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Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor Sermon Podcast

Introducing Wisdom (#2): Lady Wisdom & Dame Folly at the Intersection of Our Sexuality (Ken Wilson)

Duration:
35m
Broadcast on:
14 Aug 2006
Audio Format:
other

Introducing Wisdom (#2): Lady Wisdom & Dame Folly at the Intersection of Our Sexuality (Ken Wilson) :: August 12-13, 2006
All right. We've been in a series on wisdom of late to the month of August. We'll be looking at wisdom. Last weekend we introduced wisdom, her breadth, depth and appeal. We're looking primarily at wisdom through the wisdom literature of Proverbs. This weekend we're looking at Lady Wisdom and Dame Folly at the intersection of our sexuality. Next weekend, business savvy wisdom. Some of the breadth of the wisdom in the Proverbs, wise tongue planning, use of wealth, kind of business savvy wisdom. And then we're going to close with placing ourselves under wisdom's influence lifelong. Now today, you know, the Proverbs are not just a collection of sayings. If you have a superficial familiarity with them, you might think of them as a series of pithy sayings. And there are many of those, but the Proverbs also feature two main figures. The one is Lady Wisdom. And she's the primary figure in Proverbs. But then there's also her nemesis, Dame Folly. Wisdom is what comes first. And Dame Folly is, as it were, the parody of wisdom. This is a very significant development in the Hebrew Scriptures because so far as I know, there's no other divine attribute like wisdom in the Hebrew Bible that is personified in this way that is presented to us as a someone with an identity. This was a real risky move in the religious climate of Israel because paganism, the surrounding paganism, had gods and goddesses who were male and female and were operated through seductive means. So this is dicey territory, religiously speaking, very much vulnerable to misunderstanding, but nevertheless over all that thin eye skates this figure, Lady Wisdom. It might be very tempting to dismiss Lady Wisdom as nothing more than, you know, like a literary convention, but then along comes Jesus of Nazareth, who is God and flesh appearing. And it's clear that Jesus understood himself as the embodiment, as the fulfillment of all wisdom. In fact, it was the presence of this personified wisdom in the Hebrew Bible that helped the church come to terms with God as a community of persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So wisdom is literally in flesh. She appears with the pulse in Jesus of Nazareth. And so this is of real interest to those who love Jesus. Let's look first at Lady Wisdom, who comes first in this parallel wisdom and folly. And we're looking in Proverbs chapter 9 here, where they're paired together, first wisdom. Wisdom is built her house. She's sent up her seven columns. She's dressed her meat, mixed her wine. Yes, she's spread her table. She's sent out her maidens. She calls from the heights out over the city, "Let whoever is simple turn in here." To him who lacks understanding, I say, "Come, eat of my food and drink of the wine I have mixed." So Lady Wisdom is a powerful figure. She builds her house. It's not just a little shack. It's a seven-colomed stone-colomed mansion. Then she prepares this delectable sensual feast. There's meat on the grill, the sizzling of the fat, the aroma of the spices in which the meat has been dressed. It says she mixed her wine. We think of, I don't know, sangria or something like that. She's spread her table. So there's the woosh of the linen and the clink of the crystal and the china. It's on the order. Nancy and I went, the staff gave us a birthday back in February. We finally went, gave us a gift certificate to a Logan American cuisine in Washington, a new restaurant in town. Wow, I mean, this is the kind of feast you get from Lady Wisdom. Like, we had glazed skate wings. I didn't know there was such a thing as skate. It's like an ocean fish, like in the Ray Shark family. Glazed skate wings with a citrus reduction garnished with crispy capers. It sounded awful, but it was the most delectable, delectable dish, Lady Wisdom. Lady Wisdom is an inviter. She is, in a sense, the first evangelist. She has sent out her maidens. She calls from the heights over the city, come and eat. This actually might mean, in the Hebrew, that she dismissed her maidens. She herself, ordinarily the maidens would go out and do the invitation, but it could mean she dismissed them, because she herself wanted to go out and extend this invitation personally. Now, Lady Wisdom first appears earlier in the book of Proverbs in chapter one, and you very much have this sense of invitation. Wisdom cries aloud in the streets. In the open square, she raises her voice. Down the