I went hiking this week for a few days with some colleagues from Cal Lutheran—six professors and one dean. This is one of the things I love about Southern California—the academics escape from their labs and their libraries every now and then. We piled into two cars early Wednesday morning and headed for the Sespe Wilderness in Los Padres National Park. The driver of the car I was in is a Professor of Geology and he gave us a geological tour of the Conejo Valley as we drove along the 101. It was like a glimpse into the foundations of creation. Driving down the grade into Camarillo, he told us that Conejo Mountain on our left was once a volcano. When it last erupted, lava had covered Thousand Oaks, spread up into Moorpark, and reached as far east as Simi Valley.

He motioned with his hands to show the uplift in the earth caused by fault lines, and the shifting bedrock that formed the hills and mountains. With a sweep of his hand, he showed us that the Channel Islands were simply under water; mountains that continued the chain of ridges that led off to our right. As we wound our way up the 33 into the National Park, the geologist pointed out different layers of rock in the canyon walls around us. He explained that the anticline formations trap oil deposits. He pointed out layers of rock that were about 15 million years old. But that marine layer up ahead is closer to 60 million years old. What was once the ocean floor, but now rises 2500 feet above sea level.

As the professor gestured with his hands and arms, it seemed as if he were describing the ancient dance of creation taking place over millions and millions of years. He translated what we saw through the windows—rugged edges, gentle curves, brilliant colored strata in the earth—into a choreography of creation.

I imagined creation unfolding as God spoke it all into being. And it seemed to me that in the uplifts and anticlines and marine rock that God’s hand continues to direct the order and design of creation—the creative dance and the poetic rhythm that moves about us, around us, and in us today. Now its one thing to describe creation in technical, scientific terms. This requires specialized knowledge—like the knowledge of a geologist. But it is quite another thing to recognize the poetry of God’s creative order and to feel that we are part of this order, part of the dance.

This takes Wisdom.

Wisdom is not the technical knowledge of the geologist, or any other scientist. Wisdom is practical knowledge; the knowledge that comes from being in relationship. You can’t get this kind of knowledge in school, and it doesn’t come with a degree. Wisdom is knowing that we are part of God’s design, and coming to understand ourselves within the divine order.

In Proverbs 8, this Wisdom is personified as a woman. Now personification is not literal, or historical. We shouldn’t try to read this passage that way. Proverbs is poetic. The poetic figure of Woman Wisdom tries to capture our human imagination in order to help us understand God’s creative work. To do this, Wisdom speaks in the first person, and describes herself in three ways. She is a child, a master worker, or craftsperson, and she is a prophet. Each description of Wisdom gives us a way to understand ourselves in relation to the divine order of creation.

First, Wisdom declares that she was with God before the beginning of time, before the moment when God rolled back the waters, even before God declared “Let there be light.” She compares herself to a little child. In Hebrew the word is AMON, the darling child, playing at God’s side. This child-like quality of Wisdom is her playful delight as she rejoices in God’s creation. Imagine that: as God is creating the cosmos, God’s mind is playful, delighting and rejoicing in the act of creation.

Wisdom’s delight is like that great day in art class when the first graders finally get to finger paint. The art teacher patiently covers the tables and the floor in newsprint, he lays out the paints at each table and carefully tapes the special shiny paper to the newsprint so it doesn’t go sliding all over the place. The children come in, smocks on, and ready to go. They are giddy at their tables as soon as they touch the paint, fingers smearing colors across the paper, cool and smooth. The paper is slippery; the colors are bright: turquoise with violet and brilliant orange and lime green. Of course they mix the colors into various shades of muddy browns and purples its unavoidable—and it doesn’t matter because touching the colors is the whole experience. They delight in just pushing fingers with colors across the paper in swoops and whirls. Bright paint is everywhere: traces on faces, hands, feet, smocks and newsprint, flecks in the hair, and dramatic stripes down bare arms. And they are laughing.

This is Wisdom: the utter delight of using one’s own fingers and hands (and elbows and everything else) to discover the texture of colors, to sense the shades and shapes and feel of life. To delight in creation is Wisdom. And with delight, children also need limits. Finger painting would be an absolute catastrophe if a child took this particular delight into your living room.

The creative act of finger painting is much more successful in the art room, with newsprint covering the tables, and smocks covering the clothes.

The boundaries that protect creative delight are another aspect of God’s Wisdom. The same Hebrew word (AMON) that means little child is usually translated as master worker. Wisdom says “When God marked out the foundations of the earth, I was beside the Lord like a master worker.” Here, Wisdom is like the on-site engineer who takes the architect’s plans and puts them into action. When God determines the scope of the heavens, Wisdom sets the stars in their place. When God draws the limits to the sea, she lays out the coastlines and carves out the riverbanks. When God calls for a lesser light to rule the night, Wisdom marks the timetables of the tides. When God commands the springs to pour forth, Wisdom is the word God speaks. As God’s master worker, she takes God’s architectural blue print and she builds the building in God’s time, and according to God’s order.

I have heard that this church is familiar with blue prints. Next Sunday the architectural plans and the model for our new sanctuary will be available for all to see so that the congregation can vote on continued financing for construction. I’ve only just joined your worship here this year, but I imagine that these plans have taken a lot of collective wisdom to discern God’s plans and to follow God’s design. As a congregation you have worked together for the growth of this church. You have listened to God in prayer; you have called on each other’s expertise and asked for help; you have given of your time and made serious financial commitments. I’m sure many of you have had to take on new leadership roles; you’ve had to learn how to disagree, how to encourage each other, how to negotiate bureaucratic red tape. I imagine there have been long discussions with Presbytery, extra hours of committee work, and session work, getting new elders up to speed. Following God’s call is not easy and discerning God’s plan takes a lot of Wisdom. But the life of the church is part of God’s creation unfolding in Wisdom.

Yet even as we exercise God’s wisdom and participate in the unfolding work of creation in this church, there are other limits and boundaries that we all struggle with. God worked six days and rested on the seventh; taking a Sabbath is part of the created order. But often we lengthen our work hours, and shorten our weekends: we neglect our day of rest. God created Adam and Eve together because “it was not good for one of them to be alone.” We are social creatures. Yet many suffer from loneliness today, and find themselves separated from communities.

And it isn’t just our personal lives that warp the healthy structures God set in place. Our modern world excels at breaking boundaries and it revels in exceeding limits—breaking the sound barrier, going beyond the speed of light, crossing the frontiers of space travel. We celebrate those who climb Mount Everest to test the limits of human physiology, psychology and just plain grit. And breaking boundaries extends to the smallest particles of the universe as well. Today scientists can split atoms, splice genes, and even clone cells. Stretching the limits of our knowledge in these ways is exciting, even breath-taking. And these examples of going beyond technological boundaries and shattering the limits of human knowledge have saved lives.

But in other ways, going beyond the limits and boundaries of the created order has consequences that are deeply troubling. We have used our technology to destroy life and wound creation with bombs and chemicals, when we could have used Wisdom to care for God’s design. The disregard for limits is clear as we deplete natural resources. Rising gas prices remind us of the earth’s limitations. The threat of global warming and endangered habitats remind us that the way we live has deep repercussions for the earth. Embracing God’s Wisdom means remembering that we are intimately connected to Creation. Embracing God’s Wisdom means taking responsibility to discern healthy limits and boundaries—for ourselves and for the planet.

On the topic of human responsibility, God’s Wisdom is not silent. She is absolutely prophetic. This prophetic challenge is the third aspect of Wisdom in Proverbs 8. She confronts us in verses 1-4 and challenges us to take responsibility for our personal lives and our public lives.

“Does not Wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?” On the heights, beside the freeway, at the traffic light she takes her stand. She appears beside the high school gates. At the shopping center in front of town and at the door to the family clinic she cries out: “To you O People I call! I cry out to all that Live!”

Woman Wisdom—the poetic personification of God’s creative mind—reminds us that we, too, are creatures: created to delight God and to rejoice in our relationships with one another. Wisdom is the voice of God’s design calling us back to the rhythms of the created order.

For the Jewish Rabbis, the voice of Wisdom is the Torah—the covenant and commandments by which God’s people live.

For some Christians, God’s Wisdom is the presence of the Holy Spirit, who prays for us when we cannot pray for ourselves, and intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

For other Christians, God’s wisdom is the Christ—the spoken word of grace incarnate—who redeems and restores creation.

An old Shaker song connects Christ’s invitation with the delight and joy of God’s creative Wisdom. I won’t sing it for you, but it goes like this:

I danced in the morning when the world was begun; I danced for the moon and the stars and the sun. I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth; at Bethlehem I had my birth.

Dance, dance, wherever you may be, for I am the Lord of the dance said he, and I’ll live in you if you live in me, for I am the Lord of the dance said he.

When Wisdom calls, delight the Lord, rejoice in God’s created order, and delight in one another. When Wisdom calls, let us delight in the dance.

Amen