Words Without Knowledge

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

June 5, 2016

Words Without Knowledge

Selected Texts

For 35 chapters they talk.

They talk, and talk, and talk.

Job and his three friends,

Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.

They talk about God,

They talk to God;

They talk knowingly, assuredly.

For 35 chapters, Job complains:

“Why did I not die at birth?”;

“Though I am blameless,

God would prove me perverse”,

his friends responding to his complaints

that Job must have done something truly awful

that he just won’t admit to,

that Job is in what today we’d call denial.

On they go, words spilling out,

a torrent of words, back and forth,

all talking, no one really listening.

On it goes, until finally God boils over

exploding on the scene,

his voice booming,

the very ground shaking with God’s fury,

“Who is this that darkens counsel

by words without knowledge?”

(Job 38:2)

God heard their every word,

their every complaint,

their every response,

and it was too much,

too much even for the

infinite patience of the Lord God.

“Who is doing all this talking

without knowing what in heaven

he is talking about?

So much blather, prattle,

bloviation,

words, words and more words,

words without knowledge. ”

God aimed his anger most forcefully at Job,

confronting Job with his

shameful ignorance,

God firing off one question after another:

“Do you know?

Do you understand?

Tell me if you understand!”

God’s questions boring into Job,

burning right through him,

Job cringing,

shrinking with every question.

“Answer me,” demands God.

But Job cannot.

He sees that God is right,

that he has spoken without knowing

what he was talking about,

so many empty words;

just as God said,

words without knowledge.

God’s fury usually is unleashed for faithlessness,

for disobedience,

for idolatry;

but here God’s fury is unleashed at Job

for his blistering ignorance.

And finally, Job,

reduced to a puddle of a man,

squeaks out his response to God,

“I have uttered what I did not understand.”

(Job 42:3)

God has given us minds.

God has given us the ability to learn,

God has given us the ability to grow in knowledge

and through knowledge grow in wisdom.

And having given us the ability,

God surely has an expectation,

an expectation that we will learn,

that we will grow,

and that when we talk,

we’ll know what we are talking about;

that before we talk,

we will have done our homework.

The Word of the Lord in the

Book of Proverbs teaches us,

“An intelligent mind acquires knowledge,

and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.”

(Proverbs 18.15)

And, as is typical of the Proverbs,

there is a counterpart to that saying:

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding

but only in expressing personal opinion.”

Put another way, a fool takes pleasure in speaking

words without knowledge.

Certainly when we hear those words,

politicians and media talking heads come to mind.

But we know that from the very first false prophet,

religion has been fertile soil

for those who are quick to speak

words without knowledge.

And we know that we,

every one of us,

has had our own moments

when we’ve spoken words without knowledge,

when we have spoken words

that revealed no insight,

that revealed only our ignorance.

It is easy to talk;

learning takes work.

There was a reason that Jesus taught

through parables,

rather than by simply laying out rules,

rather than by posting his teachings

on a first-century listicle.

Jesus wanted us to think,

to learn,

to figure things out.

As our Lord explained it in the gospel of Matthew,

“The reason I speak … in parables

is that ‘seeing they do not perceive,

and hearing they do not listen,

nor do they understand.’

...For this people’s heart has grown dull,

and their ears are hard of hearing,

and they have shut their eyes;

so that they might not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and understand with their heart …”

(Matthew 13:13-15)

Krista Tippet, the host of the podcast

“On Being”

has just published a new book entitled,

“Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery

It is a book devoted to learning,

a book that helps us to understand

that learning leads to wisdom,

and wisdom leads to stronger faith.

Tippet writes that becoming wise

is so much more than

simply becoming smart.

We need to grow in knowledge in order to be wise,

but knowledge alone won’t make us wise.

Wisdom is knowledge applied in life

and through life.

Wisdom begins with words;

it begins with our being aware of words,

knowing when to speak;

knowing when not to speak.

Tippet writes,

“Start with the attention you give

to the words you speak.

This is one of the simplest things we do

every day all the time,

to realize what power our words have.”

Wisdom requires humility, as well,

humility, which she describes as,

“approaching everything and everyone else

with a readiness to see goodness

and to be surprised”.

To walk and live in humility

is to be open-minded,

which, sadly, has become such

a rare trait these days.

Humility is a recognition

that we don’t have all the answers;

that what we have – or should have –

is a readiness,

an eagerness to learn.

Wisdom helps us to understand

that the art of living

is not to find answers as much as it is

to live fully into the questions –

Tippet agreeing

with the German writer Ranier Maria Rilke.

And she goes on to explain

that when we live into the questions

we understand that wisdom is to be found

in the tension

between competing arguments,

in the interstices between the differences.

Through wisdom we learn that we were created

not just for ourselves,

but for community,

and not just the exclusive communities we create

through family, friends, church, social groups.

Wisdom helps us to understand that we are part

of God’s community,

all God’s children.

Through wisdom we learn to be

kind,

compassionate,

accepting,

forgiving,

loving,

embracing;

quick to listen,

slow to speak,

careful with our words.

“Where shall wisdom be found?

Where is the place of understanding?

…God understands the way to it”

(Job 28)

And God will show us the way,

the way to wisdom,

the way to understanding.,

so that when we do speak

we’ll have something worth saying.

AMEN