crowded way, she calls out at the city gate. She utters her words, "How long will you, simple ones? Will you love in entity? How long will you turn away at my reproof? Lo, I will pour out to you my spirit. I will acquaint you with my words." So she's out in the streets and the city squares at the city gate. She's calling out, not to the few. This is not one of those mystery cults of the ancient world where secret knowledge is offered to a chosen elite. Now, everyone is invited, especially the simple, meaning the lowly, the naive, those who lack understanding the uneducated, even those who don't yet own a video iPod. They're so far in the backwaters like myself. "Come eat of my food and drink of the wine I have mixed." So there is some obvious sauce in the text here. The man, if a woman is spreading her table and invites you over for a sumptuous feast and plants to ply you with spiced wine, I mean, you're like, "Whoa, this is an allurement motif here in the text." Well, so much for Lady Wisdom now hot on her heels and ours is her nemesis, Dame Folly, again in Proverbs 9, the thirteenth verse, "The woman Folly is fickle. She is inane and knows nothing. She sits at the door of her house upon a seat on the city heights, calling to passersby as they go on their straight way. Let whoever is simple turn in here or who lacks understanding. For him, I say, stolen water is sweet. And bread gotten secretly is pleasing. Little he knows that the shades are there, that in the depths of the netherworld are her guests." So Lady Wisdom is a class act. We're thinking of Sophia Lauren in her prime, but Dame Folly is a dit. Dame Folly is like a valley girl. Woman Folly is fickle. I love the tran- woman Folly is fickle. She is inane and knows nothing. She's in air. You know, always in Proverbs Dame Folly and she's especially featured in the first nine chapters as is Lady Wisdom. She's got this, she always comes on with this potent come on, but as soon as you stand and the Proverbs understand is written primarily to young men. So this is why it's framed in this way. As soon as you step into her boardwar, it turns into a bat cave covered with guano. Little he knows that the shades, the shades in Hebrew thought and understanding was what was left of a person after the life had been sucked out of death. Just a shadow of the human purse and the shades and the depths of the netherworld are her guests, not a place you want to be. All right, we've arrived and at the intersection of Wisdom and Folly, and it is the most unexpected of intersections that three-letter word, S-E-X-X. Wisdom and Folly Proverbs and in the Wisdom literature in general have one thing and one thing only in common and it's this. Both appeal to something integral to every human being, their sexuality. You know, name one of the major themes of the origin story in the Bible, Genesis, chapter one. Just name one of the main themes. How about sexuality is one of the main themes. You know, the oceans are teeming with aquatic life through the multiplying power of sexual reproduction. The fields in Genesis one are ablaze with fruits and vegetables, flowers, the birds and bees cross pollinating. Creation itself is sustained by sexuality. Eventually, humankind and Genesis, day six, male and female, he created them. And the first command, go forth and multiply and he's talking about doing your multiplication tables. You know, one of the great losses as we have moved away from the land, as we've paved paradise and put up the parking lot, as we've moved away most of us from farming or even gardening or the raising of animals where we live. We've lost our frame of reference for sexuality. So for us, it's all become very narrow and it's been mediated primarily by these images that we're braged with in our consumer sex crazed and saturated culture. And so for us, it seems like it's all about whatever a particular sexual appetites might be. We don't see sexuality as a river running through the whole of creation, God's creation. You know, we're not keeping bees because the orchards need pollinating. The pollen from the anther of the stamen to the stigma of the carpool. That's some dicey things going on in every field, every day. We're not tending to mares and bitches and heat and barnyard birthdays. Sexuality, like everything else in modern life, is separated and it's segmented rather than integrated into our understanding of all of life. And so for us, in this just most odd way of being human, so for us it is a jarring thought, what should be obvious, that of course spirituality involves sexuality, that of course God, that divine wisdom makes an appeal to our full humanity, which of course, how could it be otherwise, which includes our sexuality? You know, we who fancy ourselves on God's team, keep getting the emphasis on