Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (Year A, RCL)

Paul has a way with a sneer. Nineteen times in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul mentions wisdom, and each time we hear a growing sneer in his voice, until he nominates Christ as the wisdom of God. The word "wisdom" is distasteful to him because it is wooing the Corinthians to pursue a dead wisdom when they might turn to a wisdom he calls the "source of life"--and come alive.  

When Paul writes that Christ is the wisdom of God, he's tapping into an ancient way of speaking about God. He's drilling down into proverbs, where wisdom plays the part of the creative spirit of God. Wisdom is begotten of God, the firstborn of all creation, the very spirit alive in Creation, a feminine expression of God. This isn't just some hocus pocus stuff from the Old Testament, either. The New Testament writers are so influenced by this thinking that they pay homage to Lady Wisdom everywhere.

"You're a preacher, I can tell," the woman said to me. "But not yet."

Each week my church includes a prayer for the families of American soldiers who have died. As the names are read, I try to hold them in prayer. But I have wrestled with these prayers.

Just as loving mercy is a means to doing justice, so is walking humbly with God. Yet in the sexuality debates raging in the mainline church, humility is seldom easy to find. Both sides cling to the fiction that they harbor gospel truth.

Members from more than 500 congregations marched in Charlotte, North Carolina, last October as part of the “10 Percent Is Enough” campaign. While conceding that careless spending is the chief cause of consumer debt and needs to be addressed, march organizers object to credit companies' enticing offers of easy credit, their increased interest rates and their profitable penalties. The "10 percent" campaign proposes a cap on interest rates.

The Beatitudes sneak up on us.