Sermon June 15 2025   Wisdom (Proverbs 8)                         Rev. Betsy Hogan

Have you ever been stuck in random inexplicable traffic – no idea why suddenly nobody’s moving?

It’s a ridiculous question to ask of anyone who drives in Halifax, I know. Where the USUAL answer for random inexplicable traffic can be anything from random inexplicable road work to an ill-timed oil delivery to garbage pick-up. 

But not always. Sometimes it’s much more fun. This past week, for example, I found myself on Sackville, pointed down toward the harbour, inching along at a snail’s pace, no idea why, couldn’t see around the SUV in front of me, getting later and later for where I had to be –

Until finally, as I got closer to Hollis, I could finally see why. It was kids on a school field trip to Halifax. Maybe sixty of them, being herded by their teachers along the sidewalk at the best pace achievable with I’m going to say 13 year olds –

And then crossing at all the lights, presumably heading to the waterfront. Discovery Centre, Maritime Museum, Cows ice cream, I don’t know.

But it was glorious. Because they were being cool – but you could tell they were so excited. Just simmering. Whatever school they’d come from, from outside the city, they’d just invaded downtown Halifax. With all their energy and noise and pedestrian right-of-way – and hello world, please pause and take note, we are here.

Impossible to miss! Jostling for attention on street corners. On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads, beside the gates, in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals – here we are. Right smack dab in the middle of the city. In the middle of the people and the buildings and the life and the rush-hour and everything.

If you’ve ever sat in your car waiting for a bunch of 13 year olds on a school field trip to cross Hollis Street, then you know exactly why the Divine Spirit of Wisdom in this morning’s reading chooses a comparable location for her great proclamation.

Because right smack dab in the middle of the city? Where everything’s going on SO MUCH that even the tiniest wrench in the works has an impact? That’s right smack dab in the middle of life.

And that’s exactly what the Divine Spirit of Wisdom wants to speak into. The city, the organized community. The polis in Greek – the whole matrix and mechanism and constructed network of how we all share space, balance our skills and our needs, relate to each other and function well.

That’s exactly what the Divine Spirit of Wisdom wants to speak into, and with good reason.

It’s a poetic book, the book of Proverbs. It’s often described as a collection of ‘Wisdom Sayings’, and certainly that’s how we generally understand the small-p word ‘proverbs’ – as sayings or teachings of guidance that have stood the test of time. That have been passed down, generation after generation, because they’ve generally been experienced and accepted as being ‘wise’. Intelligent, insightful, thoughtful, tested and found valuable.

But the wisdom here isn’t wisdom with a small w. It’s capital W Wisdom. It’s how the ancients understood the Divine Feminine of the non-binary God who created the fullness of humanity in God’s image. All Wisdom’s pronouns are “she” in the Hebrew Bible, in the Book of Proverbs – she’s at once the source and content of Creation’s order and interrelationship and goodness. She’s what lifts it all from atoms and molecules into active and responsive and sentient life. 

And her work and her presence continue, in many ways roughly comparable to how we might understand the Holy Spirit. Wisdom is the Divine actively moving, actively speaking into Creation, into us, the essence of Godness and goodness – how to live, how to be, in the image of God. All the days of our life.

So when she wants humanity to pay attention? As this reading tells us, she goes where humanity is. Right smack dab into the middle of the city, where it all happens. Impossible to ignore, please pause and take note, she is here. 

Listen and learn, she is here. Be attentive, be guided, she is here.

And the essence of Godness and goodness she proclaims through much of the rest of the book of Proverbs – how to live, how to be, in the image of God – it’s real. It’s practical. It’s fully embedded in the polis, in the organized matrix of community. It’s everything from just employment practices, to dealing fairly with one another in the marketplace, to protecting and upholding legal rights, to just generally living with integrity and honour and compassion and a sense of responsibility for each other’s well-being. 

It's not just “wisdom” or what’s “wise” in the sense of having been proven valuable or effective – it’s the Divine Spirit of Wisdom guiding us toward embodying Godness and goodness.

Guiding us individually, and guiding us collectively, as God’s people gathered in faith.

This past Tuesday evening, as part of our celebration of the United Church of Canada’s 100th Birthday, we made some Heritage Moments for some of our best United Church things over the past 100 years. 

But knowing that not everyone had seen them, our Worship and Music folks asked for me to show them again in church this morning.

Which I’ll do with pleasure, because in fact what they lift up is some of the ways in which we’ve tried, as Christians in the United Church over the past century, to embody the essence of Godness and goodness the way the Divine Spirit of Wisdom spoke it, right smack dab into the middle of our human life together. How we all share space, relate to each other, take responsibility for each other’s well-being, balance our skills and our needs, and function well as a human family.

So here they are, and the first one reflects Wisdom’s urgent call to compassion. And I had to overdub the opening scene, unfortunately, because the wind outside last Sunday morning did NOT show us any compassion:     Depression Hunger

The next one reminds us that each of us matter. That all big transformations of how things are in our world have started with just one person asking a question, shaking the tree, daring to say “Why not?”    Lydia Gruchy

This one speaks less to daring than to patience – to the slow and incremental work of listening to one another and trying to reach a place of understanding, in service of caring and fairness and the common good.    Medicare

The next one reflects Wisdom’s urgent reminder to us that we are ALL one human family, we are ALL God’s children, and if there’s oppression and cruelty we can’t just stand by. We have to stand UP for each other’s value and worth and well-being: we are ALL God’s beloved.    Apartheid

And finally, this last one is our own version of Wisdom’s public theology on street corners and city gates, proclaiming our faith in a God who wants for ALL of us fullness of life – food, shelter, safety, well-being, peace, justice, hope.    Signs 

The divine spirit of wisdom, when Jesus is baptized, descends in the form of a bird, wings unfurled and alighting on him gently. On Pentecost? That same divine spirit of wisdom unleashed in thunder and fire and not very compassionate wind that messes up our filming. 

But in the book of Proverbs? She stops traffic in the middle of the city, impossible to ignore, relentlessly forcing us to pause and pay attention in all its glorious simmering exhausting 13 year olds energy.

Listen, she says to us. Go and do likewise. And lo, I shall be with you until the end of the age. Amen.