Community Christian Church of Springfield
Roger Ray, pastor
Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16
12 Wisdom is radiant and unfading,
and she is easily discerned by those who love her,
and is found by those who seek her.
13 She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her.
14 One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty,
for she will be found sitting at the gate.
15 To fix one's thought on her is perfect understanding,
and one who is vigilant on her account will soon be free from care,
16 because she goes about seeking those worthy of her,
and she graciously appears to them in their paths,
and meets them in every thought.
They say that history is the version of events as recorded by the people who won the war. The voices of the defeated are soon forgotten and lost to history with very few exceptions.
That can certainly be said of scripture. The Bible was written by the people who won the religious wars. The ancient near east was full of rival, regional religions, with various gods who specialized either in certain aspects of nature or life, or they were at least jealous about certain hill tops and high places.
But the Bible we inherited as children was written from the perspective of the Palestinian religion centered in Jerusalem, at the hilltop temple on Mt. Moriah.
There were other temples that practiced forms of Yahwistic religions, made sacrifices, and talked about Moses, the escape from Egypt, and the 10 commandments but the version that comes down to us states clearly that Israel was a monotheistic state with its religious center in Jerusalem. That's not historically true but that is the sanitized version of religious history that we were handed.
Even if you are talking about those settled and stable periods when the royal family and the priestly class worked in harmony and there really was a fiercely dominant state religion, as Christianity was to a large degree in the first half of the 20th century in America. Even still, there were always those who, on the more superstitious end, dabbled in other religions and forms of magical thinking, and there were always those on the intellectual end of the spectrum, who spoke the language of the dominant religion but who understood it in more symbolic and utilitarian terms.
I'm fond of the saying that equates religion to a swimming pool.... Most of the splashing and noise usually comes from the shallow end... but there is still usually a deep end for the stronger swimmers. My value judgments are added to this sermon at no extra charge.
Seriously, though, if you read even the dialogues of Plato, you see that 400 years before Jesus, in Greek society, thinking people did not take their religious myths either literally nor even all that seriously. Read the Republic and you see how Plato articulates through the character of Socrates that religion is used to tame and control the simple minded and the poor and to give encouragement to the noble and the wise, but it is not taken literally.
We get hints and echoes of the same, even from the sanitized view of religious history we get from the Bible. As the Palestinian religion rubbed up against Greek culture more and more, we see the suggestion of a kind of alternative goddess standing somewhere near that monotheistic faith that attributed all holy things to Yahweh.
It is, of course, much more than an echo in the 4th chapter of Proverbs where we find a virtual hymn of praise to a goddess known as wisdom. You always have to pay attention when a staunchly monotheistic faith speaks out of the corners of its mouth about some other god standing next to the big God.
There were people in ancient Palestine that spoke of angels and demons and buried religious trinkets in their fields in hopes of a better harvest. And there were orthodox Jews who imagined that the one true God's presence actually sat on a throne in an inaccessible inner chamber of their temple on top of Mt Moriah within the walled city of Jerusalem. But there were others who turned with religious devotion to wisdom itself, to intelligence and truth as if intelligence could be personified in a person.... Literally... a person to be desired.... A woman,... a strong, beautiful, woman.
Greek mythology had it that wisdom was a warrior goddess, Athena, and in unmistakable symbolism, she had been born, fully grown and clothed in battle armor, straight out of the forehead of Almighty Zeus. As such, she was a mythic goddess.... A personification of a character quality that was respected, adored, and desired by ancient people who could see that wisdom was their way out of the darkness of primitive society.
Our wisdom lesson today comes from one of those "in-between" pieces of ancient literature.... Attached to Old Testament material but probably originally written in Greek rather than Hebrew.... A hybrid of Hellenist and Hebrew cultures. It is from what Protestants call the "Apocrypha" and Catholics have called the "deuteron-canonical" part of the Bible but for our purposes, it is an example of how the ancient mind was striving to break free of the magic and superstition that had dominated the ancient civilizations and to aspire to something higher, something more honest if somewhat less comforting.
Our good friend, Dr. Charlie Hedrick, has mused about this point recently in his writing. Several of the honored "wise men" of history eventually became described as being either divine or partially divine but that evolution of praise through the fog of history usually took a century or two, or three! But in the case of Jesus, there were people who were saying that he was semi-divine within a generation of his death.
