Readings (Year B):
Prv 9:1-6
Ps 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7
Eph 5:15-20
Jn 6:51-58
Reflection: Wisdom calls us to her feast
In today’s first reading from Proverbs, we hear about Wisdom building her house, dressing her meat, mixing her wine, setting her table and inviting people far and wide to her feast. Anyone who lacks understanding, anyone who is lost, is especially welcomed.
In the book She Who Is, feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson writes about Wisdom—Sophia—in this passage of Proverbs 9. Johnson writes that Wisdom here is a “personified figure who, while obviously transcendent, comes toward human beings, tests and challenges them. She is a beneficent, right-ordering power in whom God delights and by whom God creates; her constant effort is to lure human beings to life.”
Thanks to Johnson’s writing in She Who Is, I no longer think about wisdom as an abstract, disembodied platonic form, but as an alive, loving, gritty mover-among-us. It’s important and powerful that Wisdom is a “she”—by her existence challenging patriarchal expectations and empowering people of all genders—and she has an active role in our lives. She moves like the spirit in our hearts and bodies and circumstances. She is that tug in our guts that tells us something isn’t right. She is the voice in the back of our heads inviting us to change.
Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower is about a dystopian America overrun by immense violence, destruction of the Earth, and dehumanization. It’s written from the point of view of Lauren, a smart teenage girl who is hyper-sensitive to other people’s pain. Lauren is deeply empathetic in an unfeeling, desensitized world. In the novel, Lauren proclaims that “God is Change.”
In Lauren’s context, “God is Change” is a hopeful and radical truth. Wisdom embodies this idea that God is change. Wisdom challenges us, sometimes painfully, to become more just, speak truth to power, and become more aligned with who God created us to be.
Being a Christian is to live a life of change—it’s to be in constant conversion our whole lives, knowing Christ’s work in us and in the world is never over. God is change, and Wisdom is the movement. She’s a flowing, fresh mountain river, not a stagnant human-made pool.
Wisdom calls us back to the bones and marrow of life, to truth. Wisdom’s table is always set for us, especially when we feel unsure, insecure, scared, and lost. When we pray for wisdom, perhaps we’re also praying for courage to take the next step. Perhaps we’re praying for trust in discernment and for grounded, steady feet in the face of an unknown, uncertain future.
May we respond to Wisdom’s invitation to join her feast. She is the ever-present force luring us toward life.
Add comment