Proverbs 15 "When Less Is More" Scott Hoezee

Two weeks ago tomorrow one of the first Monday morning emails I got was from a member of this congregation who had some very nice things to say about the first three sermons in this series on Proverbs. Mostly, this person wrote, it has been good to get more of a bird's-eye view on this entire book. This is especially appreciated, he said, since every sermon he'd heard from Proverbs until now consisted of a very long Scripture reading after which the preacher would zero in on just one verse, just one proverb, and then make some applicatory observations on it. I appreciate feedback like that more than I can say. However, imagine my startled chagrin when, right after reading that email, I swivelled my chair around to the desk to begin work on this sermon, only to discover that the plan for this message was to read the entire chapter of Proverbs 15 and then zero in on just one of the verses!

In truth, however, it is not difficult to discern why so many sermons from Proverbs end up taking that form. Proverbs 15 is a classic example of how most of this biblical book goes: what you get here is a long list of aphorisms strung together like a strand of pearls. There is a jumbled-up quality to these verses as you swing from a typical proverb about the prudence of the wise to a brief saying about putting on a happy face. One second you are pondering how the mouth of a foolish person prattles on and on and the next moment you're contemplating a dinner table and what constitutes a good meal over against a bad meal.

The average preacher, faced with this smörgåsbord of divergent sayings, feels like she has little choice but to pluck just one of these wise pearls off the string and go with it. After all, most of the chapters in Proverbs seem to lack an overall theme. This is probably also why most pastors regard Proverbs as a kind of barren stretch between the riches of the Book of Psalms and the curious sermonic possibilities in Ecclesiastes. The Book of Proverbs is, homiletically, sort of like the state of Nebraska when you're traveling from Michigan to Arizona: you know you have to cross it, but it sure can look a bit flat and desolate at times!

Nevertheless, this morning I wish to suggest that upon closer examination even a chapter like Proverbs 15 may have an underlying theme to it after all. What's more, I want to suggest that this theme has resonance in Proverbs far beyond just this chapter: what we will think about this morning is an idea that weaves throughout this book. It is also a profoundly Christian concept, well-rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

So this morning let's survey the landscape of this chapter to discover this theme. In the end we will also pause over one individual proverb and allow it to do what we said in our first sermon is one of the aims of these various aphorisms: namely, to summon up stories. The proverbs are not nestled in a narrative context--these sayings float free of any specific story and yet by design they are supposed to make you recall anecdotes from your own past. Those stories from the past then become suggestive of how we might better live when faced with similar situations in also the future. The proverbs have that kind of back-and-forth temporal quality: seeing their truth in the past helps us chart a better course for the future.

So to begin, let's take a quick walk through this chapter to discern what may be a common theme. Verse 1 kicks things off with the well-known proverb about how a gentle word makes life better whereas a harsh word just makes people angry. In a similar vein verse 4 says that the wise person's tongue creates situations of healing whereas the mouth of the fool crushes the spirit of those who get deceived. There are likewise several other verses in chapter 15 which have something to do with how positive forms of speech make people glad whereas foolish speech just makes people depressed. Wise people delight in being able to give what verse 23 calls an "apt reply" and a "timely word." Verse 28 says that the wise know how to keep their mouths from running ahead of their brains by pausing before speaking--fools on the other hand blurt out the first thing that comes to mind and then let the chips fall where they may.

Still other proverbs in this chapter also tie in with how we relate to those around us. Verses 16 and 17 convey the idea that you could better be poor but happy in your relationships with others than rich but alienated from family and friends. Better a fresh garden salad with some fat free dressing eaten in the presence of someone you love than veal scallopine with roasted potatoes at a dinner table where people keep glaring at each other in spite. Similarly in verse 27 we are told that the greedy tend to ignore the people around them due to their undue focus on things. Again, better a modest lifestyle filled with loving relationships than a lavish life which is studded with dysfunction.

Just here is where we can access what may well be the primary theme of Proverbs 15: namely, love and care for people is always going to be more important than cherishing things. Being sensitive toward others is always more important than looking out for good old #1 and making sure that your voice is heard, your opinion stated, or your feelings vented. Here is a timely truth to ponder in this society of the upwardly mobile where the slogans "Image is everything" and "My way right away" have come to characterize the overall outlook of far too many people.

