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Karen Hollis | Sept 15, 2024
Pentecost 17
Proverbs 1:20-33
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
I imagine Wisdom standing in the middle of the street, somewhere in Gaza . . . everywhere in Gaza. Calling out in the open . . . not hidden away in a bunker or in a secret meeting, but out in clear view, where all can hear and all have access to her. I imagine an ordinary street, you know, covered in dust and debris, with rebar sticking out and blocks of concrete piled up, clothing and personal items strewn about. Above her are buildings with faces demolished to show spaces that were once homes and offices. I imagine children climbing in the rubble to her left and right, people walking around her with pained faces, perhaps with bandages here and there. Wisdom is in the street, because her place is with us.
The Wisdom Woman is relational, writes Hebrew Bible scholar, Kathleen O’Connor, “In all the texts where she appears, the most important aspect of her existence is her relationships. Her connections extend to every part of reality. She is closely joined to the created world; she is an intimate friend of God; she delights in the company of human beings. No aspect of reality is closed off from her. She exists in it as if it were a tapestry of connected threads, patterned into an intricate whole of which she is the center.”
The Wisdom Woman builds relationships over long periods of time . . . months, years, eons. She watches, listens, loves, synthesizes and remains present. Notice, she’s not the same as knowledge or expertise. There isn’t a skillset to learn, we don’t need to go to school for this . . . rather we are invited to notice her, acknowledge her, welcome her . . . even if the absence of tasks makes us uncomfortable. In relationship with the Wisdom Woman, rather that picking something up, we might be invited to put something down, let go, or widen our view. Wisdom might look like moving from a tight or folded posture into an open one . . . that alone may initiate a deeper shift that moves us from tightly kept feelings to willingness to let them flow and express. Wisdom might even tell us when it’s safe to do so.
The Wisdom Woman and the people who belong to the Holy Land go way back . . . farther back even than the time of Father Abraham, our shared ancestor between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. She has space within her for the whole history, as told from every side . . . every loss, every trauma, every hurt, every joy, every belief, every story. I imagine her in some ages speaking on the wind and up through the land, while in others, she yells out in the streets, desperate for people to listen.
In this text, the Wisdom Woman isn’t very kind or understanding. The passage comes from a time when our ancestors in faith are at a low point, they are defeated, and are rethinking their understanding of God. Wisdom cries out to them to take a new path, with a new theology. In their desperate situation, she cries out: you must try something else, anything else. Wisdom tends to be something we humans only listen to when we’re ready for it. How long does that take, O God - in any age – how bad must it get before we will stop, drop our weapons in the street, and listen.
For us, though connected through our family of faith, we watch images and listen to stories from halfway around the world. We’re witnessing today the same story playing out that has been lived in the Holy Land since the time of Abraham. While the most recent events are fresh in our memories, as theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama writes: it’s a repeated story “it is repeated because it’s powerful, [it’s] a time-warp, where what was done in the mythologized past is remembered in the real present, and what is remembered is re-membered.”2 So every Israeli and Palestinian body is the blank canvas upon which hate-filled histories hang.
What is not remembered in an intentional way is repeated. Remembering is hard. Listening is hard – at the request of Wisdom or anyone else. It’s difficult to stop and name the story, name the specific hurts, nuance our wounds, and own our part. It’s much more difficult to speak to another person, than about them.
Even as observers of the conflict, we must listen . . . to wisdom, when she speaks through stories of the suffering and marginalized, the powerless, through those we like to criticize and judge, through those who are dutifully acting out the script without question, through our Muslim and Jewish neighbours, through those who are joining together across religious lines, throughout the family of Abraham and insisting on peace, holding hands of hope. We must listen, even when we feel helpless and gutted. We must listen. Not everything we hear is wisdom, yet she is speaking.
We must listen to stories from people like Amgad and Qamar and their sons, who have to move again and again to escape bombings; stories from people like Samih, who plays music at the entrance to his tent in a refugee camp, bringing a moment of escape and joy to those around him; like Wisam, who gave birth to her daughter and immediately had to evacuate the hospital; and Doha, who after being injured and losing her parents, remains in the company of her grandfather and aspires to be one bringing hope to others. Let us open ourselves to wisdom, wherever she speaks and listen . . .
1. enfleshed Sept. 15, 2024: Kathleen O'Connor, The Wisdom Literature (Collegeville Liturgical Press 1988), 59.
2. Padraig O Tuama and Glenn Jordan, Borders & Belonging p. 21.