Summer Sermon Series – What Does It Mean to Be Wise?

Week 4 : The Wisdom of Desire

Proverbs 8:1-21, Matthew 6:19-21

Wisdom, according to the Book of Proverbs, is a woman.

Perhaps more accurately put, Wisdom is a feminine noun, and is personified as a woman in the writings of the Hebrew Scriptures.

When I first learned about this some 20 years ago, I was pretty excited. There is a lack of female representation in the Bible, and “getting” Wisdom seemed like a pretty big deal. I still think it’s kind of cool. But I have to say, my enthusiasm has been dampened by closer study.

Yes, Wisdom is personified as a woman. But so is foolishness and folly. In contrast to upright wisdom who will always lead you in the right paths, there is also a “loose woman.”

Listen to these lines from Proverbs 5:1-14 (Common English Bible):

My son, pay attention to my wisdom.
    Bend your ear to what I know,
        so you might remain discreet,
        and your lips might guard knowledge.
The lips of a mysterious woman drip honey,
    and her tongue is smoother than oil,
    but in the end she is bitter as gall,
    sharp as a double-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death;
    her steps lead to the grave.
She doesn’t stay on the way of life.
    Her paths wander, but she doesn’t know it.

Now children, listen to me,
    and don’t deviate from the words of my mouth.
Stay on a path that is far from her;
    don’t approach the entrance to her house.
    Otherwise, you will give your strength to others,
        your years to a cruel person.
    Otherwise, strangers will sap your strength,
        and your hard work will end up in a foreigner’s house.
You will groan at the end
    when your body and flesh are exhausted,
    and you say, “How I hated instruction!
    How my heart despised correction!

I didn’t listen to the voice of my instructor.
    I didn’t obey my teacher.
I’m on the brink of utter ruin
    in the assembled community.”

When we began this sermon series on Wisdom Literature, we talked about how Proverbs and Ecclesiastes at their heart answer the question, “How does someone live a good life?” And even though we are separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles, the answers put forth by the authors of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes have much to say to us in our time.

However…first we have to acknowledge that the intended audience for the Book of Proverbs, the target market for its instruction—young males.

So…do you see why it made sense to portray both wisdom and folly as women for young males? Certainly, describing the choice of how to live in terms of two women vying for their attention might make their lessons more interesting. If you’ve been reading through Proverbs on your own, you know there are some decidedly PG-13 passages, warning about the dangers of being seduced by what (or who) is very desirable but ultimately destructive.

At first glance, I admit that I found this rhetorical device rather prudish, not to mention more than a little unfair in its portrayal of women. Previous generations have warned of the dangers of alcohol, gambling, sex outside of marriage, sometimes even dancing. The “desires of the flesh” were portrayed as dangerous.

Younger generations today (my own included) have poked fun at this prudish perspective. But as Krista Tippett points out in her book, her Southern Baptist preacher grandfather frequently warned in his sermons about “the body as the entry point of danger” because he lived in the age “before Twelve Steps made addictions like gambling and alcoholism something less than a death sentence, before sex was unhinged from a high probability of pregnancy, before childbirth out of wedlock upended many lives.” (Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, 2016, “Flesh” p. 62)

There was wisdom in those warnings.

For those of us who live in an age in which science and psychology have blunted if not eliminated the possible consequences of such behaviors, biblical scholar Ellen Davis makes the case for how these passages still speak to us:

“In using the language of love and desire, the sages alert us to the hidden but essential connection between what we want and what we may come to know. Those two things are always connected, for good or for ill. Through holy desire we may indeed gain what Israel called wisdom, which is a true, realistic knowledge of God, ourselves, and the world. But we may also waste our desire, by turning it to things that are unworthy of us. Or perhaps we desire things that are good in themselves, but they are not the things that God wants to give us now. So our desire, which is meant to draw us closer to God, instead sets a barrier between God and ourselves. For desire is never spiritually neutral. It either sharpens our perception, so that we may see something of what God sees in us and the world, or else it distorts our vision. In countless subtle ways, wrong desire skews our understanding of our God-given situation in the world. In other words, wrong desire deprives us of wisdom and thus brings us, often by slow degrees, into misery.” (Ellen F. Davis, Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament, 2001, p. 149)

It seems to me that we live in an age in which we are encouraged to follow wherever our desires lead us. If there is something we want to have or possess or accomplish, we should do it because we deserve it. Everything is allowed.

Now, to be clear, I think our culture has done well to dismantle the shackles of shame that were so often clamped on anyone who stepped out of line. Saddling someone with shame can destroy a life every bit as much as whatever the “original” sin was. We still shame people, but we find fewer behaviors shameful all the time. So, anything goes!

Another dynamic in our culture is the constant buzz of marketing messages. From birth, we are programmed to desire products so that we buy and consume…and immediately start the cycle over again. Our economy depends on a never-ending cycle of desire, consumption, and dissatisfaction. It goes without saying that this cycle is folly and foolishness, wasteful, the wrong kind of desire.

Ellen Davis again: “Wrong desire separates us from God. It blinds us to the goodness of the situations in which God has placed us. It separates us from one another. We may indeed learn something from following wrong desire, but too often what we come to know about the world and about ourselves embitters us.” (Ellen F. Davis, Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament, 2001, p. 150)

A laundry list of wrong desire in our modern culture would include

• The pursuit of wealth at the expense of the well-being of others
• The use of pornography and its exploitation of women, children, men
• And I might add, romance novels that can give women an utterly unrealistic image of the “ideal man” or marriage
• Winning in politics at any cost, including working with our nation’s enemies in order to defeat the opponent, as we saw in the news this week.
• And I have to say, only somewhat tongue in cheek, HGTV—it’s an entire channel devoted to making people dissatisfied with where they live and what they have. I didn’t know how terrible my bathroom and kitchen were until I started watching HGTV!

Even right desire can go wrong, such as when the pursuit of health and fitness, self-improvement and personal growth, education and learning, etc. becomes such an obsession that they take too much time away from our family, friends or community, or lead to us judging or condemning others.

And there is another phenomenon in our culture that is worth noting:

Our tendency toward numbing behaviors. Sometimes life can be overwhelming and we need to escape reality for a little bit—so we watch TV or movies, play video games, surf the web or scroll on Facebook. Sometimes we numb our worries and anxieties with food, alcohol, sex, working out. We need escape sometimes but any of these behaviors can go too far so that there is far more numbing happening than dealing with and working through.

Krista Tippett writes, “[There] was a pattern of unintentional self-destruction glorified in the twentieth century–to enrich on the outside, and impoverish within.” (Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, 2016,, p. 169)

I fear that too often in our nation we are keeping up appearances on the outside while we are impoverished within.

And this is where True Wisdom, God’s Wisdom, comes in. God invites us to more, asks more of us.

When we cultivate our relationship with God, when we make time for regular prayer, reading, meditation, being in worship, yoga, whatever spiritual technologies bring you into communion with God…

when we spend time appreciating the beauty of creation and the world around us…

when we cultivate a sense of gratitude, contentment, “enoughness” in our life, our family, our home, friends and community…

when we see our lives and well-being as integrally connected with others, whether across the street or across the globe…

THEN we have learned to desire what God desires for us and our neighbors.

May each of us open ourselves to the leading and healing of the Holy Spirit, that we, too, may grow in wisdom and desire for the truly good things in our world, and for our world. Amen.

Preached by the Rev. Lori Wunder at First Presbyterian Church of Mount Vernon, Iowa on Sunday, July 16, 2017. With much gratitude to Ellen F. Davis and Krista Tippett!