Back to School Lesson 3

This is the third sermon in my four part Back to School series studying some less-familiar texts in the Bible.  Let us pray:  God, help us spend some time with wisdom this morning.  Wisdom is a hard thing to come by, and we often get lost in our search for it.  But it is a gift from You and a treasure worth seeking. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight; for you, O Lord, are our rock and our redeemer.  Amen.

If I ask you to think about someone who is a truly great host, I bet there is someone who comes to mind for you.  Someone whose door is always open and whose welcome is always generous.  Their smile is broad and their arms are open.  They are a great conversationalist and listener.  They are not pretentious or stuffy, but warm and easygoing.  Everyone is comfortable with them.

My friend Ed who comes to mind; I got to know him during the years I spent in Chicago.  In those days I was in charge of worship at a church that had services throughout the day on Sundays, and I was usually at work from 7am-6pm.  I lived alone at the time and Ed’s kids had grown up and moved out, so many Sunday evenings, we would grab dinner together and then find ourselves on his porch with a scotch and a cigar solving the world’s problems into the evening.  We remain good friends and it’s not unheard of for us continue our Sunday night ritual via an occasional Zoom call.

Lots of people experience Ed as a great host.  Ed and I led several medical mission trips to Guatemala—he was the logistical director, managing all the details and I was the chaplain, praying with patients and offering daily devotions.  The doctors and nurses were serving in challenging and emotionally draining circumstances.  But even though I was the minister, Ed was usually the one who knew about everyone’s problems and struggles.  It was not at all uncommon for him to nudge me during the day:  “Bob just had a difficult outcome with one of the patients—you might want to check in with him.”  “I’m not sure if you know, but Susan is having a rough time in her marriage back at home.”  “Did you know that Tim recently lost his father?”  Ed was doing pastoral care triage for me all the time because people so easily opened up to him.  Whether in his own home or a hospital in Guatemala, Ed is a great host.

The Book of Proverbs says that wisdom is like a great host.

“Wisdom has built her house,
she has hewn her seven pillars.
2 She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine,
she has also set her table.
3 She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls
from the highest places in the town,
4 ‘You that are simple, turn in here!’
To those without sense she says,
5 ‘Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
6 Lay aside immaturity,[a] and live,
and walk in the way of insight.’   (Proverbs 9:1-6)

One of the main ideas woven throughout Proverbs is about the nature of wisdom, and about the opposite of wisdom, which is folly.  So the book weaves the contrast between wisdom and folly through a variety of different examples and metaphors, and the most prominent one culminates in today’s reading from chapter 9 where, as I said, wisdom is the host.

This morning’s text suggests that you might imagine yourself walking through the streets of the city and observing wisdom at her house; her door is open, her table set, wine and food prepared, and there she stands at the doorway, welcoming you in so that you may sit at table with her, learn her ways and maybe a bit of wisdom will rub off on you as well.

Renewing my study of Proverbs this past week, I discovered the author pointing out that, at first, folly looks a lot like wisdom—folly disguises itself as wisdom even though it is really quite the opposite.  So in Proverbs 9, folly entices passersby with a similar setup as wisdom, but none of the substance.  Listen to these verses later in chapter 9 about folly as the host:

“The foolish woman is loud;
she is ignorant and knows nothing.
14 She sits at the door of her house,
on a seat at the high places of the town,
15 calling to those who pass by,
who are going straight on their way,
16 ‘You who are simple, turn in here!’
And to those without sense she says,
17 ‘Stolen water is sweet,
and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.’
18 But they do not know that the dead[c] are there,
that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.  (Prov 9:13-18)

Folly looks a bit like wisdom, door open, welcoming us into her home.  But folly stole her food and wine rather than preparing it herself; she is lazy in her preparations and has no guidance to share that is enduring.

It’s like wisdom is the knowledge gained from great traditions, from deep experience and reflection, from time tested knowledge for all generations.  By contrast, folly is like the worst book on the self-help shelf; folly is the internet influencer who once stumbled on a good idea, and now curses people with daily posts full of ignorance.

There are so many ways in life that folly disguises itself as wisdom.  Folly is the relationship that seemed fun at first but quickly turned out to be toxic.  Folly is the guilty pleasure that might have been okay, but then it turned into an addiction.  Folly is the positive value that became excessive and turned rotten:  industry that evolves into greed, the weight loss plan that turned into an obsession with being thin, the close relationship between a parent and a child that became co-dependent.  Folly shows up in so many ways—and looks so much like wisdom!  Folly is attractive and enticing, but without wisdom’s depth.

It takes character, discipline, and usually some trial and error to distinguish between wisdom and folly; people have been trying to figure it out since time began.   Long before the Book of Proverbs, the Bible is always developing this quest for wisdom.  The Mosaic Law begins the Old Testament with the idea that God is present in the world, the righteous prosper and the wicked are punished and the world makes sense.  This is wisdom.  But later in Old Testament history, things change: the kingdoms fall apart, the Temple is destroyed, the people go into exile in Babylon and the voices begins to question wisdom:  suddenly people are saying that the world and it’s wisdom is upside down—it is the righteous who are naïve, the wicked seem to be prospering, and you have to look out for #1.  So the holy scriptures try to help people navigate these complex realities of life, and that’s how wisdom literature is born.  When Proverbs suggests that folly looks a lot like wisdom, it is warning us against abandoning God’s ways when things get tough.  It takes character and discipline to separate wisdom from folly, but in order for God to one day set right things that seem to be falling apart, we cannot abandon the principles of love, grace, and goodness that God set us in the world to live by.

God knows how difficult it is to tell wisdom from folly, so the Bible is full of stories in which people fall away from wisdom.  Repeatedly, these people are forgiven, welcomed back into God’s fold, and given a chance to try again.  Some of you may not know the stories of the Old Testament well, but may remember Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son, the quintessential story of wisdom found only on the far side of a journey through folly.

God knows that all of us are a mix of wisdom and folly.  And God gives us each other as friends and guides in the search for wisdom.  Earlier, I might have led you to believe that my friend Ed is synonymous with wisdom, or that I am wise in his presence; the reality is less remarkable:  we’ve gotten into plenty of trouble together, and much of our friendship is characterized by folly.  But the gift of friendship is the presence of one who not only helps you find wisdom, but who welcomes you even in your folly.  It’s no accident that my friendship with Ed started at church, because these are the kinds of friendships church should give us; these friendships are built on the stories we see in the Bible.

In light of the gift that Christian friendship has been for me, I’m inviting you to something that may lead you the same way.  Tonight, at the first of three fall gatherings we’re calling Feast, we’re going to be talking about friendship—no reservations are required, and I hope you will come.

The author David Brooks has a book called How to Know a Person.  Like most of his writing, it draws heavily upon ideas from the Bible.  Later this afternoon, at Feast, I’ll be talking more about that book.  The book has a lot to teach us about meaningful friendship.  At one point, as he talks about listening, Brooks writes something that sounds like it came right out of Proverbs:  “When you are listening,” he says, “you are like the host at a dinner party.  You have set the scene.  You’re exuding warmth toward your guests, showing how happy you are to be with them, [and] drawing them closer to where they want to go.”  (Brooks, 75-6)  There are specific things we can do to be this kind of a host—not gimmicks, but practices we can adopt that lead to richer deeper conversations, and tonight we’ll be introducing some of those ideas through Brooks’ work.