As we have noted on other occasions, our society is increasingly losing the ability to weigh words and measure speech. Spend as little as ten minutes sampling any number of those daytime talk shows on TV and you will quickly discern that what matters most to many people today is being able to express their opinions immediately, talking over top of one another in an attempt to drown out all voices but their own. The name of one show on CNN says it all: Talk Back Live! If you have an opinion, whether it's something on which you've deliberated a long time or something to which you tumbled in the last five minutes, by all means express it! And if what you have to say hurts the feelings of someone else, so be it.

Have you noticed something rather funny on local news broadcasts: very often when a News 8 reporter is interviewing someone following a township board meeting, you will often see something lame like this on the screen, "Jeremy VanderStoof: Thinks Local Water Tastes Bad." The reason they put "Thinks Local Water Tastes Bad" under his name is because probably there is nothing else to say about this person. He doesn't have a title, doesn't occupy some position of authority from which he has perhaps thought about an issue long and hard. Instead interviewees on the local news are identified only by their opinion, never mind if it is an opinion worth hearing. You could just as well put "Had Steak for Dinner Last Night" under a person's name for all the useful information it conveys!

Again, however, that is little more than a telltale sign of a society focused on the individual and whatever it is he or she has to say at any given moment. We don't often stop long enough to be thoughtful or deliberative. The act of thinking doesn't play well on TV, as Neil Postman notes. But it's not just television where careful deliberation doesn't "play" well but increasingly it seems it does not much happen anywhere else in life, either.

Parallel to this mind set is another feature to the modern mentality: the idea that more is always better and that happiness is found in material possessions. Lately you've been able to read the word "comfort" in quite a few different settings. A major trend in the culinary world has been a return to so-called "comfort food" like mashed potatoes and rich ice cream. When referring to various gadgets and appliances for the home, advertisers sometimes talk of "creature comforts." Other ads on television have now yoked the words "luxury and comfort" to describe the interior of a new Lexus or the layout of a new home. Politicians talk about wanting to provide people with a "comfortable income," preferably with enough disposable cash to keep the economy humming.

That mentality, however, runs counter to Proverbs 15 and its notion that having faith in God is, to coin a phrase, our only comfort in life and in death. Proverbs 15 laments the fact that every day, in upscale restaurants and in the dining rooms of wealthy people, elegant cuisine is salted by the tears of people who mourn lives that are full of stuff but empty of meaning; who lament the demise of a marriage or rue alienation from a daughter who seems to care more about dressing up like Britney Spears than being kind to her parents.

But still we want the creature comforts of life, believing the lie that they will make us whole. And so we are quite willing to trample on other people to come out on top. Just look at the spate of so-called "reality based" shows on TV the last year or so. On Survivor people are systematically voted off by others who deem them unworthy. The name of the show Weakest Link says it all: those who are weak, faulty, and vulnerable are eliminated, accompanied by snide insults at which the rest of us are supposed to guffaw. We want to survive, we want to be strong so that we can get at the money which will purchase our share of life's comforts. And if we need to step over, belittle, or eliminate others en route to that goal, we'll do it in America. We really will.

But the same thing happens even to maybe some of us, albeit in less dramatic ways. But day in and day out many people lose out on love and family because they are consumed with doing what it takes to get ahead. "A greedy man brings trouble to his family" verse 27 observes. True enough, and sometimes the trouble he brings stems from the fact that the family is brushed aside in favor of other pursuits.

As we will reflect next month when thinking about the stewardship of time, if there is one word which aptly describes life today, it is most certainly the word "busy." Children and young people are amazingly busy, pursuing a dizzying array of sports, part-time jobs, and get-togethers with friends. Parents are also exceedingly busy as we volunteer constantly to help our Christian schools raise money and save money. Even those who are supposedly retired are often a blur of busyness as time gets divided up between various places of residence and still other days are consumed with things like caring for grandchildren as a way to help out parents who are overwhelmed with things to do. No single comment has cropped up more often in Elders meetings in recent years than, "You cannot believe how difficult it is to set up Family Visits these days! Everyone is so busy! No one is ever home!"

