WALKING IN LADY WISDOM’S WAY
A Sermon on Proverbs 9:1-6

God, bring light to the darkness of my heart. Give me courage and insight. And help me walk in the way of wisdom. In Jesus’ name and the power of your Spirit I pray.

“On a steamy July…afternoon in 1968, Eunice Kennedy Shriver strode to the microphone at Soldier Field in Chicago and convened the first Special Olympics Games. It was only seven weeks after her…brother, Robert, had been gunned down in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, and about five weeks before the Windy City exploded in violent confrontations between police and protestors at the Democratic National Convention. The assassination and the violence had lasting political effects on the American landscape...and, in a much different way, so did the Games at Soldier Field.

“With a crowd of fewer than 100 people dotting the 85,000-seat stadium, about 1,000 athletes from 26 states and Canada, all of them routinely classified in those days as mentally retarded, marched in the opening ceremonies and followed (Eunice) Shriver as she recited what is still the Special Olympics oath: Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who would become a polarizing figure at the convention that (next month), attended the four-day event and told Shriver, ‘You know, Eunice, the world will never be the same after this.’

“While skeptics shook their heads and most of the press ignored the unprecedented competition, Shriver boldly predicted that one million of the world's intellectually challenged would someday compete athletically….Today, more than three million Special Olympic athletes are training year-round in all 50 states and 181 countries. They run races, toss softballs, lift weights, ski moguls, volley tennis balls and pirouette on skates. There are World Winter Games, the most recent in Boise, Idaho, (last) February, and World Summer Games, which will be staged next in Athens in 2011. Documentaries, Wide-World-of-Sports presentations, after-school TV specials, feature films, cross-aisle Congressional teamwork and relentlessly positive global word of mouth have educated the (entire) planet about Special Olympics and the capabilities of the sort of individuals who were once locked away in institutions. Schooling, medical treatment and athletic training have all changed for people with intellectual disabilities as a result of Shriver's vision; more important, so have minds, attitudes and laws” ( Jack McCallum; for the full story and much more, please go to Eunice’s website, www.eunicekennedyshriver.org).

While searching the Internet after her death this past week I was led to that powerful story, originally published in its entirety in Sports Illustrated last December, when Eunice was given that magazine’s first “Legacy” award. There is, I think, nothing quite like someone’s life to tell us about God. Although Eunice Shriver was deeply religious, her life wasn’t about orthodoxy, or right believing. It was about orthopraxis, right doing. Eunice Kennedy Shriver was, I believe, a very wise woman, because she lived what she believed, and what she believed, I would suggest, had everything to do with the wisdom of God.

Her son Tim, now chair of Special Olympics, “vividly recalls…summer mornings at…the family's home in Rockville, (Maryland) when he'd look out of his bedroom window and see (what looked like a party:) ponies and balloons and clowns and kids running and laughing on the huge expanse of lawn….Camp Shriver, which Eunice started in 1962, (gave)…intellectually challenged boys and girls a place to have fun. ‘My parents were more example people than adage people,’ says Tim. ‘We were told to do a lot of things--get off our rear end, don't watch television, don't be arrogant, don't waste your time--but the whole issue of being engaged in some kind of socially meaningful work came from seeing it and having fun with it. They were great at making important things fun’” (ibid.)

Today, whether we realize it or not, we’re here to have fun. Today, we come to celebrate the gift of eternal life given to us in Jesus Christ. Today and every Sunday we also come to celebrate something we call Eucharist, which means “thanksgiving.” And we are thankful for this feast, this celebration, this Holy Communion, offered at God’s table, which has room for everyone.

Today, we also hear a passage from Proverbs about another wise woman, one who invites people to get up and come to a party, a different kind of feast. This biblical woman is sometimes called Lady Wisdom. Proverbs, you may know, is smack dab in the middle of the Old Testament. There are 20 books of Hebrew Scripture before it and 20 books after it. Between the Law and the Prophets comes Wisdom. The books of Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Psalms and a few others represent this third, oft-forgotten literary strain – the Wisdom books of Jewish biblical tradition. And Wisdom, we hear, has a feminine voice. Like “spirit,” “wisdom” is a feminine noun in the languages common to bible times.

