Connnie Ridgway
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Aug 25, 2019

The lectionary Scriptures today in Isaiah, read from The Message, talk about manifesting God consciousness through caring for the least of us in the community, through housing, feeding, and treating people well.  I love what it says in verses 10 & 11:

10: If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down and out, Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.

NRSV:

your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 

11: I will always show you where to go.

Messsage:

I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—firm muscles, strong bones.  You'll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry. 

NRSV:

The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.]

The Isaiah scripture ends with: If you call the Sabbath a delight...Then you will delight in the Lord.  This is similar language to Wisdom (Sophia) in Proverbs, who delighted in God in the field of creation.

In Luke, Jesus is a Healer, and a “subversive/alternative Wisdom giver” (more about this term later!) because he healed on the Sabbath.

In the Letter to the Hebrews, Paul is a prophet, talking about shaking out what isn’t real or of God, that God is a consuming Fire.

I found myself turning to Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time by Marcus Borg, a Christian scholar and a person of deep faith.

This book was suggested to me because of a chapter called “Jesus the Wisdom of God, Sophia become Flesh.” I’m going to be leading a retreat at Dayspring in November called “Playing with God in the Field of Creation,” from Proverbs, and Borg’s book links Sophia/Hokhmah (the Greek and Hebrew words for wisdom) to Jesus.

Borg’s look at Jesus with fresh eyes, gave me a sense of the context of Jesus as prophet, healer, wisdom teacher, and subversive.  Borg says that Jesus as a “Spirit Person” (we’ll talk about that term in a moment) embodied all these qualities, and that we as Spirit People can follow in Jesus’ footsteps with these aspects as well.

One section in the book is called “Beyond Belief to Relationship.” Until Borg hit a wall, when he struggled with doubt and disbelief, he thought of his Christian life as primarily about Believing.  Then he realized that “God IS, and the central issue is not believing, but entering into a relationship with God, with the risen living Christ, and with the Spirit (p 17).  That relationship involves us in a “journey of transformation.” Later he calls it “moving from secondhand religion, or belief, to firsthand religion, or relationship.”  (p 87-88)

The thing I like about the book is that Borg is creating a context for experiencing Jesus anew.  He says that our view of Jesus could benefit from seeing him in many facets.  I don’t know about you, but I get lazy thinking of qualities of Jesus.  If we think of Jesus only as the Son of God, might we make assumptions, without exploration, about his nature?  Does calling Jesus the Son of God make us less curious to explore what Borg calls the “metaphorical and diverse” images of Jesus, or to explore our potential for the same level of connection with God that Jesus had?  When Jesus lived and in the first decades after his death, his followers didn’t think of him as the Son of God.

Borg said the image of Jesus as the Wisdom of God came perhaps even earlier than the son/father relationship named in the Nicene Creed. (p 97).  This is a mystical relationship, one that is in harmony with Jesus as a Spirit Person.

Borg teases out these qualities, and shows in depth how Jesus is linked to Abba, to Holy Wisdom (or Sophia/Hokhmah) and to the Prophets.

In the book, Borg names these aspects of Jesus (p 30):

  1. The most important: Jesus as a Spirit Person, (Borg’s alternative name for a Holy Man) focusing on his experiential knowing of God.  Spirit Persons become mediators of the Spirit for others, including being healers of others.  This quality of Jesus encompasses all the others.
  2. Jesus as a Teacher of Wisdom, especially alternative/subversive Wisdom as opposed to conventional wisdom
  3. Jesus as the Embodiment of Wisdom (different than a teacher)
  4. Jesus as a Prophet, an advocate of an alternative social vision, similar to the classical prophets of ancient Israel.
  5. us as Founder of a Movement, one that shattered social boundaries, one that eventually became the early Christian church.

I'm going into the most depth with 1 &3.

