September 7, 2025 – Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proverbs 3.19-26
I Corinthians 2.9-16
The Genius in You
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Carlos Castro of Budd Lake, New Jersey, probably does not consider himself a genius, but he certainly had an ingenious idea. Tired of never having a letter opener around when he needed one, and having to resort instead to a butter knife, a pen or his pinky, Carlos Castro invented an envelope with a built-in opener. He added a small piece of string to the regular business envelope design, extended it slightly beyond the edge of the envelope, and – voila! Patent number 5,752,652. It’s a clever idea, and if it ever catches on, Mr. Castro will surely become a wealthy man. And how many times do we read about a new idea or invention, and think to ourselves, “I could have thought of that!”? Did you read about the fellow a couple years ago who negotiated the English Channel in his bicycle-powered airplane he called “The Gossamer Albatross?” Or what about the Californian who was profiled in The Atlantic Monthly, who constructed a lighter-than-air vessel consisting of a lawn chair and balloons! He soared so high that he was arrested when he landed for interfering with local air traffic, though there were a few tense moments when the BB gun he carried to pop the balloons and thus govern his descent, fell out of his lap. All of these people, and many more like them, have won degrees of admiration and notoriety from a watching world, which sees in these ideas a stroke of genius, and thinks to itself, “I should have thought of that,” followed by more the self-assured, “I could have thought of that.”
And I think many of us do show a grudging respect for others who show flashes of genius like this: respect, because they have shown both resourcefulness and wit; and grudging, because we tell ourselves that they are no different than we are, if only we had thought of it first. We would probably agree with Russian philosopher and theologian Nicolas Berdyaev when he wrote, “There is a bit of genius in many who cannot be called geniuses in themselves.” We may not possess an IQ of 170 or better, but something in us tells us that we could be every bit as inventive, every bit as clever, as those who are considered geniuses. All we seem to lack is that momentary flash of insight for that one invention each of us has the idea for.
I thought about genius last week when I read an article by the editor of Yankee Magazine, who wrote about the genius, or spirit, of his Yankee office in Dublin, New Hampshire, a modest clapboard cottage hard by the Congregational Church, and all the inspiration it holds for him. He called it his genius loci, his spirit of place, and it reminded me of a research project a friend and I once undertook at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary on the connection between genius and spirituality, and the ways it can be experienced in the world of faith.
Berdyaev believed that in the ideal of genius it is possible to perceive the image and likeness of God. When we read in Genesis that humanity was created in God’s image, after God’s likeness, we often make the association between that image and our ability to think, which distinguishes us from the rest of creation. We are rational creatures, most of us; human beings uniquely make conscious decisions and calculated choices. In a number of ways the image of God is reflected in our minds. If we participate in God’s image by our thinking then, how much more might someone participate in that image who can make great leaps of imagination, and giant strides of originality and vision! And yet those we call genius are really no different than any of us. We all possess the same abilities and the same potential, and this fact, whether we see it or not, begins to be revealed to us in the scriptures.
Part of the ability to think as a genius is to be able to see ideas and situations in their entirety. When most of us face a problem or a circumstance, we tend to look at it piece by piece. We decide on step one, and then step two, and so on. But there are also those who can solve problems by looking at them whole, and then recognizing their perspective in relation to that whole. For example, we have all heard of the math whiz who can consider 22,348 divided by 37 and know in an instant that the answer is 604. The capacity to do this, though, does not stem from the ability to do all the steps of long division faster than the rest of us, but rather from being able to construe 22,348 as a whole and to recognize how many 37s are part of it.
In a letter written to a friend, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, an indisputable musical genius, relates the same idea when discussing his musical inspiration. Mozart claimed that often an entire musical piece took shape in his mind in a matter of an instant or two. He could hear the entire composition in his mind’s ear all at once. What took the time, he continued, was the writing down of what he heard, which took anywhere from a day to a few weeks, but the imagination and recognition of the piece often occurred to him all at once.
