Wisdom has made us, wisdom remakes us, wisdom welcome us home
Sermon – 25 August 2025, readings 1 Kings 8:22-23, 27-29, Psalm 84, Ephesians 6:10-20 John 6:56-69
From Proverbs 8:
28: when he established the clouds above
and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,
29 when he gave the sea its boundary
so the waters would not overstep his command,
and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.
30 Then I was constantly[e] at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
rejoicing always in his presence,
31 rejoicing in his whole world
and delighting in mankind.
“Now then, my children, listen to me;…
Listen to my instruction and be wise;…
35 For those who find me find life…
36 But those who fail to find me harm themselves;.
Why wisdom today? The first reading, put wisdom in my mind, because Solomon was gifted wisdom by God, and the story of the dedication of the Temple, not just for Jews but all who seek God; scholars suggest the reading has at least three layers to it, people added meaning over the centuries, including the time of exile, to offer a sacred complexity to retelling the story of Solomon’s dedication of the Temple of wisdom, that humanity has not been left alone but disturbed by the claims of the Creator God. “Listen to my instruction and be wise.”
And this Creator, made wisdom. Wisdom and creation go together. We see this in our terms week after week in the faith in nature videos: the extraordinary wisdom, genius, of the living world, its simplicity and complexity combined in sublime beauty and depth of relationships.
On the eve of the Season of Creation, the month of September, it is fitting to hold up the role of wisdom that made things the way they are.
Did you hear wisdom in the second reading? I heard it in the contradictions, that demand we go deeper; why does Paul choose the military imagery of armour and being a warrior, when he is himself in chains? Writ large is shouts out symbolism not literal truth. He urges courage, skill, determination and expects life to be a battle.
Paul also borrowed a hymn’s lyrics in a letter to the church in Colossae, to praise Jesus Christ (Col. 1:5f) and many think it is from the Jewish understandings of wisdom as the creative voice of God.
5 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 for in[h] him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in[i] him all things hold together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
28 He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. 29 To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.
Wisdom has made us, wisdom remakes us, wisdom welcome us home
To remake us. My question to myself is how I can say yes to wisdom, to let wisdom’s creative energy work in me as a partner, a co-creative act. And perhaps my answers suggest things to you.
- Let me accept symbols be symbols not facts, people tried being Christian warriors with the crusades, that were corrupt from the start, and malevolent abuse of religion. But it is easy to cherry pick scripture, literally when we see it can justify our point of view. I recommend walking a labyrinth with this in mind. It turns you clockwise and anti-clockwise, gives a sense of progress and then of being lost, of resembling life experience in the play of following a pattern on the ground. When I accept I do not know, even myself, when I am open to uncertainty, wisdom can remake me.
- Kindness rides through everything, even the things that are rough, the intention of wisdom will see things through.
A phrase for me and our church here, has come from our Region for the waiting we are experiencing, to find renovation of the building. We wait for news that land law differences between Quebec and Federal Canada can be resolved. It very hard because this is four years of waiting. But the promise has been made ‘We will work to resolution.’ I did not want to hear it. I wanted a timeline, a probability: it doesn’t feel kind. But stuff is happening. When I was training as a massage therapist we shared a fun exercise, people drew cards with different emotions written on them, and then massaged according to the emotion. Surprisingly there was often a confusion between love and anger. Remember that Job was tested beyond his limit by his suffering and in the end, he was confronted with the glory of creation, with the work of wisdom. Even though suffering is awful, the creative kindness of God never ends.
- There is something eternal in wisdom, God recycles, nothing of love is wasted, how I cannot answer, but that the maturity Paul urges us to have in Christ is to know we belong come what may.
The sense of arrival at the centre of a labyrinth is based on the truth that we will come home, to ourselves, to the relationships we have made, all at once, and my sense of this is dynamic.
In the parable of the prodigal son, he comes to himself and heads home, with minimal expectations, to be alive, and his father sees him coming, puts the past failures aside and rejoices in his being alive. The homecoming is not easy for his elder brother who finds his father’s joy excessive, the elder son has taken home for granted.
On the labyrinth after arriving at the centre, we can turn and head outwards. This is about living in the remade state that wisdom offers, it can also be about losing ourselves in God, where twists and turns are normal.
Wisdom has made us, wisdom remakes us, wisdom welcomes us home