September 10, 2006
Text: Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Ground
Rules
Something has always told us that there is a fundamental difference between “wisdom” and “book-smarts.” It’s certainly not unusual to find both residing in the same person, but most of us have known some really stupid smart people, as well as some wonderfully enlarging simple sages. So what’s the difference? My sense is that if the former represents the accumulation of vast pieces of information and knowledge, the latter reflects the ability to take whatever one has learned – through formal education, simple observation and experience – and connect it with the daily business of getting by and getting along. The wise may not know all the facts and details and scientific underpinnings, but they have some handle on the truth.
I remember the first time I met the property chairman of a church I had just been called to serve. This was the guy in whose hands would be held oversight and maintenance not simply of the church building, itself, but also the house in which I and my family would be living. And I was not optimistic. With the rarified air of seminary still in my lungs and intoxicating my ego, I saw this guy as a country rube for whom base functionality would be the standard. I could already picture it: “pretty good” would inevitably be “good enough.” If something worked, it wouldn’t need improving, no matter the clunking noises it made along the way. There we stood on the front porch desperately trying to discover a common vocabulary, him in his overalls and me in my sport coat and tie. Yin and Yang. My fountain pen to his Big Chief tablet.
But in the years to come, Jack would become to me a confidant, an “elder” in the finest sense of the word, and a friend. I can’t think of a single time he called or stopped by to pick my brain, but couldn’t count the times I asked for his advice, his help, his counsel. I was a pretty smart guy – especially back then; but Jack was wise.
Wisdom, as I say, has some almost instinctual feel for truth – for the way things are and the way things ought to be. The wise have this ineffably reliable sensibility and judgment and insight. And while most of us have a Rolodex full of names to call for information or services to help us navigate the details of life, we only have a few we keep returning to with questions about the nuances and choices of living.
Wisdom is less about the number and variety of the bricks in our personal wall of knowledge than it is about the footings and foundation on which that wall is built. Wisdom is the reinforced aggregation of values and beliefs, disciplines and habits, meanings and perspective. And if the book of Proverbs is any indication, wisdom isn’t simply something you have or you don’t; wisdom can be grown.
Last week we spent some time in that section of the Hebrew Scriptures known as “Writings,” in a book of romantic poetry attributed to King Solomon. And whatever qualifications for writing a book of romance he may have earned from experience with his 200 wives, Solomon also had a reputation for wisdom. According to the account of his ascension to the throne in 1 Kings, Solomon began his reign with a profound sense of humility, and when God inquired what Solomon might ask for by way of divine blessing, Solomon replied, “You have made me king, although I am just a kid. Here I am in the midst of all these people – your people – expected to lead and govern. What I’m going to need is an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?”
In other words, Solomon pleaded for wisdom, and God liked that. After all, the king could have asked for money or fame or military victory. Instead, he had prayed for wisdom. So God approvingly replied, saying something like, “You have done well, Grasshopper. And because you haven’t been selfish in your prayers, I’ll not only give you the wisdom you asked for – such as no one has ever equaled before you or after – I’ll also give you the riches and honor for which you didn’t ask.”
Almost immediately, as if on cue, two women approach the throne in a contest over a baby. Both claimed to be its mother. One was obviously lying. It would be the perfect opportunity for Solomon to show off his barely unwrapped divine wisdom. “Tell you what I’ll do,” Solomon replied. “I’ll just slice the baby in two and give each of you half.” Immediately the real mother cried out in compassion, “Please, my lord, give her the living boy; certainly do not kill him!” The other said, “It shall be neither mine nor yours; divide it.” Then the king responded: “Give the first woman the living boy; do not kill him. She is his mother.” And according to the story, “all Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered; and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him, to execute justice.”
We shouldn’t, then, be surprised to find a book in the Bible representing itself to be the gleanings of this astounding mind. And whether or not it really does come from that famous throne room, or just someone trading on Solomon’s name, the book is an interesting collection of bite-sized nuggets. There isn’t a storyline here; just words of counsel that often bear more resemblance to Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac than other books of scripture. Biblical scholar Eugene Peterson describes them as the “on earth as it is in heaven” part of Jesus’ prayer. Perhaps moreso than any other book, this bundle of aphorisms and teachings focus squarely on “the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves…honoring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our sexual lives, going to work and exercising leadership, using words well and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthily, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes toward others that make for peace. Threaded through all these items is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do.”[1]
Proverbs, then, collects together some of the ground rules for faithful living. How, in other words, should all this play itself out in the nuts and bolts, nooks and crannies, gardens and gullies of everyday life? In this morning’s verses, the focus is on the wise person’s understanding of people, underneath the various surface distinctions that seem to carry so much weight.
I have a friend who used to lobby for a ban on all makeup, hairdryers and fragrances at church camp. After a couple of days, he argued, the more attractive and the less attractive would start to even out, and the superficial distinctions would begin to fade. I don’t think he’ll ever get his way, but the sage behind these proverbs wants to help us develop the very kind of vision that sees beneath such artificial stratifications.
Here, the particular spotlight is shined on the issue of money – poverty
and wealth; having it, getting it, and the mystique that often surrounds
it. Unlike other biblical warnings, the
teacher here has no apparent beef with money, as such – just with our tendency
to imbue it with meaning and status and merit.
The truth, he asserts, is that underneath it all, people are
people. “Rich” and “poor” are not two
distinctively created species, but rather brothers and sisters whose
circumstances have taken them down different roads. Keeping in mind our fundamental similarity
ought to keep us from wielding our wealth as a weapon, or cowering behind our
poverty like an invalid. The rich and the poor have this in
common: the Lord
is the maker of them all.
And God, according to this wise one, is paying attention to how we treat each other. Five years ago tomorrow, we got ourselves out of bed and on our way into a day we expected to be like any other. But almost immediately that expectation disintegrated along with the World Trade Center Towers in New York City. And from the dust of that destruction we have coughed our way through every day since. Fear, defiance, grief and anger – perhaps most of all, anger: we’ve felt them all.
But perhaps most toxic in all the aftermath of 9/11 has been the deepened entrenchment of the view that it’s “us” against “them.” Whatever one feels about the “War on Terror” that has pressed our military might into Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq, of greater concern is the way our “us-ness” has festered a malignant and punitive discrimination against an entire religion and race of “thems” in that public “gate” about which the passage speaks.
In literal, biblical terms, the gate was that sturdy entryway into Israelite cities where the elders of the town would gather like a small claims court to hear rival claims and render judgments on right and wrong. And the writer knows how easy it is to disadvantage the already disadvantaged. But in larger ways, the gate stands for that court of public opinion – the collective “common mind” where, again the passage understands, not everyone is always treated justly.
In the deepest, truest sense, the wise one wants us to know, it isn’t finally “us” against “them.” There only is an “us” – rich and poor, primitive and advanced, eastern and western, Muslim and Christian and Hindu and Jew and all those other more superficial characterizations that tend to wedge us apart. We all have this in common: the Lord is the maker of us all. And God is watching the care we take with one another – the poor, the disenfranchised, our enemies as well as our friends.
A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches.
Our integrity, spiritually wrought and
relationally practiced, is worth far more, in other words, than any financial
or military upper hand.
Those who are generous are blessed,
for they share their bread with the poor.
Blessed, in other words, are those who have the wisdom to understand that
we are in this life together, and the integrity to know that we are not finally
measured by the coins we have stacked, the defenses we have erected or the
length of life we have ensured, but the justice we have defended and the lives
we have touched with honor and grace simply because they are children, like
ourselves, of God.