In today’s Proverbs passage, the Lady is the personification of God’s Wisdom. Lady Wisdom is mature, experienced and perceptive. She is gracious, generous and has godly judgment. She is, as one pastor puts it, “not unlike a grandmother who keeps her house in order and offers a sumptuous feast that is familiar and welcoming to her young ones. She knows well the individual likes and dislikes of her grandchildren and can direct the attention of the youth to that which is most suitable for the building of faith and character. Ultimately, she offers the unconditional love of God. A grandmother’s love and wise guidance have a firm grasp on the mind of the young. As children grow up to face various trials, hers is the voice of wisdom that surfaces from deep within” (Susan Vande Kappelle, Feasting on the Word, p. 340).

Today, I want to speak of the deep, godly wisdom of grandmothers and mothers, sisters and daughters. Today, I celebrate Lady Wisdom, because it’s about time. It’s about time, because today, more than ever, we need wisdom. We need deep, biblical wisdom. We need Lady Wisdom, the particular kind of wisdom that comes from the particular way women see and move in the world.

While training at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation some years ago, I met a nun who had recently returned from Africa. I told her that I had a heart for the children and families there who were living with AIDS. I said that I wondered if I was being called to go to Africa. As we walked along, this wise woman stopped, turned to me and said, “Tom, first, you must go to the Africa in your own heart.” Today, having spent some time in the darkness of my own heart, I have also learned some things from that wise woman and from others who have been the voice of Lady Wisdom for me. I have learned that, as a man, I will never understand the issues and the problems of those who do not have my privilege in the world. I speak of people who are challenged, disabled or differently abled; people who live in other countries or cultures; people who are not white or heterosexual. Yet of all the ways in which I am different, of all the ways in which my difference becomes my advantage – including my ordination as a priest – the one difference, the single and most obvious difference and advantage I hold in our world and in our church is this: I am not a woman.

My sisters and brothers, I don’t think the problems in our world today are actually about socialism or homosexuality. I don’t think the issues in our church today are really about authority or orthodoxy. I have come to believe our issues as Christians and as human beings are always, all about power – who has it, who doesn’t, who is willing to share it with others. I believe our problems, as the saints and angels and even Jesus keep on telling us, are all about fear. And far more often than we realize or admit, our fear, I believe, is a fear of the feminine.

Some are concerned with what they believe to be the wrong direction we in the Episcopal Church have been taking over the past thirty or forty years. Some are uncomfortable with our current leadership, under Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori and the President of our House of Deputies, Bonnie Anderson. You may remember that, at a meeting of more than thirty presiding bishops or primates of the worldwide Anglican Communion of churches, some of the primates would not even be photographed with Bishop Katharine, the first and only woman Anglican prime bishop. Some of them also refused to share communion with her. In each and every one of the groups of former Episcopalians who have left the Episcopal Church to form what is now called the Anglican Church of North America, not one of those groups recognizes the full spectrum of the ministry of women: as lay persons, deacons, priests and bishops. Are people afraid of what some have called the “feminization” of the church? I answer that question with these questions: How well has the church truly fared under exclusively male leadership? What’s to fear with women in charge? Do women bishops ever refuse to share communion with men? Does all this matter? Would it matter if the bishop were your daughter or sister or mother?

It’s about time. It’s about time to listen to the Katharine Jefferts Schoris and the Eunice Kennedy Shrivers of our church and our world. Some reporters have said this week that Eunice’s legacy will last longer than anyone else’s in the Kennedy family. "If you look at her brothers and sisters and all that they accomplished," her son Tim says, "no one will stand any higher than my mother." And yet we know that, as a woman, few history books will include her story. That’s why it’s about time. It’s about time to value the wisdom of women at least as much as we value the wisdom of men.

That’s what I believe Jesus did. He was able to hear wisdom from people whom most of us so often discount, women being the first among those so marginalized. Without their gracious, generous, godly wisdom, without their orthopraxis, without women like Jesus’ mother Mary of Nazareth and his disciple Mary of Magdala, we might not be celebrating this Eucharist today.

Yes, today, once again, we are invited to go on a journey with Jesus. When we do join that journey, when we follow Jesus into what is God’s shalom, the true peace, freedom and reconciling love of God, we do so because it’s about time. It’s about time to walk with Jesus, Eunice, Katharine and countless other women. It’s time to walk in Lady Wisdom’s way.

Let us pray. God, bring light to the darkness of our hearts. Give us courage and insight. And help us walk in the way of wisdom. In Jesus’ name and the power of your Spirit we pray.

AMEN. – The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg, August 16, 2009