Miriam Therese Winter. In the collection “Joy is Like the Rain”. C. Medical Mission Sisters 1966.