This is the first in a summer sermon series on topics
members of Spirit of Peace requested to have as the focus of a sermon.

This morning's sermon title doesn't exactly trip lightly over the tongue. You probably didn't read it and think, Wow! Am I glad I didn't go to the coast this weekend. . . . One of you said you wanted to hear a sermon about Sophia, which is the Greek word for wisdom. There are a lot of things that could be said about Sophia/Wisdom. As I thought about what might be helpful in a sermon, I decided to focus on the very different ways the Old Testament and the New Testament talk about Sophia/Wisdom. And how that affects the ways we talk about God and Jesus Christ, and the ways the Christian church has treated women.

As far as you know, have any of you ever heard a sermon about Sophia/Wisdom? I know I've never preached a sermon on this topic. And that's kind of odd. Because I enjoy preaching on the Old Testament. And except for God, Moses, David, and Job, the character of Wisdom shows up more in the Old Testament than anyone else. Wisdom shows up more than Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Solomon, Isaiah, Sarah, Miriam, Adam, or Noah (Susan Cady, Marian Ronan, Hal Taussig, Sophia, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986, p. 16). But synagogues and churches rarely if ever talk about Wisdom. Before we look at why that might be the case, let's get to know Woman Wisdom better.

And we'll do that by hearing Anne read from the Book of Jesus Son of Sirach. That's probably not a book you've heard talked about much in church either. Sirach is one of 15 Biblical books that Protestants do not include in our Bibles but some other Christians do. Catholic and all Orthodox Christians include 10 of these books in their Bibles. Greek and Slavonic Orthodox Christians include 5 additional ones in their Bibles. These books are called 'apocraphal', which is Greek for 'hidden'. The reason the Protestant reformers in the 1500-1600s rejected these apocraphal books is because they seem to encourage some practices the Protestants had rejected. Like saying prayers for people who are dead.

Sirach is one of these apocraphal books. And I'm using it because it talks a lot about Wisdom/Sophia. Let's meet her.

Wisdom praises herself, and tells of her glory in the midst of her people.
In the assembly of the Most High she opens her mouth,
and in the presence of the heavenly host she tells of her glory:
"I came forth from the mouth of the Most High,
and covered the earth like a mist.
I dwelt in the highest heavens, and my throne was in a pillar of cloud.
Alone I encompassed the vault of heaven
and traversed the depths of the abyss.
Over waves of the sea, over all the earth,
and over every people and nation I have held sway.
Among all these I sought a resting place; in whose territory should I abide?
Then the Creator of all things gave me a command,
and my Creator chose the place for my tent.
Yahweh said, 'Make your dwelling in Jacob,
and in Israel receive your inheritance.'
Before the ages, in the beginning, Yahweh created me,
and for all the ages I shall not cease to be.
In the holy tent I ministered before Yahweh,
and so I was established in Zion.
Thus in the beloved city God gave me a resting place,
and in Jerusalem was my domain.
I took root in an honored people, the people of God. . .
Like the vine I bud forth delights,
and my blossoms become glorious and abundant fruit.
Come to me, you who desire me, and eat your fill of my fruits. . .
Whoever obeys me will not be put to shame,
and those who work with me will not sin.
All this is the book of the covenant of the Most High God,
the law that Moses commanded us as an inheritance
for the congregations of Jacob.
It overflows, like the Pishon, with wisdom,
and like the Tigris at the time of the first fruits.
It runs over, like the Euphrates, with understanding,
and like the Jordan at harvest time.
It pours forth instruction like the Nile. . .
The first human did not know wisdom fully, nor will the last one fathom her.
For her thoughts are more abundant than the sea,
and her counsel deeper than the great abyss.
(Sirach 24.1-12, 17-19, 22-29, New Revised Standard Version, adapted)

Woman Wisdom has incredible power and prominence. Look at the words in italics in the passage Anne just read. Before God created anyone or anything else, God created her. God created her full of glory. And look at how God created her. She emerged from the mouth of the Most High. Just like God spoke all of creation into being, God spoke Woman Wisdom into being. Woman Wisdom isn't going to have a short life. For all ages, I shall not cease to be she sings. Good things will come to those who obey her, this one who buds forth delights like a vine.

And God didn't just plop Wisdom down to live anywhere. God placed her tent in Zion, which is another name for Jerusalem. God put her tent right in the heart of the Temple. That is where Wisdom lives. Which means Woman Wisdom is connected to the holiest place in all of Judaism. The place God was thought to live in the Temple is called the tabernacle. The Greek word for 'tabernacle' is the same word for 'tent'. So when Sirach talks about God placing Wisdom's tent in Jerusalem, Sirach is connecting Woman Wisdom to the presence of God in the Temple.

