“Come home,” says Wisdom to her children, “for I’ve built this house,
and mixed this wine and baked this bread. The table is set.”
In our First Lesson, from the Book of Proverbs, the female figure of
Wisdom is presented as a personification of God, as a personification of
the One who is Creator, Savior, and Sustainer of the world.
So it is God, personified as Wisdom, a female figure, who here
in this lesson promises saving sustenance to humankind, saying, “Come
home, for this is my house, and the table is set. Come, eat my
bread, and drink my wine.”
What a magnificent invitation God is extending to us here at Rutgers
Church on this Homecoming Sunday. God, as the Wisdom that infuses and
sustains all of creation, is calling us home to dine at her table.
And how good it is to be home again in this place of love and wisdom
where, during these summer months, our hearts have remained, even as our
feet have traveled afar—how good it is to be home, in this place of love
and wisdom, in this community of faith and understanding, whence comes
the strength and insight to live and walk in God’s ways.
Yes, it is God—the Wisdom that infuses and sustains the whole of
creation—who has built this house that we call home.
You probably know the oft-recited poem by Edgar A. Guest:
“It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home,
A heap o’ sun an’ shadder, an’ ye sometimes have t’ roam
Afore ye really ’preciate the things ye lef’ behind,
An’ hunger fer ’em somehow, with ’em allus on yer mind.”
I hope that through the sunshine and shadows of life this house of
God has already become for you—or soon will become for you—a home,
a home from which, yes, from time to time you’ll roam, but a home whose
love and faith and wisdom you’ll hunger for, “with ’em allus on yer mind.”
Welcome home, sons and daughters of God. Wisdom’s table of bread and
wine is set for you.
In the New Testament, it is the Greek word “sophia” that is used
to designate the Wisdom spoken of in Old Testament literature—the creating,
saving, sustaining power of God that constitutes the source and foundation
for the whole universe.
And the early followers of Jesus in the first few centuries A.D. often
used that Greek word “sophia” as a figure not only for God but also
for Jesus, thereby identifying Jesus as the earthly manifestation of God’s
creating, saving, and sustaining power.
To describe this creating, saving, and sustaining power that early
Christians experienced in the person, words, and deeds of Jesus, the church
employed a variety of titles and metaphors. Among the titles and metaphors
most familiar to us are: “Son of God” and “Incarnation of God.” Among the
ones least familiar to us are: “Child of Sophia” and “Embodiment of
Sophia.”
Yet one of the most prominent churches in all of early Christianity,
standing as it did in Constantinople, the eastern capital of the Roman
Empire, was a church dedicated to Christ Jesus under a title that was back
then quite well-known: Christ's title “Hagia Sophia,” “Holy
Wisdom”—Christ Jesus, the one whom Sophia became in order to redeem
us. Christ Jesus, “Hagia Sophia!”
So this table that Christ sets for us today can truly be spoken of also
as “the table of Sophia,” the table of Wisdom’s bread and wine—the
table of the creating, saving, and sustaining power of God made manifest to
us in Christ Jesus.
You will recall that at the beginning of our Second Lesson from the
Gospel of Mark, the author depicts for us the astonishment felt by those
in hometown Nazareth who are all of a sudden confronted by the words and
deeds of a grown-up Jesus.
They exclaim, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom,
this sophia—this creating, saving, and sustaining power of God—that
has been given to him, such that he is able to accomplish truly miraculous
deeds!” (cf. vs. 2)
And then later in this same chapter from the Gospel of Mark, in the rest
of this morning’s Second Lesson, it is the turn first of another Galilean
crowd and then of the disciples themselves to stand dumbfounded at the
creating, saving, and sustaining power of Wisdom, of Sophia—of
God—made manifest through the deeds of this Jesus of Nazareth.
Mark tells us first of the banquet for 5,000 persons that Jesus is able
to provide from just five loaves of bread and two fish, fulfilling in
himself the role of Wisdom-as-host that is depicted in our First Lesson.
