First Presbyterian Church of
100 North Hillcrest Boulevard
Telephone numbers: (310) 677-5133 Fax (310) 330-8342
Electronic mail: PRESBYTS@SBCGLOBAL.NET
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Rev. Suzanne M. Swartz
Proverbs 1:1-20
Graduation Wisdom
Today
is one of those very special days in the church year when we celebrate an
honored group of people in our congregation: our seven graduates. To do that, we are veering away from the
lectionary, going back about 3,000 years to the Old Testament time of King
Solomon. We’re going to talk about Wisdom. Perhaps in this time honored classic
scripture, our graduates will pick up a gem or two to take with them into the
next stage of their lives. I hope that
the rest of you may find a new outlook on life by studying and applying these
Proverbs to your particular situation at the present time.
The
Book of Proverbs is all about wisdom; wisdom is its key word. King
Solomon wrote most of the proverbs we find in this book between 970 and 931
BC. He was famous in all the
neighboring nations for being the wisest of all men, and is said to have
composed 3,000 proverbs and over 1,000 songs.
The word “Wisdom” relates to skill; the word “instruction” relates to
discipline. No skill is perfected without
discipline and when a person has skill he has freedom to create something
beautiful.
Webster’s Dictionary defines wisdom as “the quality of
being wise; having good judgment.” Wise
as an adjective is “showing keen perception, balanced, common sensible,
judicious, level-headed, rational, reasonable, sage, sane, well-founded, and
well-grounded. Having or showing a
clever awareness and resourcefulness.
Astute, canny, knowing, slick, smart.
Having or showing profound knowledge and scholarship. Learned, lettered, scholarly, marked by
comprehension.” Wow! I think we’d all agree that to become a
person who possesses one or two of these characteristics would be something to
strive for – to be said to have more than a few of them would be the ultimate
compliment indeed. Proverbs are God’s eternal wisdom put in short,
pithy sayings for us to enjoy and from which we can prosper. If you have questions about your life, such
as “What is God's will for my life? How can I be a wiser Christian? What should
I teach my children? What are the priorities of a godly life? How should I
treat others? How can I get ahead on the job?”, perfect answers to these and
other questions are found in Proverbs.
Some very wise people charge $500 or more an hour to authoritatively
help you answer these questions. But here is God's inspired wisdom by King Solomon,
the wisest king who ever lived, free of charge! What a glorious blessing, if we
will study and apply them! To do that
we will seek to interpret these Proverbs exactly as the Holy Spirit intended,
apply them as broadly as they should be, and look for a New Testament
application and sign of our Lord Jesus Christ in each one.
Now many of you may not realize that wisdom is a
quality which was always personified with female. In the Bible, Wisdom was a woman who always
led men to God and goodness. In
Proverbs she stood at the crossroads calling out, urging Israel to follow her
ways so they would have quiet, secure lives.
She is more valuable than silver, gold and pearls and her paths led to
contentment and length of days. She was
to be called sister and dearest friend, and was the source of riches, honor,
justice and virtue. Wisdom has
protected and brought to the Lord all who followed her from Adam to Noah, to
Abraham to Lot, to Jacob to Joseph, and to Moses.
Daniel Wolpert writes that “Wisdom, that powerful feminine
figure of the book of Proverbs, is one of the great spiritual leaders of the
bible. She is the master worker who
with God creates the world. She lifts
us out of simpleness and calls us to walk in the way of insight. Part of learning is understanding the
commandments, but more important, coming to recognize the paths of wisdom in
making choices in our everyday life.
The many ways show us how the wise and the foolish act when confronted
with common choices we all face everyday.”
http://www.ccel.org Proverbs are highly compressed, carefully crafted words of
wisdom designed to stick in our minds and to engage us in thought. They are found throughout the Bible. In 1 Kings, Chapter 20, for example, we
read, “Tell him the one who puts on his battle gear should not boast like one
who is taking it off.” That might be
translated today into something like, “Don’t count your chickens before they’re
hatched.”
Proverbs
may very well exist in every culture. We have many proverbs in our
culture. I bet if I read just the first
part of these, you can all chime in with the remainder:
“A stitch in time ...
saves nine.”
“Don’t cry over ...
spilled milk.”
“Don’t throw the baby
out ... with the bathwater.”
“Don’t put all your eggs
... in one basket.”
Various Native American tribes have their own proverbs that
probably won’t be as familiar to you.
Ponder these:
Don't be afraid to cry.
It will free your mind of sorrowful thoughts. - Hopi
It is better to have
less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hand. - Apache
All plants are our
brothers and sisters. They talk to us and if we listen, we can hear them. -
Arapaho
When you were born, you
cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world
cries and you rejoice. - Cherokee
Multicultural proverbs offer interesting insights into the
universality of wisdom. In Heather
Forest’s book Wisdom Tales From Around the World, she invites us to look
at proverbs creatively and imagine the story the proverb suggests. Try these on for size:
Every kind of animal can
be tamed, but not the tongue of man. (Philippine)
He who asks a question
is a fool for five minutes. He who does
not ask a question is a fool forever.
(China)
A blow passes on, a spoken word lingers. (Yiddish)
To hide one lie, a thousand lies are needed.
(India)
Many proverbs promote generosity and compassion toward the
poor. In fact, we find a number of
proverbs that indicate poverty may be superior to prosperity in some
circumstances. Proverbs 28:6, for
example, says “A poor person who walks in his integrity is better than one who
is perverse in his ways even though he is rich.”
Proverbs is certainly a book for parents to use in the
education of their children. It is also instructive to parents regarding their
responsibilities as parents and teaches us that wise people in the Christian
community have an important role to play in the education of their children.