Borg says that all the aspects of Jesus have to be seen through the first one, Jesus as a Spirit Person.  He defines “Spirit Person” as someone who has “vivid and frequent subjective experiences of non-ordinary reality, a strong sense that there is more to reality than the tangible world of our ordinary experience..  .[that there is] the sacred or numinous.” It is out of this sacred knowing that Jesus is a healer, Jesus teaches wisdom, Jesus embodies wisdom, Jesus is a prophet, and Jesus is a movement founder.  This Sacred Reality is not somewhere else, it is all around us; we are in it, NOW.

As I was writing for this teaching, Jesse asked me: What does it mean for Connie to be a Spirit Person?  I thought of a few of my own experiences of moving from Belief in, to Relationship with, God, whom I call Breath of Life or Higher Power.

When I was 13, I found myself sitting in the grass across the street from my house in Pittsburgh PA, wondering why I was born a white girl in the 1950s in the United States.  As I mused, I was fashioning some clay from the ground, and formed it into a turtle.  I still have it, and brought it in to show you!   It’s now 51 years old :).

In Braiding Sweetgrass, a book of stories about Native American spiritual experience that our mission group is reading, the turtle’s back was spread with mud that was retrieved by the muskrat from the bottom of the ocean, to provide land for Skywoman to live after she fell to earth from a hole in the sky.  Somehow, I felt both cosmically small and unique at the same time while lying on the grass with that turtle.  In my encounter, as a very small speck (which Alfonso alluded to in his teaching Aug 4), and also a unique individual, perhaps here in this body at this time for a reason, I also connected to the ground, and to a powerful story about creation.

Perhaps you can think of a story from your life where you moved from Belief in (or struggle with Belief) to a Relationship with, and a direct sense of connection, to God, Jesus or the Spirit.  Take a few moments to reflect.

When we look through the lens of Jesus being a Spirit Person, our scripture readings, that seem at first to focus just on the prophetic and the healer aspects, could expand -- Jesus is the embodiment of the numinous quality that the Hebrew Scriptures, the Gospels and Paul’s letters refer to as “Wisdom,”

Wisdom in the scriptures is about a way of life, and Borg calls it “subversive or alternative” wisdom, what Jesus teaches as the “Narrow Way.” It is also prophetic.  Isaiah alludes to it: get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping, give yourselves to the down and out.  Jesus claims Prophetic and Subversive Wisdom when he heals a woman on the Sabbath, turning upside down the conventional wisdom of the holy people in Israel.  Paul in Hebrews claims Prophetic and Subversive Wisdom when he says: “one last shaking” means a thorough housecleaning, getting rid of all the historical and religious junk so that the unshakable essentials stand clear and uncluttered.  Do you see what we’ve got?  An unshakable kingdom!”

Borg says also that the early Christian movement named Jesus not only as a teacher of wisdom, but also as intimately related to Wisdom, the embodiment of Wisdom.  Chapter 5 of the book is called “Jesus, the Wisdom of God; Sophia Become Flesh.” To remind us that the term Wisdom is feminine, Borg uses the term “Sophia” for all these references, one reason being that the Hebrew name, “Hokhmah” doesn’t sound necessarily feminine to our American ears.

This term Sophia has many references in Proverbs, where she speaks “like the classical prophets of Ancient Israel.” (p 99) She was with God from the beginning, she was playing in God’s presence continually, delighting in humankind.”  She is also named in two books of the Apocrypha (part of the canon in Catholic and Orthodox traditions): The first Sirach or Ecclesiasticus, says “From eternity in the beginning, God created me, and for eternity I shall not cease to be”.  In another part of Sirach “She was the tabernacle in the wilderness” and the “pillar of cloud” (equating Sophia with Shekinah Glory, the divine presence) (Ch24) .  The Second Apocryphal writing, the Wisdom of Solomon, says: “Sophia is the fashioner of all things, the mother; she passes into holy souls, she is the source of prophetic inspiration.” (Ch 7)

Jesus, in the Gospels, speaks as the emissary of Sophia: “The Wisdom/Sophia of God said, I will send them prophets and apostles, whom they will kill and persecute” (Luke 11:49-50 and Matthew 23:34-35) And Jesus calls himself and John the Baptist, Sophia’s Children (Luke 7:33-35, Matthew 11:18-19).  Paul says in I Corinthians 1:30) -- “Christ Jesus became for us Sophia from God.” Paul says in Colossians 1: “Christ is the firstborn of all creation, for in [or by] him all things in heaven and on earth were created” (this is the language used about Sophia in Proverbs).  Jesus is seen to embody Shekinah (glory), in the Transfiguration, making another link to Sophia.

