Our Fool Town preaching series through Proverbs began this week… here is the run down:
Boston, our town, is one smart city. We do learning and knowledge and academia really well.
In a sense, you could called Boston America’s ultimate college town. Most college towns get that name because a single university dominates the city’s life, like in Happy Valley, South Bend or Amherst. But in Boston… there are nearly 100 colleges in and around the Hub. Liberal arts schools, business schools, teaching hospitals, research centers, institutes of technology, you name it, we got it. We are a college town with a capital C and a capital T.
People from all over the globe come to Boston to learn. Boston’s population swells every academic semester from about five to about seven hundred thousand. At any given time ¼ of our city is sitting at desks, reading in libraries, studying books, writing papers. Literally, the world is coming here to get wisdom.
When graduation day comes, lots of those folks return home, but many stay and make Boston their home. That means that we sport one of the most educated populations of any city in the world. Graduate degrees are like T-passes around here. Every body’s got one.
And it’s not just the college scene… this whole place is big on learning. Boston is home to the oldest public school district in these United States. Our commonwealth will spend over 8 billions dollars on elementary and secondary education this year.
No city has more people with more knowledge, spends more money with more programs on learning, than ours. Boston is a smart town.
And yet Boston is also a fool town.
With all of our learning, all of our degrees, all of our knowledge, we still lack wisdom. And that is because we, as a city, as a culture, refuse to come humbly and attentively to God saying, “You teach us what wisdom is. You teach us what it means to live wisely. You teach us what it means to live in step with your brilliant intentions for human life. You.”
Instead, we set ourselves up as little gods who are smarter than our Creator. We convince ourselves that we are wise. We can decide what is wise and foolish, right and wrong, desirable and contemptible.
We try to get wisdom without starting with God, and a city of scholars ends up a town of fools.
At Seven Mile Road, we are trying to break out of the well-worn Boston path of folly and walk a wiser one.
We ache for the blessing of God, and want to do life in a way that creates space for that blessing. We want to be a community that lives wisely, as God defines wise, in the midst of and for the good of Fool Town.
And so we’ll be preaching through the brilliant Biblical book of Proverbs, contrasting Boston’s folly with God’s wisdom, and seeking to allow Jesus’ Gospel to drive toward the latter.
Join us.