This article explores the pedagogical significance of Rumi’s Majāles-e Sabʿa (Seven Sermons) as a religious framework for meaning-making in adult education. The study positions religion as a meaning system and highlights the underutilized pedagogical potential of wisdom literature in promoting existential orientation, especially among Muslim adults in diasporic contexts. Utilizing Baumeister and Vohs’s four-fold framework of meaning, including purpose, values, efficacy, and self-worth, the article offers a hermeneutical-phenomenological analysis of Rumi’s First Sermon to understand his notions of meaning in life. Through a textual analysis of supplicatory monologues, moral parables, and theological reflections, the study examines how Rumi constructs a theocentric model of existential transformation grounded in longing, repentance, and divine mercy. Purpose is rendered as an eschatological and teleological orientation toward the return to God; values are framed through repentance, humility, and moral sincerity; efficacy is redefined as spiritual agency through remembrance and trust; and self-worth is shaped by sincerity and divine recognition rather than merely meritocratic or moralistic frameworks. Methodologically, the article integrates grounded theory and hermeneutical phenomenology to offer a contextual, layered reading of Rumi’s homiletic discourse, viewing it as a performative site of meaning rather than a static text. In its pedagogical implications, the study proposes to approach Rumi’s Sermons as a “wisdom pedagogy” that draws on Rumi’s thought to support identity formation, moral resilience, and existential literacy among Muslim adult learners. It is argued that Rumi’s model offers a powerful educational framework for dealing with plural, disorienting modern lifeworlds, while also raising critical questions about normativity and inclusivity in such pedagogies.

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