the wrong syllable when it comes to God and sexuality. We think God's primary, maybe even his only interest in our sexuality, is our getting the moral boundaries right. Well, the boundaries, it turns out, are important, they're life-saving, but they are important in the same way that a fireplace in a house that doesn't have central heating is important. The fireplace provides the structure that allows you to have fire right there in your house without burning your house down. But the point of a fireplace, except in our modern homes, but we don't actually need the warmth and heat and light, the point of the fireplace is not the fireplace itself, but hello, the fire. Sexuality is the fire, and the moral boundaries are the fireplace, but the fire is primary, and the fireplace serves the fire. You know, in the conventional Christian imagination, as we picture in our minds, you know, how does this spiritual realm in which we're influenced and immersed, how does this spiritual realm work? You know, in our imagination, it's like Satan is the one, he's really the only one who realizes how sexual we all are. And so he's fueling our sexuality like it's a gas-guzzling hummer, and he's fueling it with the high-octane feel, because he could care less about the environment. And all God can do is he can only appeal to what it seems is weakest in us, which is our moral sense, our conscience. And he's like in comparison, he's putting his little low-octane feel into our scooter, into our little moped. And so we wonder why the hummer always seems to win, and we're reduced to the most pitiful prayers. Like, "God, would you shrink my gas-guzzling hummer and supercharge my moped so I've got a fighting chance?" You know, wisdom, though. Wisdom. Wisdom has a better way. God doesn't just bolster our moral sense. God, through wisdom, also wishes to attract us. First, let's broaden our understanding of sexuality. You know, I mean, biological life is so sexual. I mean, is this just a side point? Does this signify something? Is God trying to tell us something about the way we are and all of life seems to be? Sexuality isn't just about sex. Sexuality is about more than sex. Sexuality is about our capacity to be drawn beyond ourselves toward another. It's not good for Adam, for the human to be alone, because Adam, by his very nature, is drawn to one outside of himself, drawn to another. Adam has a longing for union, in other words. Now, the union between a man and a woman is a holy union, but it's not the ultimate union. The ultimate union is the human divine communion. The Bible begins in a garden with two naked humans, but it ends with the divine bridegroom coming for his bride, humanity. Now, this is either so, or it is not of sense, but if that is so, if sex is really the highest union, why do humans, even, engaging in sex sometimes, still ache for a deeper, more perfect union? The merciful God presents wisdom to us, not simply as the moral boundary marker. If we would only move within the range, within the vicinity of wisdom, we would be drawn to her like a hummingbird to a succulent flower. This is the message of proverb. We might say, "Well, why haven't I heard this before?" I mean, this is not just like your typical junior high, birds and bees at Sunday school talk, "Well, why indeed?" Religion has been a pretty noisy business of late, and there's been so much yelling about sex. Maybe we haven't had a moment's peace to sit down and listen to the voice of the spirit. Our sexuality is more than a bodily function. It's not just, well, just as the GI tract is the plumbing part of the human machinery, the sexuality is the reproductive part or the pleasure part. No, it's more subtle, it's more integrated, it's more pervasive than that. Sexuality is closer to the center of us than that. Male and female, he created them. That's right in the beginning at the center of it all. In complete, he created each without the other. And so we are filled with yearnings and cravings and desires for that more perfect union. So our beauty response, I mean, what is it about human beings? We've got this strange beauty response that it's just hard to account for with the normal ways of analyzing what a human being is. It doesn't exactly show up in a clear cut way under the microscope, our beauty response. We see something beautiful, and we ache for it, and we're drawn to it. Like our music response. Mike Brooks, of course, is a lover of music, and when he was here a number of months ago, he was here for a three-month stint before getting all the immigration straightened out. We were getting to know each other, and one of the ways you get to know each other is to kind of share music. I was probably trying to impress him a little bit because I had run across what I thought of tuning. He might not