Wisdom [Proper 15B - Ephesians 5:15-20]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Ephesians 5:15-20

 

Wisdom

 

Tomorrow at 8am the sound of a bell will mark the beginning of a new school year at Audubon Elementary.  As a parent I have honestly never felt so unsure, and so sick to my stomach, about the first day of school.  My children, with their erasable pens and composition notebooks and strongly encouraged facemasks, will attempt to concentrate amidst a pandemic that seems to ever find new waves of rage.  Like many parents with whom I have spoken in recent days, I have no idea if we are doing the right thing or the best thing for our boys.  We’re trying, of course; our intentions are good; our reasons are reasonable; also our doubts significant.  But if wisdom is calling to me in this moment, I’ll admit, her voice is difficult to discern in the sloshing sea of articles, advice, and opinion. 

 

I wish it was simpler than this.  But nothing feels simple these days in:

 

A land on fire

A world suffocating with disease

A civilization fractured and seething

A culture in which truth is nothing more than a YouTube video that supports your perspective

 

We are living in the very world from which we implore our Good Lord to deliver us every time we chant the Great Litany.  And that is a difficult place to inhabit; it weighs down the soul.

 

And the writer of Ephesians says to us today, “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise…” as if it is that easy.  A decision to be made; a choice to be chosen.  Instead of the long, weary pursuit it actually is.

 

It feels as if every moment in this pandemic age is a decision to be made.  And it feels as if every decision is shrouded in uncertainty and imbued with tremendous weight.  These days, even hindsight is a fuzzy perspective.

 

And though wisdom is difficult to catch, I know it is not for lack of desire.  Each of carries a little bit of King Solomon deep down in our bones.  We want to be wise; we want to be the sage that others admire, that the stories of the distant future sight with warm esteem.  Like the desert fathers and the mother poets. 

 

But sister wisdom dances in the shadows, rides on the wind, falls through our fingers like water.  Wisdom is the precious ghost we are called to embrace, to grasp, to hold.  The voice that whispers from a location we cannot quite place.

 

But still we need it.  Desperately.  To survive in this vicious world.  We need the delicate touch of sister wisdom on our calloused skin, on our calloused hearts.  We need her sweet voice to drown out the static that assaults us.

 

We need a Good Word – a Word made flesh, a Word that carried a fragile humanity and a sacred heart through a world of twisted thorns.  And so we open our lips to a circle of bread – a circle of bread we call the Body of Christ.  And we are fed.  And we are filled.  And that same holy food which fuels our search is also mysteriously the goal of every quest.  Holy Wisdom, which seemed so elusive, finds its way into us, into body and into soul.  And we pray that we might become what we eat.  Each morsel making us more like Jesus.  Each circle of holy bread a seed, planting the wisdom for which we yearn deep within us.