Proverbs 1:20-33 September 13, 2015 SUFFERING FOOLS

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1 16 th Sunday after Pentecost Year B Newport Presbyterian Church James 3:1-12 Bellevue, Washington Proverbs 1:20-33 September 13, 2015 SUFFERING FOOLS Several weeks ago I informed you that I am the presence of wisdom and love. (If you happened to have missed that sermon, you can download it on the Newport website from the August 16 worship service.) What I want to talk about this morning is the opposite of wisdom and love. I confessed in my earlier sermon that people like me are all-too-prone to becoming defensive when our expressions of wisdom and love are discounted or dismissed. When challenged, I can become a fulsome interrogator at best, or an arrogant jerk at worst. I confess: I just don t suffer fools well. Before saying anything further, I should note up front that I do not believe that any one place or state of the union has a monopoly on foolishness. Foolishness takes up residence everywhere even in our own homes but today s lectionary reading and the events of the past few weeks have led me to use just one of our fifty states as an object lesson in the application of some godly wisdom. So, imagine my baser impulses run amok and my unmitigated contempt over the past few weeks when the evening s news and my Facebook feeds were filled to capacity discussing the events in eastern Kentucky, with one woefully misguided person s understanding of the Christian gospel s mandates, and throngs of adoring supporters waving their white and oh, they had to be white crosses in tribute. Embraced by a former governor, a current senator and a smarmy assortment of pretenders to positions of high public office and public trust the whole spectacle rolled out and gave me an exceedingly bad case of acid reflux. Tagamet helped. So did a measure of grace. The Book of Proverbs warned us so long ago in so many contexts. How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? Who long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? It sounds so easy, really. We can take delight in the foolishness of others, knowing that they will get their just reward. But then, when we are the ones held up to foolish regard? Well, we get what we deserve, too. No one is immune from retribution. Fools may suffer, but those who esteem wisdom seem to suffer all the more. In 1993, the Presbyterian Church (USA), together other mainline Protestant denominations, co-sponsored a conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota entitled Re-Imagining: A Global Theological Conference by Women: For Men and Women. The conference was designed to be a gathering of persons of faith interested in hearing one another on issues raised by feminist theologies, including the personhood of God. The Conference s organizers set out a series of themes focused on the concept of re-imagining core elements of Christian belief and witness, challenging the Church s patriarchal doctrines, and establishing an equilibrium between feminine and masculine understandings and experiences in the expressions of Christian faith.

2 Sermon Suffering Fools Newport Presbyterian Church, Bellevue, WA September 13, 2015 Page 2 of 5 One of the ways that the conference participants sought to meet these objectives was to embrace the Book of Proverbs and its evocation of divine Wisdom. Using the ancient Greek word for wisdom, σοφία, the worship services at the Reimagining Conference incorporated a chant calling for divine wisdom, sophia, to be present among their presentations and dialogue. Following the conference, the participants left enlivened, moved and informed about a vital and important witness in the life of the Christianity today. But in the weeks and months following the conference, conservative elements of the Church went ballistic. Conference participants were accused of gathering to engage in pagan ritual and goddess worship. Right-wing elements began calling for attendees to be brought up on heresy charges and expelled from the denomination. At the Presbyterian Church headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, the director of the Women s Ministry Unit that had promoted the conference was summarily terminated from her position, and the stand-alone Women s Ministry Unit was later re-organized out of existence. Conveniently ignoring the fact that the term sophia was taken from the Book of Proverbs in Scripture, or that the conference participants were all long-standing and seasoned persons of deep faith and church involvement, or that the conference was a theological conference meant to promote dialogue, not formal resolution, the fall-out from the Re-imagining Conference nearly caused the denomination then to fracture. This was all because a group of forward-thinking women and men dared to want to talk about challenging traditional, overly rigid ways of viewing God and Creation. Fools for Christ suffer, too, it seems. But that is not the end of the story, because the justice of God wins out in the end. God s justice ALWAYS wins in the end. Just this past week, there was a ground-breaking wedding announcement from the Presbyterian Church headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. It seems that a retired denominational staffer and a current church employee got married in the chapel at the headquarters. That is not so unusual. Eight other couples have had their marriage solemnized at the Presbyterian Church headquarters. What was unprecedented this time was that the couple getting married were both men. Robb Gwaltney someone I have known personally for decades oversaw the move of the denomination s operations from New York City to Louisville in the 1980s. His new husband, Paul Kempf, had been church employee since Paul noted that if it weren t for the denomination s decision to move to Louisville and Robb s efforts to facilitate that move then he and Robb would have never met and fallen in love. It therefore made abundant good sense for the couple to want to solemnize their relationship in the headquarters of the very denomination that had fostered it. In the Presbyterian Church s denominational chapel, God s justice won the day in that corner of Kentucky. There wasn t any TV coverage, no candidates for public office came, and the press release afterward was carried only in the church media. There was no outcry, no accusations of heresy, no one was terminated. Just two persons declared their love and commitment to one another in the church that had brought them together. Just the quiet victory of wisdom and love in the place where some fools gloated and other fools suffered. 2

3 Sermon Suffering Fools Newport Presbyterian Church, Bellevue, WA September 13, 2015 Page 3 of 5 As Proverbs told us so long ago, Those who listen will be secure and live at ease, without dread of disaster. In Kentucky of all places! sophia prevailed after all. Amen. 3

4 JAMES 3: Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 2 For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. 3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. 4 Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. 5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. 7 For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, 8 but no one can tame the tongue-a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh. PROVERBS 1: Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. 21 At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: 22 "How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? 23 Give heed to my reproof; I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you. 24 Because I have called and you refused, have stretched out my hand and no one heeded, 25 and because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, 26 I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when panic strikes you, 27 when panic strikes you like a storm, and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. 28 Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but will not find me. 29 Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD,

5 30 would have none of my counsel, and despised all my reproof, 31 therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way and be sated with their own devices. 32 For waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them; 33 but those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster."