The Woman at the Crossroads

THE WOMAN AT THE CROSSROADS Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; John 16:12-15; Romans 5:1-5 A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on May 26, 2013

Like all of us, Jim and Lenore Madden have been on their own spiritual journeys.

Today they link their journeys with the journeys of faith of the rest of this company of pilgrims. And in the waters of baptism, they, and we, are reminded that our journeys are not journeys “to reach” God, because God has already reached out to us. In the waters of the font we are claimed and marked as belonging to the God who made us and loves us, and will never stop loving us.

But even when we are baptized, we are left with many practical questions about our ongoing relationship with God, about how we are to live day to day. And so we all may well ask:: “Where do we go to find God? Or better yet, where in the world does

God seek us out?”1

In a few moments, David DeLong will be ordained and installed as a Deacon, as one of the officers and leaders of this company of pilgrims. The questions that he and all of us who serve as leaders ask are similar questions: Where do we go to find God’s will for us as a body of Christ? Where do we go to find wisdom? The three texts we have read today give us some clues – and perhaps some surprising answers.

First, we find God’s wisdom at the crossroads.

Proverbs is not a book that many of us read that often, so let us hear again the opening verses of chapter 8: “Does not Wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand.” 2

Wisdom, which is the knowledge, insight, and judgment that leads to living as

God wants us to live, is personified as a woman. Why a woman? Some Biblical commentators suggest the reason is to highlight the feminine side or attributes of God.

They point out that the Hebrew word for “spirit” is also feminine. Or perhaps, as Old

Testament scholar Ellen Davis writes, the Israelite sages who compiled and edited the

Proverbs were smart educational psychologists. They were teaching adolescent boys, after all, and what better way to represent the wisdom that they want their students to seek than to portray “her” as the “ultimately desirable ‘female.’”2

But less important than why Wisdom is personified as a woman is where we go to find her. Proverbs 8 tells us that Wisdom cries out “to all who live” at the

“crossroads,” “beside the gates in front of the town,” and “at the entrance of the portals.”

These places were all public places in the towns of Israel where the people gather, the equivalent of our schools and courts, work places and other public spaces.

In other words, to find wisdom, it is not enough to look in books, even this book, the Bible. We must also venture forth into life by going out into the world where others are working, playing, learning, studying, and living. There is a lot of wisdom to be gained here among this people, to be sure, because this is a people who depend upon

Christ and the Bible. But there is wisdom to be gained “out there” among all kinds of people, including unbelievers and non-Christians, Proverbs tells us. God’s Wisdom is crying out there to all human beings, especially in those places open to all.

Shirley Guthrie, a great seminary teacher and writer, puts it this way: “If the

Christian faith claims to speak of the truth, it must have some correspondence with the truth we can learn from the natural sciences, philosophy, modern psychology, and the attempts of arts to grasp the mystery of life....God is not the prisoner of the Christian 3 church. We must expect him to be present and at work also outside the sphere of those who know about and depend on Christ and the Bible.”3

Second, we find God’s wisdom in creation.

The second part of Proverbs 8 deals at length and with delight on the wonders of the created world: the waters of oceans and springs (v. 24), mountains and hills (v. 25), fields and soil (v. 26), and the stars and the skies (vv. 27-29). As the Presbyterian theologian John Calvin poetically put it nearly 500 years ago: “Wherever you cast your eyes, there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of [God’s] glory.” Or as the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas put it nearly 800 years ago, “each creature is a witness to God’s power and...wisdom.”

We do well to take time to take the time to stop and use our senses to notice the marvels of God’s creation, whether as part of a nature walk in a nearby park, or by simply taking the time from our back stoop to watch the changing skies or to listen to the songs of of birds.

But we can do more than marvel at the wonders of God’s creation. We can also learn from creation by studying it and looking for signs of God’s wisdom in nature. That is why theology, the study of God, and science, the study of God’s creation, are intended to be dance partners rather than debate opponents. Like all dance partners, they do best when one is taking the lead and the other follows. Theology best answers the questions of “who?” and “why?”: for example, who is the Creator of that which we observe and study and why are we here? In contrast, science best answers the questions of “when?” and “how?”: for example, when did human beings show up on the earth and how does the human body work? 4

We are not well served when people of faith try to turn the poetry and theology of

Genesis into a science textbook, nor when cosmologists and biologists make pronouncements about what scientific experiments and models “prove” about God.

When theology or science try to answer questions they are not equipped to answer we often find folly. But when theology and science work together and are united by wonder, then we may find ourselves growing in wisdom, which is always more important than simply growing in knowledge.

Where do we find God’s wisdom? Third, and most importantly, we find it in

Jesus Christ as witnessed by the Holy Spirit.

The wisdom available at the crossroads and in nature can only take us so far, however. When we go out into the world, there are many voices crying out to us at school, at work, and on the media, and not all of them offer wisdom. Indeed, many of them will lead us off a cliff. How do we distinguish the wisdom of God from the follies of other, sometimes more seductive, voices?

And while much of nature gives us cause to marvel, nature can also seem cruel and capricious as we were reminded this week in Oklahoma. If what we see in nature is all that we know about God, then we may well question the wisdom and goodness of

That is why we need Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the “visible image of the invisible God,” the Word, or Wisdom, made flesh. If we want to see God, we look at

Christ. Ultimately, the wisdom of God is not a doctrine or idea but a person. In Jesus

Christ, we have the supreme revelation of God. He is the touchstone by which we judge the voices and words we encounter at the crossroads and at school, at work and on the media, to determine which words and thoughts speak wisdom and which speak 5 folly. When we want to know what God is really like, a beautiful sunset and a tragic tornado only give us incomplete and out of focus pictures. The truest and best picture is found through the snapshots the Bible gives us:

in the snapshot in Bethlehem, where we discover that God has pitched God’s tent among human beings, not in a palace among the rich and powerful but in a manger among peasants;

in the snapshot in Galilee, where we hear and see what it means to love our neighbor and care for the poor; and

in the snapshot in Jerusalem, where find out that God’s love is so great that it takes Jesus to the cross and so powerful that sin and death are no match.

But the truth and wisdom of Jesus Christ is too much for us to fully comprehend, as John 16 tells us: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” So God gives us the Spirit, who bears witness to Jesus Christ, and continues to speak to us so that we may grow in the wisdom of God. God still speaks to us through the Scriptures most clearly, but also through prayer, through other followers of Jesus

Christ, and through our experiences.

Where do we find wisdom? At the crossroads, in creation, and ultimately, in

Christ. Or, in others words, at the intersection of our real life experiences, the Bible, and our prayerful reflections and conversations with God. Even our struggles and suffering can be occasions for growth and transformation as Paul says in Romans.

Friends, each day is an opportunity to see God at work. Each experience is an opportunity for learning and growth into the people that God wants us to be. But it does not happen automatically. Growing in wisdom takes time but it is not simply a matter of age. Like you I imagine, I have known wise-beyond-their-years six year-olds and foolish 6 seventy year-olds. No, it is more of a matter of listening and watching and reflecting and praying… and changing.

In Marilynne Robinson’s award-winning novel, Gilead, we meet the Reverend

John Ames who is nearing 80 in age and knows that death is not too far off. The novel represents a letter he is writing to his son, a letter that he hopes his son will read after his father has died. He reflects back on a Sunday morning long ago:

“as I was walking up to the church there was a young couple strolling along half a block ahead of me. The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn’t. It was a beautiful thing to see....I don’t know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it...This is an interesting planet. It deserves all of the attention you can give it.”4

This is an interesting planet. And because this is a planet made by God, visited by Jesus Christ, and inhabited by the Holy Spirit, this planet and its inhabitants does deserve all of the attention we can give it…so that God’s wisdom might grow in us. 1 Richard Boyce, “Theological Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Vol. 3, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylors, eds. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, 26. I am indebted to Dr. Boyce’s theological reflections on this text. 2 Ellen F. Davis, “Wisdom, Desire, and Holy Love,” in Living Pulpit, “Wisdom,” July-September 2000, 8. 3 Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine (Richmond: CLC press, 1968), 68-69. 4 Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2004), 27-8.