God of our ancestors, Lord of mercy, you who have made all things by your word, With you is wisdom who knows your works and was present when you made the world, who understands what is pleasing in your eyes and what is conformable with your commands. Send her forth from your holy heavens and from your glorious throne dispatch her, that she may be with us and work with us, that we may know what is your pleasure. Well, we left ourselves wanting to eat from the tree of life, wanting to find wisdom, wanting to restore the relationship with God, wanting to be like God. But how do we know what voice to listen to?

[01:03]

How do we know what tree to eat from? How do we know how to choose? The goal of wisdom is life. And life in the creation story is in the relationships, is in the unities, in the unity of human beings with God, in the unity of human beings with each other and with the rest of the created world. And so we go back to wisdom. But a thread that's going to run through this whole thing is that ambiguity of wisdom. Wisdom is the knowledge of good and bad. Even the word for, that we translate as proverb, mashal, means to rule. a mashal convinces you, it rules by its wisdom, but the other meaning of it is to compare.

[02:11]

It rules by the comparison, and so the ambiguity is even in the midst of the proverb. So even there, we know there is a necessity for interpretation. There always has to be a choice. There always has to be, what we were reading about at noon, there has to be an evaluation. I like that, instead of a judgment, an evaluation. By the way, this is an aside, but I grew up in Kansas City and so I'm really glad that that umpire made that mistake, just in case you wondered. There's a description of wisdom, of the Wisdom Woman, in Sirach 24.

[03:12]

It parallels Proverbs 8. It's a later description. And I confess that each one of these chapters kind of carries me away a little bit more. This one takes me a little bit more than Proverbs 8, and Wisdom 7 carries me away a little bit more than that. But in Surah 24, wisdom opens her mouth and begins to sing her value. She says, from the mouth of the Most High I came forth and mist-like covered the earth. So she's that Word of God, that Spirit of God, covering the earth, making life possible that we met this morning. She's everywhere. She's in all creation. She's in the vault of heaven and the pillar of cloud and in the abyss and on the waves of the sea and everywhere that creation is, she is there.

[04:14]

That's the availability of wisdom to everyone. But she says, among all these, I sought a resting place. in whose inheritance should I abide?" So, she's everywhere, but she's going to settle down. Then the Creator of all gave me his command, and the one who formed me chose the spot for my tent, saying, in Jacob make your dwelling, in Israel your inheritance. So, Ben Sira is saying, you know, wisdom may be available to all of you, but she lives with us. She's going to pitch her tent with us. The Creator of all says, before all, or wisdom says, before all ages, in the beginning God created me and through all ages I shall not cease to be. I have struck root in the glorious people, in the portion of the Lord, his heritage.

[05:21]

So, Bensire is making a claim that Proverbs 8 didn't make. Then Cyrus says, we've got a special corner on wisdom. We've got a special corner on knowing how to arrive at life, at the good life. Now, the next section of this chapter, we already know. She's the tree of life. And she's the tree in the middle of the garden that has everything pleasant to look at, and to taste, and to smell. This is the whole collection of good things that go into the incense in the temple, and the collection of good trees. She's like a cedar of Lebanon, a cypress on Mount Hermon, a palm tree in Ein Gedi, and a rose bush in Jericho. She's like an olive tree and a plain tree, cinnamon, balm, myrrh, and so on, all the odors of incense. She spreads out her branches, she puts forth her blossoms, and then just like Proverbs 9, she invites us to come and eat.

[06:29]

Now remember, this is the tree of life. And she says, come to me, all you that yearn for me, and be filled with my fruits. You will remember me as sweeter than honey, better to have than the honeycomb. The one who eats of me will hunger still. The one who drinks of me will thirst for more. The one who obeys me will not be put to shame. The one who serves me will never fail." So the same kinds of promises that we had at the end of Proverbs 8. The one who eats of me will hunger still and the one who drinks of me will thirst for more. There will never be enough. In Elizabeth Johnson's book, Consider Jesus, her Christology book, she talks about, she's making Rahner digestible for most of us, she talks about the fact that what makes us human is our infinite capacity for truth and our infinite capacity for love.

