Sermon: Enlightenment Guaranteed (revised)
“Enlightenment
Guaranteed” is a film I saw a number of years ago. It was in German with English subtitles, and
another minister told me this week she saw it as well, but with Japanese
subtitles. It’s about two brothers –
Gustav and Uwe, who journey together from Germany to study at a Zen monastery
in Japan in a quest to sort out the mess of their lives and find themselves.
The brothers
are very different. Gustav – a quite, introspective
man, has always been burdened with a sense of not being enough and the journey
to the monastery is something he has been planning for a long time. Uwe – who is married when we meet him, begs
to be taken along only at the last minute, when his wife and children suddenly
leave him because of his emotional coldness and hardness. For him, the journey is a desperate escape
from his sudden loneliness.
Both
men are looking for answers to their brokenness, and when they make it to the
monastery the physical and spiritual
discipline of the place affects each of them in different and unexpected
ways.
But
it’s the journey to the monastery that really is the subject of the movie, and
the catalyst of enlightenment in both the brothers’ lives. Their first night in Tokyo they go out
drinking, get lost, can’t find a way back to their hotel, lose all their money
and credit cards, and end up sleeping in boxes on a street in a city with a
language and a culture that makes them totally alien and powerless. And it’s this – the discipline of life as it
is, the spiritual discipline of loss and helplessness as it overtakes them in
the world, that really brings them to the spiritual transformation and opening
that they need.
I
thought of the film this week when I started wondering about the place, and
maybe even the home of Wisdom in the reading from Proverbs this morning.
Wisdom
is God’s Wisdom – portrayed almost as a second person within God, and in
feminine terms. She is Lady Wisdom – God’s
Word and Way. Gerhard von Rad in his
study on wisdom in Proverbs says she is the Hebrew way of describing “primeval
world order” – the basic way the world is meant to be if it’s to be any good at
all, and reflect in any way the original and good intent of God in calling it
to being. In the New Testament and in
Christian theology there is also a special connection between Wisdom and Jesus;
in some ways Jesus is seen as one who is especially opened to God’s Wisdom, who
actually bears God’s Wisdom in ther world.
And with
all this in mind, I wonder why Wisdom is in the street, and in the public
square.
Why is
Wisdom not in the Temple, where First Isaiah came to meet her – high and lifted
up, in glory and awesome light, a vision and call and a word from on high?
Or why
is she not in the synagogue? If as the
scholars tell us, the Book of Proverbs was compiled around 400 BCE after the
time of the Exile, synagogues would have been an important place of meeting for
the Jews – their local community of faith would have been where they might have
expected to worship God and encounter God’s Word and God’s Way.
Or why
is Wisdom not in their homes? The family
home was always a central place of worship and remembrance, of story-telling
and holy instruction and ritual. Why is
Wisdom not in the home?
I
wonder, was Lady Wisdom somehow pushed out of the holy places? Was she not listened to there? Not welcomed?
It happens, I guess.
Or
maybe is the street and the public square and the places “out there” – what we
call “the secular world,” the place – or at least one of the places where
Wisdom – the Way and the Word of God, the Christ, always and actually live and
speak to us? Or at least try to?
So
when the servant of God in Isaiah 50 talks about “morning by morning” opening
his ear to God, and “morning by morning” being awakened to God’s word and way,
from which he does not turn back through the day, he is not talking just about
his morning Bible reading and daily devotional and prayer time. But he is also talking about reading the
morning paper and listening to, or watching the morning news about the time and
the world in which he lives.
A lot
of the news is good – stories of compassion, sacrifice, justice being done, positive
change. And we love to hear and read
these stories.
But
how much is bad? How much is
challenging, upsetting, jarring, angering, depressing and infuriating? Enough to make us say:
How
long, O Lord?
How
long will we and others hate knowledge?
How
long will we not choose the way of God?
How
long will we not listen to moral counsel?
How
long will we despise correction, and all attempts to change the way we do
things?
Which are
exactly the words of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs – the words of God, of
Earth itself in its primeval goodness, of Christ.
Opening
ourselves in this way to this side of God’s voice, to this face of God’s Wisdom
makes it harder for us – harder to live and know how to live, harder sometimes
to believe and have faith.
But
the message of Proverbs, the message of Isaiah, the message of Jesus and the
whole of the Bible, the message of Israel and of the Christian church at their
best and at their worst, is that this is the way to a faith that’s fuller and
deeper, more engaged and engaging, more lively and life-giving, more true to
God and God’s Way.
I say
this with confidence – that it is true, because it’s only in the last two years
as I’m learning really to face and embrace some of my own disorders and
difficulties that I’m now learning things about myself and God and life and
what and how I can be, that I wish I’d been able to learn 20 or 30 or even 40
years ago. I try not to live in regret
for having taken so long. I try to live
instead in gratitude for the chance to be facing and embracing my life as it
is, both good and bad.
And
Proverbs and Isaiah tell us that this is true of facing and embracing life as
it is out there as well.
So
what is the voice of Lady Wisdom in our day?
What is the voice of God out there?
What does it sound like? What is
it saying – at least, trying to say to us?
And is
our life, is our church, is our faith itself fuller and deeper from listening
to it?
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