8/19/18 “The Wisdom Secret” by Nancy Petty
Text: Proverbs 9:1-6
Four, almost five years ago now, to celebrate my fiftieth birthday, I planned a Babette’s Feast style dinner and invited seven individuals, each of whom had played a significant role in my life at various stages of my life. The guests ranged in age from 92 to 16 including one person their 40’s, one in their 50’s, one in their 60’s, one in their 70’s and one in her 80’s. Karla set a beautiful table outdoors—complete with white tablecloth and eloquent dishes—lit only by candlelight. The four-course meal that had been carefully planned and prepared by Karla, Nora, and myself was a hit. It was a lovely evening of spirited conversation and storytelling.
As the evening and conversation progressed, it was the 992-year-oldwho became the life of the party. Her sharp mind, quick wit and wise insight kept all the guests entertained. At one point, late in the evening, the 50 something year old asked the 92 year old, “What is your secret? How have you kept your mind so sharp and your body in such good health?” Expecting some secret piece of wisdom, we all positioned ourselves to make sure we heard the response. Without hesitating, the 92 year old belted out: “Well, I don’t drink. I read my bible. And I go to church.” Now mind you, my 50 something year old friend drinks wine daily, doesn’t own a bible and rarely goes to church. Being a bible toting-church going-teetotaler was not the wisdom secret my 50 something year old friend was looking for. The next day she called me and said, “Why couldn’t she have said something like I don’t eat bacon, I exercise daily and I have a glass of red wine every night?”
We are all looking for that bit of wisdom—or wisdom’s secret—that will give us the good life, a meaningful life, if not a long life. But as we know and have experienced, wisdom is one of those qualities difficult to define because it encompasses so much. Philosopher’s, theologians, psychologist, sociologists and every other area of study have, for centuries, worked to define wisdom. In the 1980’s, in an effort to define wisdom, a group of psychologists launched the ground-breaking Berlin Wisdom Project. At the time, New York Time journalist, Stephen Hall, reported the project as “the most comprehensive empirical understanding of wisdom by any single group in modern psychology.” Their conception/definition of wisdom was, hold on to your seat, “expertise in the fundamental pragmatics of life.” “They helpfully translated this into more understandable language as ‘good judgment and advice about important but uncertain matters of life.’”
The Berlin Wisdom Project went on to outline 5 criteria that define wisdom. They are:
• Knowing about human nature and the life course
• Knowing ways of dealing with life’s problems
• Having an awareness and understanding of the many contexts of life, how they relate to each other and change over the time
• An acknowledgment of individual, social and cultural differences in values and life priorities
• Knowing the limits of one’s own knowledge
I thought about these criteria as I tried to answer the question that had been on my mind all week after reading Proverbs 9:1-6: Who are my wisdom figures and what makes them such? Who are the people in my life that seem to have an understanding about human nature and ways to deal with life’s problems? Who can put things in context and make connections to other contexts? And who accepts differences and doesn’t claim to have all the answers? And it was that last one that seemed to narrow down the list a bit.
Proverbs lays out two paths for life: the way of wisdom and the way of folly. And specifically, Proverbs chapter 9 speaks to both of these paths. In verses 1-6 we are told that wisdom has built her house, she has set the table, cooked the food, mixed the wine and invited her guests. She has worked hard to prepare the table for all to come. Wisdom, Proverbs tells us, who has previously partnered with God in creation, is now the host of a great banquet to which she invites the world.
In contrast, just a few verses later, beginning in verse 13, we get a glimpse of wisdom’s protagonist: folly. We read that the foolish woman is loud, ignorant and knows nothing. “She sits on the front porch of her house on Main Street, and as people walk by minding their own business, calls out, ‘Are you confused about life, don’t know what’s going on? Steal off with me, I’ll show you a good time! No one will ever know—I’ll give you the time of your life.’” Folly is enticing, deceitfully enticing. Folly plays to the world’s values, the quick high that isn’t lasting. Proverbs sets two paths before us: the way of wisdom and the way of folly. And then Proverbs ask us: Which will we choose? Which are we choosing?
As I have studied and sat with Proverbs 9 this past week, it seems to me that the true secret of wisdom is radical hospitality. The whole purpose of wisdom building her house is because she needs a place to host a feast to which she invites the world. Wisdom’s secret is the path of hospitality. I know. Hearing that is kind of like hearing: “I don’t drink. I read the bible. And I go to church.” It sounds unexciting, dull. But it’s true. If you desire wisdom, it will require a radical hospitality that welcomes everyone to the table. And such radical hospitality requires some hard work—building the house for radical hospitality, setting the table, preparing the food, mixing the drink, and taking the invitation into the streets. For you see, wisdom is about welcome. It’s about inclusiveness—stretching the boundaries into places you thought you would never go with people you never thought you would travel with. Wisdom needs other people. Wisdom needs people around her table who are different from one another. Who look different from one another. Wisdom needs people around her table who think differently from one another. Who worship differently from one another. Who love differently from one another.