[07:40]

that we are finite and yet we have this infinite longing and this kind of infinite capacity. It's never enough. The one who eats of me will hunger still. It will never be enough. One of the philosophy teachers at Benedictine College, he and I were actually we were out to dinner and we got started talking about what heaven was going to be like which says something about the state of philosophy and theology at Benedictine College but anyway and he said you know we're under the mistaken idea that when we get to heaven we're going to know everything he said it's not true because we're finite we aren't going to be infinite but he said that infinite capacity will just continue to be satisfied and that the limitations we have will be removed, and so the one who eats of me will hunger still, the one who drinks of me will thirst for more, and yet the supply, the satisfaction, the food, come and eat, will always be there.

[08:48]

I don't know about you, but for my money that's a lot more attractive than eternal rest. I guess I'm not that tired yet. So that notion that there's always going to be more and of course everybody at my house knows that my idea of retiring is just to be left in the library with a peanut butter sandwich left by the door regularly. never being satisfied sounds like a good idea to me. But this all leads up to the punchline. Ben Sira has made this glorious description of wisdom and wisdom settling down in Jerusalem and then wisdom as the tree of life who offers this fruit constantly that we're going to keep longing for. And then he says, all this is true of the book of the most highs covenant, the law, which Moses commanded us as an inheritance for the community of Jacob.

[09:58]

How does wisdom settle down in Israel? How does wisdom settle down with this people? Where is she? She is the Law. She is the Word of God, the Book of the Most High's Covenant, the Law which Moses commanded us. That's why, Ben Cyrus says, we have a claim on this way to life that's greater than anybody else's. Now I want to back up. This is true of the most, of the book of the Most High's covenant. We looked at the creation story and we ended in Genesis 3 with the introduction of death and alienation and curse and all those things that separate those wonderful unities that you find in Genesis 2.

[11:02]

And it gets worse. It gets worse in Genesis 4 with the first murder. And it gets worse in Genesis 6-9 with the flood. It gets worse in Genesis 11 with the tower story and finally the alienation of all peoples. But then God starts over. All of this alienation, and alienation really equals curse, which equals death. God says to one person, I will make you a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. and curse those who curse you. I will bless your descendants and in you all the nations of the earth will find blessing." So all of this alienation, then God's going to start over with one man and start over reuniting human beings and himself. And that's the story of the covenant.

[12:03]

The covenant is God's healing of the alienation in those first 11 chapters of Genesis. Now, we know the covenant story. We know the story of Abraham making covenant with God and the promises that God makes and so on. We know it takes God a long time to come through with those promises. Abraham has to keep believing and it's that faith that's counted as righteousness. But finally Isaac is born and Isaac is the only tangible sign Abraham has. The only tangible presence of the promises. Isaac really is the covenant in the flesh, in the sense of the promises. And then God says, take your son, your only one, whom you love, and offer him up to me as a holocaust on a mountain I will show you. It's impossible.

[13:09]

It's taking, it looks like it's taking the whole covenant. But what's happening? The test is what is worth more, the relationship or the promises? The covenant is the relationship with God. It's the restored unity. The promises then are an overflow of that, but the covenant is in the relationship. And Abraham chooses for the relationship. He says, even if there are no promises, the relationship is worth it. Now, in the end, that's God's choice, too. God chooses always for the relationship. Abraham acknowledges, really, God's freedom in this. God can ask whatever God will ask.

