Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 04 Nov. 2012
and 614 Warehouse Mission, 07 April 2018
and 614 Warehouse Mission, 07 April 2018
By Captain Michael Ramsay
The passage today would be a wonderful teaching pericope on wisdom. Ellen F. Davis has referred to the book of Proverbs as a series of short haikus or poems.[1] If we had more time or if this was a class that I was teaching rather than a homily, I would actually have us all writing haikus about wisdom before its conclusion but since it is not I won’t make us write haikus… about wisdom. I will still let us each try to write a haiku but it can be about anything you want. You each have a pen and paper so I’ll give us each a chance to see how we do. Now so that we all know what we are doing, we will look at a few sample haikus to start us off today. First, can anyone sum up for me roughly, what is a haiku? A haiku is a short Japanese poem that often has 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third line; and the last line is supposed to make you think about the first 2 lines in a whole new way. I am going to have at least one person read out the haiku that we each write here; so be prepared - think about it. Here are some examples for us by Udiah:[2]
The Rainbow (Gen 9: 8-17)
after summer's rain (5 syllables)
God's promise is remembered (7 syllables)
glorious rainbow (5 syllables)
The Tree of Life (Gen 3:22)
Partake of The Word (5)
The Tree of Life, Jesus Christ (7)
And live forever (5)
I’ll give everyone a moment to come up with a haiku and when you have one ready that you are willing to read out, put your hand up. Let me know. Here is one that Sarah-Grace and Susan shared with me earlier this week that I think sums up haikus quite nicely.
Haikus are easy
but sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator
but sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator
Davis writes that, “like a haiku, [Proverbs] does not require a lot of scholarly explanation.” She states, “Biblical proverbs represent language in its most condensed form. Their stock characters are the wise and the foolish, those who yield to wickedness and those who practice righteousness.”[3]
Today we are taking a cursory look at verses 13-18 of Proverbs 3 and we can read this passage as a series of haikus or as one poem about Biblical wisdom.[4] Before we do this though, who can tell me what is wisdom? Holman Bible Dictionary refers to it as ‘the art of learning how to succeed in life’ or ‘study of the essence of life’ but ultimately “wisdom comes from God (Proverbs 2:6). Thus though it will involve observation and instruction, it really begins with God and one’s faith in Him as Lord and Saviour (Proverbs 1:7, Job 28:28).”[5] In basic language, wisdom is the ability to discern God’s will and action in our lives and the world. It is the way to figure out how to live our lives. This is what Proverbs is speaking about: how we can decide in what way to live our lives.
With that in mind, we are going to re-read our pericope and we are going to listen to this short poem on wisdom and let’s see what we can discern about how to live our lives. Let’s read our poem from Proverbs and see what it says about wisdom:
Blessed are those who find wisdom,
those who gain understanding,
for she is more profitable than silver
and yields better returns than gold.
She is more precious than rubies;
nothing you desire can compare with her.
Long life is in her right hand;
in her left hand are riches and honour.
Her ways are pleasant ways,
and all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her;
those who hold her fast will be blessed.
What strikes us about this poem? What does God say about wisdom and how we can actually figure out what’s important about how we should live our lives? In the first verse, the author of Proverbs says that this wisdom is pretty important (v.13). Making our life decisions by God’s wisdom rather than by our own whims and fancies or by our own pocket books or by any other means (v.6); the poet says this is more profitable than silver, yields better returns than gold, and is more precious than rubies (vv.14-16).[6] Following God’s wisdom, he says is pleasant and she, wisdom, leads to peace not to war (v.17). Godly wisdom – look how the poem concludes - Godly wisdom is a tree of life for those who take hold of her; those who hold her fast will be blessed (v.18). We remember the Tree of Life from Genesis 2-3 (cf. Revelation 2:7; 22:1-21; cf. also Proverbs 11:30, 13:12, 15:44): the one that in order to protect it, God threw Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden before they could of eat it. This Tree of Life, our proverb says today, is wisdom. The fruit of the Tree of Life is relying on godly wisdom to make our choices.[7] Wisdom that comes from the Lord leads to this fruit of everlasting life.
