Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?

Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out: ‘To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live. O simple ones, learn prudence… (Proverbs 8:1-5 NRSV)

The book of Proverbs depicts Wisdom as a street-seller crying out at the crossroads, hawking her wares. It’s all there, it’s all on display, and you can have some if you really want it.

People live! People learn! People be who you were called to be! People have wisdom; receive understanding; learn to live and be free.

But we don’t! We don’t see God’s good creation when it’s right in front of our faces. We don’t hear God’s good news when it’s being shouted in our ears. We don’t smell the aroma of God’s presence when surely God is in all and above all and around all and beyond all we know and have and experience.

Yet still, we persist in our own cries out to God, out to the world, inwardly to ourselves: “Where shall wisdom be found? Where can we get wisdom? Where is the place of understanding? O God, make us wise!”

One of the classic Australian novels, The Getting of Wisdom, by Henry Handel Richardson explores the pursuit of wisdom in the life of a young woman who has dreams apparently beyond her station. In her pursuit of wisdom, Miss Laura Tweedle Rambotham does some very silly things—pretending that she is someone she is not and that she has the attention of someone who has barely noticed her. And yet, at the end of the story, despite its title, there is no great enlightenment. At the moment when Laura leaves school after facing up to the futility of her exploits and suffering humiliation for them, there is no sudden realisation of the meaning of life, merely the next step, the next episode in her life. There is simply life ongoing: learning, making mistakes, relating in community again and again and again, within the ordinary constraints and freedoms of a human life. Where is wisdom in all that? Where shall wisdom be found?

Paul has some thoughts about that. And the book of Romans has been identified as the place where those thoughts are most focussed. Where shall wisdom be found? Only in the unique relationship we have with God through Jesus Christ; and it is unique.

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5 NRSV)

Wisdom personified in the Hebrew scriptures informs the early church’s understanding of Jesus and his relationship to God. Wisdom is right in our faces; right in our midst; right before our eyes. And wisdom is all about life, real life, human life, mortal life, created life.

The great preacher and theologian William Willimon puts it this way:

Wisdom is practical… Wisdom is about how you make your way in the world, something that you do in the home, a way of everyday life. Here is a faith that is not content to be relegated to Sunday glimpses of eternity (Kierkegaard’s phrase). It’s a faith that comes out to where we live and affects how we live.

True wisdom is about how we make our way in the world.

And that’s where Jesus and Wisdom collide. For in Jesus, Christian people acknowledge that we have a God who has made our way in the world—a God who has got dirty in the midst of creation; and ensured that we might participate in that practical wisdom of Christ.

We don’t make our own way in the world very well. We get side-tracked. We think we have to pretend to be something other than we are. We pretend to have the attention of others who barely notice us. We want to be important. But wisdom is about making our way in the world; and in order to do this, we have been given the gift of a God who makes our way for us—a God who has journeyed in God’s own creation as one of us.
In this God, our very existence is justified, our very striving is validated, our very creaturely existence is blessed. Through this God, we may know peace—peace, not because we do not need to continue to make our way; but because even as we do we know we are accompanied by one who knows what it is to make that way in a very mortal world—a God who has got dirty in God’s own creation.

And it precisely out of this understanding of a transcendent God, who has made a way in our world, that we also receive the understanding of the Trinity—of a God who is completely at home in relationship, of a God whose very nature is relational.
This is Wisdom--a God who loves us because that is God’s nature; a God who makes our way in the world; and a God who continues to journey with us as we seek to honour this precious, practical gift we have been given—the very justification of our own existence by a God who rejoices in the inhabited world and delights in us, the human race.

Christian Conference of Asia & Thailand

We welcome James Ellis back after being an intern with the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA). James was part of the Uniting Church’s contribution to the preparation for the 13th Assembly of the CCA held in Kuala Lumpur in April. CCA began in 1959. The Uniting Church is one of 4 churches in Australia who are members. The others are the Churches of Christ, the Anglican and the Armenian Churches.

The theme for this Assembly was “Called to Prophesy, Reconcile and Heal”:

God’s call to people to prophesy, reconcile and to be a healing community is a tremendous challenge and a call to costly discipleship. The theme is a reminder as well as a call to the churches in Asia to respond to God’s call and engage in prophetic, reconciling and healing ministries without counting the cost.