[14:12]

Talk about ambiguity, that's about as ambiguous as it gets. But Abraham chooses for the relationship. The covenant is in the relationship. And then God says in Genesis 22, you will become a blessing for all peoples because you obeyed my command. All peoples will be blessed in you because of disobedience. His obedience heals the disobedience of Genesis 3. His obedience restores the relationship. Now, the covenant story goes on in the covenant at Sinai, and in that covenant, God starts out. This is a bilateral covenant, so God makes the offer, and people have to choose. From here on, the covenant always requires choice. God makes the offer. If people say no, no covenant. And God promises that they will be a holy people, a priestly people, and a chosen people.

[15:22]

Now, Leviticus 19 tells us that to be holy means to be like God. It begins, remember, be holy as I, the Lord your God, am holy. And then the rest of the commands in that chapter, about every third command you get, do this because God does this. Be holy as I the Lord your God am holy. To be holy is to be like God, which is to be completely human. Because if we're made in the image of God, then being like God is to be fully human. Notice, we're back to that thing with the tree, but it's not saying we will be God, but we will be images of God. Being holy is to be like God. So it is a gift of life. It's the gift of full humanity.

[16:25]

And that's the gift of the law. Now, the law then, is based on the relationship with God. The law is not based on a code. It's based on a relationship. And if you look at the ceiling of the Sinai Covenant, That story in Exodus 24, there are really two ceremonies of sealing. One is the ceremony with the blood, where the blood is splashed on the altar, which stands for God, and splashed on the people. And so what happens is, symbolically, God and the people become blood relatives. they share the same blood, and so they share the same life. I've always been grateful that we managed to do this with water instead of blood on Sunday, but that ceiling says they share the same life. The other ceremony is a ceremony of a covenant meal that's at the beginning and the end of chapter 24, because to eat together is to share the same life.

[17:37]

To eat together is to be responsible for each other's lives. The Bedouin in the desert are responsible for your life if they feed you. You fed me. You're responsible for me. To eat together is to share the same life. So both of those ceremonies say God and the people share life. It's the healing of the alienation. Now, because it's a bilateral covenant and a sharing of life, and it's supposed to tell them how to be like God, then there has to be law. There has to be some kind of requirement, some kind of demand. Some kind of stipulation. The demand is best expressed in Deuteronomy 6, you shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole mind. What keeps the relationship together? But in the covenant story, there's a charter with the Ten Commandments that says, how do you do this?

[18:42]

How do you love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul? How do you love your neighbor as yourself, as in Leviticus 19? The law is a guide to that relationship. Deuteronomy 30 says, I set before you, we're back to Genesis, I set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life by listening to the Lord your God. There's no word in Hebrew for obey. And the phrase that means to obey in Hebrew is to hear the voice of, to listen to. So listen to the Lord your God, obey the commandments, and that will be life for you. Choose life. So what Bensire is saying to us, notice the choose by the way. We have to choose life. The covenant always makes us choose every day. Like the reading tonight about the, I got distracted kind of in the middle of that old lady, but the old person who doesn't just

[19:55]

degenerate, but who changes every day, who continues to recommit every day. Now, Ben Sira is saying to us that this law, which teaches us how to be like God, so which teaches us how to be completely human, is wisdom. That Lady Wisdom the wisdom woman is the law and that that is where life is found. That's why she is the tree of life. Now a couple of thoughts about law. The law primarily in the Old Testament is in the first five books, is the Pentateuch, what's called Torah by Jews. Torah sometimes is translated as law, but better it is instruction.

[21:01]

And we think of law as prescriptive law, do this, don't do this. But if you look at the Pentateuch, if you look at the Torah, it's mostly story. And it's not all stories to be imitated. But what it tells us is the ongoing relationship of God with this people. And so the law is really instruction by story. Now, if it's instruction by story, again, it's ambiguous. Because stories, like the parables in the New Testament, always make us make an evaluation, I was going to say make a judgment. They always make us choose. Stories make us try to decide how it is we fit in this. It's not a written code and you line yourself up with this. It's story.

