Holy Trinity Sunday
Text: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Pastor Jean M. Hansen
Last week’s sermon focused on the story of the Tower of Babel, and many of you confirmed my theory that it is one of those illusive Biblical texts on which few sermons are given. Well, that’s true again today since I’ve decided that our focus will be on the passage from Proverbs 8. Does anyone recall hearing more than one sermon on Proverbs 8? How about even one sermon?
It’s a lovely piece of writing; some would say poetry, in which the virtue “wisdom” is personified as female (I’ll pause for a moment and let you contemplate that), and as having a voice of self-announcement. Wisdom is a prophet, a preacher who stands among people, in the midst of daily life, and demands attention.
Wisdom was, she says, created at the beginning of Yahweh’s work, the first of God’s acts long ago. God created, and wisdom was there with God, embedding wisdom into all creation. Wisdom is to be summoned forth in humanity. Wisdom brings joy and delight to the Creator.
Those are lovely images, but what exactly is wisdom? According to Webster’s Dictionary, wisdom is the ability to discern inner qualities and relationships, good sense, and, also, generally accepted belief and accumulated philosophical or scientific learning.
There also is cultural wisdom, which describes generally accepted ways to flourish (or succeed). Sadly, in 2025, for many that involves looking a certain way, possessing a lot of what money can buy, acquiring power, being in a position of honor and winning for the sake of oneself.
Biblical wisdom, including what is described in Proverbs, is quite different from that. A simple definition is that wisdom is a way of living, talking, thinking that honors God and blesses people. Wise people understand and do what God created them to do.
This wisdom is not something humans create; it is a gracious gift of God. As is proclaimed in verses 10-11 of Proverbs 8, “Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold; for wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compared with her.”
If we want to know what wisdom looks like, reading all of Chapter 8 is a good place to start. Wisdom is concerned with knowledge, prudence, intelligence, truth, instruction, discretion and insight. Then, although your eyes may cross doing it, read Chapters 10-31 in which abundant values and virtues that lead to wisdom are listed, such as generosity, kindness to the poor, honesty in market relations, and fairness in the legal realm, especially for the disadvantaged.
A better understanding of wisdom also comes from considering its alternative: foolishness. Scohlar and theologian Walter Brueggemann, who died on June 5 and was a fount of wisdom, defines it in this way, “Foolishness is the assumption that we can do what we want and have what we want according to our money, power, and influence, without any check or restraint. Foolishness in the modern world is imagining that we are autonomous, and that without God “everything is possible. Foolishness is living as though God were not and as though wisdom did not summon.” (1)
Foolishness mocks wisdom with careless speech, assaults on the disadvantaged, indifference to the suffering, the quest for power through manipulation or violence, lack of a moral compass and shallow religious talk.
In his commentary on Proverbs 8, Doug Bratt quotes preaching professor Tom Long who wrote that Americans’ favorite and most-often quoted national proverbs cut against the grain of the biblical Book of Proverbs. Included are “Different strokes for different folks,” “Live and let live”, “To each his own,” and “Don’t rock the boat.”
Now, I’ll weigh in by saying that these “proverbs” have value in terms of the message that we should tolerate the opinions and behavior of others so that they will similarly tolerate our opinions and behavior. Also, it’s prudent not to do something that causes trouble or disturbs the harmony of a situation. However, each of these “American proverbs” can be distorted so that the principle they propose is negative. Dr. Long writes that they can “all boil down to is that one-word phrase which, though not a proverb, in many ways spells the doom of all biblical proverbs: the great postmodern verbal shrug of ‘Whatever!’” In other words, wisdom in the biblical sense need not be pursued because there’s finally no point to it. “Whatever!” And there’s no respect for living, talking, thinking that honors God and blesses people.
Quoting Dr. Long, “The Book of Proverbs offers a concentrated graduate course in the art of living. It is an education founded on the premise that life adds up to something coherent and good, stable and full of shalom because there is a Creator God who made each person and each thing. Further, God made each person and each thing to work in certain ways (and not in others) so that if everybody functions the way they were made to function, life would get webbed together into a marvelously complex, inter-locking system of mutual affirmation. There simply is a wise way and a foolish way to do most anything.” (2)
So it is that, as Dr. Brueggemann notes, “Foolishness is alive and well among us.” But foolishness need not prevail. Wisdom came first. (3)
And so wisdom continues to cry out. “Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live.” May our ears be tuned to hear, and our hearts to respond. AMEN
(1) “Walter Brueggemann on Wisdom (Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31” by the Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggmann, www.day1.org
(2) “Commentary on Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31” by Doug Bratt, 2026, www.cepreaching.org
(3) Same as #1