This theme has been particularly underlined for the CCA this year by the current situation in Thailand where the CCA has its offices (although those offices are in Chiang Mai not Bangkok where the confrontations between government authorities and protesters have been occurring).

The Church of Christ is the only member church of the CCA in Thailand. On 15 May, their General Secretary wrote:

Our society is presently marked by divisions and mistrust of one group against another... At the moment the government and the red-shirts have reached an impasse and the tension is escalating. Please pray for us—that people will remain calm and a peaceful and just solution will be found to the present conflict. Pray also for a long term reconciliation, that our nation once again will be united for the common good.

Just 2 days later, the CCA reported:

As of yesterday, Sunday, about 29 people died and over 200 injured. The situation has yet under control. The Government has announced a public holiday for today (Monday) and tomorrow (Tuesday). The government also declared announced a state of emergency in 20 provinces including Chiang Mai… Please keep Thailand in your daily prayer.

Ascension

So, at the end of the season of Easter, we hear the story of Jesus’ ascension and wait for the celebration of Pentecost.

We’ve been hearing promises of the “coming” of the Holy Spirit in some of the readings we’ve had. But the Spirit, who is God, has always been present, so what are we waiting for?

The emerging church remembered the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and tried to make sense of what was happening from there. Was God still with them? What would become of them? What was the way ahead?

The story of the ascension reminds us that Jesus too is God. The journey “upwards” makes more sense in a world where heaven is understood as being above and the world of the dead as below; but the intention is clear: Jesus no longer lives in our world with us in the same way as he had. Yet we are not alone; nor are we left without direction and purpose.

The story reminds us that we have a role to play in God’s mission also. If Jesus was God incarnate, then we are called to be the body of Christ—to witness to Christ, to the message of Christ, and to live as Christ in the world. We don’t do that on our own, but in the power of the Holy Spirit who connects us with Jesus and with the one who sent Jesus, his “heavenly father”. The story of the ascension reminds us that we are enfolded into God’s mission in the world; into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus; and into the work of the Holy Spirit.

So, we remember and we celebrate that Jesus is God; and that God is with us in and through the work of the Spirit. We also hear our commissioning as the people of God who bear the mark of Christ for the sake of the whole of God’s creation.

Peace in the Spirit

“Not as the world gives do I give to you.” Of course, the peace that the world gave at the time of Jesus and while the Gospel of John was being collated and recorded was the Pax Augusta, or as we now know it, the Pax Romana (the Roman peace). It was a period of “relative peace and minimal expansion by military force” which lasted for about 200 years from about 25 BC to 180 AD. This peace was not simply the “absence of war”; it was the effective suppression of any real resistance to the Roman Empire. It was an imperial, colonialist act—one perpetrated upon many peoples and cultures (most of the then “known world”). And it was a propaganda coup. A society that has existed on continual armed conflict and ongoing political expansion found it difficult to live without constant military pushes and conquests. Roman citizens themselves needed to be persuaded that prosperity was possible without continual military expansion. And naturally, conquered societies must be convinced of the futility or lack of necessity for resistance. But somehow, it was basically achieved and peace was declared by the closure of the gates of the temple of Janus in Rome in at least 3 grand ceremonies to which ancient historians refer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Romana). This Pax Romana was the world’s peace: a political, colonial and imperial peace. It was not the peace that Jesus was invoking upon the disciples.

Jesus was calling down a peace that did not involve suppression, that was not simply the absence of conflict; a peace in which the disciples would be accompanied by an advocate and guide rather than an occupying force.

14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.

Jesus was talking about a different kind of peace and with it, a different kind of hope—a hope not for the absence of social and political upheaval; but the hope of being continually in God’s presence. Of course, this is the hope and peace that was promised from the beginning of creation—a life in God’s presence. And yet it was and is a hope and peace, that humanity has failed to understand, failed to appreciate, and failed to live for. It is a hope and peace for which a Pax Romana is a cheap and tawdry substitute; and, more than that, a horrible and fraudulent approximation. The peace that Jesus was talking about was the peace of being in utter and continuous relationship with God, of living in God’s economy of shalom, of dwelling in God’s city.

That vision of hope and peace is picked up in the book of Revelation with its vision of the city that needs no temple because God is so apparent that those that dwell within the city need no other tangible reminders to love, honour and serve God. This is a city where the gates are not closed proclaiming a peace of imperial suppression; but the gates are wide open welcoming the world and offering divine hospitality.

