University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

Video | Download Video
Audio Player Below | Download Audio

A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

24^th Sunday in Ordinary Time     September 13, 2009

            There are a couple of surprises in the portion of Proverbs we just read. The first surprise, given its date of origin, is that its authoritative figure, its main speaker and its primary focus, is a woman. She speaks like a parent speaking to children who aren’t paying attention, or, perhaps even more forcefully, like a prophet addressing a wayward people. And that is the second surprise – her tone – which is powerful and demanding, essentially because she can see the spiritual calamity that will result if her hearers do not listen.[1] Hers is a call to a different way of being in the world than people often choose.  It is a call to live by embracing sophia and mûsar – wisdom and discipline. 

             In Proverbs Woman Wisdom is a compelling teacher, imparting wisdom to her students.  She is a strong-minded parent, seeking to instill discipline. Noting these two attributes in this text, pastor Carla Pratt Keyes recognizes the same two approaches to discipline that are in play in her own household. She says:

[The first] involves a rather calm and gentle instruction that anticipates hard choices. We speak over supper or during long walks about the challenges of life and what constitutes a faithful response. The second kind of discipline comes when a child who knows better has chosen wrongly and is reluctant to admit it. “I can’t believe you just did that!” my husband or I will cry, feeling that the stakes are high. “Look at me when I am talking to you!”

[In our text for today, she says,] Wisdom virtually jumps across the table to seize the attention of those who must face their failings and repent, or else perish. She speaks not just to a household, but to a community, carrying her discipline into the busiest of public places – the street, the squares, the city gates – where money changes hands, and judges make their rulings. You cannot miss her voice shouting over the din, or her message written everywhere about the things that make for life in the midst of all our living.[2]

            Some of the proverbs that follow upon her verbal assault may not seem like life-and-death matters.  Many are simply practical, while others are profoundly spiritual. But they all beckon to a way of life that is different from that which we often readily choose. They

speak to our daily decisions about money, time, family, neighbors. “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender,” says one proverb (22:7) – solemn words to people like us, anguished over so many bankruptcies and foreclosures. “What is desirable in a person is loyalty, and it is better to be poor than a liar” (19:22) – good counsel for people prone to duplicity. “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and will be repaid in full” (19:17) – so the fear of the Lord leads to righteousness, justice, and equity . . . . “Rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing” (12:18) – [wise counsel in these days of angry, divisive speech].[3] 

            But before she gets to such instruction, Woman Wisdom lets loose a tirade against those who would willfully choose ignorance and mock her wisdom.  They are words as appropriate today as they were in post-Exilic Israel.    

“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
and fools hate knowledge?
Give heed to my reproof….”

In an age that seems to savor ignorance and reward cynicism, these are powerful questions Wisdom raises.  In this community in which we live, situated as we are across the street from an esteemed institution that proposes to foster knowledge and encourage the search for wisdom, it may seem unnecessary to raise such questions; but I’m not so sure. We have our share of scoffing cynics all around us. And I doubt that we ourselves are immune to cynicism’s lure.

            Last week I spoke about Parker Palmer’s phrase, “the tragic gap.” The tragic gap is, by Palmer’s definition, the gap between what's really going on around us, the hard conditions in which our lives are currently immersed, and what we know to be possible from our own experience…the gap between reality and possibility. Earlier this year in a conversation with Bill Moyers that focused on the global economic collapse, Palmer described what happens when we don't learn to hold the tension between what is and what we know to be possible. He said,

I think what happens is we flip out on one side or the other. Flip out into too much possibility and you get irrelevant idealism. Flip out into too much reality and you get what I call corrosive cynicism. And corrosive cynicism is partly what's got us where we are. Corrosive cynicism is, “Oh, I see how the world is made. It’s dog eat dog. It’s whoever gets the biggest piece of the pie gets the biggest piece of the pie. So I'm going to take my share and run and let the devil take the hindmost.” That's corrosive cynicism.[4]

The important thing, says Palmer, is to stay in the fray, to stand in the gap, and be creative. But cynicism always lurks…always threatens.