[22:04]

I've heard, and I only know this by hearsay, that some Native American tribes, when their young folks get out of line, instead of punishing, they get whoever it is and tell them a story, and a story somehow to illustrate why that kind of conduct is not acceptable. And the story, then, leads them, supposedly, to better conduct. It's the choice. If you really know the difference between good and bad, we'd always choose good. But there's the necessity for interpretation. So law as story then values experience.

[23:06]

We're back to wisdom as experience. You've got the value of everyone's story, which teaches us. It's wisdom as custom and wisdom as experience, but that continually requires re-evaluation and choice. Ben Sire ends his chapter 24 with all the rivers, the four rivers of paradise, and four is not enough. Four is good, six is better, my grandmother would say. And so we get six instead. And then, this is a great story about teachers, he digs a little channel so that these rivers can come to his students. And then finally the rivers expand to become a sea, the water of life. Now, if wisdom is the law, if wisdom is the Word of God, first of all, that says something to us about the importance both of language and of story, the significance of all the words we use.

[24:20]

is in our words, if wisdom is the Word of God. The significance of the stories we tell and the stories we live and our experience, we're back to common human experience. It also tells us something about this scripture, this Bible, that we are a people of the book. in a sense. We say that the Word of God comes to us through a written text and now Ben Cyrus says that this book of the Most High's covenant is wisdom. We've looked at this book of wisdom And we say it is the Word of God because it is inspired by God. But when Sandra Schneider talks about inspiration, she says sometimes we've defined that too narrowly.

[25:24]

We talk about inspiration as God influencing the writer. But she says, that's true, but it's not enough. That it's God's presence in the whole community, because the community keeps the story, tells the story, nourishes the writer, and then after the writer writes it down, the community keeps the written text, recopies it, translates it, interprets it, and in the end, it is the community that carries the word of God that's in the book. And I will say this from my own experience of working as a translator, if I have learned nothing else, I have learned that this is a community book. One of the things when we translate, this was, well it was true with both groups I worked with, translating, we can say this is an accurate translation.

[26:28]

But we really can't say it's a good biblical translation until we know if the living community can pray with it. So the judgment, the evaluation, really, new vocabulary, really comes through the prayer of the living, believing community. It doesn't belong to the translators and it doesn't belong to the scholars, it belongs to the community. And it is the community's gathered wisdom and the community's faith and the community's prayer then that carries this Word of God. But that requires interpretation. It's back to the ambiguity of wisdom. The fathers of Vatican II in the Constitution on Dei Verbum, on divine revelation, say that what is without error is what is in the text that's necessary for our salvation.

[27:43]

They wisely don't say it's this and this and this and this. It's what's there for our salvation. It requires interpretation. But again, to go back to Sandra Schneider, she says inspiration continues in the community. And that just as We have other sacraments that we define as sacraments. The Bible functions as a sacrament of the Word of God. And as other sacraments are most fully realized when they are lived in the midst of the community. Eucharist is most fully realized when we celebrate it together. We venerate the elements of Eucharist outside the celebration, but the fullest realization of the sacrament is in the community celebration. The fullest realization of the wisdom of God, the Word of God, is when the Word is proclaimed, read, prayed, studied in the believing community.

[28:48]

We venerate it, we treasure it outside that, but it's most fully realized as Word of God in the midst of the believing community. So, it's still our common human experience and the gift of God. Wisdom is the Word of God. The Word of God is wisdom. The Bible really is the sacrament of wisdom, of the Word of God. It's the law that is the living wisdom woman, and it's she whom we obey. It's she who is the tree of life. So what? So what does that have to do with us? Benedict called out to us and said, is there anybody here who longs for life?

[29:52]

And if you hear this and your answer is, I do, then God starts directing words to us. Keep your tongue free from vicious talk, your lips from deceit, turn away from evil and do good. Let peace be your quest and aim. And then, even before we call, God will say, here I am. It's the Lord and his love that shows us the way of life. And this way of life is wisdom. But if we wish to dwell in the tent of this kingdom, we have to run. You know, Benedict has us running through the whole prologue. This is really a journey. It's not static. It constantly requires choice and evaluation. And at the end of the book, at the end of the rule, Benedict says, now that you've gotten to chapter 73, this is only the beginning.

