The Beginning of Wisdom -- Proverbs 1:1-7, 20-33 (7th Sunday After Pentecost)
- Scott Clark
- 2 days ago
- 10 min read
Here, at the beginning of the Book of Proverbs – as Proverbs opens its exposition of wisdom, we find this statement, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, of learning, of wisdom.” [1]
Wisdom begins.. with fear of the Lord.
It should not surprise anyone that “the fear of the Lord” is not one of my go-to phrases from the Bible. I am more a “grace-abounds” kind of guy. I doubt that you have ever heard me encourage you or discourage you about anything by invoking “the fear of the Lord.”
For starters, I’m much more likely to say the “fear of God,” not “Lord.” The Hebrew word translated there as Lord is actually better translated God. And, the word “Lord” images God as masculine. We are committed to expansive language for God – so that people of all genders can see themselves as made in the image of God. So, for starters, let’s say “the fear of God.”
But then there is the “fear” part. I think we are rightly cautious of anything that might evoke that pervasive image in our culture – of a vengeful, abusive, punitive God. A God to be feared... like that.
Imaging God as a violent abuser – one just waiting to rain down punishment on our heads – has done so much damage down through the centuries. That is not the God we know in Jesus Christ, the one who suffers with us on the cross, who enters into every bit of life, even death, and who brings us out into life, and liberation, and love – the one who saves us from everything that does us harm.
Like some other progressive Christians –maybe like some of you – I have a visceral reaction to the phrase “the fear of God.” And, in the past, when I’ve come to the “fear of the Lord” in the Hebrew Scriptures – I probably have used less... fearful ways of translating that Hebrew word, like “reverence of God,” or “respect for God,” or “awe of God.” "Reverence" of God is the beginning of wisdom.
Those alternatives aren’t completely wrong, but they also are not complete. Something gets lost in those translations.
And so I remember what my friend Professor Yolanda Norton once said to me – Professor Norton – friend of this church – a Black Womanist scholar of the Hebrew Scriptures. She was going to preach in chapel, and we were working together on the service, and she said, “Now don’t you translate “the fear of the Lord” out of the Bible.” She reminded me that Scripture is written for marginalized people who have been harmed by the powers. God’s word is a word of liberation. The powers – and all who are complicit – do need to “fear” the God who is bringing down the powers, and lifting up the vulnerable. Because things are going to change.
“The fear of God” is a serious motivating phrase in the Bible. It doesn’t occur just once – it’s one of the ways that folks in Scripture articulated their experience of God, again and again. That Hebrew word for fear – yare – it is used to describe what we would think of as fear – fear of external threat, fear of enemies, fear of violence. Fear is what Adam and Eve experience when they find themselves naked in the garden – vulnerable. It’s what Joseph’s brothers experience where they are vulnerable before the brother that they have wronged. It encompasses bodily and emotional fear.
And this Hebrew word yare also does carry with it a sense of awe.[2] When Moses comes down from the mountain glowing – the people are in awe of God. It is used when people face the unbelievable – when Sarah hears that at 90 years old, she’s going to have a baby, and laughs. She experiences yare – fear, awe, wonder.
The fear and awe of God is connected to God’s power to deliver the people from their deepest troubles. It’s what Pharaoh, and Moses, and the people experience as God leads the people out of Egypt into freedom. Centuries later, Nehemiah will speak of the fearsome – awesome God who brings the people out of captivity from the Babylonian Empire.
This fear of God/ awe of God – it’s connected to following the will and way of God. Remember the midwives a few weeks ago – Shiphrah and Puah – they defy Pharaoh and preserve life – because they... “fear God.” Wandering in the desert, the people eventually find their way out by following God, grounded in the fear and awe of God – the one who can and will deliver.
And the Psalms – well, they just overflow with... all of the above – fear of God, awe of God, reverence of God, again and again. When armies encamp against me, I will not fear them. I will fear no evil, for God is with me. Let all the earth fear God – let the world stand in awe. We will fear God, and put our trust in God. And our fearsome, awesome God will answer us with deliverance, with freedom, with life.[3]
The “fear of God” that is the beginning of wisdom is this: It is the settled awareness that God is God, and that we are not. God is God. God is good. The “fear of God” – the “awe of God” – is the call to take God seriously, and God’s goodness, and God’s steady will that the world be set right.
Wisdom – as we’ve said before – wisdom is “ways of living that lead to more life.”
Across cultures, down through the generations, that is a fundamental longing – part of what it is to be human – we seek to find ways of living that lead to more life.
Wisdom begins in the awareness that God is God. And that God is good. And, God has baked God’s goodness and God’s wisdom into creation. Wisdom is there at the beginning, there in our experience of Jesus Christ, and alive in the world now. [4]
We meet Wisdom in this morning’s Scripture reading – personified as Woman Wisdom – shouting in the street – like a passionate street preacher. She calls aloud. She raises her voice. How long will you love your foolish ways, and refuse to choose the ways that lead to more life? She sounds... irritated. But maybe we know what it’s like to look around at the world – maybe turn on the nightly news – and wonder – why do we keep choosing such foolish ways? Wisdom reminds us that the choices we make matter. That there is something at stake. Wisdom invites us to choose.
With Wisdom, God honors and empowers our capacity to choose – our agency[5] Though life and the world are often bewildering, and there is so much we cannot control, Wisdom recognizes that God gives us agency to figure things out – to learn together – to live together, and as we live, to find together the ways of living that lead to more life. Wisdom is alive in the world... calling. Every bit of creation and our experience of God’s world is worthy of study. Wisdom begins in the awareness that God is God, and then encourages us to live our lives from there.