We should pause and think about this for a moment. Godly wisdom is so important: it is what leads to the everlasting Tree of Life. It is a key to eternal life with Christ Jesus our Lord. Knowing that godly wisdom is this important, we should reflect: In 21st Century Canada, do we generally seek the wisdom of the LORD in making our life choices? In making our daily decisions, do most Canadians pray and read the Bible? Does the majority in our culture and society reap the available benefits of Christ, the Tree of Life, and everlasting life through making our decisions based on Godly wisdom; do we reap the available fruit of the Tree of Life by praying and reading our Bibles – or do we make our decisions in other, lesser ways that do not lead to this everlasting life?
What are some of the ways that 21st Century conventional Canadian society can tempt us to make decisions? There are a lot of ways, many of which we have addressed from this pulpit on more than one occasion. But, for our purposes today, we will just concentrate on one rival to wisdom and the Tree of Life. How do many in our culture decide: what cars to buy? What movies to see? Where to eat? What new gadgets to buy? What brand of cereal to try? What is one way that Canadians these days often decide what products are popular and what we should spend our money on? For those who watch TV, what is it that interrupts the shows every few minutes? Commercials: advertising has a great influence on us all. Just think about how much money the Americans have spent just this past week on election ads alone: I understand that the two sides down there have spent more than 4 billion dollars this year on advertising. In the journal article by Ellen F. Davis, which we have already cited today, she tells us this story that I find quite interesting:
A few years ago I was invited to lead a day-long workshop at a church in Beverly Hills; to my surprise, the requested topic was Proverbs. It was early autumn, and the day dawned crystal clear and slightly cool, perfect for being in the garden, at the ocean, or on the hiking trail. I therefore expected a small and likely reluctant group to turn out for the workshop: the planning committee and a few loyal friends, perhaps. Yet surprisingly, the room filled, and people became so engaged with the topic that I had to insist they take a break. "Tell me," I asked, "where does all this energy come from?" Immediately someone responded: "Oh, most of us work in Hollywood. We write commercials and advertising copy. And when we were in training, they told us to read Proverbs." She smiled a little self-consciously before continuing: "But now I see that most of what we write is aimed at the people Proverbs calls 'fools.'"
If more professors of Bible and homiletics had seen what the advertising industry has seen, we would doubtless hear and do more preaching on Proverbs, and it might be some of the most helpful preaching in the church. Both Biblical proverbs and advertising slogans are designed to speak directly into the heart of a culture, to ordinary people in their daily lives. With just a few words, they epitomize certain core values, and if they catch on, they become a powerful way of communicating those values…
The most telling point of correspondence between biblical wisdom and the advertising industry is that both are directed toward shaping and stimulating desire: more people should want something they do not yet have, or else want more of what they already possess. So a proverb and a well-crafted advertisement are both forms of the poetry of acquisition.
And these poems of acquisition, these advertising sound bites are very effective as shown by how memorable they are. Capitalists have discovered the ancient secret of the proverb and they are using it in the service of Mammon. Let’s take a look here and see how good they are at it. Here are some examples from some old ads; let’s see if we can associate these sayings/slogans with their products:[8]
a) “breakfast of champions”,
b) “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands”,
c) “Takes a lickin’ and just keeps tickin’”,
d) “Finger lickin’ good”,
e) “Plop, plop; fizz, fizz; oh what a relief it is.”
f) “Don't leave home without it.”
The ad executives know what the ancient scribes of antiquity knew and what we, as readers and doers of Scripture, should remember. They know that these short little sayings can easily convince and that once we are convinced of them, they can remain with us for a lifetime.
