Sermon Archive
The Wisdom who sits on God's throne
Sermon preached by Max Marnau at Evensong on 16 October 2005
"Give us as our helper, O Lord, the Wisdom who sits on your throne, that she may be with us and share in our labours"
Kierkegaard had little patience with people who agonised at great length about what the "difficult" parts of the Bible meant and concluded that since those parts were incomprehensible, unreasonable or impossible, then the whole thing was too difficult to put into practice. He said "First do the things that are straightforward, and when you have done those perfectly, come back and ask me about the difficult things".
I think we all do a lot of that sort of agonising. Not just over the Bible or Christian teaching, but over life in general. For example, I am sure many of you will have seen that heartbreaking advertisement by the Red Cross which pans slowly over scenes of starvation - and ends on the pleading face of a little child. That advertisement may well make some people reach for their chequebooks, but it may equally well paralyse others. The newspapers that morning told us about another natural disaster, perhaps a begging envelope from Cancer Research came through our letterbox, we have passed several homeless people begging in the street, and then we get an e-mail detailing the condition of the ice-caps and the ozone layer and a desperately sad story about the treatment of asylum seekers. If we are already feeling a bit low, we will probably do nothing about any of this but retreat to the sofa - or to bed - with a bar of chocolate, an escapist book or a stiff drink...feeling overwhelmed and, if we are unlucky, deeply guilty.
I have said before and I’ll say again that guilt is one of the devil’s favourite weapons. It is not among the Seven Deadly Sins, but I think letting guilt have its head is a good candidate for the Eighth.
Guilt paralyses us, guilt makes us give up, guilt makes us look at ourselves & not at God. Guilt makes us forget that if we are not sufficient of ourselves to claim any good thing as coming from us, yet our sufficiency is of God & in him we can do anything.
According to the proverb, a journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step. Usually this is taken to mean that we should be encouraged if we have taken a single step. Absolutely true. But it also means that we can’t take the first and the second steps at once. And if we feel guilty (which is quite different from feeling aware of our sins and failings and trying, with God’s help, to do better) we will either take no steps at all or else we will try to take half a dozen at once and fall over our feet. And, with my Other Half at home in plaster with a torn Achilles tendon (dancing the Dashing White Sergeant, since you ask) I know what the result of that is, and it isn’t a swift completion of the journey.
So we’ve been faced with the Red Cross, Cancer Research, the homeless & the environment, we have snapped at our family because we feel at a loss, & now we come to church & get Paul shooting great lists of demands at us - I know he’s talking about bishops, but I have a feeling he intends it to apply to all of us. How can we do it all?! It is too much!!
Am I beginning to remind you of something?
Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things. But only one is necessary...
There’s been quite a bit of controversy about what, precisely, that "one thing" is. I think it’s at least possible that it’s not a thing but a person - Jesus himself, "Christ, the power of God & the wisdom of God", that very Wisdom who cries out in the streets in today’s first reading.
That’s not so fanciful as it may sound. IT has often been said that you can’t fully understand the Old Testament without a knowledge of the New, & that each Testament is a commentary on the other. And it is an ancient tradition, very much emphasised in the monastic world, to take Wisdom, in the Wisdom Literature, as standing for - I would almost say "as being" - Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is, as Paul tells us, "the power of God and the Wisdom of God" and there is no doubt that Wisdom makes claims for herself which are elsewhere made only by, or of, God. What Paul, and to some extent the gospels, especially John, say of Jesus, pre-Christian Judaism said of Wisdom. The role that these earliest Christians ascribe to Jesus, the Wisdom literature ascribes to Wisdom.
She is a pure emanation of the glory of God; she is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God’s majesty, and the image of his goodness. In her own words:
The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting...when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him like a master workman... I made that in the heavens there should rise light that never faileth, and as a cloud I covered all the earth. From the beginning and before the world was I created, and unto the world to come I shall not cease to be.
While the demands of Wisdom are difficult, they are simple, as were those of the Lord. "Come to me." "If anyone love me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" "If you receive my words, making your ear attentive to wisdom, if you search for it as for hidden treasure; then you will understand righteousness and justice, and equity, every good path, for wisdom will come into your heart."
Jesus wasn’t into lists, though he would produce them if pushed. He called everyone to himself; he, the one thing necessary, was available to all. Wisdom - Jesus - pleads with us simply to come & listen, an instruction that Mary had no trouble with, but we Marthas seem to think is somehow...too easy!
The difference, I think, is not between what is easy & what is difficult. It is between what is simple & what is complicated. The simple things, even if they are difficult, don’t make us feel guilty; it is our own human complicatedness (Martha, Martha...!) that do that. So back to Kierkegaard, that most complicated of men, who yet saw the value of simplicity.
I am definitely preaching to myself here, & maybe none of you needs this recommendation as much as I do. But for what it is worth, here it is:
Could we try - I don’t say for a week, or even a day, but just sometimes - could we try Mary’s way? Could we try to sit at the feet of Jesus & just listen, make our ear attentive to wisdom? Could we try not to be anxious & troubled over many things? This is not apathy. Wisdom has promised us that if we do this we will understand righteousness & justice, and equity, every good path, for wisdom will come into our heart. And it may be that not only will we find peace, but we will make peace, too.
Amen! Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
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