Preached on Sunday, September 2, 2018
Scripture readings: Romans
11:33-12:8; Proverbs 10-31; Luke 10:38-42
When you were a kid, did
you want to be a cowboy? Raise your hand! I did.
When you were a kid, did
you want to be a circus animal trainer? I did. I was one, and I think my cousin
Donny was the lion.
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| Walking near Crab Creek, August 2018 |
When you were a kid, did
you ever want to be an artist? Did you ever want to race cars? Did you ever
want to be a fireman, or a policeman? Did you want to be a sailor, or a
soldier? Did you ever want to be a scientist, or a space alien, or a zombie
killer, or a zombie? I did!
How many here became what
you wanted to be when you were a kid?
Did any of you become all
of the things you wanted to be?
Now the woman in the grand
finale of Proverbs never wanted to be any of these things. But she seems to be
good at doing absolutely everything that she must have played at being and
doing, when she was a little girl, living three thousand years ago in the
ancient Middle East.
Who is this good,
virtuous, noble wife? The creator of these particular proverbs doesn’t name
her.
She isn’t the wife that
the mother of King Lemuel advised her royal son to choose for himself. It was rare for kings to be able to choose
their wife (at least their first wife). The mother’s advice ends with verse
nine.
Our verse ten, where we
started reading, is the first line of an alphabetical poem. Each verse begins
with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, in the correct order. The poem lists the
qualities of the superior wise wife from “A” to “Z”; except that the Hebrew
alphabet doesn’t end with “Z”. But, if you want the “A” to “Z” on the perfect
wife, this is the closest you can get.
This woman is the perfect
choice in a wife for a man who isn’t royal, because she does work that no queen
would do. She’s not a wife for a poor man, because they have servants and part
of her job is bringing out the best in those servants. She’s probably able to
keep them cheerful, and willing, and busy enough to earn their pay (or their
room and board), all the time. The family isn’t rich or else they would buy
slaves to be their servants.
The family has servants
who come in for the day, or who work for room and board. They were probably
like the old middle class of over a hundred years ago, who might have someone
come in to do the cleaning and cooking and other chores.
This reminds me of a guy
named Vernon, who was born around 1910. He was the youngest child in a huge
German farming family in Central Washington. From the stories Vernon told, I figured
out that he must have been the “Spare Boy”.
When he got old enough to
do some chores and work around the stable and the farm, Vernon’s family would
loan him out for room and board (for days or weeks at a time) to different
families who needed a little extra help. The perfect woman in proverbs might
have married into a family who benefited from the work of “spare kids”.
Just how would you know
that a girl you chose to marry would be the perfect wife after you married her.
Don’t they say that when a man and woman marry, the woman has a plan for changing
her man, and the man hopes that his woman will never change, but what they
forget is that men never change and women are always changing. So how can a man
find the perfect woman, or the woman of wisdom?
And then we might wonder
how to turn this whole chapter, or this whole book, around, in order to show
how a woman can find the perfect man, or the man of wisdom?
We can start to answer
both of these questions when we remember what the Book of Proverbs was for, in
the first place. Proverbs began as a textbook for the Wisdom Class at the Palace
School in Jerusalem, and then for other schools around the kingdom.
Girls didn’t go to school.
If they learned their reading, and writing, and arithmetic, they learned
privately, at home.
Remember, that this last
chapter teaches the alphabet. Proverbs was a textbook (and maybe even a
copybook) for teaching boys how to be wise when they grew up. (How exciting that
must have been for them!) It would be like telling a kid launching into their hyperactive
phase to be serious and listen for a minute.
Now, think of a slightly
older boy. When I was thirteen we took a couple of weeks in our Phys. Ed. classes
to have boys and girls together to learn ballroom dancing.
There was this girl named
Peggy. I would watch her a lot. She seemed to look back at me in a friendly way.
Then we started this ballroom dancing class. I think we started with the
fox-trot. I asked Peggy to be my partner. I put my hand around her waist and
the earth moved under my feet and my body almost turned to Jell-O. I didn’t say
anything about this to anyone, but the very next day the other guys were
teasing me about being in love with Peggy. They just knew.