Wisdom affirms that we can learn, and not only that, we can pass on what we learn from one generation to the next.[6] The Book of Proverbs is a catalog of concise statements that convey truth – learned by one generation – in the hope that it will be useful to the next. I bet each of us can think of folks who have shared their wisdom with us.
A couple months ago, we were talking about death and impermanence, and I mentioned my friend Hattie Mae who would often say, when our visits were coming to an end: The best of friends must soon be parted. She was saying that even the closest of friends are human and finite – our time together is precious. The wisdom of that sobering truth helped me live each moment of our friendship more deeply – with love and gratitude and joy. Because our moments are few.
I quote the Rev. Dr. Jane Spahr all the time. As I’ve seen traveled with her, as she has proclaimed the gospel of God’s love for all people (including LGBTQIA+ people like me), I’ve heard Janie say wisdom things like: “I will not be bifurcated.” When I first heard it, I had no idea what she was saying. But over time, I watched her live that wisdom out, with more life opening up every time she said it, and lived it out. Don’t let the world ask you to be something you’re not – to be one thing inside, and one thing outside. Don’t let the world tear you in two. “I will not be bifurcated.” That’s some wisdom. Or, as I’ve come to say: “Be abundantly you.” That’s some wisdom too.
In our Wednesday morning Transition Support Group, we’re reading a book you may know: Kitchen Table Wisdom.[7] In that book, the author Rachel Naomi Remen sets out to share, in brief vignettes, wisdom she has gleaned over her life and her practice of medicine. She tells one story of how, as a young doctor and med student, she struggled with perfectionism that she could trace back to her childhood. When she was growing up, she says, if she came home with a test on which she got a 98%, her father – who had high expectations – would ask, “What happened to the other 2%?” Later in life, she came home one day and announced to her partner that she had received a perfect score on her driving test. Her partner was an artist, with a broader perspective – he looked up in love and said, “Why would anyone want to do that?” Over years of living a less than perfect life – as we all do – she says she discovered that real love isn’t earned – or as she puts it: “Real love is unconditional... anything else is just approval.” That’s wisdom – letting go of the need for perfectionism, so that we can live our imperfect lives well. Ways of living that lead to more life.
In a bewildering world, we can be left to wonder: Where is God? Wisdom posits that God is everywhere – in every bit of creation – present in the lives we lead. Wisdom insists that God is calling out in the streets – beckoning us into ways of living that lead to more life – God, at the ready, “at the very heart of human activity.”[8]
So maybe this week, one thing we can do is just take a minute – take a few minutes – and think back. Think back to people in our lives – all the way back to childhood – think of the people along the way who have impacted our lives for good. Imagine what it is like – or what it was like – to be in their presence. What have you learned from them? How have they changed your life for good? Maybe you will remember words. Maybe it will be wisdom beyond words. Remember. And take time to savor being back there with them. And of course, give thanks.
A few weeks ago, Rev. Nancy led us in a two-part Sunday seminar on discernment. (The seminars are posted on our YouTube page – and they are worth watching and watching again.) In the second session, Nancy suggested we think of touchstones– remembering people and places and experiences where we have experienced what felt like grace or God. She encouraged noticing – noticing our experience now – and testing it – Does this feel like those remembered and deeply felt moments of grace? Or in the language of wisdom, does this feel like one of those ways that leads to more life? Wisdom begins with the settled awareness that God is God, God is good, and that God’s goodness can be found in all creation – in every bit of life.
I love that we are talking about wisdom on this day where we are ordaining and installing folks as deacons and elders. Wisdom and discernment – they are things that we do together – we learn together. I’m also aware that we are doing this as we’ve encountered a COVID speed-bump. Think of the things we have learned together over the past 6 years – these new ways of being together that transcend physical distance and the forces in the world that work to keep us apart. These ways of living that lead to more life. We are living them now.
I love that we’re talking about wisdom as we are on the threshold of our season of renewal and sabbatical – and I wonder what new ways of living we will discover in your time of renewal, in my time of travel and learning – new ways of living that lead to more life.
There’s a second scripture – later on in Proverbs that I wish I had included as a second reading. Along about chapter 8, Woman Wisdom reappears.[9] Her invitation isn’t quite as pointed: Listen for I have worthy things to say. I love those who seek and find me. Wisdom has built her house. She has prepared a banquet. Wisdom shouts out: Come. Come and feast. Come walk in the ways of understanding. I, Wisdom, have been with God from the beginning – at the birth of creation – and from that moment until now I have been filled with delight – day after day. Come, feast with me, follow me, in the ways of living that lead to more life.
The beginning of wisdom is the fear and awe of God – an honest awareness that God is God, and we are not; that God is good, and trustworthy, and present in every bit of this world; and that God invites us to experience God there – here – together, to live and to learn. That’s where wisdom begins – and then, the way of wisdom opens up in delight, in love, in life.
© 2026 Scott Clark
[1] For background on wisdom literature, the Book of Proverbs, and this text see Richard J. Cliffor, S.J., “Introduction to Wisdom Literature,” New Interpreters Bible Commentary, vol v (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997), pp.1-16; Song-Mi Suzie Park, Commentary in Connections, Year B, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 2020), pp.301-03; Megan Fullerton Strollo, Commentary on Working Preacher, at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-24-2/commentary-on-proverbs-120-33-6 ; Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “The Book of Proverbs,” New Interpreters Bible Commentary, vol v (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997);
[2] See Park, p.302.
[3] See Psalms 23, 33, 34, 46, 56, 65, 68, and more.
[4] See Clifford, p.11.
[5] See Clifford, p.9.
[6] See Clifford, p.8.
[7] See Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996, 2006).
[8] See Megan Fullerton Strollo, supra.
[9] See Proverbs 8-9.