Wisdom isn’t just some nice virtue. Wisdom isn’t just passing on a platitude or liking and sharing a feel-good clichés.

Wisdom is a matter of life or death. Wisdom is a matter of the highest stakes – it’s about survival, it’s about suffering, it’s about flourishing or floundering.

When we don’t do what’s wise, it could kill us, or it could kill someone else. It has and it does. When we don’t do what is wise it could take us down paths into caverns where we could get lost and trapped. It has and it does. When we don’t do what is wise, we can get caught in webs of lies that suffocate our souls. When we don’t do what is wise, we can damage our relationships, and destroy them, and find ourselves alone.

Our society is in desperate need of wisdom. People are dying and souls are crying out for lack of wisdom.

So, I hope it’s striking to hear this voice of Holy Wisdom. I hope it’s bracing and rousing. And I hope it’s refreshing to hear that her voice is this strong, no-nonsense Ma or Grandma for the world.

Do you hear Lady Wisdom calling? Can you hear Madame Insight raising her voice?
She’s taken her stand at First and Main, at the busiest intersection. Right in the city square where the traffic is thickest, she shouts,
“You—I’m talking to all of you, everyone out here on the streets!
Listen, you idiots—learn good sense! You blockheads—shape up!
Don’t miss a word of this—I’m telling you how to live well, I’m telling you how to live at your best.”


(Proverbs 8: 1-11 The Message)

I love the strength and confidence and boldness of this voice of Wisdom.

There is such power to wisdom.

When we live by wisdom, this leads to fullness of life and fullness of love. This does not at all somehow guarantee a life without misfortunes or mistakes. Obviously not. But living by wisdom does lead to fulfillment, flourishment, strength, capability, groundedness, faith, the kinds of virtues that earn real respect.

Some of us have to come to wisdom the hard way. And that’s okay, as long as we do come around, and keep trying to come around, sincerely.

Our God is a God of grace. We can always return and get right with God and with our souls and with each other.

So before we hear more from the voice of Holy Wisdom in the book of Proverbs – and we will be hearing more – let me invite you to reflect on how it is that you need to listen to wisdom in your life? What is the holy wisdom you are seeking?

And how is it that our society is in need of holy wisdom?

What would it look like if more of us heard this voice and heeded this voice and urged one another to take it with the life-or-death seriousness that she deserves?

So, let’s keep listening to Dame Holy Wisdom:

Reading 2

 “I am Lady Wisdom, and I live next to Sanity;
    Knowledge and Discretion live just down the street.
The Fear-of-God means hating Evil,
    whose ways I hate with a passion—
    pride and arrogance and crooked talk.
Good counsel and common sense are my characteristics;
    I am both Insight and the Virtue to live it out.
With my help, leaders rule,
    and lawmakers legislate fairly;
With my help, governors govern,
    along with all in legitimate authority.
I love those who love me;
    those who look for me find me.
Wealth and Glory accompany me—
    also substantial Honor and a Good Name.
My benefits are worth more than a big salary, even a very big salary;
    the returns on me exceed any imaginable bonus.
You can find me on Righteous Road—that’s where I walk—
    at the intersection of Justice Avenue,
Handing out life to those who love me,
    filling their arms with life—armloads of life!

Proverbs 8:12-21

We learn here more about what is meant by Wisdom.

Notice how much these virtues speak to our needs and our society’s needs:

Sanity – discerning was is real and unreal, not getting caught up in illusions and fantasies.

Knowledge – studying the world with care and curiosity, learning from others who have proven themselves knowledgably and capable.

Discretion – Being thoughtful and mindful of others and the consequences of our choices

Fear-of-God – “Fear” meaning here not being scared, but rather having awe and reverence and surrender before the power of the Divine which is so much greater than ourselves or any human or natural power.

         Allowing this reverence for God to empower us to resist evil, and to turn away from pride, and arrogance, and all the ways that people lie to each other and themselves to advance their pride and arrogance, and the violence of evil.

         Accepting wise council. Living by common sense.

         Being open to insight, and pursuing virtue, living by justice and righteousness and right-relations.

         This is especially true in using whatever power and responsibility you have been entrusted with, whether that power is small in scope or national and international, wisdom, fair-mindedness, is urgently needed.

