2nd Before Lent- Wisdom the root of The Word made Flesh- Proverbs 8.1, 22-31- John 1.1-14
Leaving behind the season of Epiphany with its echoes of the declaration of God with us in various signs and actions of Christ, we have now a few short weeks of green before we start the sudden and stark journey of Lent towards that other pinnacle of our faith, the events, tragedies, commotions and upheavals, the turning of tables for everyone’s expectations, the disciples included, of the Cross and the very first Easter.
Here though we have a sort of no-one’s land that just get called “the Sundays before Lent,” as if someone had forgotten to give them a purpose and filled them in with whatever was left of the bible. It does feel a bit like that as we see a reprieve of the gospel message of John that we use at Christmas midnight mass with what was in all likelihood a song of those early gathered communities of Christians spelling out how Christ is God’s Word made flesh and that he was there in the beginning, and is the all in all.
But rather than treat it as a no-one’s land of scripture, let’s make use of this week. Let’s see if we can’t turn it towards a preparation for Lent; that is, a preparation for the preparation for Easter. Easter is such a huge thing. We take it for granted every year, but it is huge, this turning out of a grave by the power of God after a scandalous illegal trial, of a popular teacher of faith, who dared to say love your neighbour as yourself and got hated upon for it. Yeah, that great moment of Easter that brings a hope of life to you and to me, life forevermore, that needs some decent preparation, and to have a preparation for the preparation of the celebration of Easter is, in my opinion, no bad thing at all. Think there may have been a few too many ‘tions’ in that sentence!
Imagine, if you will a world where Christmas stories weren’t part of our celebrations. Where would we start? The incarnation - the idea of God made flesh- is of course ever so critically important- so this is just an imagination experiment and nothing more- but I do wonder, if we didn’t have Christmas in the calendar, we might start our journey through the Christian year with these bible stories that we have heard today.
The Word of God became flesh. Ok so, what is the Word of God, some would say that would be scripture- Christ is the scripture made human- that’s a powerful thing to think of, except we do have to mindful that the bible is the inspired work of many human cultures that certainly weren’t as crystal clear in their thinking as a Britta Water Filter!
Our Old Testament reading gives us another angle. The Word of God there is called Wisdom, and in Hebrew thought Wisdom was a virtue valued so highly regarded that we find here in the bible Wisdom existing alongside Godself right at the very beginning of things. The gospel reading’s words start ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ a deliberate echo of the book Genesis sits there, but now we pair it up with today’s Old Testament reading and find there that the Word of God is equated with Wisdom. So, Jesus, The Word of God made flesh, is God’s wisdom, and that is something gets all those tricky human authors of scripture well out of the way for a better understanding of what the incarnation - that God made flesh thing- might mean.
Jesus with us, is not about the rules that we have to keep. Jesus with us is not about the who’s in and who’s out, the black/white, mustn’t have grey world that the people’s around Palestine back in the day really needed for their survival. Jesus with us, is this slightly mysterious thing called Wisdom. Something that we kind of know in our lives, we know what wisdom is don’t we, and yet it’s like trying to catch the air isn’t it, it eludes us. We can never say we are wise, only ever that we had a moment of wisdom.
Wisdom is less tangible than Word. We can’t pin it down, we can’t define it like we can a word. Wisdom is more... emotional, felt, subjective, acted; sometimes the gut feeling part of life.
In the Old Testament reading we only have a little bit, but Wisdom is explaining why we should be listening to her (and yes the pronouns used of wisdom are female ones- that makes an interesting study for the association of Wisdom with The Word and therefore the connection to Christ). Wisdom says we should listen to her, because of the truth and justice of what she says (v4-11, we didn’t get to read that bit). Then she says we should listen to her, because of the practical value she brings to the working of society (v.12-21, we didn’t get to read that bit either). Lastly she says we should listen to her for her role and presence in the ordering of creation (v.22-31). This is the bit we heard today and the bit that gives the cross-over to The Word of God as written in the gospel. In the beginning was the Word, well it looks like that was wisdom, because she says ‘The Lord created me at the beginning of his ways, the first of his acts of long ago.’
Let us say that Wisdom is the centre of the incarnation, the God with us that we find in Jesus. And when we do, what do we find? We find one who will stand up for justice even when it’s going to hurt; one who is prepared to throw tables out of temples, to make people sit up and think about what they’re doing in their acts of worship, that it might not be of a transactional nature. We find Christ doing all sorts of odd things that seem to go against the grain of the teachers and even scripture sometimes, and the only way to begin to explain it all is this more emotional, felt, gut feeling presence of the Wisdom of God, who knows how things should be.
That is a long discursive way of looking at things today. But it doesn’t hurt once in a while to put away the fun analogies that we use and to chew hard on what we’re given in the bible. Christ is the very wisdom of Godself, present at the very beginning of all things, a totally non-rational form of knowing that goes beyond the limits of what language can achieve.
If you feel, as we tread the first few yards of the pathways to the cross this year, that Christ did some almighty odd things that leave us flabbergast, or that the whole notion of coming to this world to be nailed to a cross for what reason again? and you’re just left bewildered by it all, consider whether it is because the Wisdom of God is speaking in Christ’s presence.
“when [the Lord] marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a little child [heb reads ‘master worker’];
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.” (Proverbs 8.v29b-31)
Christ, the Wisdom of God, loved us from the foundations of the world. With a love so deep, you’ve got to expect some unexpected things, as Christ’s love for you defies explanation.
Benefice prayers, 4th February, 2024 (CandleLentmastide)
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
(John 1:1)
God is balanced on my tongue
like a burst of birdsong —
I do not have the throat to let it out,
do not have the voice with which to sing,
do not have the gifts required
to place a blessing into the world.
(Jay Hulme)
Holy One,
You are the only Word we will ever need.
Forgive us for the times when we have built fences around our hearts with too many words, distracted ourselves from the pain of this world with clever phrases and carefully honed utterances, left the mending of the world behind us with our Sunday prayers.
Today, the world is too ragged and too worn, too broken and too horrific for words. There are no words. Today, let words fall away as we dare to sit in the silence of this holy place and listen for the words that you send.
So many in the world are in mourning. Let us sit with ‘darkness’.
God in the silence,
we are so sorry for the things that we have done,
in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.
So many of us are tired. Let us sit with ‘apathy’.
God in the silence,
we are so sorry for the things that we have done,
in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.
So many of us do not love ourselves. Let us sit with our ‘neighbour’.
God in the silence,
we are so sorry for the things that we have done,
in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.
Peace is the sound of chains breaking. Let us sit with ‘peace’.
God in the silence,
we are so sorry for the things that we have done,
in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.
You love us in all our brokenness. Let us sit with 'forgiveness'.
God in the silence,
Thank you for loving us while we work this out. Truly, YOU are the light of the world.
In your mercy,
Hear our prayer.
May there be shalom salam between us all and may we join with our Jewish siblings in working for Tikkun Olam, the repair of the world.
Merciful Father, accept these prayers
in the name of your son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Amen