"A Word to the (Un)Wise"

"A Word to the (Un)Wise"
Proverbs 13:20; 22:1


As I was thinking about this series of sermons we are embarking on for the rest of the summer, I thought about the phrase, “A word to the wise…”  It doesn’t make sense.  When we hear that phrase, it’s usually in the form of a warning to someone who’s about to choose something stupid.  As in, “It may not be a smart thing to go on a fishing boat in the gulf of Mexico if there’s storm warnings being posted.  Just a word to the wise.”

But, as I said, it isn’t a word to the wise.  It’s a word to the unwise.  Like the men who chose not to heed the storm warnings this past week, go out in a fishing boat in the gulf of Mexico.  The boat was capsized in 40 foot swells, and most barely escaped with their lives.  Seven are feared dead.

Somehow, there has to be a way to learn wisdom.  Wisdom is different from intelligence.  Some people are smart, but they aren’t wise.  A person needs both in order to live well.  To make good life choices.  To see not just the events of life, but the meaning and relevance within those events.

Just about every culture has a collection of wisdom that it passes on to its young.  Except maybe our own.  In the Asian cultures there are the sayings of Confucius or of Lao Tzu.  Such as, “Confucius say, A bird in the hand make it very hard to blow your nose.”  In the Hebrew, Middle Eastern culture, there is the book of Proverbs.  As I said last week, it is a collection of wisdom sayings that were passed from fathers to sons, and on down the line.  Proverbs is a summary of the great lessons that life teaches about how to best get along with each other.  Proverbs highlights the substance of what we need to emulate if we are to sustain ourselves positively for any length of time.

Where is the American culture’s depository of wisdom?  There isn’t any, if you stop and think about it.  But people are hungry for wisdom and common sense.  There were some best selling books, several years ago, by the title of Life’s Little Instruction Book.  The subtitle was, “511 suggestions, observations, and reminders on how to live a happy and rewarding life.”  In those little books you could find sayings like:
Make it a habit to do nice things for people who’ll never find out.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

Smile a lot.  It costs nothing and is beyond price.

Then there came out a couple of books titled, God’s Little Instruction Book.  They have wise sayings collected from a number of sources in the hopes of inspiring the reader to “live a happy and fulfilled life.”  Some of them are:
The measure of a person’s character is not what they get from their ancestors, but what they leave their descendants.

He who wants to milk should not sit on a stool in the middle of the pasture expecting the cow to back up to him.  (The person who said this certainly has no idea of what a modern dairy farm is like.)

Sorrow looks back.  Worry looks around.  Faith looks up.

God plus one is always a majority.  (Except if you’re Harold Camping)

A shut mouth gathers no foot.

And, to add to those two repositories of American wisdom--those little instruction books--we cannot overlook the back bumper of people’s cars.  Bumper stickers seem to be the only depository of wisdom in our culture.  Like:
Politicians, like diapers, should be changed often.  And for the same reason.

(on the back of a police car in Atlanta, GA) In God we trust--others we polygraph.

I don’t want buns of steel.  I want buns of cinnamon.

Don’t believe everything you think.

Tithe if you love Jesus; any idiot can honk.

If bumper stickers and cutesy little gift books are the best we can do to pass on our collective wisdom, maybe we need to borrow from one of the other sources.  My vote goes for the book of Proverbs.  It’s better than driving around trying to find a word to the wise on the back of somebody’s car.  Or going to the Chinese restaurant and opening a bunch of fortune cookies until you find a good one.

So I’m going to choose a couple of proverbs each Sunday to highlight.  Again, I would highly recommend reading the book of Proverbs yourself over the coming weeks for your daily devotional.  Read part of a chapter a day, and see which ones catch your attention.  Spend some time in prayer over the ones that God makes jump out at you.

The first Proverb I’ll look at this morning is 22:1, “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.”  Or, as the Message has it, “A sterling reputation is better than striking it rich; a gracious spirit is better than money in the bank.”

When hearing a proverb like this, a follow-up question came to my mind:  When does the choice between “great riches” and “a good name” come?  We may think that the answer to that question is when we are young adults.  That’s the point when we form our occupational identity and goals as individuals.  As young adults, we make decisions that set the stage for later on in life when wealth and reputation becomes solidified.  Or lost.

But the wiser answer is that these kinds of decisions come at many different times in our lives, in many different situations.  Certainly as young adults.  But also when we change jobs, when we get married, when we decide to have children, at mid-life, at retirement.

Everyone has a reputation.  Everyone has either made a good name for themselves, or a bad name.  Or a mix.  In spite of what happens to us, or because of what happens to us, we all have some sort of reputation.  When I was out in Leoti, in addition to working in a couple of churches, I also did some substitute teaching, and para educator work.  I started out sitting at the teacher’s table at lunch time.  But I got sick of hearing a few of the teachers rag on students.  Often, I’d hear comments like, “Well, you  know how Johnny’s father is.  Always been that way; always will.  Johnny’s the same way.”  I thought, Poor Johnny.  He’s got a father who has some kind of reputation and will never be able to live it down, apparently.  And now Johnny’s being branded with the same hot iron.  I couldn’t take listening to that, so I started eating with students at their tables.