And then Sirach does something that elevates her status even higher. Sirach connects Woman Wisdom to the law of Moses. The law of Moses is the first five books of the Old Testament. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy: these are the most sacred texts in all of Judaism. The rest of the Old Testament is considered a response to those first five books. In this passage, Sirach says, obeying Wisdom is like obeying the law that Moses commanded. So Woman Wisdom, this deeply and powerfully feminine being, is now intimately connected to the holiest place in Judaism and the holiest stories in Judaism. This Woman Wisdom who calls herself a vine, from whom the law pours out like so many rivers, she is intimately connected to God.

In a society in which men had all the power, status, legal rights, and control, to have a being with this kind of power portrayed as a woman is stunning. Of course neighboring countries worshiped goddesses who had great power. So having powerful beings who happened to be female was not unique. But to have a being so closely connected to God in Judaism is quite remarkable. Because the Jews were passionate monotheists: there was only one God. So Woman Wisdom never became identified as God. She became very closely identified with God.

So this in the context for the New Testament. This strong Wisdom/Sophia tradition. This one so intimately identified with what gave Jews their identity: the Temple, which is the dwelling place of God, and the Torah, the law God gave to God's chosen people.

Now listen to the opening verses of John's Gospel. And please pay attention to the words in italics, and see if they remind you of anything we were just talking about.

In the beginning there was the Word.
The Word was in God's presence, and the Word was God.
The Word was present to God from the beginning.
Through the Word all things came into being,
and apart from the Word nothing came into being
that has come into being.
In the Word was life, and that life was humanity's light -
a Light that shines in the darkness,
a light that the darkness has never overtaken. . .
The Word was coming into the world - was in the world -
and though the world was made through the it,
the world didn't recognize the Word.
Though the Word came to its own realm,
the Word's own people didn't accept it.
Yet any who did accept the Word, who believed in that Name,
were empowered to become children of God -
children born not of natural descent,
nor urge of flesh nor human will - but born of God.
And the Word became flesh, and pitched its tent a little while among us;
we saw the Word's glory -
the favor and position a parent gives an only child -
filled with grace, filled with truth.
(John 1.1-5, 9-14, Priests for Equality version, adapted)

What relationship do you see between this passage from John and the passage from Sirach? . . .

The images are so similar! The Greek word for 'word' is Logos. Like Sophia/Wisdom Logos is from the beginning. Logos is filled with glory. Like Sophia/Wisdom, Logos is a light that darkness has not overtaken and will not overtake, so Logos, too, shall not cease to be. Just as those who obey Sophia/Wisdom and the law of Moses she is connected with will not be put to shame, so those who accept the Word are empowered to become children of God. Jesus called himself the vine. And said out of him would flow rivers of living water (John 15.1-8; 4.13-15; 7.37-39).

In all these ways, Sophia and Logos seem identical.

But John's Gospel announces something else about Logos which changes everything. While Sophia/Wisdom clearly is not a thing but is a being, nowhere in the Sophia/Wisdom tradition is there the suggestion that she has become an actual person. She is called Woman Wisdom. She acts in ways that are proud, assertive, angry and threatening, creative, and energetic (Cady, et al., p. 16). But there's no suggestion that Sophia/Wisdom ever had a physical body.

And that's what makes Logos so different. John's Gospel says Logos - the Word - became flesh. What Jesus said and what Jesus taught suggest that he believed he had taken on the role of the Temple and the Torah. Those who wanted to live as God's people no longer had to look to Temple and Torah to find God and worship God and be God's people. As both Sophia/Wisdom and Logos, Jesus Christ had taken flesh. While Sophia/Wisdom pitched her tent in the Temple, and connected herself intimately with the law of Moses, Jesus Christ, the Logos, did something very different. He pitched his tent with us. He lived among us. He was one of us. Early Christians believed that somehow this radical action of God becoming human in Jesus Christ was necessary. Necessary to bring people back to what it means to be human, to be saved, to what it means to be God's beloved people (this whole comparison between Sirach and John's Gospel is from N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, Fortress Press, 1992, pp. 413-16).

So Sophia has become Logos. But unlike Sophia, Logos didn't just have an intimate connection with God. John's Gospel says, The Word was in God's presence and the Word was God (emphasis added). As I said earlier, the firm commitment in Judaism to worship one God and one God alone may have kept Sophia/Wisdom from being seen as God.

