I decided not to preach this sermon in church because I felt I had to address Hurrican Florence. So I did a different sermon. If there had been no hurricane, this is what I would have preached.
Visitors to Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia often go to the “Post Office.”
Every tourist guide, every Ethiopian hosting a guest from another country
inevitably takes the traveler to “the Post Office.” It’s not because they want you to send
letters!
The streets running in front of the
post office and along one side are lined with little booths and shops. The proprietors aggressively approach every
passerby who is from out of town; and, they immediately know who is from out of
town. “Sir, come in. Buy t-shirts.
Buy ebony carvings. I give you
good price.”
“No, I’m just looking.”
“Yes, sir, yes, come in.” She approaches with artwork or teapots or
dresses. “You like? I give good price.”
If you stand on the street, kids
selling gum or just begging throng around you.
Someone has taught them just enough English. “Please sir, hungry,” they say.
Be alert. They’ll sell you cheap, useless trinkets that
seem special because you’re in Ethiopia buying them. They’ll tug at your heart strings. If none of that works, beware. They’ll pick your pocket.
Every
hawker selling his wares in that environment is trying to make money, trying to
make a living. Each one is convinced
that the money he or she needs is in your wallet. When you’re there, surrounded by aggressive
sellers, who can you trust?
That’s
the question this morning. Who can we
trust?
The people at the Addis post office
are no different than people who come at us right here in our everyday lives in
Chapel Hill. It’s just that the sellers
here use methods more effective in our context.
Try this. Go to your email in-box. Now, go through your spam filter. Most of those messages marked spam are one of
two things. Either they are from people
who don’t know a thing about you and just want to sell you something you don’t
need, or, they are from malicious hackers and contain some kind of virus that
will wreck your computer or steal your information or both. Like the Addis street vendors these internet
hawkers want money and the money they want is in your account.
The world is full of people who come
at us without any concern for what’s in our best interest. In social settings, how do you know who truly
wants to be your friend verses the person who thinks he can use you to better
himself? Does he care about you, or does
he see you as a piece of meat there to satisfy his carnal appetites?
Who can we trust?
Imagine life is a big city,
downtown, a lot of foot traffic; everyone is coming and going. Everyone is selling or recruiting. “Sir.”
“You there.” A thousand voices
vie for your attention. All jostle and
shove to gain position so they can be the one to influence you. They’ll
influence for their benefit, and maybe for yours, and maybe not. In this cacophony of noise, who do we trust?
Christians traditionally turn to
scripture to find guidance in God’s word.
It’s a way of preparing to step into the world and enter the fray. This morning in Proverbs chapter 1, we find
help that deals directly with this question of trust, and which path we are to
walk. “Wisdom cries out in the street;
in the square, she raises her voice. At
the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks”
(1:20-21).
At the intersection where all of
life runs together, count on two things being true. First, voices from all directions descend on
you, intent on using you. Second, one among
those voices is wisdom and wisdom is definitely there for your good.
In Proverbs, wisdom is cast as
though she were a divine being who aids God in the creation of the world and in
sustaining the world. Some authors and
critics take this to be a description of an actual divine being – close to God,
but not necessarily God. Others see this
personification of wisdom as a literary technique. The definition of wisdom begins in Proverbs
1:7. “The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of knowledge.” Fear means
reverence for God. We always consider
God’s ways when making decisions because of our righteous ‘fear of the
Lord.’ It’s not a sense of terror or
dread. It is recognition that God is
‘wholly other;’ we are not God and can’t really understand God. Proverbs says that we start on the path of wisdom
by adopting the right posture toward God.
We worship and we listen to God.
This is easy when we are here in
church. It gets hard when we step out of
church, away from the Bible and into the world where an endless flow of ideas passes
by us. At the intersection, we lose
focus; with temptations all around us, it’s harder to stay attuned to God’s
voice. Even our idea of wisdom gets
thrown out of whack.
Is wisdom some secret, known only to
holy men who spend their lives far out in desert places? The book of Job seems to indicate as
much. Job 28:12 asks, “Where shall
wisdom be found? And where is the place
of understanding? [Human beings] do not
know the way to it, and it is not found in the land of the living”
(28:12-13). It seems pretty obvious from
this verse that wisdom is utterly unattainable.
But if we stop there, throw our hands up, and decide in defeat that we
can never know what’s right, then we’re allowing ourselves to fall prey to the deceptions
evil people will use to lure us into their traps. Job 28 goes on to say, “God understands the
way to [wisdom], and he knows its place” (v.23). The chapter concludes with the same truth
given in Proverbs 1:7, “The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom” (Job 28:28).
