Wisdom?s Cry, September 13, 2009
Have you ever heard a scripture text and, after you think about it for a moment, want to protest . . . that isn’t true! This is one of those texts for me. We just heard that God - personified here in Proverbs as Lady Wisdom - cries out on the street corners and gates of the city. She is ready to impart - in fact, she is desperate to impart - divine wisdom to all she meets. She ‘pours out her thoughts.’ All have access to the divine teaching and then, she says, when people do not listen and find themselves in difficult situations that she - that is, God - will scoff at them. God will turn her back altogether, laughing at human calamity. You see, I don’t think this is true because I just don’t believe God turns her back - or his back - on us. Ever. Despite our stubbornness and our thickheadedness.
On the other hand, what is true about the text is that this is how it can feel. Over and over in life, we must make choices. And sometimes, our choices don’t turn out so well. And when that happens, sometimes, in the midst of it all, we feel alone. Abandoned. As if God himself has turned away. As if Lady Wisdom has given up on us. As is so often true with scripture, this one has layers and if we are wise we will hear this as an invitation from Wisdom herself that there is a better way to live than simply ‘going it alone.’ As Lady Wisdom states those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster. (That’d be better!) Of course, disaster may come anyway, but those who are wise will not live in fear of it. They will, instead, live secure. To be wise is, quite simply, to have learned to live without fear. That’s the invitation of faith, I believe. Faith does not insulate or protect us from the tragedies or challenges of life. Instead, it gives us a way to live with hope in the midst of calamity, distress, panic and anguish. But to live with faith we must seek wisdom. Without it, life is quite lonely and fearsome indeed.
In a sense, you could say that the reason we gather each Sunday, the reason we have a Welcome Home Sunday each fall, encouraging us all to start anew, the reason we cast our lots with fellow travelers on the road and engage in the work of the church is because we know that together we can better open our ears and our minds and our hearts and our lives to the wisdom of God’s love and act upon it. For real wisdom bears fruit. One anonymous author wrote that wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it. My hope is that this is a place, a community of seekers who gather not to proudly proclaim what we know but to humbly listen to what God has in mind for us next. And it is in the listening together that we will become wise. I think that is a central reason for being a church. Too often, I think we get it mixed up - we think we come to church to ‘get saved.’ That’s God’s work - and God does it in many places and in many different ways. Our work is to get wise - and in the process, says Lady Wisdom, we become secure . . . secure in God’s love, secure in our own identity, secure in our call to make a difference in this world of ours.
If you think about it, the quest for wisdom is what getting an education is all about. Fifteen years ago, I came across a column written by Erma Bombeck. She was addressing herself to children returning to school and she wrote:
The beginning of the school year seems a good time to tell young people what education is all about - going to school isn’t necessarily fun. It won’t guarantee you a good job. It may not make you smart or rich. So what are you doing there and why should you stay?
Because school may be your last chance to star in your own life - the twilight zone between parental domination and the mating scene. You’ve got center stage all to yourself. You’re in control. So what are you going to do? ...
The wheel of blame spins daily, coming to rest on teachers who don’t make it interesting enough, parents who don’t care, and school boards who don’t provide enough money. That’s garbage. It all comes down to you.
The irony is that we’ve all been at these crossroads, lost and confused with a road map marked ‘destiny’ we can’t read. What makes some keep going and others turn back? For me, I . . . didn’t want to grow old wondering if I had something to give but too scared to find out.
Much later, you’ll realize what a remarkable thing you did. You finished something hard. You interacted with people different from you who had an impact on you life. You challenged yourself against some odds. You developed curiosity and realized how much you had to learn. You proved to yourself how good you can be. From here on . . . the road (only) gets more interesting.
We heard a very similar message last week from our President as he addressed our young people. But as I listened to him or as I consider Bombeck’s words, the thing that is so clear is that the quest for wisdom and the need for us to be wisdom seekers is not only a job for young people in school. The seeking of it does not end with graduation. We all need to be reminded that openness and commitment and hard work matter. We all need to be reminded to listen even to people with whom we disagree. We all need to be reminded to take responsibility for our own lives rather than blaming others. We all need to be reminded that there is always more to learn. That’s why the Book of Proverbs tells us that wisdom cries out in the street, in the squares she raises her voice . . . at the busiest street corner she cries out . . . the cry is universal and the world abounds with opportunities to grow in wisdom. But only if we dare do the hard work of searching - for to grow in wisdom is to be open to share what we know and admit what we don’t and to change and to be willing to admit when we’re wrong. You know the saying . . . a wise person learns from the mistakes of others. Nobody lives long enough to make them all yourself! Do we dare?
My message today is quite simple and, given everything else going on today, must be quite short . . . so this is it. One of the reasons we come together as a church community and welcome each other back and sing and pray and worship and listen is because we cannot really become wise on our own. We need wisdom and we need each other to find it.
And so today, we greet each other again and we have an opportunity again to recommit to the wisdom road. Downstairs after the service, you will find table after table with countless opportunities to help in your quest for wisdom. There are classes for children and great new activities for youth. We have some new offerings for adult learning - and something brand new for us - a 5-week class I’ll be leading for young adults in October. But the search for wisdom is not only done in classes. We also have opportunities for service in the church and the community and our mission team is pondering the next place God is leading us. If you don’t find something down there that interests you, perhaps you can help lead or put something together. There are tickets for our Lecture downstairs. That’s one of the biggest things we do each fall. Ordinarily, you’d have to travel a long way to hear speakers of this quality and learning. I have friends flying in from New York for this year’s lecture. But, we have only the cost of a ticket - and a willingness to learn about something you might not even know you need to learn. That’s how it is with wisdom . . . we become wise most often learning things we don’t even know we need to know.
Consider this . . . an employee at NASA was preparing a presentation on lessons learned from bad experiences with the Hubble Space Telescope. On his chart at the briefing, ‘Lesson Number One’ read ‘In naming your mission, never use a word that rhymes with trouble.’ You didn’t know you needed to know that when you came to church this morning but it could come in handy some time!
On this Welcome Home Sunday 2009, let us together commit ourselves to being and to becoming joyful, generous - and wise - followers of Jesus.