The necessity of viewing the whole rather than the parts, this seeing the forest in spite of the trees, as it were, is evident in the approach to faith and history which we discover in the Old and New Testaments, as well as in our own approach to our faith. Israel’s idea of her history, as it developed, did not begin with step one, that is, creation, and move chronologically forward, year by year and generation by generation. Rather, Israel viewed her history from the centrality of the exodus event. Everything that happened before and everything that happened since has been shaped and flavored by the exodus, Israel’s deliverance from Egypt by God. Israel possessed the ability to view the whole of her history from the viewpoint of that once decisive event. As a matter of fact, it was impossible for her to regard her history in any other way.
As Christian people, we do this as well. Our Christian faith does not find its origin at the beginning of the gospel; it is not the story of Christmas which has shaped and determined our belief. Rather, we view and understand all of Jesus’ life as interpreted by centrality of the cross and the resurrection. Ours’ is an Easter faith; the empty cross is the center of our perspective on all history, it is what has shaped our view of events from the creation to the end of time. Like Israel, we do not begin at the beginning, but rather with our deliverance from the bondage of sin by the grace of God through Jesus Christ.
The book of Proverbs is an attempt to help us see our place as a part of the whole of God’s creation. Particularly in the first nine chapters of Proverbs, the writer endeavors to unfold the wisdom and knowledge of God to us by describing the place of humanity in the design of our individual roles in God’s world. It’s not easy to see at first because we tend to read the proverbs piecemeal, verse by verse, proverb by proverb. But to see the book as a whole is to begin to understand the continuity of its teaching for our lives. The writer’s effort to help us do this is most evident in today’s Old Testament lesson where we are encouraged to see our part in the creation of the world: “By wisdom the Lord established the foundation of the earth; by understanding God established the heavens; by God’s knowledge the deeps broke forth, and the clouds drop down their dew. My children, keep sound wisdom and discretion; let them not escape from your sight, and they will be life for your soul and an adornment for your neck.” The wisdom and understanding by which God created the world are given and commended to us; they are, as the writer describes, life for our souls. When we can perceive ourselves as integral parts of God’s vast creation through the wisdom of the Proverbs, our souls reside in the genius of God.
It is appropriate that the writer should mention the soul here, because the soul, far more than the mind, is the genius loci, the place of the spirit. Conventional wisdom has it that genius is the mark of an outstanding mental capacity, popularly defined, as we have observed, by the IQ. But a glance in any good dictionary will reveal that this is only a secondary definition. The primary meaning of genius is the spirit, or the elemental nature, of either a person or a place. When the early Christians were forced to pay tribute to the genius of Caesar, it was his spirit they were compelled to worship, not his mental capacity. And the plural of genius is genii, which are always depicted as spirits. Real genius then, resides in our spirit, or our individual souls, and it is here that the image of God is most evident. This is why the wisdom and understanding of God as present in creation, so Proverbs declares, is the source of the life of our soul.
Our participation in that wisdom and knowledge, as Paul wrote in I Corinthians 2, is in the realm of the soul and spirit. The source of the genius within each of us is the spirit of God, and it is communicated to us through our own spirit, through our souls. It is when we recognize ourselves as part of the entirety of God’s creation, that we participate in that genius, in that spirit. And the way we know this is in our relationship with God’s spirit. As Paul wrote, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor human heart conceived, what God has prepared for the beloved, God has revealed to us through the Spirit.” Whatever genius of spirit we possess is a result of the Holy Spirit’s working within us. Paul says much the same thing, only more explicitly, in Romans 8, where we read, ““When we cry, ‘Abba!’ – in other words when we acknowledge our relationship to God – “it is the Spirit itself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” Our spirits, in concert with the Spirit of God, vivify the genius within us.
There is more that can be said about genius as bearing and reflecting the image of God. The Bible speaks about our own rational and cognitive capacities and their importance in the world, both at creation and in the present moment. There is the idea of collective genius as expressed within the community of believers in Israel and in the early church. And we are also led to discover our own creativity, not just as part of creation, but also as co-creators with God. But for today, as we reflect on the working of God’s spirit in the world as well as in ourselves, let the idea of genius sit for a while in our hearts and in our spirits. To be open to the working of God’s spirit in our own lives, is to participate in the holy genius. As Proverbs reminds us, when we are guided by God’s knowledge of us and claim on us, when we seek and pursue divine wisdom an understanding, we become open and receptive enough for God to reveal and bring to life the genius which already resides within in each of us.
Thus as I look out on the congregation this morning, it is no wonder I see a church full of geniuses. Or genii.