Proverbs 25 & 26
“Good Analogies”
October 12, 2014 - Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

         You don’t want to punt too soon or too often. Though I’m pretty indifferent to football, I watched enough of it in my misspent youth to know that a punt is how a football team escapes a desperate fourth down situation when they are pressed back into a poor field position. Rather than risk losing possession too close your own end zone, your center snaps the ball back to a kicker who dropkicks it as far down the field as he can. The other team takes possession, but you’re out of immediate danger.

         Beth and I have often noted that some Christians will do a sort of mental punt whenever their theology gets pressed. Questioned regarding the return of Christ, or how Jesus can be both God and human, or about the relationship between faith and works, they will punt. I mean they will say something like, “You know, that’s just more than anyone can know. It’s a mystery.” And that’s where the theological discussion stops. A punt to mystery drives any further questions off the field.

         God and His ways and even our own human lives are constantly baffling and mysterious. Remarkably, verse 2 of Proverbs 25 tells us that is the glory of God, “to conceal things…” And it makes sense. If God is truly the omnipotent, all-knowing creator of our vast universe, He and His creations will be too glorious to figure out by the time you are a sophomore in college or by reading some spiritual best-seller. We may expect that many, many things about God and ourselves will remain mysteries.

         Yet verse 2 doesn’t stop there. It goes on to say that while it is God’s glory to conceal things, it is “the glory of kings to search things out.” This new section of Proverbs begins back in verse 1 with the note that chapters 25 to 29 “are other proverbs of Solomon that the officials of King Hezekiah of Judah copied.” So the proverbs before us are the diligent effort of at least two kings who searched out “things” and caused their knowledge to be written down. They delved into the mysteries of God and the world and human life, and came up with wisdom to write down and passed along. They didn’t just punt and turn over the ball of understanding to mystery. They carried it as far and as hard as they could.

         Verse 3 celebrates the kingly mind, making it like God’s mind, unsearchably high as the heavens and as deep as the earth. Verses 6 and 7 warn us to be humble in the presence of a mind like that, not to put ourselves forward, but to wait for the invitation to come up to that level. Jesus said the same in Luke 14:10, repeating the wisdom of Proverbs.

         All this may rub us the wrong way, though. We don’t usually think of kings or political leaders in general as any smarter than the rest of us. In fact, we frequently feel quite free to critique their intelligence, their morals, their leadership, their dining habits, and any other personal traits we can find to pick on. In American democracy we’re taught that everyone of us is the equal of any king. So why should a king have more wisdom, more insight into the mysteries of God and the universe than anyone else?

         Here’s the thing. As Josef Pieper points out in his classic book, Leisure the Basis of Culture, it takes time and energy and resources to develop wisdom, to ask questions and seek answers, to sit down and just think. In ancient Israel and in many cultures there aren’t a lot of people with that kind of time and resources. Most people work all the time just to put food on the table and survive. Even today, exploring wisdom takes leisure time, time when you don’t have to balance the checkbook or change the baby or get the leaves raked up. Back then it was mostly kings who had that kind of time. So it was their special prerogative to search out wisdom.

         It was a king who had books to read, and materials on which to write, and other wise people around with whom to speak and explore a subject, and, once again, time for it all. Yet now you and I can go to the library and order books from Amazon and read all kinds of news and science and literature on-line. We can pick up a phone or pull over a keyboard and converse with people on the other side of the world. We have the time and resources and connections to seek wisdom in a way Solomon would have envied.

         Under the influence and progress of a past Christian culture which taught us that we are a kingdom in Christ, many of us have the leisure time to learn and explore the mysteries of life. Like Adam and Eve, we are meant to rule and learn about this world as well as about the God who made it. It’s no longer just the glory of kings to search out that kind of wisdom. It’s anyone’s glory who will actually take up the quest. Of course, there’s the point. Most of us, and I include myself, don’t use that time well.

