Hidden
Gems
“6.
Saving Paradox”
Proverbs
11:17-25
First
Presbyterian
The Reverend
Thomas A. Sweet
July 31, 2011
the
richer;
others
withhold what is due,
and
only suffer want.”
-Proverbs 11:24
I
was talking with one of our members this week about worship and told him I would
be preaching from the book of Proverbs. I
allowed that it is not typical to use the Proverbs as a preaching text and he
said, “At least they are not controversial!”
Well, maybe, though I am not getting into the one in our reading today
that says, “Like a gold ring in a
pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without sense.” (I think I’ll give
that one to Don to preach.)
You
have heard the aphorism, haven’t you, that says of an overly pious person – “He
is so heavenly-minded that he is of no earthly good”?
The book of Proverbs is an antidote to that danger.
It is a book of the Bible that
helps us to be of earthly good in our everyday lives.
It trains us to live in the spirit of God’s heart and hope for us.
The
book of Proverbs is an example of what is called “wisdom literature” in the Bible.
Wisdom has little to do with information or knowledge, per se.
Wisdom refers to the art of living well.
We all know smart people who are not too wise.
Wisdom is about being related healthily and gracefully to God and to
other people and even the earth. Wisdom
means becoming skilled and adept in honoring our parents and raising our
children, handling our money and using our means, treating people kindly, doing
things that make for peace. The
growth of wisdom in us is the pre-eminent way in which we can “glorify
God and enjoy him forever.” If
we do not accept as our primary task in life our growth in wisdom, our lives
always will be out of whack (to use that good technical term) and the sense of
serenity and contentment we desire even amid the inevitable tumult of our lives
will elude us.
“On earth as it is in heaven” we
pray every week in worship and the book of Proverbs counsels us in how to make
that prayer come alive in our lives. Proverbs
have little to do with some future heaven but rather the here-and-now, with our
lives in this world, with living into the flow of God’s rivers of grace and
love for this life. Listen to a few
of the biblical proverbs before we settle in on the one I have chosen as our
hidden gem of the week:
“Those who guard their mouths preserve
their lives; those who open wide their lips come to ruin.”
(13:3)
“No one finds security by wickedness,
but the root of the righteous will never be moved.”
(12:3)
“A cheerful heart is a good medicine,
but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.”
(17:22)
“The lazy person does not plow in
season; harvest comes, and there is nothing to be found.”
(20:4)
“Whoever pursues righteousness and
kindness will find life and honor.” (21:21)
“Do not rejoice when your enemies fall,
and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble.”
(24:17)
Just
a couple more. Do you see how they
have to do with the way we live in this life, on this earth, seeking to make of
us and it a heaven?
“Do you see persons wise in their own
eyes? There is more hope for fools
than for them.” (26:12)
“When one will not listen to the law,
even one’s prayers are an abomination.”
(28:9)
“Discipline your children and they will
give you rest; they will give delight to your heart.”
(29:17)
“Speak out for those who cannot speak,
for the rights of all the destitute. (31:8)
“Hatred stirs up strife, but love
covers all offenses.”
(10:12)
One
of the characteristics of many of the proverbs gathered in the Bible
is that they are paradoxical. A
paradox is a statement that seems contradictory or even absurd but in reality
expresses a truth. Or, alternately,
a paradox is a statement or opinion that is contrary to conventional wisdom.
In this latter definition, the proverb I just cited that tells us not to
rejoice when our enemies are defeated is contrary to commonly accepted attitude.
Witness, for instance, the reaction of many to the recent killing of
Osama bin Laden.
We
are not to rejoice because we all are children of God, and thus, family, and we
do not rejoice when members of our family fall.
Jesus said we are to pray for our enemies and when we pray for our
enemies out hearts cannot be glad when they stumble.
Gloating when enemies fall embitters
them and enjoins them to come back around another day.
Rejoicing over the fall of enemies does not make for peace and thus is
not in accord with the life shown to us by Jesus.
“No one finds security by wickedness,
but the root of the righteous will never be moved.”
Wickedness in the Bible
does not mean unrestrained evil but doing something that goes against the
grain of God’s ways. They are
legion who believe their security is to be found in wealth and weapons and
material well-being and who believe that trusting God for one’s life and death
is gross naivete. Because the wicked
so often seem to prosper while the righteous suffer, it is paradoxical to say
that our security is found in the One we cannot see rather than the things of
this world that we can see, but that is the crux of our faith and divine wisdom
for the long run.
I
have called the sermon today “Saving Paradox” because the paradox in the
Proverbs saves us from the often uninspired and uninspiring wisdom of the world.