have heard. Johnny Cash is a lover of all things in America, and I thought he'd really fall for Johnny Cash's version of the first time ever I saw your face. And so I play it for him out of my iTunes. He might come over here and listen to this. I'm going to see if he's a classy guy he claims to be. And he's like, you know, yeah, okay. But have you heard, Mike says, the Roberta Flack version of the first time ever I saw your face. And puts Johnny Cash to shame. And so I download right then and there off of iTunes, 99 cents, click, boom, it's there. And we play it. And, you know, Mike just, he just, he's like, he's over there getting all choked up. The first few measures is tears in his eyes. He's practically melting on the ground. We're both sitting there like, oh my goodness, this is the most beautiful song we've ever heard. We'll put it in the after songs for you. We have this music response. You know, our engagement with the arts are being drawn and attracted to whatever it is beyond ourselves, in our interests, in our hobbies, in our calls, in our sense of vocation. Even our being drawn inward is to something beyond ourselves. What's up with that? All of that is of a piece. It's signified by our sexuality. Our sexuality, in other words, is yet another landing pad for the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit hovers over us there as the Spirit hovers over the waters and draws us toward wisdom, draws us toward Jesus of Nazareth, draws us toward God himself. But be sure of it. I mean, this is crystal clear in Proverbs. Lady Wisdom is competing for our affections, and her competition is Dame Folley. And it's important for us to understand the two and their respective power and our respective relationship with them if we're going to get this right. You know, I think it's the first time I was ever, no, it's the only time I've ever in my life been flat out propositioned by a woman. I shared this last night, and Nancy said afterwards, "You know, I never heard about that." It was when I was 17 and working at the sign of the bee feeder, and I was just flat out propositioned by a high school girl. Said, "Let's go out to the back, and let's go to the end of my car." And I was not like a player in high school, you know what I'm saying? I mean, this was like, "Whoa!" Fortunately, fortunately, I was just in the process of falling in love, though, with Nancy. And so it was actually rather easy for me, even in that 17-year-old, I was an atheist at the time, hormonalized state to just know this. There wasn't a future in this, and I said, "No, no, this." And then, actually, she kind of opened up, and she was, like, depressed and suicidal. I actually started talking to her about her being suicidal. She called Nancy, and she came over, and we went over to this girl's house, and we're kind of like doing an intervention, 17-year-old to 17-year-old. But, you know, if you're only fighting Dame Folly with the moral rectitude at your command at a given moment, you are just a weak moment away from the bat-cave. Your best bet is a long-nurtured romance with Lady Wisdom. You know, our current obsession with moral rectitude and the neglect of the romance with wisdom is not producing in the evangelical church the greatest results. You know, Dame Folly is having a heyday. I mean, it's certainly not scientific, but an online survey from two evangelical websites came up with 50% of the men responding in the survey. It was drawing evangelicals primarily admitted being addicted to pornography and 20% of women the same. I mean, whatever's going on doesn't seem to be working all that well. Be sure that we are pursued by both by Lady Wisdom and Dame Folly, but we cannot pursue both simultaneously to seek the one is to abandon the other. And the one leads to life and bliss and unimaginable joys and pleasures, and the other to the most sorrowful, inane, regrettable, groaning emptiness. You know, so wisdom, how can we, you know, make this connection with wisdom? You know, wisdom in our religion on demand culture is something we tend to only think about or turn to when we need to know Pronto which way to go. You know, there's some decision in our lives, and all of a sudden we're all over wisdom. Like, oh, I need wisdom. We don't think about wisdom for months at a time, and then we need to decide, you know, which job to take or which way to go in our life, and we're anxious, and God give me wisdom, and it's good to turn to God in our need. But wisdom is not a consumer item. Wisdom is not a commodity to which we only turn when we have an itch need scratching. Wisdom is crying aloud in the streets for us. She's delighting in God, and in the children of men, it says in Proverbs, she's learning, yearning for a lifelong embrace from both. She's a lady, and that's what she