[30:55]

You've got the rule, you've got the teaching of the fathers, you've got the Old Testament and the New Testament, and those are all tools. They're not the life, they're tools, because the life is a journey. It's running on the way. It's constantly taking this. Years ago, when I started to teach, I used to read a lot of It really seems like a hundred years ago. I used to read a lot of teacher magazines. I kind of quit after a while, but one thing I read in one of them was, have you had 30 years experience or one year's experience 30 times? One year's experience 30 times is if you just get one pattern and you stamp it out every year. But that's not wisdom. Life is a journey.

[31:59]

We have to keep running. It constantly requires interpretation. The law is the Word of God, is the wisdom of God. But this is the Word of God not because, not primarily because God inspired the author of it, but it's the Word of God because God speaks to us through it today. That's why it's the Word of God. It's in the intersection between the Word and our lives that wisdom gives us life. I told you that we're in the midst of trying to talk about our monastic identity in my house. One of the things we did at a community day just recently In order to talk, well first, I had asked all the sisters to just list five or six things that had been consistent as values in their monastic lives.

[33:05]

You know, whether they'd been in community two years or 60 years. Just to list five or six things that were values or practices. I gave them Liturgy of the Hours as an example. Well, and then they were supposed to get together in their small groups and come to a consensus. We do this all the time on 5 or 6, and then we brought that to the whole community. Well, we ended up with 12, which I would have, you know, anyone, anybody in here could have made the same list. You know what's on the list. It's liturgy of the hours, Eucharist, community, common meals, hospitality. It's all the things you would recognize as the common monastic values. And so we decided we knew what monastic identity was. What we needed to know was how to live it in 1995. And so for an example, we took customs.

[34:07]

that we had had in the 1914 Customs Book, and in the 1962 Customs Book, and the 1966 Customs Book, now you know Vatican II happened in between there, and then in our 1990s Customs Book. And we looked at those. It was really kind of fun because we had one, for instance, on transportation. In 1914, the sisters were not to go visit the sisters in another house, even if it was in the same city. Now, enclosure is what we were evaluating at that point. In 1962, you could visit the sisters in another house if it was within 50 miles. In 1966, if there was a car going, you could go, no matter how far it was. And in 1990, when you joined a living group, you had to discuss what your transportation needs were. Or in 1914, the sisters were not to read books or newspapers without the permission of the superior.

[35:12]

In 1962, they were not to read books or newspapers or watch television without the permission of the superior. In 1966, Television was not to be used during recreation, except sparingly, and someone was appointed to decide which programs could be watched. And in the 1990s, there is an encouragement to keep up with current affairs, and the community chooses one social issue to concentrate on for three years. Now, the culture has changed us, but the monastic values continue. Now, you've done different things, I'm sure. You know, how is it that what happens in that intersection? But it's the wisdom. Joan Chidester was right in terms of her title of her book about wisdom distilled from the daily.

[36:18]

Benedict says, God waits for us daily to translate into action as we should His holy teaching. The law, wisdom, the Word of God is living. It continues to speak. She continues to speak to us daily. Daily, we have to translate into action what that law is. Daily, we have to hear the Word of God. If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts. Daily, we have the choice between good and bad. Daily, we have to re-choose the relationship with God. Daily, we have to seek wisdom. And perhaps in that

[37:24]

We are most like God, who is, after all, a living God. Maybe we can just ponder that. And tomorrow what we're going to think about is this dailiness. Where is it we find wisdom in our daily lives? Where is God in the midst of the daily?

[38:26]

O wisdom proceeding from the mouth of the Most High, announced by the prophets, come teach us the way of salvation. Come, Lord, come to save us.

[38:45]

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