Instead, it leads us into the spaciousness of divine wisdom that is the
most practical wisdom of all because it is in keeping, in harmony, in the flow
of God’s heart and desire.
So,
the featured proverb of the day:
“Some
give freely, yet grow all
the richer;
others withhold what is due,
and only suffer want.”
This
proverb is paradoxical because conventional wisdom counsels us not to give
freely but to be circumspect, wary, modest, frugal.
To give freely is considered in common wisdom to be “naïve,”
“injudicious,” “short-sighted,” and “ill-advised.”
And maybe it would be save for the presence of God and the way God has made his creation
and kingdom to work. So it requires
trust and the exercise of faith in God to live paradoxically; that is, to live
in keeping with the wisdom of the proverb.
Eugene
Peterson’s paraphrase of this proverb really hits the mark.
He renders it like this:
The world of the generous gets
larger and larger;
the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller.
(Eugene H. Peterson, The
Message, p. 1114.)
I
like that because, while I get it that many Christians believe that salvation
means “Jesus dying for our sins,” – taking our punishment for us for being
sinners and thus making us acceptable in God’s sight – I also know that is a
relatively recent interpretation of Jesus’ death.
It has cachet today because three or four hundred years is a long enough
time to make us think it always has been the regnant and authoritative
understanding of salvation. But it
hasn’t – not until the last half of the last millennium.
Jesus died because of his love for others – especially those whom
nobody loved – that he was unwilling to compromise in order to assuage the
principalities and powers of empire and world.
Jesus died because he was unwavering in his desire to show us a larger,
more expansive way of thinking, relating, and being in the world that threatens
those of a “small mind” way of life.
The
Bible and early Christianity through
at least the first eleven centuries until the time of Anselm of Canterbury
portrays salvation as entering into a divinely inspired spaciousness of which
our proverb speaks. You know how you
feel when you are crowded in somewhere and then find some breathing room.
You know how you feel when someone helps you to see a bigger perspective
on a problem or conflict in which you have been embroiled.
You know how you feel when you have been wrong about something and you
are granted mercy and forgiveness that sets you into the larger estate of grace
and freedom.
All
the good Bible stories speak of salvation as spaciousness, of living into the
expansive heart and ways of God. The
widow who gave what the Bible calls her “mite;” the prodigal’s father who
gave his son the space to “come to himself;” the Samaritan who helped an
injured man whose religion despised the Samaritan.
“Some
give freely, yet grow all
the richer;
others withhold what is due,
and only suffer want.”
So
the proverb is talking about more than money, though its principle certainly and
unequivocally applies to that part of our lives.
But what about praise? There
are some who seem to surmise that if they praise others they will themselves
suffer by comparison. So they
withhold their praise as a miser hoards his money.
And their stinginess leads them into a smaller, sadder life whereas those
who are profligate in their praise enter into the larger way.
There
was not long ago in our presbytery a recently retired pastor whose congregation
he had served for many years voted to bestow on him the honorific title of
“Pastor Emeritus.” A day was set
aside to bring him back to confer on him the title and to celebrate the
relationship that he and the congregation had enjoyed over many years.
It should have been a day of great joy and gratitude for who and what
they – pastor and people – had been and shared together.
But the succeeding pastor who seems to want to take the church in a
different direction was taciturn in her reception of him…no invitation for him
to preach that day, a muted ceremony, a reserved coolness.
I am sure that her smallness garnered her little good will from the
congregation and that she will pay for her poverty of graciousness for a long
time to come even if in subtle and subconscious ways.
For when you withhold what is due,
you only suffer want. Had the
succeeding pastor been able to be generous, her ministry would have grown all
the richer.
The world of the generous grows larger
and larger. Can
we be accepting and supportive of people of other religious traditions – those
of whom Jesus says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.
I must bring them also…”? Can
we rejoice with our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters when the state accords
their committed love the legitimacy and legal protections that heterosexual
people long have enjoyed? Can we
hold in our love, as Jesus did, those who fail and falter along the way?
There
are few days go by that I do not think of the prodigal’s father’s plea to
his eldest son who grumped and groused about the father’s generosity to the
prodigal-come-home. It helps me when
I find myself living in my small mind. The
father said, “Son, you are always with
me, and all that is mine is yours. Won’t
you come in to the party?”
That
great spaciousness is the salvation of which both our proverb and our Lord
speak. Do you want to be saved?
Then heed this paradoxical wisdom, this wisdom of God:
“Some
give freely, yet grow all
the richer;
others withhold what is due,
and
only suffer want.”
“Some
give freely, yet grow all the richer…”
Amen.
Copyright
© 2011 by First Presbyterian Church