Why did it happen so fast? What was it about Jesus that called forth such a rapid promotion from sage, to saint, to prophet, to demi-god and finally to God?
Sermons, unlike college classroom lectures, really ought to have only one point. I know better than to stand up here and have lots of options in a short speech but this is a topic that simply can't tolerate a one note description.
The first person we know of who tried to push Jesus beyond mere mortal wisdom into a divine role was a guy who had never met him but who did at least have a geographical and biological reference point for Jesus and that was none other than Paul, the self-appointed apostle.
Sadly, however, even though he was closer in time and space, Paul apparently knew less about the historical Jesus than we do and, even more importantly, he cared even less.... He was not interested in the man, Jesus.... He was interested in a mystical Christ.
Fifty years later, one of the first of the famous Christian writers whose works did not make the cut to be included in the New Testament, a man we remember as Justin Martyr, wrote that, "Now the son of God, called Jesus, even if only an ordinary man, is on account of his wisdom (σοφία) worthy to be called son of God." (First Apology, 22)
In the early second century, Justin did not argue that Jesus was God's own offspring because he was miraculously born of a virgin by divine parentage, or that he was any kind of human, divine mix, but rather, quite simply, because he bore the stamp of the goddess who is wisdom.... It was his teachings that made Justin regard him as being a son of God.
In that sense, we too are chosen to set aside the manipulations and deceptions of a creedal religion that wants us to focus on pie in the sky in the by and by, in favor of a religious devotion to wisdom, to the truth, to faith rooted in rational evidence, reality and facts.
Folks, the best part of our faith has nothing to do with denial of reality. Mysticism is not an embrace of fantasy over science. Our faith is a principled decision not to be deceived by the trickery of modern magicians who are always asking for you to look "over here" while they are picking your pocket "over there."
Proper 27 November 9, 2014 Community Christian Church of Springfield
Roger Ray, pastor "Israel's Alternative Goddess"
Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16
12 Wisdom is radiant and unfading,
and she is easily discerned by those who love her,
and is found by those who seek her.
13 She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her.
14 One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty,
for she will be found sitting at the gate.
15 To fix one's thought on her is perfect understanding,
and one who is vigilant on her account will soon be free from care,
16 because she goes about seeking those worthy of her,
and she graciously appears to them in their paths,
and meets them in every thought.
They say that history is the version of events as recorded by the people who won the war. The voices of the defeated are soon forgotten and lost to history with very few exceptions.
That can certainly be said of scripture. The Bible was written by the people who won the religious wars. The ancient near east was full of rival, regional religions, with various gods who specialized either in certain aspects of nature or life, or they were at least jealous about certain hill tops and high places.
But the Bible we inherited as children was written from the perspective of the Palestinian religion centered in Jerusalem, at the hilltop temple on Mt. Moriah.
There were other temples that practiced forms of Yahwistic religions, made sacrifices, and talked about Moses, the escape from Egypt, and the 10 commandments but the version that comes down to us states clearly that Israel was a monotheistic state with its religious center in Jerusalem. That's not historically true but that is the sanitized version of religious history that we were handed.
Even if you are talking about those settled and stable periods when the royal family and the priestly class worked in harmony and there really was a fiercely dominant state religion, as Christianity was to a large degree in the first half of the 20th century in America. Even still, there were always those who, on the more superstitious end, dabbled in other religions and forms of magical thinking, and there were always those on the intellectual end of the spectrum, who spoke the language of the dominant religion but who understood it in more symbolic and utilitarian terms.
I'm fond of the saying that equates religion to a swimming pool.... Most of the splashing and noise usually comes from the shallow end... but there is still usually a deep end for the stronger swimmers. My value judgments are added to this sermon at no extra charge.
Seriously, though, if you read even the dialogues of Plato, you see that 400 years before Jesus, in Greek society, thinking people did not take their religious myths either literally nor even all that seriously. Read the Republic and you see how Plato articulates through the character of Socrates that religion is used to tame and control the simple minded and the poor and to give encouragement to the noble and the wise, but it is not taken literally.
We get hints and echoes of the same, even from the sanitized view of religious history we get from the Bible. As the Palestinian religion rubbed up against Greek culture more and more, we see the suggestion of a kind of alternative goddess standing somewhere near that monotheistic faith that attributed all holy things to Yahweh.