And Mark goes on to use in this story, which is clearly meant to point
backward to the banquet of Wisdom, of Sophia—Mark goes on to use
in this story a symbolism that is also clearly meant to point forward
first to the future event of Jesus’s Last Supper and then onward beyond
that to the Sacrament of Holy Communion.
Listen to the words Mark uses to narrate this feeding of the 5,000
(vs. 41). He tells us that Jesus takes the bread, blesses
and breaks the bread, and then gives the bread to his
disciples to be distributed.
“Takes,” “blesses,” “breaks,” “gives”—this is the exact sequence of
verbs that Mark uses eight chapters later in describing Jesus’s Last
Supper (14:22).
So, the banquet furnished for the 5,000 through the power of
Sophia foreshadows the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, a sacrament
that is likewise provided to us through the creating, saving, sustaining
power of Sophia made manifest in the person of Christ Jesus.
And then at the end of our Second Lesson, just as the story of Jesus’s
feeding of the 5,000 both symbolizes Jesus as Sophia and foreshadows
the banquet of Sophia that is the Lord’s Supper, so, too, the story
of Jesus’s walking on water both symbolizes Jesus as Sophia and
foreshadows the ongoing presence of Sophia that will be experienced
by Jesus’s disciples after the resurrection through the ongoing Sacrament
of the Lord’s Supper.
This final episode is set quite metaphorically during the fourth watch
of the night, that is, during the three-hour period that follows 3:00 a.m.,
a period meant to symbolize the future time that will come after “the third
day”—that is, after Jesus’s resurrection “on the third day.”
Mark is here projecting us forward into that future time, when
the disciples will be sailing alone, by themselves, through the stormy
waters of life here on earth, without the visible company of their crucified
and risen Lord. It is in that future time that the resurrected Christ
will come toward them across life’s stormy waters.
Now, Mark is counting on us to know our Bibles. He is counting on us to
link this image of Jesus’ s walking on water to an image that is found, for
example, in one of the Old Testament books of Wisdom—the Book of Job.
There, in a vision, Job beholds the God who is Wisdom, the awesome Creator
of the Universe, who shapes and controls all of the forces of nature.
The awestruck Job sees God and describes God as the One who “walks along
on the waves of the Sea” (9:8, own trans.).
And then, in Job’s vision, the God who is Wisdom, the God who walks
along on the water, passes him by (9:11).
Mark is counting on you to know this passage from Job when he describes
Christ—the Child of Sophia, the embodiment of Wisdom—as One who
walks along on the waves of the sea, but does not pass the disciples
by (6:48–51).
Instead, the risen Christ, who is Sophia, climbs aboard the
disciples’ vessel; Christ manifests the Creator’s power to still the raging
winds and waters of the cosmos; and Christ offers the disciples the
sustenance of peace and well-being.
Now, Mark closes this narrative by telling us that the disciples were too
terrified to experience peace and well-being, for “they did not understand
about the loaves” (vs. 52).
You see, the disciples did not understand that Jesus’s previous feeding
of the 5,000 symbolized God’s calling of the multitudes to Sophia’s
banquet of bread and wine, in which the creating, saving, and sustaining
power of God is made perpetually available to followers caught in the raging
storms of life.
The disciples did not understand that Christ’s stilling of the lake’s
roiling waters was symbolic of Sophia’s power over every
manifestation of chaos in the world.
But Mark wants us to understand that. Mark wants us to
have the peace and the sense of well-being that come from knowing that it
is through Jesus, the Child of Sophia, that God says to all her
children, “Come home, for this is my house, and the table is set.
Come, eat my bread, and drink my wine.”
What a magnificent invitation Sophia is extending to us all on
this Homecoming Sunday here at Rutgers Church. For the God who is Wisdom
is calling us home to her table. And how good it is to be home
again!
Let us pray:
O Sophia, our God made known in Christ, it is You who comes to
save and sustain us amidst the storms of life, saying, “Take heart, it is
I; do not be afraid.” It is You who comes to us when we are lost and
lonely, saying, “Come home. Come, eat of my bread and drink of my wine.”
O God, Sophia, Wisdom—we have come home. Prepare now our hearts
to receive You.
Amen.