The city of Amsterdam – which I’ve only visited once, for a few hours – has many notable sights. There is of course the network of canals and I have to say, having done both, that a boat trip around them is slightly nicer than taking the Cardiff water-bus from Bute Park to Mermaid Quay! Then there is the architecture, the narrow but tall old houses that line the canals. You can visit the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh gallery; another popular attraction (if that’s the right word) is the house of Anne Frank whose diary of life under Nazi occupation is world-famous. There is an abundance of churches, chief among them being the Old Church and, naturally, the New Church, now only used for royal weddings and coronations, organ recitals and as an exhibition space. As you wander around, make sure you look out for the bicycles and trams!

But Amsterdam is famous – or perhaps infamous – for two other things, although they don’t attract me. One is the array of so-called coffee shops which offer not just the usual drinks but the chance to buy and smoke cannabis; strangely enough people aren’t allowed to smoke tobacco in them. And then of course there is the “red light district”, where “working women” as I think we’re now supposed to call them, display themselves in red-lit windows enticing customers to come and join them. Apparently even the liberal-minded Dutch are becoming uncomfortable with both the coffee shops and the blatant sex trade and moves are afoot to both close the coffee shops and move the women to a less prominent area.

Now you might be wondering why I’ve started today’s message by talking about prostitutes; indeed you may be shocked. After all, it’s not really a suitable subject for worship; even sermons on Rahab and the Fall of Jericho tend to emphasise her bravery but ignore what the two Jewish spies were probably getting up to in her house! But there can be no doubt about the woman we heard about in our reading, who we can conveniently call Madam Folly: she sits, all too visibly, in her doorway and shouts out to every passer-by (male, one presumes!): “You who are simple, turn in here!  Stolen water is sweet and food eaten in secret is delicious!”. Or, as “The Message” translation puts it: “Are you confused about life and don’t know what’s going on? Steal off with me, I’ll give you a good time. And no-one will ever know!”

If you were in church last Sunday you’ll remember that we looked at the first part of Proverbs 9, where Lady Wisdom invites people to her house-warming party. We noticed that wisdom is hard to define but we finally decided that it has something to do with the ability to use our knowledge sensibly and fairly; we also realised that the Bible talks about several kinds of wisdom including skill or craftsmanship, sagacity in making good decisions, the right interpretation of Scripture, and even cunning craftiness. And we also found out that the Bible doesn’t always make a clear distinction between Wisdom, God’s written Word or Law, and Jesus himself – which is a bit surprising, if Wisdom is seen as female!

That was last week’s passage; today’s parallels it very closely yet there are fundamental differences between them. For both Lady Wisdom and Madam Folly issue their invitations but, while Lady Wisdom is generous and refined, Madam Folly is loud-mouthed and brash. While Lady Wisdom has prepared a rich feast and wants the hungry to eat their fill, Madam Folly merely wants to drag men into her house for sex and profit. While Lady Wisdom cares so much for people that she sends out her servants to seek the most needy, Madam Folly just sits in her doorway hollering at passers-by (one can just imagine the lewd and suggestive language!). And while Lady Wisdom’s invitation gives insight and life to those who accept it, Madam Folly’s guests are dragged down to death and Hell.

But what is amazing to realise is that both ladies’ invitations are exactly the same – which rather proves the point that “it’s not what you say but how you say it”. For both of them say, “Let all who are simple come into my house!” or, more simply, “Come in, ignorant people!” But their motives could not be more different. For Wisdom invites people to eat wholesome food that will give them the resources they need to make good decisions when they are faced with the complex problems that life throws up; she will replace their naïve, even childlike, simplicity with mature insights. But Folly’s call intends to exploit that simplicity and take advantage of that naïveté: in today’s language it is nothing more than the headline of a scam that will fleece people and entrap them in its web. What’s on offer seems so tempting and attractive; the reality is very different.

It does seem to me that this passage is talking about personal folly and stupidity rather than foolish decisions that may be made by business leaders, politicians or football managers. Of course these – and other people – can make mistakes which are expensive, controversial or even deadly: for instance a business may see what looks like a gap in the market and spend a lot of money developing a new product only to find it doesn’t sell (yes, ‘Dragons’ Den’, I’m looking at you); politicians can send a country’s soldiers to war only to see them quite literally caught in the cross-fire; a football manager can decide to sell a player who seems to be surplus to requirements but then find the team collapsing because he was the invisible lynchpin. So these can all be fools: perhaps they were pig-headed and failed to carry out ‘due diligence’ before making their decisions, perhaps they were swayed by strident voices in the media or from their colleagues, perhaps they were poorly advised or they wilfully ignored some important issues that they’d been told about. However the sweet words being spoken and temptations being offered by Madam Folly seem to be a bit different: they are more obviously moral and personal.

At this point I’d like to return to what the Bible regards as the basis of foolishness. I said last week that it sees true Wisdom as something which is found in the Torah or God’s Law – which means that it comes from God himself. However, when you start examining Madam Folly’s foolishness, you soon realise that this doesn’t have any real foundation at all – or perhaps it’s based on nothing more than lust, greed and short-term satisfaction. So, according to this passage at least, the Bible declares ‘foolish’ people to be those who have no moral undergirding to their life, who are rootless and shallow, who live only for the moment and little more. Although the book of Proverbs is something like 3000 years old, I think that sadly seems to ring true for many folk today.

And I can go further. For, at its simplest, the Bible’s definition of a fool is a person who boldly declares that God does not exist, or perhaps who thinks they can do whatever they want without God noticing. I doubt that any of us would fall into that category, or be tempted by Madam Folly’s seductions. Nevertheless even Christians can be foolish: in fact our faith makes us susceptible to particular ruses that might be perpetrated on us: perhaps not the preacher who says “give generously to my ministry and God will repay you a thousand-fold” but possibly the email which arrives on our screens and presents a heartstring-pulling picture of children lost in poverty – yet which is actually the “cover” from some fraudster who is after our cash. And, even if we are too wily (or hard-hearted) to be taken in by this sort of thing, we must still ask ourselves how firmly our lives are grounded on Biblical principles and how well-developed is our moral compass. Rigorous self-examination might make us realise that we are more foolish than we thought!

Yet we serve someone who some would consider to be the greatest fool of all: Jesus of Nazareth. For he certainly did some very strange things: he entered Roman-occupied Jerusalem in a shambolic parody of a victorious King, he upset the Temple merchants by charging through their market like a whirlwind, he made a point of being rude to the religious leaders of his day, he offered no resistance to the unjust arrest which led to his execution. None of that makes sense – until it’s placed into the context of Jesus, the Son of God, coming to earth with the specific mission of speaking his Father’s words, demonstrating his justice, life and love, and being our saviour from sin. So much of that was (and is) utterly ridiculous in many people’s eyes: yet we believe (to quote St Paul) that God’s (apparent) foolishness is in fact wiser than human wisdom.

And it’s Paul who lays out the challenge that Christian people still face. For a commitment to follow Jesus will almost certainly require us making some decisions which will appear ridiculous to the worldly and successful; indeed, it may look as if we are flying into the face of reason as we adopt beliefs and values which are increasingly different to those held by people around us. Yet we believe that, in the Cross of Christ, we have found a wisdom which is deeper than that of the greatest human minds. We are not, I hope, foolish enough to fall prey to Madam Folly; but we are proud to call ourselves holy fools, fools for Jesus Christ.