September 27, 2009
(Proverbs 1
“When I was a boy of
fourteen,” says Mark Twain, “my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to
have the old man around. But when I got
to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”[1]
Ah, the wisdom of parents.
Eugene Peterson rewords a portion of this morning’s text this way
Though some may find it has
its flaws.
What if your parents weren’t
there for you when you were a child?
What if their advice was less than helpful? What if the biggest lesson you learned from
mom and dad was “do as I say, not as I do”?
If it takes a village to raise a child, we recognize in certain cases
that the rest of the village has contributed rather more than the parents
themselves. But I’ll bet we can each
remember someone who taught us the ropes, someone who helped us learn to
navigate life when we were young. So if
it wasn’t your parents, I invite you to call to mind this morning a person at
whose knee you were offered wisdom. I
invite you to recall the people from whom you learned the most as a child. If they were God-fearing men and women, if
they did their best to model justice and fairness in their lives, if they
exhibited those classic characteristics of wisdom—understanding and insight and
discernment—then they are precisely the kinds of people Proverbs would have you
think of when it urges you to “wear their counsel like flowers in your hair,
like rings on your fingers.”
I was fortunate as a child –
and still am – to have parents who are a tremendous source of good advice. Among other family lessons I’ve taken to
heart
A proverb has
been defined as “a maximum of meaning in a minimum of words.”[2] And many of the biblical proverbs seem to
have originated at home, in families and clans.
You hear these little tidbits of advice and sense that they were passed
along through the generations, father to son, grandma to grandkids. Over the dinner table, in the marketplace,
around the campfire at night.
You know the type. “A bird in the hand is
worth two in the bush.” “Money can’t buy
you happiness.” “Never order spaghetti on a first date.”
It’s great
fun, by the way, to discover a cross-cultural proverb or two along the way,
since of course there are parents and grandparents in every region of the
world, passing their wisdom along. I
imagine there is a subset of family wisdom that varies widely from
Ah, the wisdom of parents .
. . Still, what does it mean to elevate this kind of wisdom to the level to
which it’s been raised here in Proverbs?
I can’t get this across without a little Hebrew lesson, but the word
translated ‘instruction’ in ‘hear, my child, your father’s instruction’ is mitzvah, or commandment. And the word translated ‘teaching’ in the
phrase ‘your mother’s teaching’ is actually the word torah, more often translated law with a capital L. What’s going on here? Sure these are all helpful lessons, “but
where is God, exactly”[3]
in advice like “always wear clean underwear?”
The biblical Proverbs are a
mixed bag in this regard, too.
Interspersed with those profounf lines we were reading last week about
the fear of the Lord being the beginning of wisdom (Prov 1
The earthy sayings really pile up around
Proverbs 26-27. Proverbs 26
Skipping ahead to verse 14
“Like
somebody who takes a passing dog by the ears is someone who meddles in the
quarrel of another.” (Prov 26
“Like one who shoots deadly firebrands and arrows is
one who deceives a neighbor and says, ‘I am only joking.’” (Prov 26
Verse 27 of the same chapter
And in the next chapter, “The sated appetite spurns
honey, but to a ravenous appetite, even the bitter is sweet.” (27
And finally, Proverbs 27
(Amazingly enough, this, too is the Word of the Lord
. . . )
If you’ve ever feared the Bible has
its head in the clouds, Proverbs may be just the right book for you. But
whether these kinds of sayings strike you as deeply insightful thoughts, or
simply as an indication that the sages had a good sense of humor, you might
well wonder what this kind of thing is doing in the pages of Scripture. These Proverbs “sound more like good sense
than good faith.”[5]
I mean, elsewhere in the Old
Testament we read of the salvation history of the people of Israel, the
magnificent acts of God on their behalf, we read of the gift of the law, the
Torah, at Mt. Sinai, we read the words of prophets and priests and kings. In the gospels we read about the life of
Jesus, his miracles, his parables, his death and resurrection. The apostle Paul treats the great
fundamentals of Christian doctrine in his letters. And the book of Revelation is about cosmic
battles between the forces of good and evil.
When we turn to the book of
Proverbs, we suddenly find ourselves reading about table manners. About financial planning. About how to act around your boss. About how kids should behave toward their
parents and how parents should treat their kids. “There is nothing particularly religious
about a lot of Proverbs.”[6] So it becomes clear right away that if this
book is going to speak to us theologically, if it’s going to teach us something
about God and how we are to live as God’s people, it’s going to do so in a
radically different way from the rest of the Bible.
Again, one of the great
contributions of biblical wisdom is the importance it places on human
experience. That’s part of what makes
the wisdom books so fresh and relevant even in a 21st century setting. Sure, some of the advice is dated – the
wisdom teachers loved to go on about the dangers of chasing after loose women,
for instance; that’s their favorite illustration of foolishness. And they certainly favored forms of parental
discipline for children we’d never be comfortable with today. But many of their words are remarkably easy to translate into new settings because they are
based in life experience, gleaned from the pooled wisdom of real men and women
living in the real world. And in some
instances, their words require no translation at all – we hear them and immediately nod our heads
What a gift to find this
stuff in our Bibles! What fantastic news
it is that God cares not only about the grand sweep of cosmic history but about
all those normal, everyday things in our normal, everyday lives. Jesus modeled it too, didn’t he? Solving a catering crisis for an unnamed
couple getting married in a tiny little town called
We have a God who is bigger,
wiser, more powerful than our minds can comprehend and who cares when our dad is sick, when our kid is nervous about
the first day of school, when we’re facing a tough deadline at work. We have a God under whose watchful eye
mountains and oceans and whole galaxies have come into being, and whose joyous laughter can be almost
audible when we arrive at a long awaited graduation, or celebrate a birthday
with a bunch of good friends, or appreciate the first time our baby sleeps
through the night. That’s what Emmanuel,
God with us, is all about. In addition
to the fact that God is here,
always and everywhere, God’s also ‘been
there’. I imagine God-in-Christ
whacked his thumb with a hammer while working with his dad in the carpentry
shop, we know he went to parties with his buddies, and watched his best friend
get sick and die, and I feel certain he learned plenty of good sense at his own
mama’s knee.
What are all these earthy
sayings doing in our Bibles? They are
there because “good sense” and “good faith” aren’t mutually exclusive. They are there because God cares about our
everyday lives, and it matters how we live them. They are there because in the real world,
where the rubber of our theology hits the road, we need wisdom that’s as
concrete and practical as it is inspiring.
I don’t know about you, but
on the average day, I’m not usually faced with a sea that needs parting. Most days I don’t wake up expecting to
deliver an oracle from God to a king, or suit up in shining white armor for an
all-out battle against the guys in the black hats. But I might very well be faced with a
situation at home or at work in which some good old fashioned proverbial wisdom
might be just what the doctor ordered.
Sometimes I find it in the pages of the Bible, sometimes it comes in an
e-mail from my mom or dad. Proverbs reminds
us that it can be equally God-given either way.
What fantastic news it is
that God cares not only about the grand sweep of cosmic history but about all
those normal, everyday things in our normal, everyday lives. God-with-us in an
extraordinarily ordinary way. Amen.
[1] In The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain, edited
by Alex Ayres (New York, NY
[2] Twain’s definition of a maxim in The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain, p. 147.
[3] Barbara
Brown Taylor, sermon on Proverbs 31 at Plymouth Congregational Church in
[4] Attributed both to Mark Twain and to Abraham Lincoln, according to Ayres, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain, p. 5.
[5]
[6]