Common Ground Song 147 ‘Wisdom’s Table’
Words / Music: © Doug Gay
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzbi3M7wwno  OR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm6SQ1nmxPI  (see note below)
Featured image: Community meal at Blessed Sacrament Church, Waterloo, Iowa

It is well known that one of the main themes of the book of Proverbs is ‘the Wisdom of God’, always personified and usually viewed as feminine. In the first six verses of chapter nine, she is pictured setting a banquet, and sending out her maidservants to invite to it not the obvious guests (wealthy, prominent or interesting people) but ignorant and foolish people. Jesus must have had this in mind when he told a similar parable (Luke 14) and gave instructions to his follower in Matthew 22 to offer hospitality to those who cannot return the favour.

The lyrics invite us to identify with these ‘fools’ and accept Wisdom’s invitation to her table. There, we will be able to lay down our burdens, find answers to our difficult problems, and learn to make wise choices in life. As a metaphor for the Church, it fits. If a church congregation is doing its job well, we will indeed invite in people who are regarded with suspicion or contempt by the leaders in society. We will help them deal with their problems, offer them practical advice, and through Biblical teaching share something of God’s Wisdom. We may well also offer them literal food, though foodbanks, pantries, bring-and-share meals, etc.

All religions have a sense of welcome and hospitality, perhaps especially the Sikhs, so I am not suggesting that Christian churches are the only ones doing this. But the last verse of Doug Gay’s version of the song (see note below) points us specifically to Jesus with its vivid image of Wisdom ‘dancing on the tombstone of the fool who bled and died’. In this image, Wisdom presumably represents the Holy Spirit who could now be sent fully until after the Resurrection. Jesus embodied the human folly and godly wisdom of which St Paul writes (1 Corinthians 1:18-27). And in his resurrection, God proved that what seems folly to the world (paying attention to the world’s ‘losers’ and giving up everything for his sake) is in fact the deepest wisdom, that leads to eternal life.

Note on YouTube recordings: Now here is something interesting. The first of the two linked above is the words as set in Common Ground and likewise attributed to Doug Gay (who from what I can tell is better known a a speaker/preacher than a composer), but sung to quite a different tune. The second is slightly different in words and melody and attributed to John Bell. But the differences (at least in the first three verses and chorus, and in the melody) are so slight that one of them must surely have been based on the other. Collaboration or plagiarism?