Trinity Sunday, Year C 2025: Proverbs 8:1-4,22-31

Both of my daughters have “churchy” names: Ruth and Sophia. I once commented to my husband about how I “got away with” two bible-named kids and he didn’t even try for a Zelda or any type of gaming-related names, and he said “yeah, well, we still gave our kids pretty normal names.” Which is fair, I didn’t try for a Jael. Ruth is a fairly straightforward biblical tie-in, with Ruth being one of four women to have books of the Bible named after them - the others being Esther and the apocryphal Judith and Susanna. But for Sophia, you have to look a little deeper than the table of contents, because there isn’t a person in the Bible named Sophia. But she’s there - so much so that, as a parent, I think I put far more pressure on Sophia than on Ruth, because sophia is the Greek word for wisdom. The same wisdom that today’s beautiful poem from Proverbs is about.

While it is true that Proverbs is written in Hebrew, where the word for wisdom is chakam, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, you will find sophia in its place. Words like wisdom typically aren’t great 1:1 translatable words in scripture. But sophia actually translates well in this instance with chakam, sophia, and wisdom being roughly equivalent. Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible plays a more active role than in the New Testament. In the complete poem from Proverbs 8, which is 36 verses, not only the 13 verses we read today, wisdom takes on her role as the personification of divine intelligence and speaks to humanity. This text is the most fully developed poetic personification of Wisdom. Speaking in the first person, Wisdom praises herself to induce her listeners to heed her call. When Wisdom makes her first appearance in Proverbs 1, she “cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks” (1:20-21). Her daring approach is personal and verbal and public. She is found where the economic and judicial life of society takes place.

There’s a reason that this Proverbs text is included on Trinity Sunday. There are seven traditional “gifts of the Spirit” found in Isaiah 11, which are commented on frequently by writers in the early church. The Isaiah text, which we will read more fully on Advent 2 this year, begins in this way: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” (Isa 11:1-2) In that text, we find the gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and the fear of the Lord.

And that text from Isaiah gives us information about Jesus. We, as Christians, see Jesus as that shoot from Jesse - Jesse who is the father of Israel’s King David from whom Jesus descends - Jesus as the one upon whom all of these gifts of the Spirit rest. But the Spirit doesn’t stop there. While we saw the Spirit descend upon Jesus at his Baptism, it continues to move throughout the world and the Church. We believe the Spirit descends upon us at our baptisms, as we baptize, as Jesus instructs at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is all over the place throughout the baptismal rite. At the thanksgiving over the water we begin with “We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation.” And at the end we state, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” In every Eucharistic Prayer we have a moment called the epiclesis, which is the invocation of the spirit, over the gifts and over the people, where “we pray you, gracious God, to send your Holy Spirit upon these gifts that they may be the Sacrament of the Body of Christ and his Blood of the new Covenant. Unite us to your Son in his sacrifice, that we may be acceptable through him, being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.”

We can feel the Spirit, but we may have trouble articulating how, exactly, the Spirit moves in our lives. Most of our collects in the Book of Common Prayer are addressed to God the Father or God the Son, with the Spirit making an appearance at the end, "through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.” And yet, we struggle with how God can have Trinity of Persons and Unity of Being. Which sends us back into the Old Testament, where we see those gifts at work throughout our history. Which then leads us to the enumeration of those gifts of the Spirit that help us articulate what it is the Spirit does. And God’s holy wisdom, that gift of the Spirit, has been at work all along. And our relationship with Wisdom parallels our relationship with God. Since Wisdom is a gift of the Spirit which is God, if we ignore Wisdom’s teachings, if we ignore Her call, then we are ignoring the God who sent Her to us.

So then what does it look like to follow God’s holy wisdom? To listen to her voice? To hear her truth? Are we being found where Wisdom is found? Are we making ourselves heard? What do people hear from us? Are we seen where Wisdom is seen - in public, being visible and vocal. 

Wisdom is seen at Christ Episcopal Church in Toms River, New Jersey, where they are  fighting to live their baptismal covenants by opening a 17-bed homeless shelter on their property in the face of the mayor’s retaliatory attempts to claim eminent domain over their church in order to build pickleball courts. Wisdom is seen in the Diocese of Michigan whose bishop, Bonnie Perry, will be preaching at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin as part of their pride celebrations and as her witness as an openly gay married woman in holy orders, in the face of the Church of Ireland that still does not permit gay marriage.

And Wisdom is seen in our own diocese, where Bishop Barker issued a call to the faithful on Wednesday following the disappearing of 76 people who have been detained at an unknown location with no access to legal representation or the ability to communicate with their families. In Bishop Barker’s words, “I hope you become an advocate this day, working to ensure that our immigration laws are sensible and just, and that law enforcement officials do their work without unnecessary abuse or cruelty. Write your elected officials and speak out in the public square.” Bishop Barker continues, “In one of the most memorable and sobering of his parables, Jesus identifies himself with the marginalized and imagines that the citizens of heaven came to that reward because of the way they treated him. ‘I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in.’ Today – and always – may we do our part to love and serve the one whose name we bear.”

Bishop Barker is calling us to do what the Wisdom of the Holy Spirit would have us do - to be visible, vocal, bold, and fearless. To seek and serve Christ in all persons and to respect the dignity of every human being. To live the words of Paul, “God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us,” and the words of Lady Wisdom, “whoever finds me finds life.” Amen.