A person’s reputation isn’t something gained overnight.  It’s formed over a period of time.  Often a long period of time.  As we demonstrate such qualities as trustworthiness, caring, industriousness, commitment, etc. we build our reputation.  We can also demonstrate the opposite of those qualities, and create another kind of name for ourselves.

General Robert E. Lee was approached after the close of the Civil War by a representative of a large insurance company.  The man offered Lee the presidency of the company, at a salary of $50,000 dollars a year.  That was a huge amount of money back then.  General Lee was out of a job, and he needed to earn a living.  But he stated, honestly, that he seriously doubted that his services were worth so much money.
“We aren’t interested in your services,” the insurance company board told General Lee.  “We only want your name.”
“My name,” Lee said quietly but firmly, “is not for sale.

My hunch is that Robert E. Lee was able to say that, because a long time before, and in several points in his life before, he intentionally decided to keep his reputation pure and his integrity intact at any price.

What is disconcerting is that it only takes a fraction of the time to lose a reputation as it does to build it up.  One compromise to the inner ogres, and all the bricks of integrity with which you have built your life vaporize to dust.  In Shakespeare’s play Othello, there is the line, spoken by Cassio to the evil Iago:
Reputation, reputation, reputation!
Oh, I have lost my reputation!
I have lost the immortal part of myself,
and what remains is bestial.

Iago’s response is to say that reputation is just a quaint notion, when he says back to Cassio:
Reputation is an idle and most false imposition;
oft got without merit,
and lost without deserving.

I’m sure Cassio, as well as anyone else who has lost a piece of their good name and reputation would beg to differ with Iago.  The wisdom of the book of Proverbs is to hold on to your good name with everything you’ve got.


The other proverb I want to highlight this morning may go along with the one about keeping a good name for yourself.  It’s Proverbs 13:20:
Keep company with the wise
and you will become wise.
If you make friends with stupid people,
you will be ruined.

The Message translates that last phrase with:
...hang out with fools
and watch your life fall to pieces.

Another way to say this proverb is to affirm the truth, “You are who you are with.”  It doesn’t matter how old you are on this account.  The mix of you with your friends and associates determines a lot about who you are, and what your reputation will be.

Influence is undeniable.  We are influenced by others.  The kind of influence others have on us will depend on the kinds of people they are.

Much is at stake.  The proverb states that depending on the kinds of people with whom we associate, we will either gain wisdom or we will fall into ruin.  A person’s life could become destroyed simply by the choices made in terms of our associations, relationships and friendships.  All that you are, all that you hope to be, can go down the sewer if you “make friends with stupid people.”

The province of Heraclea in ancient Greece was known for its honey.  It seemed the honey found there was sweeter than any other honey.  It also was told to bring a state of euphoria to those who ate it.  But the euphoria was brought on by the fact that the bees gathered the honey-making nectar from the aconite or wolfsbane plants--plants that happen to be poisonous.  The nectar of those plants is a cardiac and respiratory sedative.  If a person ate enough of that honey their heart would stop.

The same could be true of certain of our friendships and associations.  To eat of those relationships may seem sweet and bring us to a state of euphoria.  But in reality we are being poisoned by the covering sweetness and our ruin is sure.

The thing is, nobody makes the choices for us as to who we associate with.  It is up to us.  Each of us chooses our own friendships and relationships.  We, then, each of us, will reap the results of wise or poor choices in terms of our relationships.

I would add one additional thought here.  The influence goes both ways.  The proverb is not only a warning to look out for the kinds of people we gather around us, and who influence us.  It is also a warning to us that we need to be mindful about what kind of influence we are affecting on others.  This proverb forces us to look at and assess the kinds of influences we are having on those around us.

Each week I pick one of the Psalms and I concentrate on it, allowing it to guide my prayers.  The Psalm I’ve been pondering over this past week was Psalm 67.  I used a variation of it from a book called The Lyric Psalter.  Here’s how it goes:
Let us declare that we are the people of God
And that the weight of seeing is among us.
The nations will be sane, using our thoughts,
And our words shall penetrate beyond our guns.
We live upon the edge near the lordly lands,
And the world shall eat the harvest of our minds.

The Psalm has served, for me, to be a serious call to attention.  We are the people of God.  That is a large part of our reputation.  Christian is our name.  And by that name we are, by our faith and identity in God, the only sane voices in this crazy world.  The world has for too long been feasting on the harvest of the honey of Heraclea.  People are falling into ruin on our right and on our left.  It’s time to become influencers rather than just the influenced.  It is time that the world eat of the harvest of our Godly minds and lives.

A young woman was working as a night nurse in a hospital in New York City when they had that black out a number of years ago.  When she left the hospital at 1:30 a.m., the ordinarily well-lighted street was in total darkness.  Suddenly, a flashlight appeared in an upper-story window of an apartment near the hospital.  It shined down on her as she walked along the sidewalk.  As she was walking just out of reach of it’s friendly beam, another flashlight came on several windows over.  The lights from above continued appearing until she reached her apartment a few blocks away.

As you think about that story and this proverb, ponder how you are shining a light for others.  And whether the others in your life are leaving you in the dark, and aren’t the kind of people who would shine a light for you in your darkness.

“A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.”
Keep company with the wise and you will become wise.  If you make friends with stupid people, you will be ruined.