It’s been a busy few weeks here. So I am looking forward to two weeks of vacation to regroup and renew myself. I will be back in the pulpit on Sunday, July 18th. What follows is the final sermon in my summer sermon series on Proverbs from this 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time.
“Don’t Be a Fool”
Proverbs 1:7, 15: 32-33
Rev. Dr. Teri McDowell Ott
June 27th, 2010
Proverbs is not for those with fragile egos, it is not for those who get their feelings easily hurt because Proverbs is quick to call you a fool.
One of the principal characters in the book of Proverbs is the fool. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. According to Proverbs, the fool is someone who refuses correction or reproof.[1] Foolish people cannot seriously entertain the possibility that they might be in the wrong. They are right and don’t you dare suggest otherwise! And seeing as they are right, they have no need of criticism, constructive or otherwise, so they avoid it or shrug it off as inconsequential. Foolish, foolish people. You probably know someone like this. You’re probably already fantasizing about handing a copy of this sermon to that foolish person in your life.
But….let’s be honest here….aren’t we all a little foolish sometimes? How do you respond when your spouse, or your friend, or your parent ventures to tell you something about yourself that you know is true but that you don’t want to admit or accept as true? When you are critiqued do you stop and say, “Why, thank you for sharing that with me! I’ll certainly try to work on that in the future” and then go off and seethe and sulk for days or even months, all the while passively aggressively attacking the person who dared to say such a thing to you? Or, when you are critiqued do you immediately take offense and then quickly and fiercely tick off all the things that are wrong with your critiquer? You’re critiquing me! Take a look at yourself! Or, when you are critiqued do you smile, and nod, and say thank you, and then quietly and oh-so-subtly cut yourself off from that person, remove yourself from that relationship so you might never have to hear those difficult words again, so you’ll never have to face that truth again? Aren’t we all a little foolish sometimes?
Wisdom is hard won. Wisdom is hard won because it means not being foolish. It means being open to criticism and critique and accepting those critiques that are true. Wisdom means disciplining ourselves to seek out instruction, even when that instruction is in the form of truthful critique that is difficult and uncomfortable and leaves us feeling vulnerable and exposed, like we have just been gutted open and left for dead.
Most mainline churches today require their ministers to go through something called Clinical Pastoral Education. For my friends and I in seminary, this meant spending a summer serving as chaplain interns in a clinical setting such as a hospital or a prison. I did my CPE work as a chaplain in a mental health hospital. The work is challenging. Usually you face issues in these settings that you have never in your life faced before. But even more challenging is the group work, IPR group, we called it, which stood for Interpersonal Relationships. Once a week, you met with your IPR group made up of a number of your peers in ministry and a CPE supervisor. In this group you confidentially discussed your cases and you discussed yourself, how you responded to people, how you cared for people, how you related to people, etc. The CPE supervisor would constantly prod the discussion to go deeper and deeper, to get right down to the truth, to get right down to all the things you really didn’t want to talk about and all the things you didn’t want to hear. Just imagine it as a group of people who would, week in and week out, call you on all your issues and force you to face them. If you had issues with anger, you’d get called on them. If you had issues with personal and professional boundaries, you’d get called on them. If you had issues related to your family of origin, it would all get drudged up, hashed out and drawn out before God and the whole group. It was terrible! It was excruciating! But we had to do it. Every pastor friend I know has a horror story to tell from his or her CPE experience. But, we all also grew from it. We grew in wisdom. We grew in self-awareness. We grew in understanding. And in that sense, the experience was invaluable.
Unlike some of their contemporaries, the Israelite sages subscribed to a dynamic understanding of human personhood.[2] We humans are made in the image of God, in the image of our dynamic, active, living God. So human beings, the sages believed, are characterized by constant change, growth, or progress. To avoid criticism and the growth that comes from it, then, to avoid new sources of knowledge and self-understanding, is not only foolish, but contrary to who we are as human beings, and contrary to who we are as reflections of our living God.
The one who breaks loose from discipline rejects his own self, but one who hears reproof acquires a heart. When we reject wisdom, the sages say, we actually reject our own self. We reject who we were created to be as dynamic, growing, changing, and learning human beings. When we reject wisdom, we reject life itself.
