Voice of reason/Enemy within

Proverbs 8: 1 – 21 (The Message)
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
May 22, 2016 – Trinity Sunday

            Earlier this week I posted two questions on Facebook: where do you find wisdom for the living of your life and how do you define wisdom? Of course the answers were wide and varied. As to where folks find wisdom, most folks named sources outside of themselves such as billboards, music and books, yoga, trusted friends, elders, and family. One person said their mom was their source of wisdom. Another person posted an image of Tarot cards while another cited Rocky Horror Picture Show. Another friend who was raised in the Methodist church said that in theory wisdom is the Wesleyan quadrilateral of scripture, reason, tradition, and personal experience, but in practice his source of wisdom is his growing list of what doesn’t work. Some commented that though most of their sources of wisdom are external, listening to their gut or that still small voice is always part of the decision-making process.

            Interestingly enough, the question about defining wisdom got more answers.  Of course the wisest ones said that wisdom is realizing you don’t have it.  Indeed this is the first step toward wisdom.  And yet it’s like that quote from Life of Pi by Yann Martel:  “To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”  It’s good and yes, very wise to understand that we cannot be wise in our own eyes, but it’s only a place to begin.  Sooner or later it’s good to figure out how you define wisdom so you can begin finding some and using it!

            One person defined wisdom as “The capacity of combining love and intelligence in order to discern what is fair and just in any particular circumstance.”  Another friend and a few others similar to this gave what I would consider a universal understanding of wisdom:  “Knowledge from living life and adapting accordingly.”   Here’s one we can all appreciate:  “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting one in a fruit salad.”  This one has a Zen quality to it: “Wisdom is the inaction that is not apathetic, stubborn, nor unaware.  Wisdom is the action that is not reactive.” 

            In all of the responses wisdom did not involve freaking out or losing one’s cool or binge-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  One friend said that wisdom involves being non-anxious and non-judgmental.  And yet in the reading from Proverbs, Lady Wisdom sounds like she just might be ready to blow a gasket.  She’s not the still small voice speaking from within but the frustrated traffic cop in the middle of the busiest city intersection yelling at us to slow down, keep our eyes on the road, and for God's sake, use our turn signals.

Do you hear Lady Wisdom calling?
    Can you hear Madame Insight raising her voice?
She’s taken her stand at First and Main,
    at the busiest intersection.
Right in the city square
    where the traffic is thickest, she shouts,
“You—I’m talking to all of you,
    everyone out here on the streets!
Listen, you idiots—learn good sense!
    You blockheads—shape up!
Don’t miss a word of this—I’m telling you how to live well,
    I’m telling you how to live at your best.”

            We’re knuckleheads and fools only when we don’t listen to Madame Insight.  She’s that voice of reason and sanity, but she’s also the spiritual 2 x 4 that shows us the folly of taking only our own advice.

            Today is Trinity Sunday, a day when the Church lifts up and celebrates the mystery of God in three persons: Creator, Child, and Spirit.  Lady Wisdom isn’t to be confused, though, with the Holy Spirit.  I would say she’s the glue that holds this trinity together.  Lady Wisdom was there in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth.  She was the pause before Jesus spoke.  She was the meaning of the parables the disciples just couldn’t get sometimes.  And when those same disciples needed words of wisdom to preach the good news, Lady Wisdom was there with a lexicon that spoke to the human heart in ways that Jew and Gentile could understand.

            Even though the idea of a Trinitarian god is a human construct, wisdom tells us that we can’t just dismiss it out of hand.  Like Sigmund Freud’s id, ego, and superego, aspects of the human psyche, we come to know ourselves in the three persons in a single divinity.  We are made in God’s image; we are a reflection of Creator, Child, and Spirit, and so much more. To deny ourselves of this gift would be like denying a part of ourselves.  Our creativity is an echo of the creative force of the universe.  When we deny Jesus his divinity, we deny our own divinity.  When we deny Jesus his human flaws, we create a cult of personality and we become devotees rather than mature disciples.  When we deny the Spirit and her insistent call to use our gifts, we relegate those gifts to what Jung called the shadow side.

            The wisdom of the Trinity is wholeness and authenticity:  humanity and divinity in all their fullness.  We need our whole sacred selves, our brokenness and our beauty, if we are to serve goodness, compassion, unconditional love, if we are to be able to truly forgive, be forgiven, and restore justice.

            Unbelievable as it may sound, there is an original Star Trek episode about this very thing.  When Anita and I were planning this service, we both thought of it at the same time.  Forget "The Godfather".  Star Trek is the I Ching, the Bhagavad Gita, the book of wisdom for the ages.  The episode is entitled “The Enemy Within”.  Through a freak transporter accident, Captain Kirk is split into two persons.  One is kind and gentle, compassionate to a fault, but also unsure and somewhat fearful and hesitant.  The other is brutal, violent, and cunning but also aggressive and assertive.   

         Without each other, both will eventually die.  The violent Kirk is eventually sedated, while the kind Kirk must take command but cannot do so because he lacks the decisiveness of his other half.  Only when Kirk is restored to his whole self can he be the captain the Enterprise needs to survive its current crisis.

            In one of the books that didn’t make it into the canon, the gospel of Thomas, a book of wisdom sayings in its own right, Jesus says, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”  It’s the reason some of us won’t let anyone see our messy home, why we put on our best face, why we hide our tears and watch our language, why we keep people out of our weird little worlds.  If everyone saw us as we really are—flaws, brokenness and all—no one would want us, we wouldn’t belong.

            This is why we need the Church.  We need Church to be the people, that safe place where everyone can be all of who they are and still belong.  The truth, the wisdom is we’re all incomplete, a work in progress, in transition, none of us the same, and yet members of one another.  Indeed we can do plenty to separate ourselves and each other from love and belonging, and so we need a God whose love we cannot separate ourselves from, a Jesus who incarnates, who embodies that love and shows us how, and a Spirit who makes us one.

            Before us, before there was sun, moon, and stars, before there was all there is, Lady Wisdom was there, in the process, in the soup, in the mess. Out of that wisdom came you and me and everyone, everything else, even the Trinity. O God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.