So let us pray.
God, you are the source of all wisdom.
May your spirit guide us in this place and time as we lean into a deeper understanding of what it
means to be wise in your ways.
Amen.
So Proverbs is intense. I've already highlighted some of it from reading from God's stories as told
by God's children. But Reverend Dr. Catherine Schifferdecker. She's a professor of Old Testament at
Luther Seminary. She writes that the book of Proverbs is the quintessential book of wisdom in the
Old Testament. Wisdom literature teaches, seeks to teach its readers and hearers wisdom.
That is the attitude and means by which to live well. This kind of common sense wisdom is not based
on revelation. She notes that there's no burning bushes here, but on experience and observation.
Nevertheless, it is grounded in a right relationship with God. The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom. And so it's an interesting book because it's a collection of poetry.
And we'd like to take just one verse at a time and act like that's the thing that we're supposed to
follow. But that's not how poetry works. Poetry, you have to sit with the whole poem in order to
get to where the author's trying to take you. And we have that it's wisdom that's passed down by
sages to young men over several time periods. So while the opening chapter says that it's during
the reign of Solomon, later Hezekiah is mentioned. And so it seems to be a collection of wisdom
teachings in a single space after generations of passing this wisdom down.
And I really want to lean in. On the idea of this being the fear of the Lord being the beginning of
wisdom, especially since this week at camp, I had a handful of teenagers,
they were talking about something, and then one was like, well, you know, we're supposed to fear
God. But they meant it, like they're supposed to be afraid of God.
The source of all creation, the one who created all things good, the one who is nothing but pure
divine love, is the one that they feel like they're supposed to be afraid of.
And so as I'm sitting with this text and also the understanding of fear of the Lord that is in
Ecclesiastes, the bigger idea, while they are saying fear of the Lord, they're more saying that to
be in the presence of God reminds us of how immense God is,
and even more so how overwhelmingly immense God's love is for us.
And so... On Wednesday night, when they had written things that they wanted to be healed for,
and since we're at camp, where do those things go? They go into the fire. But as I was talking to
them, and before I invited them to actually put it in the fire, I reminded them that fire is
something we're supposed to be afraid of. But that doesn't mean that we're like deathly afraid of
fire. We don't avoid fire. We don't avoid candles, right? We still appreciate candles and we
appreciate campfires. We make s'mores. We make the pie tin things.
We do all of that, right? And it's just that the closer we get to a fire,
the more we can feel its warmth. And then when we get really,
really close, that warmth is just unbearable. And so the fear of the Lord being in the presence of
God, God is so much larger than we can possibly imagine.
One theologian says that God is the water that fills the space between all things.
That's huge, right? And so that is an overwhelming and terrifying presence to be in.
Everything that's going on is overwhelming.
In the same way that I had one student this week kind of drop hints that she wanted to talk about
things. But being known is terrifying.
So she just gave me like a little bit, and we talked for like a half hour. And a good half hour in,
as we're swinging on one of those like bench swings, she finally got to the thing that she really
wanted to talk about. And as soon as she said it, I was like, ah, there it is.
But the reality is being fully seen and known is such an act of vulnerability that it's terrifying.
And so in the same sense, being seen and known by the one who created all things is terrifying.
Because also being in the presence of the immensity of divine love reminds us of how small we are.
How limited we are.
I can probably find the author later, but at least in an album by Ahlay,
she quotes this author about grief. And the opening track says,
My darling, everything we love, we will lose.
Everything's a gift and nothing lasts at all.
This is a painful truth. And that's the reality of interacting with the immensity of God's love is that
we are reminded of the infinitude of God and also the finiteness of our physical existence in this
world. And that is also terrifying.
And so in the same sense, we have the fear of the Lord being the beginning of the wisdom because
once we understand our orientation to things, we can start to live wiser. We know that every single
day is a gift that is to be cherished. That every single moment that we get to interact with people
can be cherished. And also that there's so many other gods out there that aren't necessarily worth
our time. And so all of this knowing our right relationship with the divine is the beginning of
wisdom.
It helps us develop an awareness of what is ours to actually do.
And this is why Proverbs contradicts itself. Because there are no set rules to navigate the
messiness of life.
To have children look at me and expect me to give them like the exact right next step. I just,
as like two of them are going through like the hardest moment of their seven-month relationship.
which we can kind of chuckle at, but that's the heaviest thing that they have that they feel like
they can control.
And for me to look at them and go, I don't have any good answers. I can just tell you that it's
always a long game.
Because wisdom is the entering into the ambiguity of life.
We also, as we discerned this wisdom, we are reminded that our allegiance belongs to God and should
impact how we navigate the world. how we navigate our relationships. A lot of other wisdom stuff,
especially if we go into like the Deuteronomy and Deuteronomistic history, they're really big about
idols and having no other gods before God. And the reality is that nothing else should take the
primary seat in our discernment of wisdom.
And I want to highlight two of the main idols that are labeled the bad guys in the Hebrew Bible.
First, mammon. Mammon is the idol of money which demands obedience and disciplines those who don't
follow it. If you don't do the right thing, you don't get the stuff that you feel like you need.
And then Moloch, an idol which demands child sacrifice.
And I think the reality is most of our modern idols are really Mammon and Moloch dressed up in
modern day garb.
And so we have to ask ourselves, if the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, what are the
things that we are more loyal to than God's wisdom?
There was a time in our history where the GDP was not a thing that we paid attention to. That was
just not a thing. That's not how we measured stuff. And so Mathen Bernico and Dean Detloff,
who are Christian theologians of a sort, they've written a book recently.
