We don’t spend a whole lot of time in the book of Proverbs in our worship, so I think a little introduction could be helpful before we jump into the second reading.
Proverbs is an interesting book; it’s a book, not unlike the Bible itself, that is more like a collection. There are a number of different pieces from a number of different eras, based on the literature of a number of different cultures all smooshed together into one. (Smooshed – that’s a technical scholarly term.) There are the short two-liners containing teachable lessons, a favorite of the Israelite sages who put the book together in the royal courts of Israel after the return from the Babylonian exile. There are extended poems about wisdom in a variety of forms, but one of the standout features is the personification of wisdom as a woman. As we know, there aren’t a lot of Scriptures where women are center stage in such an important way – especially where they are depicted as carrying an important divine attribute as wisdom.
Some of these personifications of wisdom as a woman, including the one we will hear today, come in poetry that is set up as a father giving advice to his son, or maybe a teacher to a student. I think that’s important because it’s not quite the same as a prophet who speaks a message from God to God’s people. It’s poetry, with all the literary forms we’ve learned in high school, such as parallelism and hyperbole and personification, and it’s instructional, trying to both explain and motivate toward a particular result.
With that introduction let’s hear the words of Proverbs from the 1st chapter, verses 20-33
Woman Wisdom is not a woman who is content on the sidelines, is she?
I love this about her. I love this about the way the author chose to portray her. If you had told me there’s a passage in the Bible about a women screaming and shouting in the streets and squares of the city, at the busy corners and city gates, I would have assumed it was in a passage about a woman being looked down on, a woman who was not staying in her place, a woman men and religious authorities were trying to silence for being disruptive and unladylike. But here in Proverbs, where the father is trying to teach his son how to embrace wisdom, we find a woman who is breaking out of all the expected norms for public behavior. Here we have a description of a woman whose place is in the middle of absolutely everything, where she not only belongs, but is claiming her divine mandate to speak and teach and critique and warn. Woman Wisdom, in other parts of the poem contrasted directly with Woman Folly, is portrayed as an authority expecting to be heard, listened to, heeded. She isn’t a tweed-coated professor locked away in an ivory tower produce tomes for the elite, learned class. (#notallprofessors) She is down on the ground, moving through the marketplace, walking among the everyday people, desiring to pour out her thoughts, to make her words known.
A word about words here – – what words do and, particularly, whose words we are talking about. In the book of Proverbs and a lot of other wisdom literature, biblical books like Job and Ecclesiastes, when we encounter God, we primarily encounter God who is known and acting mostly at Creator. “Unlike the Torah [the first five books of the Bible] and the Prophets, which view God primarily in terms of covenant and national history,” biblical scholar Carole R. Fontaine writes, “for the wisdom tradition God is primarily Creator. God used Wisdom to create the world and placed Wisdom within creation, where people could observe its harmonies and live in right relation to it.”
It is with words and words alone that God the Creator spoke the universe into existence. It is by Wisdom, by the Word of God that all things came into being, as the writer of the gospel of John put it. The words of God, Wisdom itself, can and are expected to do something – to create, to inspire, to motivate, to effect change, to motivate.
But, we hear from Woman Wisdom, she is being ignored. She has all this knowledge and counsel, all these thoughts and words to share – that she has shared! – and no one is taking any notice.
At this point, her rhetoric, as narrated by the father speaking to his son, takes a turn – one that might feel familiar. I’m not saying it’s admirable, but it’s a mix of tactics more than one of us have employed at one time or another in our own relationships. It’s a bit of “You’ll be sorry!” enhanced with some “I tried to warn you!” and accented with a whole lot of exaggeration. She’s alerting the people to the importance of what she has to share – knowledge, particularly knowledge of God who alone created the universe, and counsel, direction for what to do with that knowledge – and she doing it in a way to try to get their attention. And, you know what, I think she’s also a bit frustrated.
Or at lease the father who is telling his son about this ignored Wisdom has decided to paint her a bit frustrated.
We hear it in the exaggeration of the consequences. That’s a frustrated parent move, if ever there was one. A fairly ridiculous example – former NFL player Jason Kelce has been talking on his podcast recently about how his young daughters want kittens. Kelce, apparently, is not much of a cat person and has no interest in having cats in the home. So, in an attempt to dissuade them of this longing, he’s told his little girls that cats are venomous. (I warned that this was a ridiculous example.) His trying to change their desire to have cats; he’s trying to change their behavior of begging for cats. And so he has gone over the top to try to convince them that they way they are going is not ideal, that this cat dream is not a good idea.
