Sermon Archive

When I was little I believed – fervently – in the possibility of being a good girl. My favorite book – I read it seven times – was Heidi. Heidi is the story of an orphaned girl who goes to live with her grandfather in the Swiss Alps. Her grandfather has a mysterious, tragic, and possibly criminal past. He lives alone high on the mountain, angry with his neighbors, “withdrawn from God and man,” and Heidi is left unceremoniously on his doorstep by an aunt who doesn’t want her. We might expect Heidi to do a little acting out here: everyone she ever loved has died, and her grandfather appears to be an ogre. But Heidi is made of sterner and more cheerful stuff: she immediately makes herself at home, exploring the house, playing with the goats, helping her grandfather with chores. Within minutes his heart is won over – and he’s only the first. She befriends the lonely goat-herd, Peter, and becomes the light and life for his blind grandmother. She then goes to the city of Frankfurt to become a companion for a girl named Klara – an invalid who cannot walk – and she brings joy to that household, too. But Heidi is not just loving and cheerful; she is wise, and her wisdom and goodness are bound together. The first part of the book is called “Heidi’s Years of Learning” and the second part is called “Heidi Uses What She Learned.” She gets Klara to walk again. She teaches Peter how to read. She brings her grandfather back into the fellowship of the village. I adored her. I wanted to be like her. I knew I was also called to be good and wise and brave, and Heidi was showing me it could be done. I’m sure I was not the only child who felt that way. Books about good and wise children who overcome adversity and help others – like Harry Potter – are still best sellers.

Recently, I went back to Heidi and was somewhat appalled that this book had been a formative influence. The author was a product of the 19th century, a member of the Swiss bourgeoisie. In her understanding, goodness and wisdom are not equally granted to folks: servants, for example could be good or bad, but in Heidi they were all quite limited in intelligence. Rich people had lots of both, even though they weren’t as noble as the mountain folk. I was also disturbed by the portrait of the invalid Klara and the blind grandmother, who both seemed helpless without Heidi. What message did I get about people with disabilities – and would they really have appreciated all that pity and interference by an 8-year old? And poor Heidi herself – I could tell she was going to need years of therapy after all those clinically depressed adults kept turning to her to fulfill their emotional needs (and Freud hadn’t even started his practice!).

So being like Heidi is not a viable alternative ... and deconstructing Heidi is only the tip of the iceberg. We all know that being good and being wise is much more complicated than she makes it seem. There are so many sides to every ethical dilemma, so much to know, so much we can’t know.

Let’s start with relationships – Heidi simply loved everyone and made them all happy, but that doesn’t seem to work for us. Do we really love him or her? When do we stay, when do we go?

Or let’s talk about children. When do we say yes you may and when do we say no? Are we worried enough about that problem in school – or too worried?

Then there’s politics.... When we read about the poverty and debt in Zambia, or the sweatshops and sex trade in Thailand it’s hard to believe that global capitalism can ever be made just – but then what are we talking about? Socialism? What would that look like? And do we then have to account for Stalin’s purges or the great famine in China?

It’s all so complex – doing the right thing can seem beyond us. We try to avoid making gross mistakes and keep away from mortal sins. We don’t murder or steal – as long as you don’t count the fudging on that time sheet. We vote but we don’t demonstrate. We could be accused of laziness or cynicism, but really, we’re insecure – just thinking about trying to do the right thing can put a knot in our stomach. It’s so easy to lose our passion for doing the right thing because it’s so hard to figure out.

Our scripture today won’t let us get away with that. Wisdom calls to all who live, standing at the gates of the city where all come and go. We can’t plead ignorance. But the scripture reassures us, too. Wisdom is not something we have or don’t have, something given at birth that we can measure with intelligence tests. Wisdom promises that all who seek her diligently will find her. She loves those who love her. Wisdom is to be sought and loved ... but who is she?

My alternative sermon this morning was called “Wisdom: Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?” because so much of the commentary on this passage has to do with pinning down the category of reality that wisdom belongs to. Is she an expression of God or even a person of God - a hypostasis - like Christ or the Holy Spirit? Is she a remnant of ancient Israelite polytheism, a Goddess borrowed from Egyptian mythology? Was “woman wisdom” simply a literary technique of the sages, something that no one is expected to take literally? Or is this a pre-Jesus reference to the Christ, as the Church has claimed through much of its history?

I think the answer can be all of the above as long as we remember the important thing about Wisdom: she rejoices in the inhabited world and delights in the human race – in spite of our foolishness. Wisdom is not some nasty and authoritarian schoolmaster, giving us demerits for mistakes, depriving us of recess when we do something wrong, rapping us on the knuckles or sending us out of the room. Wisdom delights in us, and wants us to watch and wait for her, to desire her above all our other desires. Wisdom has expectations – we need to seek her diligently, to watch and wait for her, and to listen to her instruction – but she loves those who love her. She has been delighting in us since our birth and even before creation. We are called to seek her with all the passion and joy that we can muster, with the confidence that being able to find the way of righteousness and the path of justice is not only possible – it is promised to us.