But early Christians experienced Jesus Christ as God and believed Jesus Christ to be God in human form. And as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity took shape in the first several hundred years after Jesus, Christians could continue to be monotheists - followers of one God. But they also could speak of difference persons within this one God. One of whom is Logos. The Word. Jesus Christ.
So Sophia/Wisdom has become Logos.

And what happens to any feminine face of God? What happens when language about God and now about Sophia/Logos are all carried out using masculine pronouns - when it's all about 'he'?

What happens is many Christian churches refuse to ordain women to ministry. Because when the priest holds up the bread and the wine at the eucharist, guess who the priest is supposed to be representing? Jesus at the Last Supper with his disciples. And Jesus was a man. So how can a woman be a priest? How can a woman represent Jesus? So because Sophia has become Logos, because this female image of intimate connection to God has become the male Jesus Christ, women 2000 years after Christ are still denied equal rights in Christ's church.

United Church of Christ pastor William Sloan Coffin tells a story about an argument he had about this with a good friend who was a Catholic priest. The priest repeated the point that Jesus' twelve disciples were men. So only men could be priests. To which Coffin replied, "Right. And Jesus' twelve disciples were Jewish! So doesn't that mean all priests should be Jewish, too?"

These conversations about gender miss what seems to be the most radical point about Jesus Christ. What's radical is not that God took the form of a male. What's radical is that God took the form of a human being. God became one of us. But we humans so love to compartmentalize. We so love to take things literally. So we talk about God as 'he' and think God actually is a male. The language of the Trinity makes it especially challenging because the Trinity speaks of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And while Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit, can seem like a reasonable alternative, something gets lost in that. The language of relationship and connection, I think, gets lost. How I hear the word "Father" or "Mother" is very different from how I hear the word "Creator".

Jesus clearly was male. But is it necessary to think of the Risen Christ, the Spirit of the Risen Christ that moves among us, as male? Or is the Risen Christ free of gender, or somehow does the risen Christ embrace both genders? Some Christians say that we should call the risen Christ Christ-Sophia (an example is Jann Aldredge-Clanton, In Search of the Christ-Sophia, Mystic, CT: Twenty-third Publications, 1995). To lift up the idea that the risen Christ embraces female and male, that all are one in this Christ. And so the church doesn't continue to preach and teach a God who is so male. Since that has to create and prolong attitudes that lead to discrimination against women, violence against women, and a refusal of church and society to embrace women as full and total equals.

This is what The New Century Hymnal does. And it is what has made this hymnal so controversial. Hymns about the Jesus who walked this earth as a human being use the pronoun 'he'. Hymns that talk about Jesus Christ after the resurrection, or Advent and Christmas hymns that talk about Jesus Christ as the Coming Messiah, do not use any pronouns at all. Which means the words to those incredibly familiar Christmas and Easter hymns have been changed. And that has angered many, many people. So, "Joy to the world, the Lord is come, let earth receive her king. Let every heart prepare him room" becomes, "let earth her praises bring. Let every heart prepare Christ room." And the refrain of "O Come, All Ye Faithful" no longer is "O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord," but "O come in adoration, Christ is Lord." It's the first hymnal of any denomination to do this - to try to talk about the Risen Christ without gender.

Others see talking about the Holy Spirit as feminine. The Hebrew word for Spirit is feminine, while the Greek word is neuter, neither masculine nor feminine. I don't know if it would be easier for people to talk about the Holy Spirit as 'she' than to talk about Christ as he/she or to not refer to Christ as either he or she? Language is so tricky because it shapes our attitudes and our beliefs. And it gets awkward. Since so many of us have heard God referred to as 'he' our whole lives, I've wondered how my views about God would change, and how my attitudes and beliefs might expand, if for the next year I only referred to 'God the Father' as 'she'. Just to see what might happen. And to show myself that God is not a male. Even though part of me knows that, I know that Father/he language about God comes more naturally to me that Mother/she language. And I know that is idolatry. That is sin. Because it's making God in my image. And it perpetuates misogyny but subtly and not so subtly conveying the sense that men are more God-like than women.

This is a conversation we can continue after worship. And well beyond.

For now let us claim the power of Wisdom/Sophia in our Jewish and Christian heritage. This powerful force of understanding, wisdom, and creativity. Who in a culture which denied women any role outside the home, dared to proclaim that she had intimate connection with Temple and Torah. The most sacred symbols of Judaism. That is a courageous, radical, Spirit-led action. To proclaim anything female had such status and such power. May we listen well to this radical call. And become wise in our following - breaking down the barriers that still divide and deny. Amen.