wants, and what she wants is also what he wants. Jesus calls aloud in the streets. You know, when I'm reading those texts on wisdom, you're hearing, aren't you, those echoes of Jesus of Nazareth himself? Jesus cries aloud in the streets in the city square from the heights over Jerusalem, and his aim is not simply to bail you out of a jam, because he's so much more than a jam baler. He is God looking forward to union, to communion with you. And so our response to that is a whole response. Sir, how is it that you would desire me? What is man that you desire him or the son of man that you think of him? And with that sense of just how lucky I am to be approached by him, you surrender, and you surrender whole and entire, which means riddled with human frailty and weakness and moral failure. That's the only you you are. There's a whole of that. You can't surrender part because you are not a part. You are a holy only way to surrender is whole and entire. Sir, may I call you my Lord and my God. Take me as I am, sins and all. I will be yours. I mean, this is what wisdom is looking for. This is what Jesus of Nazareth is looking for from us. In that surrender, I am talking about an event and a process. This is an ongoing thing in our lives. I mean, it's a daily reality. It's an event. There's a first time, but there's also a process and it's fixed and it starts and it's back and it's forth. But there's a movement, all your brokenness, and that's a render. All your neediness, all your human frailty is plunged into the warm, and it's all bad, into an ocean of mercy and in time. All that's not you sinks and all that is you floats in that ocean of God's law. But there's choosing to be done. There's choosing to be done. There's preferring and there's nurturing that preference and there's receiving and there's attending to and there's pair bonding with wisdom. And her patron, her king, Jesus of Nazareth. So if this morning we could have the band come back as I'm done. But if this morning you are hearing, if you've been hearing, wisdom calling to you, and I mean this in a very personal way, if you yourself have been hearing, wisdom calling to you in this way, a desireing you, and you wish to respond and to heed her voice. She's out in the city streets and lots of people are just going about their business, but out in those streets there are people one at a time responding to lady wisdom. If you hear her voice and you want to respond to her, what I'm going to ask you to do is just right here, right now, to stand up where you are and to signify that response to her. And then we'll all pray. So just if you would, those who wish to. And I'm talking about something that's very specific and personal, not just like a general kind of thing. Okay. I'm just going to lead us, those who are standing in a prayer of surrender. So God, we just gather ourselves in the reality of who we are. The good, the beautiful, the bad, the ugly, the things about which we're pleased and the things about which we're disappointed, that doesn't even begin to think what you might think. We just gather ourselves such as we are today. And we're so thankful for hearing the voice of wisdom crying out to us, desiring us. And we surrender to wisdom. We surrender to the embodiment of wisdom in Jesus of Nazareth. We surrender ourselves such as we are and we say, that we receive us and allow us to call you our Lord and our God. And would you just come to us in the way that you choose to come to us? We open ourselves in our entirety to you, come Holy Spirit. Fill us with your presence and give us a taste and a longing for wisdom such as she has a yearning for us, the children of Nazareth. We ask this, "In all humility and sincerity in the name of Jesus of Nazareth." Let's all stand and celebrate the communion together. Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread and blessed and broke it and said, "Take, eat, this is my body." And he took a cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, "I drink of it all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I shall drink again of this fruit of the vine, not until the day that I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." So we just offer this prayer that comes from an ancient song, "Bread of the world in mercy, broken, wine of the soul and mercy shed, by whom the words of life were spoken and whose death our sins are dead. Look on the heart by sorrow broken, look on the tears by sinners shed, and be your feast to us, the token, that by your grace our souls are fed." And so we pray with boldness as the Lord Himself taught us, "Our Father, who are in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours are the kingdom, the power, the glory forever. Amen." So come and receive. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]