They identified just how mammon and moloch show up in our understanding of GDP,
which I think is a really useful understanding here, because this is a global phenomenon.
They write, we might not interact with the GDP very often on our own, the way we do with money,
but its ubiquity and reporting and speeches starts to congeal into an idolatrous,
seemingly divine power over us. Journalists or politicians talk about the GDP as though it is the
sign of a curse or a blessing. Like biblical idols, the GDP also demands sacrifice.
In our day, it appears as part mammon and part moloch. Like mammon,
the idol of money in the Bible, the GDP is a master that dictates its will to us,
disciplining those who refuse to or simply can't bound to it. Like Moloch,
traditionally seen as an idol that demands child sacrifice, our economies feed the GDP.
Innocent people, including children like those in the Congo, where real lives are thrown into the
void of an imaginary figure, taking the GDP for granted as the best and most universally accepted
measure of economic health means, people in power pattern our economies and live to appease it.
Not because they self-consciously worship it, but because they unintentionally find themselves
devoted to it. And so I really like that last line. We can already see how devotion to the GDP is
just like the devotion to these other two ancient idols.
But it's not that we are self-consciously worshiping it,
but because we unintentionally find ourselves devoted to it. We need the thing, we buy the thing,
it shows up the next day. Which means that we don't do the old school thing that for most of us
growing up meant if we didn't have the thing, it wasn't going to show up the next day. We could
just walk to the next door and see if they have it, and we'd be good. Like, when's the last time
one borrowed a cup of sugar from a neighbor? Right?
Like, nowadays, everyone that lives in a house that has a yard has a chainsaw that they use
sparingly. Right? Like we are convinced that growth is the right thing because we've been
unintentionally patterned to be devoted to spending instead of relationship.
And we can see how this unintentional worship leaves us from practicing the wisdom that Proverbs is
talking about that roots us in relationship instead. Similarly, we have the same thing happening
when it comes to political systems, being able to hear both sides across an aisle. That's not a
thing that most people can do because we've been taught by our political leaders that the other
side has to be the enemy. And there's absolutely nothing that they could ever say that's at worth
at all. In the same way, we have ideological systems.
And if you think that it's really a right versus left, if you want to talk to like...
that are trying to do more socialist things, you're going to hear different people arguing all the
time about which tenet of Marxism is the right one. So even then, there is this type of ideological
devotion that keeps us from seeing the person in front of us. We built systems where cultural
groups could declare a hierarchy of importance. We had white supremacists marching willingly and
openly in our capital yesterday.
And we are more devoted to saying that other people are worthy of being neglected because one race
is more supreme. And somehow, 250 years into this, we haven't figured it out.
And so how do we practice discernment and wisdom as Methodists?
Well, we have the beautiful Wesleyan quadrilateral because there's never good answers. There's
never clear rules that you have to follow. So Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian
faith was revealed in Scripture,
illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason.
So in the very least, we have that as a way to start our discernment and our wisdom processing.
Clearly, I'm in the middle of writing my Board of Ordained Ministry exam. responses,
and they love to hear how I'm using the Wesleyan quadrilateral for all kinds of situations. But the
reality is this is what we have as a tradition, as a tool. We also have our social principles as
conversation guides that can hang out with us, and we can bounce ideas off of the thoughts of
people that represent a worldwide church that's trying to figure things out in the messiness of an
entire worldwide communion. And then we can always practice discernment in community because
the more diversity of beliefs we have in a conversation,
the more wise decision we can make as a congregation, as a community,
or even as individuals. For instance, there was what I had labeled my dream job was open.
And I had... resume filled out, and I just had to write the cover letter.
And I hadn't done it, and I turned to my friend Kate Fulton. She's an amazing pastor out in Silver
Spring. And I guess technically Chevy Chase, but that doesn't matter as much.
And we're hanging out, and I'm talking about things, and she goes, well, what does Joe think? And
Joe is our spiritual director. And it was in that moment that I was like, oh, I didn't talk to Joe
about this.
That's really good advice. And so then I did, and Joe and I unpacked it. It took like a whole half
hour in order to unpack why didn't I do the thing. The timing wasn't right. It didn't make sense.
And now that I've seen what has happened to the congregation for the person who did get the job,
I'm like, yes, this was the thing I didn't want to have happen here.
Because the reality is, for all of the decisions that feel heavy, Honestly,
the heavier the decision feels, the more we need to realize that we're not alone in discerning.
That we have one another, we have people we can talk to.
Once again, so many of the conversations I got to have with high schoolers this past week, they're
holding some of the heaviest things of their lives. And they just unload on me and they talk and I
listen and I don't, just like the TikTok trend, we listen and we don't judge. Just holding that
space for them was more than enough because all of the other adults in their lives are with them
all the time. And so it feels like they have to listen. So it doesn't seem like they are choosing
to listen. And just the power of being there for one another as we practice this wisdom is some of
the most powerful stuff we can do, especially when we're navigating the heaviness of the world.
In the middle of a heat wave, which is also going to agitate us as we're all holding different
types of grief and loss. We need one another. We need to lean in to God's wisdom.
And we need to enter into the presence of a divine love that is so big that it's terrifying.
Because that helps open us up to be vulnerable with one another. And to be able to seek the heart.
of the one who created all things. So let us pray.
God, you are the one who crafted all things, and we can see your presence in your first book of
creation.
And then through the wisdom of your people, we have these beautiful collections of wisdom that help
us learn to follow your heart for our world.
So help us know that entering into your presence is terrifying and
good.
and safe.
Guide us with your spirit so that we can learn and grow in wisdom with one another.
And from there, we can love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously.
Amen.