We may or may not have a hard time believing that sometimes less is more, but what is certain is that we have precious little opportunity ever to find out! To do the things we want to do, to have the possessions we see everyone else enjoying, and so to achieve a "comfortable lifestyle," we sometimes fail to take the time needed to cherish other people.

Wisdom counsels us to slow down. Wisdom cries out at the top of her voice to encourage us to be sensitive toward others. In our speech we need to keep some thoughts to ourselves even as we take time to measure our words before we open our mouths. Wisdom says that we could better earn a little less money if doing so enables us better to love the people around us. Wisdom says that if our words wound one another or our busy lives keep us from one another, then it wasn't worth it to express ourselves, it wasn't worth it to take on that extra obligation, it wasn't worth it to work longer.

The people at the core of life are always more important than the outer trappings of life. Or in the words of one of the most striking proverbs in this chapter, "Better a meal of vegetables where love is than a fattened calf with hatred." And because that proverb is so arresting, but also because it captures what this chapter is at bottom all about, let's conclude the sermon today thinking about these words and connecting them to the stories of our lives. "Better a meal of vegetables where love is than a fattened calf with hatred."

As Tom Long once asked, sound familiar to any of you? Does it make you remember anything? I remember one evening when there wasn't much in the house to eat and I allowed this deficit to sour my mood and so I ended up snapping at my family. In the end we ordered out some pretty nice food, but there was no joy in the eating of it. My actions darkened the family's sky. But I remember another time when we threw together some peanut butter sandwiches, grabbed a bag of chips, and had a little picnic in the backyard. We laughed and talked even as the kids enjoyed spying the butterflies and birds that flitted by. "Better a meal of vegetables--or a peanut butter sandwich--where love is than a fattened calf with hatred."

I remember the German couple whose income and home were so very, very modest but who shared their food with my wife and me with such obvious exuberance as to make tears leap to our eyes. When the hostess discovered my wife was expecting our first baby, she positively lit up at the chance to send us on our way laden with enough milk, cheese, yogurt, and fresh fruit to nourish the wombs of several pregnant women!. Then again I remember other times when far more lavish meals were rendered oddly tasteless because they were served in so perfunctory a way due to the obvious tension in the air between the hosts. "Better a meal of vegetables where love is than a fattened calf with hatred."

Like so many of you, I can also remember so many meals of no more than a cube of bread and a dram of wine (often cheap, Mogen David wine, at that) and yet these meals meant the world because of the pierced hands that served this simple fare. But I also remember that supper when one whom Jesus loved slunk away from the table and fled into a dark night of silver coins and treacherous kisses. "Better a meal of vegetables where love is than a fattened calf with hatred."

Again and again down the corridors of our memories the difference between joy and sorrow, between a good time that made us laugh and a bitter time that made us ache with the sadness of it all, the difference is how we regard and treat the people around us (and how they in turn treat us). The wise know how to check their tongues and monitor their speech. The wise know the gravity of speech and so weigh their words in advance. The wise know that much though the good things of life can be properly celebrated as God's gifts, those things and the pursuit of them can never stack up against the value of the people we are called to love and to serve, to cherish and to respect in God's name.

In a time of excessive acquisitiveness we would do well to cultivate the virtue of being able to revel in less. In a time of too much quick talk and savage speech we would do well to cultivate the virtues of silence and prudence. In a time of eliminating weak links and pursuing personal survival by exploiting the vulnerable we would do well to cultivate the virtue of reaching out to the weak and of forgiving the flawed folks around us.

If ever there were a New Testament incarnation of all that we've thought about this morning it would perhaps be the Beatitudes of Jesus as delivered in his Sermon on the Mount. Because there Jesus lifted up the quiet, the meek, the lowly, the poor in spirit and blessed them, calling the rest of us to do the same. If we are going to be people in whose lives the gospel has truly taken hold and sunk down some roots, then we need to pursue the wise course of always being mindful of the people around us. We need the wisdom not to wound through our words, the wisdom not to snub others in our own climb to the top. "Better a little with the fear of the LORD than great wealth with turmoil. Better a meal of vegetables were love is than a fattened calf with hatred." Indeed, such things are not only "better" but "blessed." Blessed are the wise for theirs is a feast of love and a banquet of mercy every day. Amen.