And yet even the vision of Revelation has its own imperialist overtones: “nothing unclean will enter it”. Bill Loader writes that “Ultimately a vision that is satisfied to permanently exclude the immoral carries a conflict within itself and threatens to unravel the good news or relegate it to something of temporary relevance” (http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/CEpEaster6.htm). The world’s peace is always close to us, tempting us with its illusory nature—telling us that it is possible to suppress and exclude all that we find “unclean”, not to our taste, not acceptable to us, so that we might be clean and perfect and pure on our own. But that is not God’s peace, that is an imperial, colonialist peace—albeit a tempting one.

So, what then does God’s peace involve? Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word.” And you better be sure that “keeping my word” isn’t just about keeping a secret or saying the right things in the right places, it’s about living out a lifestyle—a lifestyle of love for God and love for one another arising from being in utter relationship with God; coming out of being the very dwelling place of God.

14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.

Not a Pax Romana, but a Pax Christi, the peace of Christ that does not suppress but frees for relationship with God and with one another; a peace that is concerned with hospitality and justice; a peace that is about a full life, a life lived in God.

Love One Another

Talk about love
how it makes life complete
You can talk all you want
make it sound nice and sweet,
But the words have an empty ring,
and they don't really mean a thing,
Without Him love is not to be found;
not to be found.

Originally written by Ralph Carmichael for the 1969 Christian musical “Tell it like it is”, “Love is surrender” became a popular hit when it was recorded by The Carpenters… with a slight word change. Instead of the line “Without Him love is not to be found”—a clear reference to God in its original musical context, The Carpenters sang “Without love you are not to be found”—“Without love you are not to be found”. It was a small change, but a momentous one. Suddenly, the focus of the song shifted from God, the giver of love, to us, the finders of love. And that small, but significant shift, is something that we tend to do automatically when we read the very familiar words of today’s Gospel reading:

13:34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

Whenever we come across these words, almost invariably, it is the words “love one another” that we emphasise; and there’s no doubt that they are important words, but they would be almost meaningless without the other part of that new instruction, “as I have loved you”—“as I have loved you”.

This reading is part of the Gospel of John’s very extensive farewell discourses given by Jesus at the “last supper”. Jesus has washed the disciples’ feet, predicted his betrayal and begun to talk about “going away” and the “glorification of the ‘Son of man’” and of God in that human one: “love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Almost immediately, Peter promises to lay down his life for Jesus and Jesus predicts Peter’s denial. Then Jesus spends a long time assuring the disciples of God’s presence, God’s peace and God’s leading into the future even when he is not there.

13:34 … love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
13:35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

Love one another—just as I have loved you. The love of which Jesus speaks is not an airy-fairy, insipid, feel-good, emotional experience. It is grounded in his very person, in his very being, in his life, death and resurrection, and the promises of God fulfilled in that journey. The love of which Jesus speaks is not one that does everything that others think should be done or left done—Peter didn’t want Jesus to wash his feet at all; nor is it a love that conforms to the slightest whim—it wasn’t because Peter changed his mind, that Jesus washed Peter’s feet. The love of which Jesus speaks is firmly grounded in the presence and purpose of God. This love is not a giving up, or a giving in, but a giving for the sake of God’s world. It speaks of purpose and direction, of hope and of reason to live, to be, to exist.

The title of that pop song “Love is surrender” was always a problem. When surrender means giving up all responsibility and forfeiting all commitment, love is not to be found. When surrender means waving a “white flag” because we simply don’t have the energy to fight anymore, love is not to be found. When surrender means a “giving for” (a rendering towards) the presence and purpose of God, then the love of God has been discovered and we have been enfolded within it. “For love is surrender to [God’s] will.”

The type of loving to which Jesus calls the disciples, to which Jesus calls us, is the type of love embodied in his very person. It is an acceptance of the presence and purpose of God in the life of the world; and it is only because of God’s love, that we are enabled to love one another, as God as loved us.

Sing about love
and the strength it can give
You can sing how you're ready
to face life and live,
But you know as the days go by
that no matter how hard you try,
Without God love is not to be found;
not to be found.

God has given us, rendered towards us, the very gift and promise of new life in Christ. The only response that is required of us is our honouring of that gift as we pray that God will work through us to make that promise known and real throughout the whole of God’s creation.

13:34 … love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
13:35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."