At the crossroads

 

Proverbs 8: 1-4, 22-31
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
June 15, 2025

White and yellow barn owl spreading her wings, about to take off from her perch on a broken pine limb.

I get a little salty sometimes when we read a feminine voice in scripture. I mean, yes, I love hearing she and her and Mother as divine Wisdom, but it happens so rarely. And the other reason is because her voice is seldom heeded. You might be tempted to think that the second one would be strangely comforting—having the company of divine Wisdom in the not being heard, being ignored department—but it’s not. We all want to be heard, and I would think that’s especially true for Wisdom.



More than five hundred years after the book of Proverbs was written, an early Gnostic text, titled “The Thunder: Perfect Mind” was written, found centuries later in Egypt, and she sounds like divine Wisdom from Proverbs, but she’s salty too and crossing genders:



Look at me, all you who contemplate me
Audience, hear me
…Don’t chase me from your sight
…Don’t ignore me any place, any time
Be careful. Do not ignore me
I am the first and the last
I am she who is honored and she who is mocked
I am the [tramp] and the holy woman
I am the wife and the virgin
I am he the mother and the daughter
…I am the bride and the bridegroom
…I am my father’s mother
My husband’s sister and he is my child
…I am she, the lord
…I am the speaking of my name
…You who deny me, confess me
You who confess me, deny me
…I am security and I am fear
I am war and peace
Pay attention to me
I am she who is disgraced and she who is important



As this Thunder reminds us, Mother Wisdom stands at the crossroads. Not just the intersection of two roads, but wherever there is a binary or division, opposition or conflict. She isn’t trying to tell us which way to go. Not yet. The first thing she does is raise her voice to get our attention. Because we aren’t listening. The lectionary reading interrupts Mother Wisdom before she can get salty and omits verse 5. From Eugene Peterson’s The Message: “Listen, you idiots—learn good sense! You blockheads, shape up!” Other translations use dupes, fools, dullards, those lacking intelligence. She’s fed up with us when we think we know better than she does.



Our Western culture hates to be proven wrong, to take a step back, consider another point of view—especially a minority one—and then change our ways. Not once but twice has the United States declared that in almost 250 years we still are not ready to listen to a woman as president. Sit with that one for a moment. We are not ready to listen to Native Americans who want their land back, who are profiled daily as immigrants on their own land. We have not been ready to listen to the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter, queer and transgender people, millennials and Gen Z, disabled people, teachers and workers, Occupy Wall Street movement, Free Palestine, what it means to be woke. Do I have to say it? Mother Wisdom is not White.



All of those movements, all of those voices, all of those lives trying to get our attention, they all intersect one another. They keep bringing our communities, this nation, this world, our humanity to a crossroads. And they are salty too because their voices are seldom heeded.



All because we will not sit with our discomfort, especially we who have privilege. Mother Wisdom calls us from the crossroads to meet her there, to meet her in the uncomfortable places where people struggle and suffer, to sit with our discomfort. Discomfort breeds compassion and empathy, our ability to see ourselves in someone else’s suffering. Sitting with our discomfort is a spiritual practice. As the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome, “…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.” But discomfort and suffering can’t produce any of that if we do not sit with it. And loving God, loving our neighbor, loving our enemy, loving “the other” means sitting with our discomfort, sitting with THEIR discomfort. Disrupting our lives.



In the Twelve Step tradition there is a piece of wisdom called the Three A’s. Awareness. Acceptance. Action. First, we become aware of one of our character flaws or aware of a problem that needs attention. Next, we accept the reality of that problem, that character flaw, that addiction. Only then are we ready for action, to focus on changing ourselves, our behavior, our attitude. Most of the time, though, we move right from awareness to action, skipping over the discomfort of acceptance. The discomfort of accepting that we have hurt people, accepting our powerlessness, accepting that we need help. When we sit with our discomfort long enough, it can teach us what we need to learn and what action we need to take.



Our country is at a crossroads once again. We keep coming back to the same place because we refuse to sit in our discomfort long enough to learn what Mother Wisdom has to teach us. A neighbor of mine just returned from a trip to Germany. While she was there, a German woman said to her that everyone, the global community, is watching what is happening in the United States, because if an authoritarian takeover of our government can happen here, it can happen anywhere.



Is it possible for us to remain at the crossroads, nonviolently, peacefully, all of us together, Americans of all stripes, sitting with our discomfort and that of our neighbor until we accept one another as human beings? Sitting with our non-binary and trans neighbors until we write their pronouns on our hearts. Sitting with our anxious, depressed, and isolated neighbor until we begin to breathe in the same rhythm. Sitting with our Jewish neighbor who feels unsafe all the time. Sitting with our immigrant neighbor, our homeless neighbor, our neighbor who struggles to feed her family, or the one who can’t shake their addiction. Sitting with our neighbor who voted for the current president but who also still loves us.



Jesus didn’t just sit with discomfort—he invited it, he lived with it, he made those around him and those with power uncomfortable. Biblical scholar Mattie Mae Motl writes, “Protesting is one of the most Christlike things you can do. …When you protest, you echo the ministry of Jesus, who publicly challenged religious hypocrisy and empire-backed violence. Protesting injustice is Christlike because Jesus actively and consistently rejected systems that excluded, exploited, and abused. The cross wasn’t just a symbol of salvation—it was a tool of state terror used to silence a prophet who protested oppression.”



The cross itself is a crossroads where life and death, injustice and resistance, loss and resurrection meet, and there is wisdom to be found there. It’s meant to make us uncomfortable—so uncomfortable with the suffering of others that we join them in the struggle for liberation. We learn what it means to be human and to love. Amen.

Benediction – enfleshed.com

Holy Wisdom brims forth in the mountains, oceans, and fields.
She is found in places both extraordinary and humble.
She calls out on the streets.
She dances with God
and reveals Herself in the ordinary corners of our lives.
Wisdom awaits, beloveds, let us meet Her with hope.