         When we live by wisdom, some satisfying things can come our way. Wealth, honor. But it is a trap if we pursue them of their own accord or for our selfish desires. Wealth for the wise means knowing what is enough, it means knowing your own worth and the true worth of those people and things in your world.

         I could go on…

         All this relates to wisdom in the human scope of things.

         But in the book of Proverbs, and in the other Wsidom books in the Bible, much more than that is going on than that. 

In the next passage we’re going to hear, we learn more about who this Holy Wisdom is, and how she relates to God. In the biblical understanding, Wisdom means much more than what we usually mean by the word in English, even when we use it in to its fullest, with the utmost respect for wisdom. The Hebrew word is Hokmah. As we’ll hear, the reality of Hokmah has a cosmic scope that is truly Divine.

“God sovereignly made me—the first, the basic—
    before God did anything else.
I was brought into being a long time ago,
    well before Earth got its start.
I arrived on the scene before Ocean,
    yes, even before Springs and Rivers and Lakes.
Before Mountains were sculpted and Hills took shape,
    I was already there, newborn;
Long before God stretched out Earth’s Horizons,
    and tended to the minute details of Soil and Weather,
And set Sky firmly in place,
    I was there.
When God mapped and gave borders to wild Ocean,
    built the vast vault of Heaven,
    and installed the fountains that fed Ocean,
When God drew a boundary for Sea,
    posted a sign that said no trespassing,
And then staked out Earth’s Foundations,
    I was right there with him, making sure everything fit.
Day after day I was there, with my joyful applause,
    always enjoying his company,
Delighted with the world of things and creatures,
    happily celebrating the human family.

Proverbs 8:22-31

Hokmah, Holy Wisdom, is the first act of Creation. This is because the Holy Creator Beyond All Name needs Wisdom to be able to create anything else at all. Hokmah is God’s trusted companion, God’s right-hand-Woman in the process of creation. Proverbs imagines her to be a kind of architect or engineer. Wisdom helps plan everything so it works out, she makes sure everything has the balance and boundaries for the universe to work.

You can think about this as like the laws and constants of Physics. Physicists have found that the fundamental forces that are active in the subatomic and atomic worlds weren’t set at the moment of the big bang, but just a fraction of a second after. And if any of those forces and constants had ended up just slightly different than they are, the whole thing would have collapsed from the start. It’s astonishing how finely tuned the universe is for there to be the right push and pull among fundamental particles to be able to give rise to atoms and molecules and cells and organs and organisms and ecosystems.

The insight is that we can see similar principles in how life works. We need the right boundaries and balances between things, the right patterns of inter-relations for the astonishing variety of lifeforms to grow and develop and thrive and reproduce and die and decay as they have through countless generations.

There is Wisdom knit into the very fabric of God’s Creation.

This is Hokmah.

About the meaning of Hokmah, let me quote a biblical scholar, James Crenshaw:

“According to Israel’s sages, a fundamental order lay hidden within the universe; this ruling principle applied both to nature and to humans. Discovery of this “rational rule” enabled the wise to secure their existence by acting in harmony with the universal order that sustained the cosmos. Conduct, it follows, either strengthened the existing order, or contributed to the forces of chaos that continually threatened survival itself.” (from Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction).

How important it is that in the Hebrew Scriptures this Wisdom is personified as female. She lends balance to the predominantly male personifications of YHWH the Creator.

How urgent it is for us to hear the voice of wisdom, in our era of upheaval and violence and climate catastrophe, amidst abundance and ingenuity and ever renewing possibility.

I will give Holy Wisdom the last word:

“So, my dear friends, listen carefully; those who embrace these my ways are most blessed. Mark a life of discipline and live wisely; don’t squander your precious life.
Blessed the man, blessed the woman, who listens to me, awake and ready for me each morning, alert and responsive as I start my day’s work.
When you find me, you find life, real life, to say nothing of GOD’s good pleasure. But if you wrong me, you damage your very soul; when you reject me, you’re flirting with death.”


(Proverbs: 8:32-36 The Message)

Delivered Mother’s Day, May 14th, 2023, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge