Epiphany 4/January 28, 2024
Sermon by Chip Camden
Readings: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; I Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. Those who act accordingly have a good understanding."
You probably can't tell from the English translation that our Psalm for today is an acrostic poem. An acrostic begins each verse or phrase with a successive letter of the alphabet -- in the Psalms that’s the Hebrew alphabet. The verse numbering also fails to reveal that in this psalm the alphabetic progression is applied to each half or even third of a verse. Most acrostic psalms advance only one letter every whole verse, which provides more room to tie the meaning together from one verse to another. The more rigid formalism of today's psalm, while creating a simple, steady rhythm and a merciful brevity, limits the poet's ability to maintain any progression of thought. The result is a collection of largely independent aphorisms.
The last three of these aphorisms are contained in verse 10: for the Hebrew letter resh (ר): "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom," for the letter sin (ש): "those who act accordingly have a good understanding," and for the letter tav (ת): "his praise endures forever." The first two of these have a connected meaning.
First, let's look at "the fear of the LORD". The word translated as "fear" (Hebrew yir'ah יראה) encompasses our current ideas about fear but also includes "awe," "respect," or "reverence." I think the latter senses are more like what is intended here. The psalmist is not advising an existential dread of God looking over our shoulders, but rather a recognition of how much more wise and powerful God is, with the consequent deferral to that wisdom of our decisions on how to conduct our lives. When we do that, we "have a good understanding" as the next phrase says.
Our version says "the beginning of wisdom," which is a possible translation, but I don't think it's the best. It was no doubt influenced by Proverbs 9:10 which begins with a similar phrase: "the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom," but the word translated "beginning" is different in the two verses. In Proverbs, it literally means "opening" or "commencement."
In our psalm, it is the Hebrew word re'shiyth (ראש׳ת), which although it is the word used in Genesis 1:1 for "beginning" it is from the word for "head" and thus carries a wide range of meaning -- including "principal" or "highest." I believe the latter meanings are intended to be included in this verse. Reverence for God is not just how we start to grow wise, it is the pinnacle of wisdom.
In today's reading from Deuteronomy, one of the books of the law or Torah, we have an account of the institution of prophecy. The people fear to have God talk to them directly (out of a healthy reverence), and so God promises to raise up a prophet like Moses to speak God's word to them. Many Christian interpreters take this to be a prediction of the coming of Christ. The discussion at the end of our passage about false prophets and how to distinguish them, though, makes it clear that what is referred to here are the prophets who would come after Moses. Of course, Christ is the superlative fulfillment of that role, as well as many others.
That prophets would be necessary at all is a tacit admission that the law by itself is not enough to guide individual behavior. Discernment will be necessary to determine how God's commands apply to a given situation. As time goes by, the literal meaning of a commandment might even become antithetical to its spirit. The people of God must listen reverently to God's voice, instead of thinking that they already know what God wants from them.
In our gospel lesson, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum, and the people are "astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." The scribes interpreted the scriptures using the traditions that had been passed down to them, and they were mostly allergic to innovation. Perhaps that was due to a reverent humility on their part, but it could also lead to a prideful certainty that they knew exactly what the scriptures meant. Jesus, however, speaks with "authority." This word in the Greek is exousia (εξουσια), which has a broader meaning of having the ability or the right to act. It is sometimes translated as "liberty." In other words, Jesus is going off the scribal script. He's bringing forth new understanding about God's will. In this he is fulfilling the role of prophet as described in Deuteronomy.
In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, Paul spends a lot of time addressing a faction at Corinth that took their Christian liberty (exousia again) to extremes. "All things are lawful to me" (as quoted in I Corinthians 6:12) seems to have been one of their mottos. To which Paul replies, "but not all things are expedient." For Paul, what is expedient is what builds up the church community. Immorality is not helpful, because it is degrading to each other and to ourselves.
Factionalism is not helpful, because it is the antithesis of the love that we are to show one another. Paul does not deny that in Christ we have freedom from rigid legalism, but that freedom must be tempered by the wisdom of God for building up each other in love.
So, in the case of eating food sacrificed to idols, Paul acknowledges the Corinthians' freedom to do so -- concurring with them in their assessment that the idols do not represent anything to them that draws them away from God. However, there are converts to Christ who are not yet solid in their faith, who used to eat the sacrificed meat as an act of communion with the god represented by the idol. If they see other Christians eating that meat, they may fall back into their old practices and fall away from Christ. Here in the twenty-first century we might wonder why they couldn’t do both, but in the first century the associations with their former life would make it a stumbling-block. To engage in it in front of them would be like drinking in front of an alcoholic.
So Paul urges the Corinthians to constrain their liberty for the sake of others. It isn't enough to know what is true or false, right or wrong. "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him." See how Paul flips the table on knowledge. Rather than to seek to know, we should love and be known. Love is the key to discerning the will of God. The Way of Christ is about relationships, not knowledge: relationship with God and with each other. It is about humility in those relationships, acknowledging the limits of our knowledge and deferring to God's wisdom all of our decisions on how to conduct our lives.
"Reverence for the LORD is the summit of wisdom. Those who act accordingly have a good understanding." Amen.