In today’s passage, what caught my
eye is wisdom’s desire to be known.
Wisdom goes to the busiest intersection, to the city gate. Wisdom plants herself where all the people
are. Then, Proverbs 1:21-22 says, “She
raises her voice; … she cries out.”
Wisdom does all she can amid the noisy throng to be the voice we hear. Wisdom wants to be known. Wisdom wants each of us to stop, be quiet, be
still, and listen to her. She plants in
herself in the busiest places of life and calls us from there.
Imagine as we go through this
reading in Proverbs that the Bible is talking directly to you. Verse 23, “How long o simple ones, will you
love being simple? How long will
scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?” The one who ignores wisdom is a simpleton, an
idiot. Turning away from wisdom, we are
numbered among the scoffers and the fools.
Over
and over Proverbs illustrates that the way of the fool is the path to
destruction. This book sees life as a
pathway. We can be on the right path,
the one that leads to life and blessing.
Or we walk the way of the fool.
The way of the fool takes on many appearances, but all lead to loss,
destruction, humiliation, and death.
In
verse 23, wisdom is insistent. “Give
heed to my reproof. I will pour out my
thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you.” The actual content of this wisdom is not
given here, but we find it throughout God’s word. Psalm 19 is a song of praise, heralding God’s
glory in creation and then rejoicing in the way God gives life through the
law. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy are Torah, “instruction.” Abiding by the relational ethics we find
there, we meet God, and we have good relations with our neighbors. What’s more, we feel the overwhelming love of
God.
The
rest Proverbs 1 is quite clear in the ‘either/or’ attitude wisdom has. Verses 24-32 are blunt. Should we choose to ignore wisdom; say we
close our Bibles and forget everything the word of God has for us; we turn from
it and step into the world relying on our own good senses instead of the
guidance God has given; if that’s’ our approach, wisdom mocks us because all
that is ahead is calamity. That’s the
English word in the New Revised Standard
Version, verse 26: calamity. In
verse 33, wisdom promises, “those who listen to me will be secure and will live
at ease, without dread of disaster.”
That doesn’t mean life is easy with wisdom. It just means that in life, whether it be a
stressful moment or a relaxed one, we are ease.
Proverbs gives us these choices: listen to wisdom and live in peace, or
count on yourself and fall into calamity.
What
wisdom has to say is worth our attention.
But Job 28 said wisdom cannot be found by human beings. All we can do is “fear the Lord,” and live in
reverent worship of God. But out there, all
manner of temptations threaten to seduce and devour us, and it’s hard to live
in a frame of worship. It’s hard to even
see God out there.
For
us to hear wisdom in the world, we must fear God; for us to fear God we must
have access to God. Otherwise our faith
is vague, unhelpful. Here Job and
Proverbs come together with the Gospel to give the hope we need. Job said that while wisdom is impossible to
find, “God understands the way.”
Proverbs depicts wisdom as standing in the midst of the fallen world,
calling to us.
The
Gospel – the good news – is that God has come near. In the person of Jesus Christ, God took on
human flesh. God became touchable. Jesus made a way for us, scoffers, fools, and
simpleton sinners that we are to be in relationship with God through the
forgiveness of sins and faith in Jesus.
Wisdom is present because God is present.
In
the midst of the hustle and bustle of life, we focus on Jesus. We give him our attention, and He enables us
to tune out the noise of the world, the temptations and distractions. He directs us to a path. Remember, in the worldview of Proverbs there
are only two choices – the way of the fool and the way of life. Because we know Jesus, we know the way of
life is life everlasting: the blessing of the Holy Spirit’s presence today and
the promise of eternal life in the Kingdom.
It
means listening with discernment. We
don’t have to attain wisdom. Wisdom
reaches for us. We hear wisdom’s voice
when we remain in Christ. So, we remain
in Christ. Read the Bible and do so in
submission to the word and with full focus.
Allow your life to be shaped by God’s word, directed by God’s word. Pray meditatively, shutting out all
distractions and quieting the mind so that you allow yourself to hear what the
Spirit is saying.
These
spiritual disciplines – attentive Bible reading in which we submit ourselves to
scripture and meditative listening
prayer in which we quiet our minds in order to hear God; these disciplines open
us up to wisdom. And then it is a matter
of believing what the Bible promises. Because
we are in relationship with God through Jesus, wisdom will come to us. As wisdom comes, the way to live lives of
love and peace will be shown to us. And
the promise at the end of Proverbs is realized in our lives. “We live at ease, without dread of
disaster.” We have God’s peace.
AMEN
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