September 23, 2015

“For we were born by mere chance,
and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been,
for the breath in our nostrils is smoke,
and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our hearts;
when it is extinguished, the body will turn to ashes,
and the spirit will dissolve like empty air.
Our name will be forgotten in time,
and no one will remember our works;
our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud,
and be scattered like mist
that is chased by the rays of the sun
and overcome by its heat.
For our allotted time is the passing of a shadow,
and there is no return from our death,
because it is sealed up and no one turns back.

But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
and no torment will ever touch them.
In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died,
and their departure was thought to be an affliction,
and their going from us to be their destruction;
but they are at peace.
For though in the sight of men they were punished,
their hope is full of immortality.
Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good,
because God tested them and found them worthy of himself;
like gold in the furnace he tried them,
and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them.
In the time of their visitation they will shine forth,
and will run like sparks through the stubble.
They will govern nations and rule over peoples,
and the Lord will reign over them for ever.
Those who trust in him will understand truth,
and the faithful will abide with him in love,
because grace and mercy are upon his elect,
and he watches over his holy ones.
Wisdom of Solomon 2:2-5; 3:1-9

“Not all readers of Scripture notice that the concept of life after death develops throughout Scripture and isn’t implicit in the earlier texts. Where people are after death according to the Old Testament is a topic of some complexity, but certainly they aren’t offered immortal life with God, nor is there a firm concept of resurrection. Until Wisdom that is.

Wisdom starts out with the older view, “No one has been known to return from Hades” (2:1). But by chapter three, “the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God… their hope is full of immortality” (3:1, 4). A Sunday sitting with these texts from Wisdom, then, is an opportunity to clarify what Christians mean in their confession of “the resurrection of the dead” as it compares to soul sleep, Hades, Platonic immortality, and all the other various promises out there relative to life after life after death.

All of that being said, there is really just one reason why the lectionary compilers selected this text. It compares the unrighteous, who summoned death (1:16), to the righteous one who overcomes death (2:12-22). This is a Jesus text before there was a Jesus. It sounds like a Hellenistic version of Isaiah. “He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord” (2:13).

For the Protestant Church, the book “Wisdom of Solomon” is an apocryphal, non-canonical book, and thus is not Biblical “scripture”, though still of spiritual value. It is one of the seven “Sapiential” or wisdom books included with the Septuagint, along with Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon (Song of Songs), and Sirach. Therefore, those of us raised in the Protestant Church are less familiar with this book than our “Roman Catholic” brothers and sisters. But it is still important, and the scripture we read today is one of the reasons why it is important.

It reads in part: “The breath in our nostrils is smoke. Our name will be forgotten in time, and no one will remember our works; our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud, and be scattered like mist”. In other words, we live for just a short time, and then we are gone. It is as the blink of an eye. But though our lives are “but a wisp of smoke”, we are still of value to G*d — who raises Jesus so that we are not forgotten — but live into eternity. And this understanding of “eternal life” comes from a non-canonical book — one that, though not determined by the “Church Fathers” to be worthy of the Protestant bible, reminds us that the redemptive work of Christ was known in the Book of Wisdom. There may be good reason for us Protestants to open the Apocrypha and the teachings found therein.

Pastor Dave