Yesterday afternoon, I stood on a street corner with friends and colleagues from the United Church of Christ from around Minnesota. Since our Conference meeting was held at St. Benedict’s College in St. Joseph, we joined the St. Cloud contingent of the “No Kings” protest. A crowd of thousands lined both sides of a main highway through town. As the demonstrators raised protest signs and chanted, people in the cars passing created a symphony of honking. They drivers waved; they raised their fists; they made signs of peace. Not all the cars were supportive, of course. some made hostile gestures or deliberately billowed exhaust in our faces.

I was surprised by the tender feeling that welled up in me as I took in the emotion on the faces of these strangers driving by with their windows rolled down and sometimes made eye contact with them. I felt a deep sense of connection, a shared, unspoken understanding of the stakes of this moment. I realized that what was most important was not that our yelling was heard in Washington. What mattered, on this day full of horror, was that we chose to come together: to grieve together, to stand together, to let love be greater than fear, together, to labor toward the vibrant, diverse democracy that we long to birth at last.

Reading our text from Proverbs in light of all that is happening in these days, I’m struck by the portrayal of wisdom as a public good, accessible and available to all. She “takes her stand” “on the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads.” This lady is out in the street. She’s loud and blunt. She speaks her mind. She cannot be hidden away in a book or locked up in an expensive education. She’s not a commodity, not the property of the wealthy and powerful. “My cry is to all who live.” Wisdom’s gifts are in everyone and for everyone. We are each wise in ways that are unique and necessary for the flourishing of the whole.

I didn’t know representative Melissa Hortman personally but have been hearing many incredible testimonies from folks who did. And I can’t help but see an echo of woman wisdom in her bold yet collegial way of leading in the legislature. I was reminded last night of the episode in 2017 when she called out her white male counterparts for playing cards in the back room while their female colleagues of color gave testimony on the floor of the MN House. She stood firmly in solidarity, with dignity and clarity, insisting that the wisdom of all of us be at the table, even as the pressure mounted for her to retract her critique.

Wisdom, according to Proverbs, is embedded in the world. She makes everything else possible—depths and springs, mountains and hills, fields and soil, seas and sky. She is the design of creation, the master craftswoman. She is the delightful inter-play that holds the world together. Living wisely, then, puts humans in harmony “with the togetherness of creation.” Living unwisely, on the other hand, causes the world to come apart. 

Today is known, in the calendar of the church year, as Trinity Sunday. Now I know many of us are rightfully wary of doctrine. In this church, we don’t have a creed you have to believe in. Maybe there’s a non-dogmatic version the Trinity, though. Will you enter into that thought-experiment with me? Traditionally the Trinity is the idea that God exists in three persons. What if we choose not to be limited by the three-ness? What if the important point is simply that the nature of God is togetherness? God is relationship. God cannot be in isolation. God is not an individual. God is community. And community, togetherness, is also how we find God, how we experience God. What if God is an ongoing dynamic movement, a flowing from one to another, an interrelationship of all that is? 

Today’s text portrays Wisdom as God’s partner. I wonder, though, if she’s something more than that? If she’s equal and integral to God in God’s self? There is a lost and buried tradition of the divine feminine that was once a vital part of the ancient Hebrew religion—perhaps this figure of Wisdom is a remnant of that. It makes perfect sense to me that the trinitarian God, a God rooted of togetherness, encompasses all genders,

Being “together” doesn’t mean that we are all the same or that we do things in the same way. It does mean that we each show up and do our part, that we each offer our unique wisdom for the good of all. Protest is one way to show. There are many ways to show up with and for each other and for all that is sacred to us.

So amid the groanings of this time—the deep grief, the weaponization of fear, the breakdowns of communication, the rise of fascism, the peddling of the hate and violence of white nationalism in the name of Jesus—how, amid these pains of birthing, do you show up to embody hope? During the time of offering today, and in the coming weeks, we will continue to ask this question. We are doing this to strengthen and inspire each other and so that we can see how our efforts are connected, see how we are in this together. So please take some time before we get to the offering to write your response on the small piece of paper. Friends, wisdom calls. In our many diverse ways let us manifest the divine togetherness that that creates and sustains this world. Amen.