This is what Proverbs is all about. This sequence of short poems is like a series of quick commercials enticing us to try Wisdom –instead of money, or our own desires, or anything else. It is like a series of short commercials enticing us to try Godly wisdom as a means to Salvation through Christ Jesus our Lord. For the Christian, the new and the old believer alike, as we immerse ourselves in these Divine advertisements, these Scriptural proverbs should come rushing to our minds as quickly and as easily as any of the capitalist ones that we have mentioned today. That is a point of Proverbs. The proverb is the wise sound bite of antiquity and Proverbs has some great lines that we should remember as easily as any product slogan or TV jingle.
Let’s re-read our text, Proverbs 3:13-18 for a third time today and let’s picture it as that TV commercial interrupting our regular life’s programming for a moment. Picture with me as I am reading this ancient commercial for Wisdom here, that there is a person sitting on a beach in a lounge chair and then another person climbing a mountain followed by another person sitting at their desk managing their investments – maybe flipping from scene to scene here and there as we have sentimental music playing in the background. Picture this ancient ad for Salvation with God’s Wisdom:
Blessed are those who find wisdom,
those who gain understanding,
for she is more profitable than silver
and yields better returns than gold.
She is more precious than rubies;
nothing you desire can compare with her.
Long life is in her right hand;
in her left hand are riches and honour.
Her ways are pleasant ways,
and all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her;
those who hold her fast will be blessed.
As the last words of the announcer are being spoken, the TV screen then fades to black with only the silhouette of the tree remaining.
Proverbs is like a collection of antiquity’s greatest commercials and finest poetry combined to point us to the glory of God’s wisdom and salvation. And our text today reminds us that as we gain wisdom, as we make our decisions based on praying and reading our Bibles that our life will be a lot different. It will make a lot more sense.
We know this; so my question for us today is, do we pay even as much attention to Proverbs, the Bible’s poetic commercials for wisdom as we do to the ads on our televisions? Do we pay so much attention to the Bible’s advertisements for wisdom that we just want to rush out and get that eternal life from the Tree of Knowledge that God has provided for the whole world? …Or do we just skip over these Devine commercials that point us to the eternal Tree of Life?
My encouragement for us this week then is this. I encourage each of us to read and re-read Proverbs, enjoy the sayings like we enjoy our favourite poems or our favourite TV commercials; let us run them over and over again in our minds like we do a well-written jingle. Proverbs are as artistic as any poetry and Proverbs are as effective as any ad; so let us take a break today from life’s regular scheduled programming, let us read through these Heavenly Haikus and then let us, in response to them, let us -at the next opportunity, let us if we haven’t already - let us acquire for ourselves what Proverbs is advertising: the eternal wisdom of the Tree of Life that leads to Salvation in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Let us pray.
---
[1] Ellen F. Davis, ‘Surprised by Wisdom: Preaching Proverbs’, Interpretation: a Journal of Bible and Theology 63 no. 3 (July 2009): 265
[3] Ellen F. Davis, ‘Surprised by Wisdom: Preaching Proverbs’, Interpretation: a Journal of Bible and Theology 63 no. 3 (July 2009): 265, 266.
[4] Katharine J. Dell, ‘Proverbs 1-9: Issues of Social and Theological Context’, Interpretation: a Journal of Bible and Theology 63 no. 3 (July 2009): 238
[5] Harry Hunt, ‘Wisdom and Wise Men’ in Holman Bible Dictionary. Editor, Trent C. Butler, (Holman Bible Publishers: Nashville, Tennessee. 1991), 1412.
[6] Derek Kidner, Proverbs: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1964 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 17), S. 62
[7] Alan P. Ross, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Proverbs/Exposition of Proverbs/II. A Father's Admonition to Acquire Wisdom (1:8-9:18)/E. Admonition to Follow the Way of Wisdom in Relationships With God and People (3:1-35)/3. Commendation of the way of wisdom (3:13-26)/a. Wisdom the most valuable possession (3:13-18), Book Version: 4.0.2. But cf. Roland Murphy, Proverbs. (WBC 22: Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, 1998), 22
[8] a) Wheaties, b) M&Ms, c) Timex, d) KFC, e) Alca Seltzer, f) Amex
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