            Why is cynicism a danger? Why is a little cynical scoffing such a bad thing?  It is because with cynicism we mock the very things that could save us and make us whole and blessed and happy... individually and collectively. Scoffers are expert in defeating every ideal and deflating all admiration.  The psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan once described cynics as defeated people “whose attitude seems to be, ‘If I cannot be great, then by God there shall be no greatness.’”[5]  Thus they delight in pointing out feet of clay as though feet of clay were a completely novel discovery. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was right: there are some people who, taken to a flower garden, will inevitably sniff for the manure under the roses.[6]

            The most seductive thing about this cynical scoffing is that on the surface it sounds so wise, so sophisticated.  But Woman Wisdom knows better. The cynicism of the scoffers is pseudo-wisdom masquerading as the real thing.  The scoffers sound so experienced, so worldly wise.  They seem to know, well, everything.  It was a cynic that Oscar Wilde once described as one “who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

            In one of Gary Larson’s “Far Side” cartoons natives are dancing around and making offerings to a great stone obelisk on which is carved the word, "NOTHING."  Watching from a distance, one anthropologist turns to the other and asks, "Is NOTHING sacred?"  That’s actually the position of the cynical scoffer: nothing is sacred; nothing is respected, admired, cherished, valued.  Nothing is worthy of our decorum or praise or sacrifice.  Nothing is at the center of life.[7]

            Woman Wisdom stands in the public square and shouts,

“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
and fools hate knowledge?
Give heed to my reproof….”

            The deep sadness is that in cynicism, scoffers close themselves off from the possibility of growth and just get stuck in intellectual laziness. My mind is made up, the scoffer says; don’t confuse me with facts. So scoffers just get stuck where they are. 

Wisdom's audience has refused to hear her call and has not heeded her outstretched hand. They have ignored all her counsel, and, indeed, would have none of her discipline (verse 25b).[8]

And so she sounds her warning. And the warning is hard to hear. But Woman Wisdom is not one to trifle with.

Wisdom not only says she will laugh when … misfortune happens, but also that she will not answer when her audience finally comes to its senses and calls out to her… These sentiments are very similar to those found in the prophets. Wisdom is not alone, that is, in adopting such a firm tone with her recalcitrant audience. She has a host of distinguished predecessors in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Amos – not to mention the God in whose name these prophets speak.

[And for her, the warning is a life-and-death matter.] One cannot live foolishly forever without reaping the [appropriate results]….[9]

Time marches on, and choices must be made, and we won’t always have tomorrow to make a better choice. And all our choices… all of them… have consequences.

            In the face of Wisdom’s warning, we are left without excuse.  She stands on the busiest corner where everyone can hear. Everyone can, but not everyone will. It is a shame, because Wisdom has much to teach us, and her wisdom has much promise and hope. She offers, in fact, a way beyond cynical scoffing… a way of wisdom and discipline that shows the way to life and wholeness. 

            One does not have to be a genius to discover and claim such wisdom, for wisdom is not the same thing as intelligence.  To the biblical writers, says one scholar, wisdom meant “living in the world in such a way that God, and God’s intentions for the world, are acknowledged in all that we do.” Such wisdom is available to every person who desires it wholeheartedly.[10]  Indeed, within the faith we claim, it is fairly straightforward, though at times counter-intuitive and counter cultural. And it is not limited simply to the Book of Proverbs.  It teaches us things like:

            Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.

            Be kind to one another.

            Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

            Render to no one evil for evil.

            Blessed are the peacemakers…the merciful…the pure in heart.

            Judge not, that you be not judged.

            Forgive one another, as I have forgiven you.   

            The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

            In the end, that’s the kind of wisdom we are called to embrace [and to teach to children such as Miles and Gavin]. It is the wisdom by which the earth was created… the wisdom of the prophets… the wisdom of Woman Wisdom.  It is also the wisdom embodied in the grace, gentleness and peace of the One we call Lord.

            Standing as we do in the gap between what is and what is meant to be, between the hard conditions in which our lives are immersed and what we know is possible, we are invited, urged, called to choose the wisdom that will draw us more toward the future God intends.  To choose such wisdom is to choose the path of faithfulness.  To choose such wisdom is, in fact, to choose the road to life itself.

May God give us the wisdom, the courage and the grace to choose it.

            Of course, if you prefer a less demanding path, you can always scoff.