         Like the lazy person Proverbs constantly warns us about and who shows up again in chapter 26, verses 13 to 16, we like to think with all our information and resources we are already wise. So we spend our leisure watching television or playing video games or just snoozing in the recliner, and again I totally include myself in all those activities. But it’s not all our fault. We may have “leisure” time, but the pressures and demands of work have robbed us of the mental and physical energy it takes to think seriously before we ever get there. We have time, but we’re exhausted. So we click up Netflix and zone out in front of our favorite show or sports event.

         We have this royal privilege and Christian calling to seek wisdom, but it takes a royal effort to guard the time for it, whether it’s a few minutes a day to read Scripture or a couple hours a week to discuss a book with friends, or a week of vacation where you allow yourself unscheduled time just to quietly contemplate where you stand with God and the world around you.

         Even when we give it time, there is one more hindrance to finding wisdom today. It’s our modern notion of what wisdom is. For a few hundred years, we have soaked up and been saturated with the idea that the only solid, real wisdom comes from what we now call “science.” Even Christians are pretty convinced that the only knowledge worth having comes in the form of facts solidly grounded in evidence gathered by careful observation and experiment. Real understanding can always be stated in clear, literal, evidence-based statements of fact.

         Scientific understanding works very well. We want the FDA to test the medicine we take and prove it effective. We want our cars to use proven, safe technology. We want phones and microwaves and pacemakers to have been designed by people who gathered facts and run the numbers and made sure it all functions. What we don’t always get is that there are other kinds of wisdom and knowledge about this world and about God and that it won’t all reduce to the theorems and numbers of science. Science can tell us a lot about our universe, but it cannot tell us the purpose of our universe or our own purpose in it.

         That’s why a great deal of human wisdom is couched in non-scientific language. It’s why reading and telling stories or listening to poetry or even watching plays and films can teach us a great deal of wisdom. Because God and His universe and our own hearts and minds are deep and mysterious, we often learn and speak about them in language that is not literal and factual, but is full of images and metaphor.

         Thomas Aquinas explained that, because God is so much greater than we are, even the words we use to talk about Him will have different meanings than they usually do. They will take images we do understand and help us to grasp mysteries we can’t completely understand. We say God is our Father, but we know that He’s not exactly like our biological, human father. We say God is our Creator, but we know He didn’t make us in the same way that a woodworker makes a chair. In the 23^rd Psalm this morning we said “The Lord is my shepherd,” but we don’t go looking for his shepherd staff to reach down and grab us. Thomas said that the things we say about God are analogies. They are word pictures which say something totally true about God or about His creation, but not literally.

         Scripture is filled with analogies that let us grasp deep and mysterious truths about God and about ourselves. These couple chapters of Proverbs, 25 and 26, happen to be chock full of similes or metaphors or, I would say, analogies (and I’d be happy to hear an English major give me some clear explanation of the difference) which offer us insights into the mysterious business of human life and interaction.

         Many of these proverbs fit the dictionary definition of a simile because in English they use the word “like” to make their comparisons. But not all of them use the preposition which signals “like” in Hebrew, so perhaps they’re just metaphors. But they all use the fundamental characteristic of analogy. They teach us with a picture that corresponds to the truth and reality of things, of life.

         These analogies are often entertaining. Remember I said last week that the verse in chapter 24 which directed us to eat honey is balanced out by chapter 25’s verse 16 which warns that eating too much honey will make you vomit. The point is not about eating too many carbs. It’s verse 17 which compares the sweetness of honey to visiting your neighbor. She may enjoy your company in small doses, but too much is going to make her hate you.

         Analogical wisdom is abundant in these couple chapters. Verse 19 compares a bad tooth or a lame foot to the pain of trusting someone who is not trustworthy when you need them. And verse 20 aptly says that trying to cheer up a person with heavy sorrows by singing them happy songs is like pouring vinegar on an open wound. It just makes them hurt more.

