Sermon from Sunday, May 22, 2016

Reading:  Proverbs 8:1-4, 24-31

Theme:  Holy Sophia!  Where have you been all my life? 

I wonder what my life would have been like if I had come to know Sophia earlier.  What my character, my behaviour, my relationships and my ministry would have been like if I had come to know her better than I even do now.

Sophia is that side – face – expression of the fullness of God that is celebrated in Proverbs 8, and in other parts of the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament – of the Hebrew Scriptures.  And maybe wisdom is something we come to only later in life – or come back to, after growing away from it for most of our lives.  I wonder if the kind of wisdom God is about, is natural to babies and the littlest of children, and as we grow up we also grow out of it, and away from it until maybe – if we’re lucky, in later years we find the freedom to recover and rediscover that wise way of being truly human in a new and deeper way.  At the very least, I hope that might be my story.

Sophia is the Latin word for Wisdom, so in the old translations of the Hebrew Scriptures that the Western church used for its first fifteen hundred years, Sophia is the name given to the aspect, the face, or the person of God celebrated in Proverbs 8 as the key to the universe and to good life on Earth:

Does not Sophia call, and Sophia raise her voice?
At the holy shrines and along the daily way,

in the common marketplace and the holy temple,

Holy Sophia takes her stand and cries out:
“To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all who want to live.

I was the first of the Lord’s great works;

at the very beginning I was set up,

at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
Before ocean depths and bubbling-up springs,

before mountains were shaped and hills brought forth,

when he had not yet made earth and fields,

had not made Earth as a planet within the cosmos,

had not even yet sketched out the meaning of cosmos,

I was there.

And it was with me and through me

that each step of the way, he brought to be all that is.

I was beside him, providing the blueprint –

being the blueprint myself –

the key and the plan to how all things fit,

and how they fit together for good.

In the New Testament in the Gospel of John, this figure of Wisdom as a separate expression or person of God – a part that specifically relates to creation and makes it good, is picked up and called the Logos – the Greek word for Word, the divine Word above all that’s the key to true and good life, and which we believe was incarnated and seen in Jesus. 

So is Sophia then what we call the Holy Spirit?  The outflow from God’s inner mystery, that calls into being all reality and fills it with good direction and meaning?  That takes human shape in Jesus, and through him calls us to live truly human lives like him in touch with the life of all Earth? 

In the reading from Proverbs, this Holy Sophia is described as a “master worker” – or at least that’s the most common translation, as a “master builder” with whom and through whom the transcendent God brings the world into being. 

The image is familiar.  Building and construction we know.  Blueprints and the need to follow them we understand.  Doing things right and not doing them the wrong way, we accept, along with the need to BE right, to have the right answers and turn to the right experts when we don’t, to feel bad when we fail or things seem to fall apart, and to be on the right side with other good and right people so together we can fight and win against those who are wrong and bad.

That’s the kind of life, the kind of faith, the kind of person, and the kind of God I grew up with, and grew into.

But there’s also another way of translating the description of Sophia in these verses.  The old Hebrew words are ambiguous, and in addition to being “master worker” and “master builder,” this description of Sophia is also just as accurately translated “little child,” or “child at play.”  In addition to being the holy master builder, creating a clockwork universe and a logical, rational structure of reality where every piece has a place and there’s proper good place for every piece, Holy Sophia is also, in the words of Proverbs:

like a little child – the daily delight of the fullness of God,
rejoicing – happily playing before the mystery every minute of the day,
rejoicing – happily playing in and playing with all that is and all that will be,
and thoroughly delighting in the human race.

As one scholar says, “the playful nature of this language cannot be over-emphasized.  Lady Wisdom, who calls out to any who will listen, who offers many crucial skills to those who seek her out— like shrewdness, righteous speech, a truthful tongue, counsel and prudence, even the righteousness of kings —is also just plain fun!  [More like a playful little child than a precious and proper lady] she gambols in the garden and the cosmic playground that is creation, and she shares her special delight with all human beings. Wisdom – dear Holy Sophia, is not only the right way to go; she also offers the most fun enjoyable way to go.”

Sophia does sound like fun – not as deadly serious, as logical and rational, nor as hierarchic as I have tended to be – not focused so much on right and wrong and the need to be the only right one, but more on right and right, and right again, and the loving, caring, mutually helpful interplay and interdependence of all that is in the world – playing with all that God has made, and loving to see just how it all fits together in so many ways – loving the quest not to win, but to create right and good relations with all.

As I face my later years now, I hope I’m able to know and grow into this side of God – to know and grow into this face, this person called Sophia – the cosmic master worker who just happens also to be a delightfully playful little child.

This week I half-jokingly posted on-line to other ministers a possible sermon title: “Who the heck is Sophia?  And why is she suddenly so popular?” I thought it was clever, and almost immediately I received this reply:  “You poor unfortunate thing, Brian (joking)... I take it you didn't study her in seminary?  She is a fascinating figure....” – from Judith Stark, a UCC minister in Vancouver BC. 

I thank Judith for her wonderful reply.  Yes, she was joking.  But at the same time, I completely believe her and know that my life will be a whole lot richer, deeper and more enjoyable, with Holy Sophia as part of it.