Holy Wisdom, Love Most Bright
Holy Wisdom, Love Most Bright
Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B April 29, 2018
1 John 4:7-21 John 15:1-8
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Pastor Andy Kennaly
Today we will hear a duet from the bells as Amy and Ann share an arrangement of Johann Sabastian Bach’s classic song, Jesu, joy of man’s desiring. While the bells play what is likely a familiar melody for most of us, there are also words that sometimes get sung. We won’t be singing them today, but I thought I would share them to help set the tone.
As that questionable internet source called Wikipedia puts it,
these words are the most commonly heard English version of the piece. It was written by the poet laureate Robert Bridges. It is not a translation of the stanzas used within Bach's original version, but is inspired by stanzas of the same hymn that Bach had drawn upon: (Jesu, meiner Seelen Wonne), the lyrics of which were written in 1661 by Martin Janus (or Jahn). The original text of Jahn's verses express a close, friendly, and familiar friendship with Jesus, who gives life to the poet. It has been noted that the original German hymn was characteristically a lively hymn of praise, which is carried over somewhat into Bach's arrangement; whereas a slower, more stately tempo is traditionally used with the English version. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesu,_Joy_of_Man%27s_Desiring).
So with much history and cultural depth, here are those English words written by the poet to help express the music of this piece:
Jesu, joy of man's desiring
Holy wisdom, love most bright
Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiring
Soar to uncreated light
Word of God, our flesh that fashioned
With the fire of life impassioned
Striving still to truth unknown
Soaring, dying round Thy throne
Through the way where hope is guiding,
Hark, what peaceful music rings;
Where the flock, in Thee confiding,
Drink of joy from deathless springs.
Theirs is beauty's fairest pleasure;
Theirs is wisdom's holiest treasure.
Thou dost ever lead Thine own
In the love of joys unknown.
Aren’t those amazing words? Don’t you want to see beauty’s fairest pleasure, and comprehend wisdom’s holiest treasure? Images of fire and uncreated light. There’s a lot going on in these words and as the music soars and swirls, our souls take joyful flight.
There’s also a lot going on in today’s scripture readings, with images and words that are also amazing. Images like a vine grower, the vine and branches, pruning, bearing fruit, and abiding. These are from John’s Gospel. The letter called 1 John is similar, with more talk of abiding in God’s love, and Father, Son, and Spirit. These words and images catch us at different levels of interpretation and understanding. Let’s play with a couple different ways to look at these passages.
Two words will guide us in this: soteriology and sophiology. As Cynthia Bourgeault talks about in her book, The Wisdom Jesus, Soteriology and Sophiology are two traditions within the Christian church. (The Wisdom Jesus, Shambala Press, Boulder, 2008, pp. 19-21). In the Western Church, we have only really heard about soteriology, focusing on Jesus as Savior, while other streams of Christianity, such as those in India, China, Egypt, and the near East focus through sophiology and Jesus as life-giver, an Enlightened One.
She says it like this:
Soteriology comes from the Greek word soter, which means, Savior. The Christianity of the West has been Savior-oriented. Jesus is seen as the one who died for our sins, who rescued us both individually and corporately from exile and alienation brought about through the disobedience of Adam and Eve. ‘Do you believe Christ died for your sins?’ is still the core question for Christian orthodoxy: the dividing line between a believer and a nonbeliever. This emphasis entered the theology of the West early, and it entered through the apostle Paul. Four centuries later it was re-emphasized through Augustine of Hippo, eventually developing into the doctrine of original sin, that humans are totally depraved without Jesus.
The Christianity of the East saw things radically differently. […] The word sophiology has as its root the word wisdom. (Sophia is the Greek word for wisdom.) Christianity was supremely a wisdom path. For the earliest Christians, Jesus was not the Savior but the Life-Giver. In the original Aramaic of Jesus and his followers there was no word for salvation. Salvation was understood as a bestowal of life, and to be saved was ‘to be made alive.’ [Through baptism, Jesus emerged as] the Enlightened One, a person whose life is full, integrated, and flowing. Jesus’s disciples saw in him a master of consciousness, offering a path through which they, too, could become enlightened ones. A sophiological Christianity focuses on the path. It emphasizes how Jesus is like us, how what he did in himself is something we are also called to do in ourselves. By contrast, soteriology tends to emphasize how Jesus is different from us […] belonging to a higher order of being – and hence uniquely positioned as our mediator.”
Two streams of Christianity, two ways of interpreting who Jesus is and how we are called to respond. One reason I bring these words to our attention is because this morning’s scriptures are intense and wonderful, and depending on which lenses you are looking through, different words stand out, and different conclusions or interpretations are possible.
For example, looking at 1 John through the Savior language of Soteriology we land on phrases like, In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. But through that Wisdom tradition we might focus more on the next phrase, …if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us his Spirit. They are both there! The passage is filled with phrases that support both branches of Christian faith. In that sense, the filters we bring to the text, the background that has shaped us and formed our assumptions, this is what really influences what we choose to emphasize. Taking a different angle from what we’re comfortable with can be frightening.
The same thing with John’s gospel story about the vine and the branches. A soteriological view may look at the pruning and the judgment and the fire, while a sophiological view may emphasize the unity of branch and vine, and how one is dependent upon the other for life and expression. Pruning and flame are not to be feared, but are simply part of the journey deeper into the abundance of life and the fruit of loving relationship.
I would invite you to sit with these passages this week and not only ask how they are speaking to you, but to examine how it is you know what you know. Are you open to your assumptions getting challenged? As you sit with these texts, notice what phrases bubble up at first, in familiar ways. But then notice what phrases were overlooked, and what they may hold as truth.
Don’t think you’re the first ones to do this kind of thing. Bach was doing it when writing sacred music. Poets do this when adding lyrics. Authors do this as they use word and story to surprise us and challenge typical ways of knowing. In 1845, Henry David Thoreau began writing from the shores of Walden Pond a book also known as Life in the Woods, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. He reminds us that...
our vision does not penetrate the surface of things. We think that that is which appears to be.[…] Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these time and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it. And later Thoreau says, I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. (Rinehart Editions, Thoreau, Walden, New York, Toronto, Fifth Printing 1955, pp. 79 & 80).
Friends, we do not need God to do things to us, but we need God to do things with us. Abide in God, as God abides in us, and through abiding, discover your Center, in Christ. Do you want to see beauty’s fairest pleasure, and comprehend wisdom’s holiest treasure? As we follow Jesus on the Way, may the light of life and love illuminate our path, and may God be glorified through the Spirit at work in us, now, even as forever. Amen.