Think of Proverbs as a textbook
for boys like that. It doesn’t say that Lady Wisdom was beautiful. It tries to
be serious. The next to the last line says: “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is
fleeting, but the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” (31:30) But think
of a thirteen-year-old imagining a certain girl wearing a fine purple dress
like Wisdom wears. Purple was expensive, and rare, and hot.
The writers of that culture
would want all their leading and successful boys to fall in love with wisdom. After
all, no one should hold any public office unless they have fallen and remained in
love with wisdom ever since they were thirteen years old.
So, the good wife was a
picture of Lady Wisdom made to look like a real human woman for some boy to
love. Think of her interest in food: why she would feed you just as well as
your mom did. And she could work to make you some spending money. And the word
that means good, virtuous, and noble also means Valiant and the boy would
pounce on valor and think, “Here’s a woman who would never be afraid to do
anything possible with me.” This boy might dream about falling in love with Lady
Wisdom.
In Jesus’ ministry, Martha
was in love with a clean and orderly house that looked and smelled like
hospitality. Her sister Mary was different. Mary had fallen in love with the
wisdom of Jesus. Falling in love with the words of Jesus is not only wisdom, it’s
the fear of the Lord, which reminds us that fear (in the Bible) can be a love-word:
the deepest in-love word of all. And wisdom is not a brain-word. Wisdom stands
with fear as one of the greatest love-words possible, from A to Z.
Paul tells us that you
cannot live the Christian life with other Christians unless you fear the Lord
and love his wisdom: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge
of God! How unsearchable his judgements, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who
has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever
given to God, that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to
him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen!” (Romans 11:33-36)
Here is fear and love: the
fear that comes from love. It was like my fear of Peggy and my fear of my feelings
for her: Terrified of her smile and her smiling blue eyes.
No human being (woman or
man) could do all the things that Lady Wisdom would be able to do, if Wisdom
were a real woman or man. Wisdom (in the Bible) is not a brainy thing. It’s a life-skill.
And it comes from God who can do anything he wants.
I don’t even think that
wisdom is a serious thing. Lady Wisdom is a lesson in enthusiasm: as if she had
the gift for turning you into a child in her presence. That’s another
resemblance that Wisdom bears to women for men: that is, if the man would fall
for her.
There is an age where
children want to do everything. They want to wear cowboy boots and vacuum the living
room floor. They want to be the fire inspector grading your house for fire
safety, and find everything that you’ve got wrong, and they also want to mow
the lawn and pull the weeds.
Along with showing their
children the fear and love of God, the wise parents will let their children do almost
everything to make sure that they grow up to fall in love with doing everything.
Then their children will grow up to be wise.
Now, I want us to notice
how practical this love of everything should be. Just as wisdom is a
life-skill, as well as a brain-skill; in the same way love, itself, is a
life-skill, just as much as it is a heart-skill. Wisdom is skillful because it
knows how to take good care of others. Love is skillful because it knows how to
take good care of others. You don’t know how to love skillfully unless you love
wisdom. You don’t know how to be truly wise, unless you know how love constructively.
This is never about
falling in love with love. It means loving to love others well and take care of
them in a way that is good for them, and in a way that will help them to be
loving and wise, in turn.
Another thing about love
and wisdom is that both are life-skills that are required equally, together, in
order to take good care of yourself. Let’s hyphenate Lady Wisdom’s name. We’ll
call her Lady Wisdom-Love. So, Lady Wisdom-Love keeps her own room attractive (as
with the bedding) and Lady Wisdom-Love wears a purple dress. While her loving
and taking good care of other people dwarfs her apparent self-care life-skills,
those self-care life-skills are at work every day, every night, to prepare her
for whatever comes and to laugh at the future.
I’ll tell you right now
that I don’t understand this balancing act very well. Without understanding it,
I will put the balance of love like this. Somehow, you must care for yourself
if you are sincere about taking care of others, and you must take care of others
if you are sincere about loving yourself. And the love of God, and your love
for God, and your listening to God for wisdom, are the only way that you can be
wise and loving for yourself and for everyone else.
