Today’s lessons are about wisdom. The idea of wisdom in the Bible grew out of crafts like tentmaking and carpentry. Craftsmen learned that you can do things well or badly. There is a right way to go about our work.
As time went by, they came to see life itself as a craft. Life can be lived well or badly. Wisdom is simply the art of living well.
Much of the Bible is about how to live well. Living well helps us sleep at night, get along with our friends, and make the world around us a better place. Many people have the notion that wisdom must be something very solemn. It must frown and look very serious. Wisdom is always wagging its finger at our foolishness.
But Paul paints a different picture of wisdom. He says, “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise. Do not get drunk . . . but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and spiritual hymns among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The first thing to see here is that wisdom isn’t a solemn lecture. It’s a song. Wisdom is pleasurable, like a melody in the heart. Wisdom isn’t dour and judging. It’s playful like music.
The second thing to notice about wisdom is that it recognizes a basic truth about reality. It’s a gift. It’s all a gift. The sunrise and the moonset are gifts. The friendship of another person is a gift. Our very ability to breathe, to laugh, to hear the rain on our roof — it’s all a gift.
There is a wise way and a foolish way to handle wood. It starts by recognizing it as wood and not copper. There is a wise way and a foolish way to handle life. To handle life wisely, we must first see it for what it is: a gift, not an achievement.
Paul was writing in Greek, and the Greek word for gift is charis. What shall we do with this gift of life, this gift of everything? Obviously, Paul says, we say “thank you.” In our lesson, when Paul says “giving thanks,” he uses the Greek word eucharistein. That’s where we get the word Eucharist. But Eucharist in the Greek isn’t just a thank you note on pretty stationery. Eucharist means a gift back, a return gift, a thank you gift. So what can we give God?
God has given us our very selves. In thanksgiving for God’s primal generosity, we give something to match his gift to us. We give God ourselves.
This is the great gift exchange of the spiritual life. God gives us our lives. We give our lives back to God. We place ourselves on this altar to be blessed, broken, and given back to us enriched by love and grace and mercy.
St. Ignatius of Loyola prayed, “Accept, O Lord, my memory, my will, my imagination, my understanding. All that I am and all that I have you have given me. I give it all back to be disposed of according to your good pleasure. Grant me only the comfort of your presence and the joy of your love. With these I shall be more than rich and shall ask for nothing more.”
That, my friends, is the core meaning of the Eucharist. And it is the heart of wisdom.
The Rt. Rev. Dan Edwards is the retired Bishop of Nevada.