Like everything else here in the West, we have Westernized wisdom. We have made wisdom about individual knowledge, trying to find the meaning of life here and now with self at the center. We look for wisdom in an individual that we can place on a pedestal, until they take the inevitable fall. We make individual pilgrimages to individual gurus seeking wisdom, hoping that the next one will know and share wisdom’s secret to that happy and meaningful life that keeps escaping us. And we ignore that divine wisdom is found in our willingness to sit at the table and feast with those who are like us AND those who are ever so different from us. We have forgotten, if we ever knew, that wisdom stands in the middle of the public places and in our sacred sanctuaries calling out to the masses to come and sit at her table and feast together in all our diversity and difference. Togetherness, unity in our differences, is the voice and call of wisdom.
Over the last several months I have met with a former newspaper journalist who is writing a book that explores the diversity of those who call themselves Christian and are engaged in social justice. His interest is in telling the stories of a diverse people who are committed to their Christian faith through social justice but whose theological and political differences separate them into groups that rarely interact with one another. He is specifically interested in the impact the current political climate is having on religious life in America.
Last week he reached out again to ask if we could meet one more time. I was interested in his request given that we had already spent quite a bit of time together. When he arrived for our meeting, he explained that he wanted to follow up on a few things that I had said in our last conversation. As we settled into our now familiar routine of talking with one another he shared with me that the day after our last conversation he had traveled to the neighboring town of Wake Forest to interview a professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He said that he had been thinking about the two conversations and had a few follow-up questions for me. And wow, did he. We covered, again, the authority of the Bible, God’s nature, the human condition, evangelicalism, liberalism, homosexuality and the church—the whole nine yards. We had another delightful two-hour conversation, mostly me responding to theological statements made by the professor.
Toward the end of our time this retired newspaper journalist gently said to me, “You know Nancy, you and Mark would find it difficult, if not impossible, to agree theologically on anything. But I’m convinced that if the two of you sat down at a table together to have a conversation you would learn something from each other. You are both good, sincere people.” On the outside, I nodded without saying a word. But on the inside, my heart ached, if not broke. Wisdom’s secret was revealed and, like most of us, when seeing wisdom, we recognize it. I recognized it immediately in that moment in his words! She has built her house, she has set the table, the food is prepared, the wine is mixed, the invitation extended and I have continued to sit at my table for one. From a retired newspaper journalist I heard wisdom’s invitation and I knew in that moment my work is to decide if I will accept her invitation. Wisdom’s secret is to keep widening the circle. Wisdom’s secret is to sit at the table with those who speak of their faith in language both foreign and offensive to me. Wisdom’s secret is to invite those who hold a different set of values than I to my table. Wisdom’s secret is to welcome the one whose political views I march against.
Wisdom speaks, ““You know Nancy, you and Mark would find it difficult, if not impossible, to agree theologically on anything. But I’m convinced that if the two of you sat down at a table together to have a conversation you would learn something from each other. You are both good, sincere people.”
On occasion, I will have a conversation with someone who will say to me, “I’m just not sure I would fit in at Pullen. My theology is a bit different and I’m not sure my political views would be welcome.” Each time I hear that my heart sinks. As your pastor, I haven’t said enough what needs to be said in churches right now: we don’t have to agree on matters of theology and politics to welcome one another and sit at the table together. One of the things I cherish about our church is that we place a high value on agreeing to disagree. We are a passionate people. And we speak passionately about matters of faith and life. And sometimes our disagreeing is quite spirited. But I hope, always, we walk away from each other with respect and a radical welcome for one another.
And so the wisdom question: Whose table are you, are we, am I willing to sit at and learn from? And who is missing from our table? Who has a portion of wisdom that we need? Wisdom begs, “Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” Or as one translation says, “Leave your impoverished confusion and live! Walk up the street to a life with meaning.”
I want to be clear that what I am saying is simple, but not easy. I believe what I am saying to you about wisdom, and I know that it is very, very hard for me to live. And yet, I also know it is true. And I know that it will require a continued breaking open of my heart. The ancient Hebrews did not associate the head or even the mind with wisdom. They had a much clearer separation between knowledge and wisdom – wisdom came into us through the heart, the space in our chest that we in the West have come to associate only with feelings. But the ancients knew of a different kind of heart experience – one of knowing. And when I read about how wisdom calls us to open our table to difference, I know it to be true here. When the journalist says that if I sat with this Southeastern Seminary professor I would learn something, he means that I would learn it here. Wisdom asks us to make ready the table. What if that read, make ready your heart? Radical hospitality requires not only that we open the doors, but that we open our hearts. As hard as it is to do, I know this is true Wisdom. And so I pray: Sophia, help us be Wisdom people, with open doors and open hearts.