The biggest reference to Sophia in the Gospels is in the Gospel of John.  In Chapter 1, thought to be an ancient hymn fragment, John uses the term Logos, which in Greek means “Word.” [“Word” is another possible translation of the root “shem” which can mean, light, sound, vibration, name or Word, and the Aramaic term “shmaya” speaks of the reality of the Spirit. ]

Many biblical scholars have “long noted the close relationship between what John says about the logos and what is said about Sophia in the Jewish tradition.  Borg suggests substituting “Sophia/Wisdom” for “Word,” and that Jesus is the incarnation of divine Sophia, Sophia-become-Flesh.  St Augustine also said that Sophia “was sent one way that she might be with human beings; and she has been sent another way, that she herself might be a human being.” (De Trin 4.20.27)

Borg reminds us that Sophia is not simply an interesting use of the literary device of personification.  Sophia is not ‘wisdom in female form;’ Sophia is God in female form (p102)

This is profoundly comforting and disturbing for me, to have Jesus BE the embodiment of Sophia.  It skews all my presuppositions about gender and Spirit (even though I’ve been talking for a long time about this, I’ve been shaken up, confused by new language, new links in awareness).  It also points to metaphor and mystery.

Another story about me: I had a waking vision in 1985 of becoming a healer through massage therapy--and I could sense energy between my hands and the person I was touching--perhaps an encounter with Shekinah Glory?  With Sophia? Proverbs says of Sophia: “I was right there with God, making sure everything fit.  Day after day I was with thee, always enjoying God’s company, and delighting in the world of humankind” The Spirit?  Then a few years later, breast cancer, and eventually two mastectomies and my ovaries removed, I wondered, what does it mean to be feminine?  Perhaps a Spirit Person is both male and female, prophetic, subversive, a healer, wise.  I was a wounded healer.

Do you have a story of manifesting your gifts, and realizing they’re connected with a wound?  How does this make you closer to being a Spirit Person?  Take a few moments to reflect on this.

To wrap it up, what different roads have you traveled, that you could be called prophetic, or a teacher of wisdom, or a founder of a movement, or a healer?  Through those roads, can you see yourself as a Spirit Person, like Jesus, who can embody Wisdom/Shekinah Glory/ the Holy Spirit?

I had a profound healing this past July, while at a music and arts camp with Jesse.  Kathy Bullock, a Professor of Music at Berea College, was my Spirit Person, my Sophia.  And, the music itself was embodied wisdom.  She brought out of me a sense of joy, connection to Spirit, and healing that came from a wound.  I got to sing in her Gospel Choir, and this song was the one that did it all for me:

I had a profound healing this past July, while at a music and arts camp with Jesse.  Kathy Bullock, a Professor of Music at Berea College, was my Spirit Person, my Sophia.  And, the music itself was embodied wisdom.  She brought out of me a sense of joy, connection to Spirit, and healing that came from a wound.  I got to sing in her Gospel Choir, and this song was the one that did it all for me:

So Glad I made it, I made it through

In spite of the storm and rain, heartache and pain,

I’m still alive, declaring You

I made it through, see I didn’t lose

Experienced loss at a major cost,

But I never lost faith in You.

So, if you see me cry,

it’s just a sign that I’m, I’m still alive

I may have scars, but I’m still alive.

In spite of calamity, you still have a plan for me And it’s working for my good, And it’s building my testimony.

So glad I made it, So glad I made It, I made it through.  I made it through.  So glad I made it.  (Written by Marvin Sapp)

May Shekinah Glory, Sophia, the Holy Spirit, help you make it through. 

Amen.