I planted a garden once. It didn’t go so well. At first I was all excited about the project. I spent the majority of one whole day working on it. I tilled the soil. I planted sugar snap peas, and zucchinis, tomatoes and peppers. I planted marigolds all around the edge. When I was finished I was exhausted. But I had the perfect, neat little garden. And then I forgot about it. I guess my enthusiasm for the whole project just waned after spending all that time on it at the beginning. I still checked on the garden every once in a while. But I didn’t weed it. And I didn’t water it. I didn’t do anything to actually help it grow. Eventually the weeds took over and choked the life out of my neat little garden. It wasn’t long before it shriveled up and died.
We human beings are a lot like a vegetable garden. If we want to know life as God intends us to know life, then we need to be watered and nurtured, loved and fed. We also need to be weeded and pruned, directed and redirected by people in our life who love us enough to tell us the truth.
We can foster these relationships. If we value the growth that can come from them, then we can seek people out who will tell us the truth. I’m excited about a friendship that I have had for about five years but that is just now getting to the point where we can tell each other the truth; the hard truths, I mean. My friend and I have always been truthful with each other but now we are getting to the place in our relationship when we can say things like, “You know, you hurt my feelings when you said that.” Or things like, “I know this may not be what you want to hear, but I think this is something you really need to work on.” I’m excited about this friendship because such relationships don’t just happen. It takes a while to get to this place of trust. It takes a while for us to feel safe enough with another person to give and receive the truth.
Dan and I work hard on this aspect of our relationship. We know that a healthy marriage means being able to tell each other the truth. And after you work at it, you come to learn how to best tell the truth so the other person can really hear you. For instance, Dan knows by now that he needs to tell me something he likes about my sermon before he tells me what he hates about it. We need people in our life who love us enough to tell us the truth.
The fear of the Lord is discipline, wisdom; and before glory, meekness. The NRSV actually translates the end of this verse as “and humility goes before honor.” Proverbs, as I mentioned before is not for those with fragile egos. The Israelite sages who wrote these words of wisdom meant to knock us down a peg or two. They meant to call us foolish if we so arrogantly believe we are always right, if we so arrogantly act as if we are above criticism and critique. Humility and meekness are the virtues they applaud. Humility and meekness, an open heart, a willing spirit, and a desire to grow, and change, and better ourselves so we can truly reflect the God in whose image we were made.
As I conclude this sermon series on Proverbs, I am thankful for all the practical wisdom that has emerged from this underutilized book of the Bible. I am thankful for its reminder that we are to keep good company, that we need to surround ourselves with people who bring us to life, not to death. I am thankful for its teaching on money and on prudence, that we are to live and act and spend with care and thought for the future, not just our future. I am thankful for its insistence that we raise our children with good moral character, and for its reminder that the morals for which we are to strive are righteousness, justice, and equity. And I am thankful to know that the beginning of knowledge is fear of the Lord, not fear of the world or fear of what others might think, but fear of the Lord and what the Lord might think. It would be foolish to avoid such advice. It would be foolish to avoid the truths offered to us from these ancient, yet timeless words.
The end of the first chapter of Proverbs reads, “Wisdom cries out in the street; in the square she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks.”[3] My friends, let’s not be deemed a bunch of fools. Instead, let’s open the gates and let wisdom in. Let’s open the gates to this wise woman of Proverbs who has come to tell us the truth so we might truly live.
Now to the God of all wisdom, be all honor and glory, thanksgiving and power, now and forevermore. Amen.
[1] Ellen F. Davis,
Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament, (Cowley Publications, Cambridge, MA, 2001), pgs. 98-99.
[2] Ellen F. Davis, Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament, (Cowley Publications, Cambridge, MA, 2001), pg. 99.
[3] Proverbs 1:20-21
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I’ll be preaching on Mark 2:23 – 3:6 at a couple of different churches over the next couple of weeks. It might be a little cheesy, but I’m thinking of starting with a couple funny church signs. This one’s probably my favorite. But the one that I want to take exception to is “It’s Not a Religion / It’s a Relationship.” While Jesus’ “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath” may at first blush have some relation to the relationship / religion dichotomy. I want to talk about how you can’t have the relationship without the religion. The religion piece is only there to be used as a tool with which we strive to encounter Christ and have a relationship with God. But without religion we can not have the relationship.
I am preaching on 
It felt great to get back into the pulpit after two weeks of vacation. Although it is a bear to write a sermon week in and week out, I miss the rhythm of it when I am away. I miss the spiritual rhythm and practice of giving Jesus my full attention. What follows is the sermon from the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time.
I am preaching on 
Dan
Teri
