Food.
There is good food and bad food.
Food that is good for us and bad for us.
There are whole diets and life styles and cultures that revolve around food.
And appropriately so, because food is what keeps us alive, life revolves around food.
Food says a great deal about a person, how, what, where and with whom.
We are what we eat.
Garbage in garbage out.
What makes for life?
What makes for death?
What is a good and healthy diet?
To be fair we don’t always know.
But we do know something. It is all about Wisdom. Wisdom.
The reading from the book of Proverbs this morning shows the house and the feast of wisdom, those things that make for life. Lady wisdom builds a house and prepares a feast and she invites us in to lay aside immaturity, to live and walk in the way of insight. Lady Wisdom. Holy Wisdom. Hagia Sophia
Later on in that same chapter we are introduced to Dame Folly whose house and food are full of death.
The way of life, the way of wisdom, of insight.
The ancient Hebrews understood Lady Wisdom to be a living force at work in the world, leading people to God, literally the pillar of fire and smoke that led the people of Israel on their Exodus. A force drawing us away from death and slavery into The Way that is flourishing life.
John’s Gospel understands that force, lady wisdom, to have become flesh and blood in Jesus Christ, the incarnation of wisdom, the incarnation of life itself.
Wisdom isn’t just good advice, wisdom isn’t an esoteric utterance. Wisdom has to do with regular every day things. The stories we tell, what or grandmothers remind us, it is as plane old and ordinary as canning tomatoes and washing dishes.
Wisdom speaks and moves and weaves though our lives, a gift from God, a gift that is God, life itself abiding with us.
And Jesus is all that and more.
Jesus is the food of wisdom, the food of life.
The closer, the more intimate our relationship is with him the more alive we become, the more wise.
We become like lady wisdom, building a house and preparing a feast and inviting all to come and share in life itself, in the great thanksgiving, we become part of the invitation, part of the hospitality of God.
Lets build that house and get cooking! I can smell it and taste it already.