"Better than Jewels"
- sspencer650
- May 14
- 5 min read
“Better than Jewels”
Proverbs 8:1-11
May 10, 2025
Tobermory United Church
Let us pray: Holy and gracious God, these words were created with love for you and in humility. May they also be received in the same way. Amen.
If you happened to be listening to the CBC Radio Science program Quirks and Quarks this week, you might have come across some startling information. Apparently AI has developed so rapidly and so thoroughly that it can now propose a scientific research topic; do the experiments, gather the data, write the paper, peer review it, and then get it published – all without human assistance. The fellow being interviewed, UBC computer scientist Jeff Clune, wondered if in the future, human scientists would have any role at all to play in actual Science. Perhaps, he wondered out loud, humans would be more involved in the oversight of Science, with one of their tasks being to ensure, hopefully, that Science is being used ethically. If all of that sounds a bit unnerving, the interview ended with an even more shocking statement. Clune said:
“We are staring down one of the biggest transformations in human history . . . It’s right around the corner. The stakes could not be higher. We’re talking about everything from solving all of disease, solving poverty, giving everyone a good education, a life of abundance, to the other extreme of wiping out human civilization. There is nothing more important for humanity to be doing right now than trying to make sure that the development of super-intelligence goes well.”[1]
So, how do I follow that? How does this next paragraph begin? With a prayer, maybe? And I’m sorry that it’s Mother’s Day, and maybe you were expecting a sermon equivalent of flowers and chocolate, but we have bigger fish to fry today… So let’s just move over to Wisdom in Proverbs 8, Wisdom, capital W, the personified figure we find standing her ground at the crossroads, holding forth at the gates of the city where all the important things in Biblical times happened – meetings, trade deals, arrangements for marriage. There she is, an agent of God, in the very midst of human activity. “O simple ones, learn prudence,” she says. “. . . For wisdom is better than jewels and all that you may desire cannot compare with her.” A little further on in Proverbs, Wisdom is by God’s side, and they create the cosmos together: “When he established the heavens I was there,” she says, “when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above.” (Proverbs 8:27, 28a) There is a line, also in Proverbs 8, where Wisdom declares “by me kings reign.”
And it makes sense. Because Wisdom, who is likely modelled after a combination of the Greek goddess Isis and the Egyptian goddess Ma’at, when she shows up in the Hebrew scriptures, is concerned with setting limits, with equitability, with fairness and justice, with making good decisions, with inviting everyone to the table, a table laid with care and abundance. But Wisdom was an uncomfortable component in monotheism, and when Jesus came along, advisors such as the Greek philosopher Philo thought Christianity would be best to make its way without such a figure,[2] and so her qualities were diminished, transferred over to Jesus. Wisdom is still there, of course, references to her sprinkled throughout the Wisdom texts in the Hebrew scriptures, but I know people who have been part of the Christian church their whole life who have never heard of Wisdom.
And what about Julia Ward Howe… Had we heard about the actual origin of Mother’s Day? About Julia Ward Howe’s deep and passionate plea for a way to world peace? Imagine the women of the world gathering together in 1870. I wonder what they might have come up with… But that did not happen. And even in 1908, when Anna Jarvis got Mother’s Day made into an official holiday in the United States, she boycotted the whole thing when, by the 1920s, Hallmark Cards had got their hands on it…[3]
And that seems to be the case in Western civilization, how we’ve let the almighty dollar run roughshod over just about everything, hurtling wisdom out of the way, and now here we are, on the brink of climate disaster; entire species becoming extinct daily; new technologies unleashed on the world without guardrails in place to keep us safe. When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, the world took from it the idea of the survival of the fittest. Competition, therefore, without regard for consequences, has become accepted and encouraged, a whole economy based on it. We forgot that Darwin also said, “In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”
Our text from Proverbs today reminds us of the importance of wisdom, of sage understanding. It reminds us to slow down, consider the effects of our actions, short-term and long-term. Adopt a “measure twice, cut once” attitude. It also reminds us to listen to voices that have been silenced and suppressed. The Seventh Generation Principle is a Haudenosaunee concept of making decisions looking seven generations into the past to honour the ancestors and seven generations into the future to honour the next generations. Wisdom is incorporated into the process. Imagine how the world might be different if that were the norm. And a new form of theology is taking root, “grandmother theology,” perhaps just in time. It’s rooted in generational wisdom, believing that the stories we tell through age and maturity offer a lens through which we might find God.[1] And AI, this galloping horse that no-one seems to know how to rein in? Geoffrey Hinton, known as the godfather of AI, who won a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in 2024, said something really surprising recently. He believes that the only way to control the development of AI in a good way is to give it maternal instincts.[2] Somehow, he says, we must train AI to care for humanity, else, trained to surpass and surpass and surpass, it could just take over… How’s that for a Mother’s Day proclamation: Maternal instincts save the world… We must make AI more like family…
So, in the end, perhaps somehow the ancients knew what our generations have failed to realize, for there is Wisdom, from three millennia ago, taking her place at the crossroads, bearing witness at the city gates. Her advice is more valuable than jewels, more than silver or gold. I imagine her handing out bagged lunches, freshly made. She’s reminding you to pack your raincoat. There she is. She’s there.
Saving the world.
Amen.
[2] Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2002), 26.
[4] Cecilia Francisco-Tan, “Grandmother Theology: A Critical Engagement with Yolanda Pierce,” in Divine Interruptions: Maternal Theologies and Experiences, Cristina Lledo Gomez and Julia H. Brumbaugh, editors, 231.
Image: “Be Thou My Vision,” an abstract impression of the hymn of the same name, by Mike Moyers, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. www.mikemoyersfineart.com.
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