Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise (Ephesians 5:15)

Many years ago the actress Maureen Lipmann did a sequence of adverts for British Telecom involving a Jewish mother called Beattie. In one Beattie was on the phone to her son who was university and he’d phoned up to tell her he’d passed his last exam and acquired his degree. “An ology?” She says in happy pride. “You got an ology!”

I don’t have an ology but I remember my Mum still had that same pride when I got my degree - as she took pride, I think, in all our achievements growing up. And why not? It takes work to learn all the facts and ideas you need to get a qualification at any level. This country has always prided itself on our attitude to education and learning - to the acquisition of knowledge and understanding. The Church has always, too, valued knowledge and understanding - the ministry of the Church is made up of people who got an ology - Theology. People who have studied and learned knowledge and ideas about God, Jesus, The Bible and so forth.

Our readings, though, deal with something subtly different from knowledge. They deal with wisdom. Not that I’m knocking knowledge and learning. Far from it. God has put in each of our heads the most complex thing in the known universe - the human brain. He has made us as thinking creatures that yearn to discover, to learn, to understand, to question. All these are important things for human beings to do, and I suggest to you that part of what has disengaged many people from the Church is the mistaken belief that we are not meant to question; not meant to learn. There is a myth that the Church values ignorance and unwavering unquestioning faith. Nothing could be further from the truth, but we have allowed, for example, the myth to be perpetuated that science and faith are at loggerheads.

Science is a fantastic tool for human beings to find out about God’s Creation; to understand the rules that God built in to the bedrock of reality that cause the world to work the way it does - rules that we call laws of nature and whose regularity and reliability reflect the constancy of their author. We can learn from what science has to tell us and what we learn will allow us to interpret scripture more clearly for the times we live in.

But science and knowledge are not wisdom. They are not enough. For all science has achieved amazing things - things that have allowed humanity to feed the hungry and heal the sick - it does not and cannot replace the need human beings have for meaning - a meaning we find in religious belief. As John Polkinghorne, scientist and theologian, put it,  “Essentially Science only asks one question about the world: the question of process; the question of how things happen. It brackets out questions of meaning and value and purpose. But we know these are questions that are meaningful and important to ask.”

Traditionally, for Jews and Christians alike, wisdom also involves a willingness to be open to God’s promptings to find meaning, value and purpose in our lives by reflecting on the scriptures, by spending time with God in prayer and by letting the Holy Spirit guide us when we’re unsure. To guide us to meaning, value and purpose for our lives in the things we see, by the the things we learn and by the things that happen to us. Often these involve not fact, but metaphor. When my son was born and I held him for the first time I knew what it felt to love someone as a father for the first time and that spoke to me of God’s love for me, for you, for all his children. God isn’t my biological father in the way that I’m Christopher’s Dad, but the metaphor works: it speaks of meaning, value and purpose in life.

We are not simply creatures of fact and knowledge: we are creatures of poetry and feeling. God inspires us to create meaning from both these sides of our natures. This is why I have a problem with Bible literalists who insist that everything the Bible says must be fact - whatever science says. For me such people are like the guys who are confused when Jesus talks about bing the bread of Heaven and of his followers eating his flesh. “Eat his flesh? What’s he on about?” They have insisted on literal facts when Jesus is using metaphor and imagery to offer meaning, value and purpose for their lives.

God has made us as beings that long to know but also to create meaning. The combination of those two things is belief. Not wisdom. Wisdom involves one more element and it comes from our text this morning. “Be careful how you live, not as unwise people but as wise.” Wisdom isn’t, in the end, about the stuff we’ve learned and understood through the gifts of reason and thought that God has given us. Nor isn’t it about the meanings we create through the guidance of the Holy Spirit about God, Jesus and our relationship with them. It’s about how we take them and build them into the way we live our lives.

We won’t always follow Paul’s guidance. Sometimes we will be distinctly unwise. We’ll say things, do things, think things that are unworthy of us, let alone God. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that we are forgiven all those things if we will just let God forgive us and seize the opportunity each new day to live with the wisdom God offers us in Christ: the Christ we’re not simply supposed to believe in, but to follow, to imitate, to live in the world as children of God.

Living with God’s wisdom - not the wisdom the world peddles. In a world which insists that charity begins at home we can embrace and live the wisdom of God - that we love our neighbour as we love ourselves. We do our best to make sure that the hungry get fed; that the homeless get shelter; that the sick get treated. In doing so we follow in the way of Christ

Let us live with God’s wisdom - not the wisdom the world peddles. In a world that insists you take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth we can embrace and live the wisdom of God - that when someone hurts us we can forgive them. We can return kindness for harshness, peace for war, love for hate. In doing so we follow in the way of Christ.

Let us live with God’s wisdom - not the wisdom the world peddles. In a world that insists that we are separated by race, religion, colour, language, gender; which seeks to close borders, throw up barricades and wrap hatred in national flags, we can embrace the wisdom of God. We can open our doors, our wallets, our hearts to those of anyone who needs our care - whoever they are and wherever they come from. In doing so we follow in the way of Christ.

That, ultimately, is wisdom. Following in the way of Christ. Sure it may not seem ‘wise’ in the cynical sense the world often uses the word. It won’t make you rich. It may not make you popular. It won’t give you the trappings of success that the world admires. It will, however, make you properly human - human in the best sense of the world. Human in the sense we were always meant to be if you take the words of Genesis: “let us make humanity in our image. Human in the sense Jesus teaches when he speaks of light to the world and salt to the earth. Human in the sense of children of God. Get that right, who knows? You may get an ology. And you may get to look back, in your last moments before you step into eternity in the loving presence of God and think, “Yes. That was a life lived well.”

Lord, may we live as wise, not as unwise. May we not accept the easy lies the world teachings but, instead, live lives that reveal our true natures as your children; lives which follow in the way of your son

Preached at Gretna Old parish church