         What we’ve got here is all about finding ways to say truth about human relations in a way that will motivate us to change. You can hear a psychology lecture about the grieving process and an explanation of how cheery songs or platitudes will only aggravate a person’s pain at certain stages of grief, but that seemingly plain scientific talk won’t help you get what’s needed as much as the wince you feel when you imagine the sting of vinegar in a cut.

         John 1:1 tells us Jesus Christ our Lord is the Word and that world was made by that Word. So it fits really well that the spoken and written word is still how God reveals truth to us, both about Him and about our lives. If you want a key verse it’s there in Proverbs 25:11, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” When we find the right words to say a thing, we’ve gone a long way toward searching it out, toward understanding it. And the right word at the right time in the right place is like the perfect setting for a piece of jewelry, like a diamond in the perfect engagement ring.

         Jesus taught us to love our enemies and He told us stories like the Good Samaritan to help us understand what that means. And when it came time for Paul to pass along that teaching he borrowed the analogy here in chapter 25 verses 21 and 22, that image of feeding and caring for your enemies being like coals on their heads. The analogy helps us get hold of the true power of Christian love.

         The pictures, the analogies are not really optional. We need them to really get it. We need to see, we need to feel the truth of it all. We could talk all day here about the work of the Eugene Mission and you might get some idea of what’s going on there. But when a dozen of us actually walked around the place yesterday and saw the clean beds and smelled the good food and heard the greetings of people being served there it was entirely different. That was a literal picture which helped us grasp God’s work. And we need word pictures, analogies, as well, if we want to know and understand God and ourselves.

         There is not enough time this morning to work through each of these funny, beautiful, powerful and convicting analogies. There are many images in the first half of chapter 26 about the frustrations of dealing with people who are foolish. Unseasonable snow, the flitting around of a bird, and even a little corporal punishment all appear.

         Then verses 4 and 5 give contradictory advice about how to answer foolishness, but they are only exploring this business of finding fitting words, making us think about each situation carefully. Whether or not you try to talk a person out of foolishness depends on choosing the right words for the circumstances. But verse 11 is a classic and disgusting image to remind us that even if we get a fool straightened out, such person will often go back to foolishness like a dog goes back and eats its vomit.

         I’ve already mentioned the verses about laziness which follow the verses about foolishness. Then starting in verse 17 there some analogies about the human vice of quarreling with each other. That verse is a truly apt “apple of gold,” a vivid image of taking a stray dog by its ears as a warning against meddling in other people’s quarrels. As a pastor I wish I could take that more to heart sometimes.

         The last few verses use more images, like a glazed pot in verse 23, to warn us against hidden wickedness in others. But then we get several verses of reassurance that evil will have consequences for those who do it. God is just and justice will be the end of the story.

         Jesus’ story in our Gospel lesson from Matthew 22 starts out with an analogy about the consequences of declining an invitation from a king. When a king invites you to a family party like a wedding, it’s smart to go, because you don’t want to be on the bad side of someone who has life-and-death power over you.

         We could say here as we read Proverbs that our King and Savior is inviting us to a feast of wisdom, a feast of those golden apples by which He teaches us to love Him and love each other. It’s a foolish move to decline His feast and ignore all these analogies teaching us how to love and relate to each other.

         The wedding feast in Jesus’ story is more than just advice for getting along with each other. It’s God’s offer of saving grace through the death and resurrection of His Son. It’s an invitation to receive His forgiveness and accept new life in His kingdom. The wedding feast is an analogy of that invitation, and Jesus told us to act out that analogy all the time by sharing a feast together which itself is a picture and analogy of how He saved us. We come together to share bread which shows us the broken body of Jesus and a cup which tells us His blood was shed. And that best of all analogies keeps inviting us to come to Him, to receive, to learn His deep and mysterious wisdom by which the universe is run.

         So let’s not ignore the similes and metaphors and analogies by which God speaks to us, by which He invites us to learn His deep things. It’s in and through those words, those pictures, that He comes to us, that He calls us back to reality and the truth. And it’s in the living and visible Word who is Jesus Christ that we will live forever.

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2014 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj