The Way of Wisdom

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

23rd July 2023

Proverbs 1.1-7; 3.1-8
 
I wonder, does your family have proverbs?
            Mine does – and I made a list of them a few years ago.
Some of these I can hear in my Dad’s voice,
            and some I’ve added to the list as the years have gone by.
 
And so as we begin this morning a short summer series
            on the Wisdom Tradition of the Hebrew Bible,
I thought I’d share some of the ‘not-so-wise’ sayings of the Woodman family,
            and I offer these not because they have any spiritual or indeed material wisdom,
but because I’d like to invite each of us
            to think about what the principles are that we live by,
            what is the wisdom that guides your life,
            what proverbs have come down to you through your family or cultural tradition?
 
Anyway, here you are, in no particular order, Woodman Wisdom:
 

• The world does not owe you a living.
• You can make your own luck.
• Sometimes you’ve just got to be in the right place at the right time; but sometimes you can plan this.
• Success is often about just turning up.
• Genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.
• Knowledge is power.
• Moderation in all things.
• The hardest part of swimming a mile is picking up your kit bag.
• How to write a book: one sentence at a time.
• If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
• If you don’t have the right tool for the job, the first job is to make the right tool.
• Measure it twice and cut it once.
• Don’t try to make up on the road what you have lost elsewhere.
• Don’t be in a hurry to get to your own funeral.
• Give a new job three years, before deciding whether to stay or not.
• Don't measure your personal progress over the last year: look back five years to see if you're in a rut.
• You’ve got a brain: use it.
• I am organised because I am lazy - it's less work to do the job efficiently.
• I don’t look busy because I did it right the first time.
• Procrastination is the key to success: it’s amazing how many jobs you have been meaning to get around to, can be accomplished by the simple task of avoiding the one job that you really don’t want to get around to.
• Don’t spoil the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar.
• Always quit while you’re ahead.
• Always leave a party early, whilst it’s still fun to be there.

Now, you may not like all of these,
            and I’d be very surprised if everyone agreed with all of them,
but that’s not the point;
            the point is that we all live by our own inherited wisdom traditions,
and in the Book of Proverbs,
            we have the inherited wisdom tradition of ancient Israel.
 
And whilst we may not like some of what is in there,
            and whilst we are very unlikely to agree with all of it,
there is nonetheless wisdom here that we need to hear,
            to weigh, to consider, and possibly to make our own.
 
There are certain characteristics of biblical wisdom
            that set them apart from the secular sayings of personal proverbs. [1]
 
Firstly, the quality that the Hebrew Bible calls ‘wisdom’,
            finds its meaning in relation to God,
and so, as we heard in our reading this morning,
            wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord (Ps 111.10; Prov 1.7; 9.10).
 
Secondly, true wisdom is found within the covenant community of God’s people,
            through Israel and the church, and their story of Salvation and acts of mercy.
 
As the book of James in the New Testament puts it:
 
‘Who is wise and knowledgeable among you?
            Show by your good life
            that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.’ (James 3.13),
 
And thirdly, wisdom is not always readily apparent:
            sometimes, true wisdom is the very opposite
            of what our human reason and intuitions conclude.
 
As Paul puts it in his letter to the Corinthians:
 
^‘God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.’ (1 Cor 1.25).
 
But whilst Godly wisdom,
            made known through the people of faith,
            and distinct from the wisdom of the world,
might be a fair summary of the Biblical wisdom tradition,
            its interpretation within Christian history is far more murky,
so we’re going to take a dive for a moment
            into the world of what is known as allegorical interpretation.
 
The wisdom literature boasts the must unusual history of interpretation,
            because unlike almost all other biblical texts,
                        and with only a few exceptions,
            wisdom, in the first fifteen hundred years of the church,
                        was interpreted allegorically.
 
Sometimes wisdom was interpreted as an allegory for the church,
            or the Spirit, or the human mind,
sometimes it was an allegory for Mary the mother of Jesus,
            or some other spiritual ideal,
but rarely was it understood as advice
            on how to literally live life in the world.
 
This was largely because of the dualistic way the early church was inclined
            to oppose spiritual things, to physical things.
 
The third and fourth centuries CE
            were critical for this so-called Neo-Platonic development in the church.
 
During this time, churches at Antioch
            practiced what we would call a more ‘literal’ reading,
while the churches at Alexandria
            practiced spiritual, moral, and allegorical reading.
 
The differences between the two are subtle,
            and it would be a mistake to think of ‘literal’ and ‘allegorical’
            in only their modern senses today.
 
For example, in the last century it has been common
            to think of ‘literal’ in a scientific or mathematical way.
Thus, when the Bible speaks of God, ‘coming in the clouds’,
            contemporary literal readings often believe
            that this must mean those physical sources of rain in the sky!
 
In the ancient world, ‘literal’ carried more of a literary meaning,
            with a broader appreciation for poetic and symbolic ideas.
The clouds could be the literal ones we see,
            but they could also be a sign
            of God coming from a higher place that we cannot see.
 
It may be helpful for us to have this second, ‘literary’ interpretation
            in mind as we come to our reading of the Hebrew Wisdom tradition.
 
Jerome, however, the late fourth- to early fifth-century theologian,
            favoured a more allegorical or spiritual way of reading the wisdom literature,
            and this set the tone of Christian interpretation for the next thousand years,
before Martin Luther and a few others
            started writing commentaries and sermons
            that rediscovered the literal, or literary, approach.
 
More recent interpreters, informed by the disciple of Biblical Studies,
            tend to read these texts primarily against their ancient background,
            rather than as allegories of the church, or instructions for living in the present.
 
But this doesn’t mean these texts can’t still speak to us,
            because of course our humanity intersects with the common humanity
            of those who first wrote and received this wisdom.
 
The context may have changed, and so we need to be cautious,
            but a careful engagement can still draw us into a world
            where true wisdom is found in God,
                        and is enacted through the community of faith
                        in ways that challenge the wisdom of the world.
 
And the opening verses of the book of Proverbs
            which we heard earlier,
certainly set up the reasons why we should spend time with this book.
 
The claims that are made for the benefits of studying wisdom are immense,
            leaving the reader in no doubt that wisdom is of great value.
 
We are told to appreciate the many benefits of wisdom,
            in gaining wisdom and understanding (1.2),
                        in living a disciplined and just life (1.3),
            in enabling the immature to become mature (1.4),
                        and the wise to become wiser (1.5).
 
Proverbs not only provides wisdom instruction,
            but it will also teach one how to interpret the sayings of the wise (1.6),
            because it seems reading the proverbs requires wisdom too.
 
And the object lesson par excellance, of course,
            is the individual to whom the authorship of these proverbs is attributed,
            none other than the wise and wealthy King Solomon himself!
 
Now, here we have to engage our critical faculties for a moment,
            because it is remote to the point of profoundly unlikely
                        that Solomon actually wrote this book.
 
But thankfully that’s not really the point!
 
Ancient Royal figures such as Solomon
            were renowned for their expertise in exercising judgment.
The ultimate court of appeal in those days was to the king,
            and so an ideal king was supreme in wisdom, justice, and law.
 
Solomon was Israel’s only king to reign in a time of prolonged peace,
            and so the stories about him described him as embodying these traits
            more than anyone else, and wisdom most of all.
 
In Israel’s historical writings, he is remembered not only for his wisdom,
            but also for his building of the temple (1 Kings 3-6),
            which is itself depicted as an act of wisdom.
 
The story of his solving the conundrum of the child with two mothers,
            by threatening to cut the child in half to reveal the true mother,
            is the stuff of fable.
 
And so it makes sense that the collected proverbial wisdom of Israel,
            came to be associated with this most wise of ancient rulers,
even though a close look at the stories of Solomon’s life
            might suggest that he was less able to live out his great wisdom
            than he was to impose it on others.
 
So, after introducing us to Solomon as the source of the proverbs,
            and after spelling out what they will do for us if we attend to them,
we come, in 1.7, to the foundation of wisdom.
 
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
    [but] fools despise wisdom and instruction.
 
Wisdom comes, ultimately, not from Solomon,
            but from God,
and we are told, intriguingly, that one must ‘fear’ God
            in order to obtain wisdom.
 
In the Hebrew Bible, the theology of ‘fear’
            is a much richer concept
            than our modern notion of trembling and terror.
 
In Deuteronomy, fearing God is equated with loving God,
            with obeying God’s commands, and walking in God’s ways (Deut 10.12-16).
 
In fact, the use of the phrase the ‘fear of the Lord’ in Exodus to Deuteronomy
            is always in the context of the redeemer and law-giver ‘Yahweh’,
            who loved Israel and redeemed her from slavery (Ex 3; 6).
 
By this understanding, ‘fearing’ God was the appropriate response
            to an experience of salvation (Ex 20.20)
 
Fearing God thus refers
            to a loving reverence for the Lord,
                        the one who has brought us close,
            and also to a way of living
                        that fits with such an attitude.
 
It’s the fear of the LORD
            that Mr. and Mrs. Beaver describe to the children
            in this scene from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:
 
[Mr Beaver said to the children,] “Aslan is a lion—the Lion, the great Lion.”
 
“Ooh” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
 
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or just plain silly.”
 
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
 
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver … “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
 
The fear of the LORD,
            the fear of the God who created the universe
            but who deigns to be in relationship with us,
                        is the prerequisite for wisdom.
 
Such proper fear teaches us our place in the world
            and how to live well in it.
 
And so the fear of the Lord is the ‘beginning’ of wisdom:
            fearing God is both the starting point of the journey into wisdom
            and it is also the foundation on which a life of wisdom is built.
 
It is both a response to what God has already done for us,
            and also the means to continue our lifelong journey
            of using wisdom to find God’s ways in life every area of creation.
 
And it is this idea of wisdom as a journey
            that takes us to our second reading:
 
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
    and do not rely on your own insight.
⁶ In all your ways acknowledge him,
    and he will make straight your paths.
⁷ Do not be wise in your own eyes;
    fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
⁸ It will be a healing for your flesh
    and a refreshment for your body.
 
The key idea here is that wisdom is good for us,
            it is the path of healing and refreshment.
 
Godly Wisdom is concerned with life
            lived according to the grain of creation;
this isn’t some abstract philosophizing about ethical concepts,
            it’s about seeking to draw our lives into harmony with the created order.
 
God is in all things, and through all things,
            and God’s wisdom puts us in tune with creation.
 
So today, my challenge for us,
            is to consider the basis on which we live.
 
What voices do we listen to, attend to,
            in the real-world decisions of our lives.
 
What newspapers do we read?
            What social media do we engage with?
What voices fill our ears and engage our eyes?
 
What space to we make to hear the voice of the Lord
            whispering to us the counternarrative of godly wisdom?
 
Where do you go to hear the voice of God?

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[1] What follows draws extensively from Bartholomew and O’Dowd, Old Testament Wisdom Literature, A Theological Introduction, 2011.