Anyone of any age in any kind relationship can probably relate to that feeling you get when you can see the path forward clearly, when you have particular knowledge that will solve a particular problem, when your experience lines up with a challenge perfectly, and the person trying to navigate that path, find a solution, or overcome that obstacle chooses not to listen to what you have to offer. Most of us really want what’s best for others and when it looks like they are going (and maybe taking us with them) in the wrong direction, it’s painful to watch. It can even feel hurtful!
“Fine,” we might say. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you! I’ll just be right over here watching the fallout. You do you.”
Theses are not usually our finest moments, but they can be hard to avoid. And I think they can help us hear where this poetic interpretation of Wisdom’s dilemma comes from. “I will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when panic strikes you,” she threatens when the city full of people is ignoring her. “I will not answer; they… will not find me,” she asserts, “because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord.”
They are striking words if we hear them as a dictate from God’s mouth. This isn’t how we understand the ever-present, ever-loving, ever-forgiving love of God that moves through the world, in part because, like we talked about last week, we know the end of the story. But this turn in tone does give us something to relate to as we consider how Woman Wisdom, the Word and Knowledge of the Divine, feels about being ignored. Maybe it tells us a little something about how God feels about being ignored.
Like Wisdom, God will go anywhere to find us. This archaic three-story universe of heaven above and hell below and earth in the middle isn’t just bad science; it’s bad theology. God isn’t confined to the clouds, in a palace with foundations bedazzled by gemstones, behind pearly gates, with streets paved of gold. God isn’t somewhere far away, locked away, distant, having set the world in motion and now watching as it all unfolds. God isn’t at the top of some mountain we have to climb to know divine love. God isn’t at the end of the arduous book we have to wade through in order to unlock secret knowledge. God isn’t hiding behind a curtain only waiting to come out if we say the magic words.
God – and God’s Wisdom, God’s Word – is in the streets. God is in the squares. She’s at the busy corners. She’s at the city gates. God is here and now, not been and gone, not there and later. God is searching for us, pursuing us, seeking after us to speak to us. Not because God wants to shame us or punish us, berate or belittle us, but because God wants to speak God’s Wisdom, God’s Word of love to us. God wants to give us counsel. God wants to pour out all that God is and God has and God knows for us, so that we might be secure in the knowledge that we are children of the Creator of the universe and we might put that knowledge to work in the world.
That’s what wisdom is, isn’t it? Knowledge at work. Knowledge applied. Whether it’s gained from books and lectures and studies and degrees or from experience and labor and the school of hard knocks – wisdom is knowledge being used for greater purposes. And that’s what Woman Wisdom is inviting everyone who can hear her to be a part of. She’s calling, despite rejected invitations. She’s offering counsel, advice for next steps. She’s reaching out with a hand that any one of us or all of us will take it and walk with her as she moves in the world for God’s purposes, that we will be a part of enacting God’s wisdom in the world. She wants us to take what we know and do something with it.
Knowledge is wonderful, I guess, but when it is not used for action, for the building of God’s kindom, that Jesus tells us in Mark’s gospel is near, than I’m not sure it’s nearly as wonderful as it can be.
How are we going to live because of what we know? That’s what Woman Wisdom is asking the people of the city to consider. How are we going to live because of what we say we believe? That’s what Jesus is asking his disciples on the road.
Peter makes this bold statement when asked, “But who do you say that I am?”
“You are the Messiah,” he blurts out. And he’s right! But as soon as Jesus tells him what that means – that the way he is the Messiah will not be universally accepted, that his messianic message is deemed dangerous to the status quo, that his vision for a divine kindom is threatening to the imperial kingdom – that he will suffer, be rejected, and killed, Peter isn’t quite so sure anymore.
So Jesus calls them all together, his disciples and the crowds near by. The Word of God pursues everyone within shouting distance, he speaks to them on the road, between the villages, anywhere that they find themselves, and tells them that knowledge is great, but wisdom is their calling. Learning all the things and saving your life, is not what discipleship is about. Wisdom not just personified, but Wisdom in the flesh, asks them and us, “Who do you say that I am? And what are you going to do about it?”
For Some Reason 