It is, of course, much more than an echo in the 4th chapter of Proverbs where we find a virtual hymn of praise to a goddess known as wisdom. You always have to pay attention when a staunchly monotheistic faith speaks out of the corners of its mouth about some other god standing next to the big God.
There were people in ancient Palestine that spoke of angels and demons and buried religious trinkets in their fields in hopes of a better harvest. And there were orthodox Jews who imagined that the one true God's presence actually sat on a throne in an inaccessible inner chamber of their temple on top of Mt Moriah within the walled city of Jerusalem. But there were others who turned with religious devotion to wisdom itself, to intelligence and truth as if intelligence could be personified in a person.... Literally... a person to be desired.... A woman,... a strong, beautiful, woman.
Greek mythology had it that wisdom was a warrior goddess, Athena, and in unmistakable symbolism, she had been born, fully grown and clothed in battle armor, straight out of the forehead of Almighty Zeus. As such, she was a mythic goddess.... A personification of a character quality that was respected, adored, and desired by ancient people who could see that wisdom was their way out of the darkness of primitive society.
Our wisdom lesson today comes from one of those "in-between" pieces of ancient literature.... Attached to Old Testament material but probably originally written in Greek rather than Hebrew.... A hybrid of Hellenist and Hebrew cultures. It is from what Protestants call the "Apocrypha" and Catholics have called the "deuteron-canonical" part of the Bible but for our purposes, it is an example of how the ancient mind was striving to break free of the magic and superstition that had dominated the ancient civilizations and to aspire to something higher, something more honest if somewhat less comforting.
Our good friend, Dr. Charlie Hedrick, has mused about this point recently in his writing. Several of the honored "wise men" of history eventually became described as being either divine or partially divine but that evolution of praise through the fog of history usually took a century or two, or three! But in the case of Jesus, there were people who were saying that he was semi-divine within a generation of his death.
Why did it happen so fast? What was it about Jesus that called forth such a rapid promotion from sage, to saint, to prophet, to demi-god and finally to God?
Sermons, unlike college classroom lectures, really ought to have only one point. I know better than to stand up here and have lots of options in a short speech but this is a topic that simply can't tolerate a one note description.
The first person we know of who tried to push Jesus beyond mere mortal wisdom into a divine role was a guy who had never met him but who did at least have a geographical and biological reference point for Jesus and that was none other than Paul, the self-appointed apostle.
Sadly, however, even though he was closer in time and space, Paul apparently knew less about the historical Jesus than we do and, even more importantly, he cared even less.... He was not interested in the man, Jesus.... He was interested in a mystical Christ.
Fifty years later, one of the first of the famous Christian writers whose works did not make the cut to be included in the New Testament, a man we remember as Justin Martyr, wrote that, "Now the son of God, called Jesus, even if only an ordinary man, is on account of his wisdom (σοφία) worthy to be called son of God." (First Apology, 22)
In the early second century, Justin did not argue that Jesus was God's own offspring because he was miraculously born of a virgin by divine parentage, or that he was any kind of human, divine mix, but rather, quite simply, because he bore the stamp of the goddess who is wisdom.... It was his teachings that made Justin regard him as being a son of God.
In that sense, we too are chosen to set aside the manipulations and deceptions of a creedal religion that wants us to focus on pie in the sky in the by and by, in favor of a religious devotion to wisdom, to the truth, to faith rooted in rational evidence, reality and facts.
Folks, the best part of our faith has nothing to do with denial of reality. Mysticism is not an embrace of fantasy over science. Our faith is a principled decision not to be deceived by the trickery of modern magicians who are always asking for you to look "over here" while they are picking your pocket "over there."
Just as the ancients struggled to break free of a world defined by fear of demons and spirits by giving their faith and loyalty to a more reliable deity, a goddess they called "wisdom," so we choose to be freed from a culture that worships war, bows down to the power of wealth, worships at the altars of banks, corporations and a hysterical media that distorts reality as if they were feeding us a cocktail of meth, coke, and alcohol that they call "news," and we choose in stead an informed, sober, and sometimes somber awareness of reality that buffer only with hope that is born of faith.... Faith that together, we can make it better.