Keep in mind that the method employed in the Book of
Proverbs is very similar to the teaching method employed by Jesus. Matthew 13 says “Jesus spoke all these
things in parables to the crowds; he did not speak to them without a parable.” Proverbs 1:6 teaches us how to discern the
meaning of a proverb and a parable, the sayings of the wise and their
riddles. Here we’re given clues.
The Greek translation of the word “proverb” is in fact a
transliteration of the Greek word for parable.
Several times the Septuagint actually chooses to render the Hebrew word
for “proverb” with the Greek word for “parable.” The proverbs are like parables in that they provoke people to
thought, and they create vivid mental images of truth.
At the very outset of the Book of Proverbs, the reader is
challenged to choose one of two “ways.” While wisdom has many different
dimensions, in the final analysis, wisdom is a spiritual matter. It is a “way”
that one chooses, leading to life.
Here wisdom cries out publicly, inviting the naive to come
and to learn from her. In the broadest
of terms, Proverbs sums up all of life in terms of just two “ways,” two paths –
the “way of wisdom,” leading to life, and the “way of folly,” leading to death. Each of us is on one path or the other. Each of us make decisions about whom we will
believe, about whose authority we will respect and whose instructions we will
obey. Each of us is on a path, and the
only way we can know the outcome is because God has told us where each path
leads. The most important question we will ever ask is, “What path am I on?”
The New Testament has a very specific answer. In Proverbs,
the way of life is the way of wisdom. Wisdom is personified in Proverbs 8, and
it is not difficult for the New Testament Christian to see this to be fulfilled
by our Lord Jesus Christ. In the New Testament, Jesus is absolutely clear about
the “path” we must be on to obtain eternal life: Jesus himself is the incarnation of wisdom.
The Proverbs to the youth are equally clear: obey your parents; avoid bad company; seek
wisdom and the benefits of wisdom; be kind to others; avoid the wicked; keep
your heart; be faithful to your spouse; avoid surety (that means debt); and do
not be lazy. I think that’s very sound
advice from almost 3,000 years ago, don’t you?
Some of you were around this church when H. Stan Jones was
a member. Stan wrote a wonderful book
you may not have heard of entitled “Quality of Life: Achieving Balance in an
Unbalanced World.” It’s a very good
book in which he talks about eight areas that are essential to living a
balanced life: family, community, career, finances, health, leisure,
spirituality, and our focus for the day, education. I asked Stan if I could share some snippets from the book with
you today and he said “by all means.”
Stan says, “the more you know, the more you realize how much more there
is to learn.” Learning starts at birth
and continues until death. It happens
sometimes when you least expect it.
Today there is a need to develop a larger concept of
education– it’s not just what happens in a classroom setting. Every activity teaches a lesson. A portion of your time should be devoted to
keeping current with worldly events or to further your standing in the world
through education. Part of the value of
education is learning to keep your peripheral antenna aware. Education can and should be ongoing.
Another Chinese proverb says, “When the student is ready,
the teacher will appear.” That teacher
could be a mentor, boss, friend, child, or relative. Do you have such a person in your life? Was it your 8th grade math or English teacher? Or maybe you were somebody’s mentor one day
and now someone new needs you to teach them what it is they want to learn
during their earthly lifetime.
Most children want to learn, and often it isn’t until they
are taught otherwise that learning becomes more of a chore or requirement than
a fun and fulfilling experience.
Involvement in your children’s education is one of the finest gifts you
can give them. They observe the way you
live, your attitudes, prejudices, likes and dislikes. Have you ever thought about what you are teaching them
when they are in your presence and not in the classroom? It’s just as valuable an education.
Education gives great enjoyment to life. A broad liberal education requires students
to study subjects they might not have chosen voluntarily such as arts and
literature. While knowledge and
education may not change the way you look, it may change the way you look at
the world. John F. Kennedy once said
“The human mind is our fundamental resource.”
The President of Harvard said “If you think education is expensive, try
ignorance.” College graduates will take
in almost a half million dollars more over a lifetime than a non-college
graduate. If that’s not an incentive to
stay in school, I don’t know what is!
But I do have a word of caution: It’s much better to love and enjoy what you do than to dread
getting out of bed each morning to go to a job you can’t stand. It’s far more important for a person to be a
happy meat cutter or truck driver than a well educated, wealthy but unhappy
fool.
If you are longing to get back in the classroom, in the
short term you can sign up today for our upcoming Vacation Bible School and
engage your mind as we gather all together to study the Noah’s Ark story from
Genesis. This is an intergenerational
VBS where the kids will teach the elderly folk some new stuff and vice
versa. Come and join us and stretch
your mind. In the long term you can
take correspondence courses, go to a trade school, begin as an apprentice or a
volunteer somewhere. There are evening and
weekend programs as well as classes during the day. Most universities have continuing education courses or online
courses. For the older returning
students there are a multitude of support programs to make the transition back
to school easier. You can attend
seminars, audit college classes, or rent audiotapes from the library to listen
to while you’re driving. “Knowledge is
power and lifelong learning truly is the path to a better life.”
Always remember that an education isn’t how much you’ve memorized
or how much you know. It’s about being
able to differentiate between what you know and don’t know, and knowing where
to go to get the information you don’t know.
In
closing I leave you with a quote from Stan Jones’ book. Amelia Earhart once said, “some of us have
great runways already built for us, but if you don’t have a runway built for
you, build one for yourself.” Today our
graduates have runways in their sights that are exciting and promising. It is my sincere hope and prayer that they
feel the Holy Spirit inspiring them as they soar down those runways. And I hope you go out and build yourself a
runway from which you can soar. Perhaps
some year soon we will be celebrating your graduation. Amen.