There is a danger for
Christians who are so in love with the responsibility for doing everything that
they leave the wisdom of their love for others out of the picture, and out of
the church. They don’t let their brothers and sisters in Jesus do anything. They
aren’t letting their sisters and brothers know the very joy that they have be
found in wanting to do everything.
Of course, Proverbs
teaches us that we can’t do everything. Somewhere or other, we are going to be
foolish. Like wisdom, we may want to try everything (but only if we have a good
supply of wisdom). But the Lady Wisdom clearly sets her bar too high for us. Wisdom
does come from God, and we want to share in what God is doing, and we are meant
to be God’s children, just as we are meant to be Wisdom’s children. But we are
not God, and we are not wisdom in the flesh, we are only to be in love with
them and be the child who loves to do everything with their God and with his
Wisdom.
Paul tells us to learn
some wisdom about God’s special gifts, and to have our greatest faith and love
and joy in those special gifts, most of all. Christian can be children who love
the chores that God has given them; but, also, they can be children who love
and thrive in some chores more than others.
In my growing up, I did
have favorite chores. I had the good fortune to develop a skin allergy to dish
soap and rubber gloves, so dish washing wasn’t my gift. Now it is, and I’ve
turned allergic to different chores.
There were two chores that
I always loved. One was burning the trash. The other was shooting tomato bugs
with my B-B gun.
“A good woman, a virtuous
wife, a noble woman, a valiant wife who can find?” There is a proverb like that
one for the men. It’s in Proverbs, chapter twenty, verse six: “Many a man
claims to have unfailing love, but a faithful man who can find?” (Proverbs
20:6)
Faithfulness and unfailing
love are as rare as goodness, virtue, nobility, and valor whether you look for
these in women, or in men. This faithfulness and unfailing love in the rarest
of men is also found in the perfect woman or wife. It’s like this: “She speaks
with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue.” (Proverbs 31:26) The
faithful instruction from the perfect woman and the unfailing love of the
perfect man are the same thing. Faithful instruction and unfailing love use the
same Hebrew word.
The Hebrew word is “hesed”.
It’s almost impossible to translate into English. The word means too much to
tell.
It’s like our English word
“love”. What does love mean, when you can love your wife or husband, and you
can love your dog, and you can love your car, and you can love your pizza and
beer? That’s insane. It must be so confusing to people from other languages. “Hesed”
means “tender mercies”. It means loving-kindness. It means-steadfast love. No
human being can truly, fully give “hesed” to anyone, not even to God. Hesed is
much too big. It really only comes from God. Receiving hesed is just as much a
miracle as finding a perfect woman, or a perfect man.
Hesed means “covenant love”.
Covenant means promise. It’s the love that always keeps its promises. A vow is
a solemn promise. C. S. Lewis says, somewhere, that love loves to make
promises.
God promised in the Garden
of Eden, at the place of the original rebellion of the human race, when humans
ate the forbidden fruit in order to have the power to set their own standards
for good and evil. God promised that a child would be born in the human race
who would save us all from sin, and evil, and death. Then God went on making
more and more promises and vows, all the while reminding us of that human child
who would deliver us from evil.
Who know how old that original
promise is by now. But, in the fullness of time, only a mere two-thousand years
ago, after a million years or so had passed, God kept the promise: not by
sending a child, but by becoming that child; not killing a snake, but letting
the snake kill him on the cross, and only then destroying the power of that
snake; and yet the final death of the snake is still yet to come.
These long aeons of time
roll on and the faithful love, the covenant of God, the promises of God, are
alive and well in Jesus. Jesus is both God and us. And because he is both, we
can know him truly, if not completely.
In the cross and the
resurrection from the dead, true wisdom is found, if you will accept it. The
life-skill of wisdom and the life-skill of love can come together into us, grow
in us, show itself in us for others.
The cross and the
resurrection were very scary things that teach us the fear of the Lord. The
wisdom and love of the Lord are ours in Jesus as we live with him. And through
that love and wisdom we can be for others, what they need most. And we can be,
for our own selves, what we need most to be. And we become the creatures of God
who are now the true children of God, in a home that will never come to an end,
and where the best wisdom takes the best care of everyone and everything.
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