September 13 – Fifteenth after Pentecost
Lectionary
Lectionary readings from Vanderbilt Divinity Library online
(http://divinity.library.vanderbilt.edu/lectionary/BPentecost/bProper19.htm)
Wisdom
cries in the streets.
The
heavens declare the glory of God.
Not
many of you should be teachers of God’s Word.
One reads Proverbs 1:20–21;
then an unseen voice reads Proverbs 1:22, 23, and 33.
One:
Come, let us listen to the voice of Wisdom.
With Children
Ask
the children how it’s going at school. Then ask whether they have heard the
saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.” Ask
whether they think that’s true. Talk about a time when you were hurt by
something someone said. We really can
make a difference by what we say, and names can
hurt.
The
Bible says that God brought the world into being by speaking! Words are
powerful. One way of saying who Jesus is, is that he is the Word of God. Let’s
make a plan for this week, both at home and at school, to honour God and follow
Jesus by using our words to help and not to hurt.
Sing
“Who do people say I am” by the Common Cup Company.
Sermon Starter
Focus
on the differences in the priestly, prophetic, and Wisdom traditions with
respect to where and how the Holy is experienced.
The
priestly emphasis is on experiencing God in worship and spiritual practices;
the prophetic stress is on acts of justice and on extraordinary individual revelation;
and the Wisdom worldview emphasizes the Holy in the everyday, built into the
fabric of creation. It’s hard to choose between this and the gospel lesson, but
since we are in Wisdom material for a few weeks, I think it’s worth it. Wisdom
became so prized that it was envisioned not only as a human attribute, but also
as part of the very being of God; there with God at creation, Lady Wisdom is
calling to creation and teaching us that beneath and throughout creation there
is a unity, a principle that holds us together. Even though I don’t like
bringing the Greek reading into the Hebrew one, it would be fine to say that in
some traditions and understandings, Jesus is the Wisdom of God.
As
people searched for words to express what is inexpressible, i.e., what God had
done in Jesus, they turned to their own scriptures and traditions, finding
there the person of Wisdom, and in Jesus, this Wisdom incarnate. (This serves
two functions: lifting up Jesus as God’s Wisdom, and reminding people of the
direction that the link moves in. It’s not that the authors of Hebrew scripture
were foretelling Jesus, but rather that those who knew Jesus found in the
Hebrew writings words and images to express what they experienced in him.)
Hymns
VU
287 “Wellspring of wisdom”
VU 892 “Who
comes from God”
VU 283 “God
is the One”
VU 604 “Not
for tongues of heaven’s angels”
VU
328 “Jesu, joy of our desiring”
VU
561 “Take up your cross”
MV 126 “Are
you a shepherd”
VU
346 “There in God’s garden”
VU 379 “O
holy Spirit, root of life”