Proper 15 B
Wisdom or Folly
Proverbs 9:1-10
16 August 2015 – Redeemer
Proverbs chapter nine is the tale of two restaurants vying for your business, eager to have you dine at their respective tables. One table is set by Wisdom, the other by Folly. They are right next to each other – and they are calling you in, but beware. One is less than ordinary. The other is opulent. One calls for her customers, “Come in here and eat what is nutritious.” The other calls, “Come in here and eat whatever you desire.” One invites with mere words. The other with entices with the sweet smell of forbidden pleasures. One sets a table of life, while the other serves up a delicious feast of death.
So where will you dine? With wisdom or folly? Wisdom calls the simple to come away from what they love, think, and believe. “Leave your simple ways,” she calls, “and live, walk in the way of insight.” Folly calls on the simple man to indulge his desires, “Stolen water is sweet,” she says, “And bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” You may have guessed that Folly’s restaurant is standing room only, while Wisdom has immediate seating.
We are all fools by nature – our inborn sin makes us so. You know better than your wife. You are wiser than your parents. Five minutes as president and you could out-president this president no problem. Even worse, you often think you are wiser than god. Sure you do – you are constantly rewriting the Bible to fit how you feel and think and what you want. You justify your sins – it isn’t gossip if it’s the truth. I don’t have to honor my parents if they’re beyond hope. It isn’t adultery if I’m just looking at pictures on the internet. It isn’t murder it is choice. St. Paul likens us to drunks – we drink our fill of sin. We love it. We enjoy it. It helps us escape. We imbibe on manmade pleasure instead drinking deeply of Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual songs that teach us the wisdom of God our Father through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And yet, you are wise, not naturally, but supernaturally, as a gift of Christ through your baptism. If you weren’t wise you wouldn’t be here this morning. The first act of wisdom you did this morning was to acknowledge that life isn’t about you or from you. You invoked God’s name – “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” You’ve left the worship of the world, the worship of that infamous trinity of “me, myself, and I” to invoke God’s Name. God’ very name and nature make no sense – for He is three persons, and yet He is One God.
You are wise – you confessed before God that you’ve spent time at Folly’s bed and breakfast, eating at her table, enjoying the comfort of her bed. Think how unwise confession is in the eyes of the world – you’ve admitted you are wrong. You have confessed that you have sinned in thought, word, and deed, that you are unworthy before God. What do you think should happen to you? What does happen? God treats you in a most foolish manner when He has His men say, “I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” (There’s that name again – I think we’re beginning to see a pattern of folly associated with that foolish name.) The words you heard this morning (that you are forgiven) make as little sense as that father in Luke 15 who rejoices to have his son home after the boy wasted the inheritance on sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. And therein is the rub, the revelation of your wisdom – you expect God to act this way. You are counting on Him to be foolishly gracious and unreasonably merciful. Your life and future depend on Him acting this way, but His way is not the way of the world.
We see that quite clearly in today’s Gospel reading. Along with bread from heaven Jesus gives the crowds wisdom from heaven. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The Jews didn’t understand such foolishness, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus’ Words become even harder, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” This was impossible for the Jews to grasp. In the Old Testament God had strictly forbidden the eating of flesh with blood in it. As Lutheran’s our first assumption (being wise to the Word of God) is that Jesus is here speaking of the Lord’s Supper, but that is not likely the case. Throughout John chapter six, Jesus has been talking about faith in Him alone, about believing in Him as the One sent by the Father, as He says earlier in this chapter, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” This eating and drinking of Jesus as the only way to life is the same as “believing in Jesus alone (the offering of His flesh, the shedding of His blood) as the only way to life.”
And there again we come to the great divide between wisdom and folly. You believe that one man’s death on a cross a couple thousand years ago outside Jerusalem is your life and salvation. You believe that that man’s blood not only atoned for your sin, but the sin of every person who has ever or will ever live. You also believe that contrary to every other death recorded in human history this man rose again from the dead and lives to this day. You also believe that outside of faith and belief in this man’s death there is no hope for eternal life or heaven. That’s your wisdom but surely you must know the world thinks you’re fruit loops for thinking such nonsense (even though there’s more evidence for the resurrection of Jesus than most historical events of that time.)
Your wisdom is not from earth. It is from heaven. This wisdom did not come to you naturally. You would never learn of Jesus or desire to be baptized or believe in the life given you in the Lord’s Supper if you had never heard the Word from above or received the Holy Spirit who comes through that Word. You would never dine at Wisdom’s table if you had not been given the taste and desire for God’s Word and God’s ways that come by faith. By faith you return here each week because you are wise enough to know that folly still appeals to you. Until the resurrection on the last day you will be both wise and a fool, both saint and sinner. Folly sets an appealing but deadly table, so you come here to dine on the Wisdom that leads to life. That’s foolish to the world, but God considers it wisdom unto life.
I’m not sure if I’m wise or a fool to tell you this, but next Sunday I won’t be preaching. Pastor Koopman will be gracing our pulpit which will probably increase attendance. Unfortunately it means I will miss preaching one of my favorite texts – Ephesians 5:22-33. You remember the foolish words Saint Paul records there – words ones that makes bridesmaids roll their eyes and should make grooms run for their lives from the altar. “Wives submit to your husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” The world thinks those are about the stupidest words recorded in Scripture. I mean why would anyone enter into a marriage for the sole purpose of living for another person – that goes against all the advice in Cosmopolitan and Maxim magazines. Let me tell you why. Because Christian men and women have been made wise to the ways of God and have been delivered from the foolishness of this world. We ought not to apologize for God’s foolishness. Rather, we ought to look carefully at how we walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil (and we might add foolish.) If Christ was foolish enough to die for me to deliver me from my own sin, then I ought to be foolish enough to die for my wife and my wife ought to be foolish enough to submit to me, and we ought to be foolish enough to have children and teach them the faith, and not live for ourselves, but for Him who died and rose again. You want to do something about marriage in this country – here’s God’s wisdom – get married, die for your wife, submit to your husband, have children, lots of children, (with your husband or your wife) and raise them in the faith. I know it sounds foolish, but then so does the forgiveness that God has put on the table for you this morning. Be wise this week and live in the foolishness that is ours in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Pr. Bruce Timm
15 August 2015 anno Domini