Sermon for the 18th of August - Twelfth Sunday after Trinity

Today I am going to reflect on wisdom. Partly stimulated from the first reading, and Solomon’s well-known request – he didn’t want wealth or prestige. As a king, he desired wisdom.

Wisdom today is particularly needed. We live in a world where we carry around smart phones. We can access whatever knowledge we want, whenever we want. There’s no need to spend hours trawling through libraries or consulting reference books – knowledge is immediately available.

We also live in a world where AI is increasingly used. It can sometimes be incredibly helpfully, although I wouldn’t mind if it could help with the cooking, cleaning and doing the dishes.

Some people think wisdom is about the accumulation of expert knowledge, and how to pragmatically use this knowledge. This sounds more like AI than wisdom.

Wisdom is different from simply the accumulation and pragmatic use of knowledge. It can’t be reduced to a simple, rationally-based formular, or an algorithm. So, what is wisdom? I wonder who you think of as a wise person?

Perhaps like me, you have in the back of your mind a wise elderly grey-haired sage you approach with trepidation – and who gives the perfect life-altering advice – a bit like King Solomon. And perhaps there are people like that. In the early church, many people went to visit the desert fathers and mothers seeking advice. Living a life of solitude and prayer, they were particularly attuned to God, and perhaps could see issues with a certain clarity and offer counsel.

But what about for us? How might we gain wisdom. Well, its not something one can simply download or acquire from a book or course.

The French philosopher, Michel de Montaigne, pointed out you can be knowledgeable with another person’s knowledge, but you can’t be wise with another person’s wisdom.

Our embodied Christian faith would affirm this. Wisdom has a deeply embodied moral element; it comes from our own personal experiences of life. Out of our moments of suffering comes a compassionate regard for the frailty of others.

So, wisdom grows with experience.  At the end of the infancy narrative Luke's gospel tells us that Jesus ‘grew in wisdom’ [Luke 2:52]. 

Growing in wisdom can of course come through growing in intelligence, from formal education, reading, discussing with others, particularly those who are different to us.

Growing in wisdom might also come through our emotions. As a family, we’ve watched the recent film called Inside Out 2. It’s an animated film where there are characters who are set inside the mind of girl called Riley. Her actions are influenced by a range of emotions: Disgust, Anger, Fear, Sadness and Joy. In the first film, the character Joy attempted to suppress other emotions that she perceived as negative. In the second film, at night, an alarm goes off in Lucy’s brain and the characters Disgust, Anger, Fear, Sadness and Joy go to Lucy’s brain control panel to find out what’s going on. The flashing red-light alarm highlights something these characters have never come across – puberty. And in enters some new characters: Envy, Ennui, Embarrassment and Anxiety, with anxiety who starts taking control. It’s totally brilliant.

It’s a reminder that emotions, both positive and negative, are profound teachers that reveal our deepest selves and others. Whilst we don’t want to be consumed or controlled by our emotions, they can help move into greater insight, with a new ability to connect.

As well as emotions being great teachers, bodily knowing comes through the senses, by touching, moving, smelling, seeing, hearing, breathing, tasting—often at a deep, unconscious level. It’s partly what drew me to the more catholic tradition, because it incarnates the faith in a sensory way. Becoming aware of our senses allows us to awaken, to listen, to connect. Jesus touched most of the people he healed. Something very different is communicated and known through physical touch, in contrast with what is communicated through mere words. One of the things we learned from Covid was that many people, stuck alone at home, were desperate for a hug from a loved one. Bodily, sensory wisdom reveals something beyond words, with another way of knowing.

Another way of gaining wisdom are epiphanies.  These are eureka moments, when there is a parting of the veil, a life-changing manifestation of meaning. Like the transfiguration, where the disciples up a mountain with Jesus gain a deeper understanding of him.  These epiphanies cannot be manufactured or orchestrated. They are pure grace, always a gift, unearned, often unexpected, and larger than our present life.

Jesus growing in wisdom would have included all of these, and other, ways of knowing.

Theologian Christopher Pramuk describes how Jesus engaged his listeners and followers in ways far beyond their minds. He writes:

When Jesus of Nazareth prefaced his enigmatic sayings with the words, “let those with eyes to see, see, let those with ears to hear, hear,” scholars tell us he was speaking as a teacher of Jewish wisdom, appealing not just to the head but to the whole person of his listener: heart, body, mind, senses, imagination. Like a lure darting and flashing before a fish, Jesus’s words dance and play before the imagination, breaking open our habitual assumptions about “the way things are.” To be “born again” is to break free of the stultifying womb of conventional wisdom…

Like Solomon, may we desire not wealth or prestige, but a desire to learn the path of wisdom. May we be open and attentive to the variety of ways that wisdom may be gained.

For wisdom, as Proverbs puts it [8.11], ‘is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her’.