In baseball, there is an unwritten rule that says you never attempt to bunt with two out and two strikes. If you foul the bunt, you're out. And if you execute the bunt perfectly, you're probably out as well, since that is the object of a bunt--to sacrifice yourself and advance the base runner. It's kind of pointless to advance a runner if the process results in the third out. Everybody knows that!
But I remember seeing a game once where victory turned on a player doing exactly that--bunting with two strikes and two outs. The defense was so surprised by this departure from conventional wisdom that they failed to get anybody out, the runners advanced, and the winning run scored. Sometimes you have to do the unexpected, ignore the conventional.
Most of us have been raised on conventional wisdom; we live our lives by it. We probably learned it from our grandmothers who said things like: “look before you leap” "the early bird gets the worm", and "you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar," and "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Or that grandfatherly man in the news lately whose motto seems to be, “Shoot first and ask questions later,” because “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Or something like that. I remember hearing those things when I was very young, and while I didn't have any interest in catching worms or flies and didn't have a horse, I was impressed by my grandmother's common sense way of doing things and her understanding of the world.
Of course she learned most of that from her mother, who heard it from hers, and a lot of it most likely goes at least as far back as Benjamin Franklin, that Founding Father whose 300th birthday is being celebrated this year.
Franklin was not only an inventor, scientist, printer, statesman, diplomat, revolutionary and abolitionist, he was a purveyor of wisdom, and much of what he said, recorded in things like Poor Richard’s Almanac, almost sounds biblical. In fact, if you were to take a poll, you’d find there is a lot of confusion about that. Someone did take a poll, actually, Barna Research, and they found out that 75% of some 1,002 self-proclaimed Christians think that the aphorism, “God helps those who help themselves” is found in the Bible! It’s not, of course, and in fact runs counter to what much of the Bible teaches.
Other non-biblical, biblical-sounding passages include “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” “The poor have little, beggars none, the rich too much, enough not one.” They all sound biblical, and in fact some may reflect biblical values, but they all come from Franklin, straight out of the Almanac. But they’ve been around long enough, and have been quoted enough, that they have become part of the conventional wisdom of our culture.
Conventional Wisdom is that common body of intelligence about how life works, the things that "everybody knows", convictions and morals that hold us together and which are basically unquestioned.
Conventional Wisdom in our day has been embodied in such sayings as---
---Buy low, sell high.
---Give 'em an inch, and they'll take a mile.
–The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
---Women can never be soldiers (doctors, ministers...)
---Men are from Mars.
---Might makes right.
---Never tease a pit bull, a Hell's Angel or an angry cop. .
These are the things that "everybody knows." It's our conventional wisdom.
In Jesus' day, the conventional wisdom was espoused by sages, who usually quoted the Torah or the Book of Proverbs, and then expounded on them. The Proverbs are that body of wisdom literature, found in the Hebrew scriptures right after the Psalms, which put the rules of behavior very succinctly. Someone once said that a proverb is "a short sentence derived from long experience." Tradition has it that the author was King Solomon, who did have a reputation for being wise, but more likely is that this book is simply a collection from many sources of the conventional wisdom of the day, generally exposing an elite or ruling class point-of-view.
Today’s lesson included proverbs such as--
A word fitly spokenis like apples of gold in a setting of silver. Like a gold ring or an ornament of goldis a wise rebuke to a listening ear.
(Peasants, you see, wouldn’t easily relate to that!)Like the cold of snow in the time of harvestare faithful messengers to those who send them;they refresh the spirit of their masters. Like clouds and wind without rainis one who boasts of a gift never given.
Nothing wrong with that – it all generally makes sense. And it was pretty much the conventional wisdom in Jesus' day that if you work hard and do right, keep your nose clean, in short be a good person, then you will get your just reward. And if you mess up, then you will be punished. If you were wealthy, you must have done something right. If you were poor, well, you probably deserved to be. "Healthy, wealthy, and wise..." was something you earned by your own industriousness. If you lost it, there must have been a sin involved somewhere. The theology espoused as part of this conventional wisdom pictured God as righteous and just, a God who rewarded and punished, based on merit and goodness.
As a result of the acceptance of this conventional wisdom, a whole system of identifying who was good and who was not---who was close to God and who was not---grew up: the ins and the outs, the righteous and the wicked, clean and unclean, Jew and Gentile. It was a way of surviving in a very unstable time, as the Roman world came and invaded the Jewish world. Such labeling seemed to be necessary for survival. And it was all supported by conventional wisdom, as taught by grandmothers, sages and rabbis.
Into all this came Jesus, a spirit-filled teacher, one who had grown up in a Jewish home, studied the Torah, knew the Proverbs. He was himself a sage, but what he taught was different from the other sages. He didn't teach a set of beliefs, nor did he offer a set of moral propositions, rules to live by. Much of these can be inferred from what he said, but mostly, Jesus came to offer unconventional wisdom, to say, "There's another way to look at things. The usual way isn't necessarily working all that well." And so he said some things that were really shocking to first century Jewish ears, and if we take them seriously, even to ours.
Consider: whereas conventional wisdom delights in wealth as a sign of God's favor, Jesus said, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth." What would that mean for the savings and loan and banking industries, if we were to take him literally? Some days I think my broker actually does....
Jesus said, "When you give alms--charity--let know one know what you have done." Not even the IRS?
He said – and this is my children’s favorite verse – "If you have money, do not lend it at interest, but give it to one from whom you will not get it back."
He said, "If you give a dinner, don't invite your friends who can return the favor, but invite the poor, the lame, the blind, the needy." No wonder I never get invited out.
He said, to a person of some wealth who thought he'd done everything right, "If you want to enter the kingdom of God, then you are going to have to sell all you have, give the proceeds to the poor, and then come and follow me." And to his disciples he observed, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is wealthy to enter the Kingdom of God." Given that in comparison to the world at large, we are all incredibly wealthy, does that mean there's no hope for us? Kind of turns “God helps those who help themselves” on its ear!
He said, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, he cannot be my disciple." So much for family values!
And he said, "If your foot causes you to offend, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out." It seems to me that if we were to take this advice literally, we would all be lame and sightless!
Is this really what Jesus intended? Did he really mean to be taken literally, or did he mean to shock his listeners into taking their lives seriously?
Sometime after Ben Franklin, there was H.L. Mencken. You may find a comparison between him and Jesus to be curious, but hear me out.
Mencken said, "In Southern California the vegetables have no flavor and the flowers no smell." He wrote, "New York is only a third rate Babylon...a place where the raw materials of civilization are received, sorted out, and sent elsewhere." He insisted, "Texas is a place where there are the most cows and the least milk, the most rivers and the least water..... where you can look the farthest and see the least."
Now H.L. Mencken did not make a lot of friends, but he shocked a lot of people into seeing things they's never seen before; and thinking about things they didn't want to think about at all. He wasn't crucified, but he was called a "nasty curmudgeon" by just about everyone.
And yet he also wrote, "It is a fine thing to face a machine gun for immortality and a medal, but isn't it a fine thing, too, to face calumny, injustice, and loneliness for speaking the truth that makes men free?"
We speak of a curmudgeon as an irascible and cantankerous fellow, but perhaps his reputation is undeserved. Perhaps a man like Mencken did not hate humankind, only our excesses. Perhaps he did not mean to make fun of our heartaches, but remind us that we need sometimes to laugh at ourselves, even in our pain. Perhaps he decided, no one will listen to me unless I shock them out of their stupor, shake them up, make them think for a change!
I think it was just that sort of thing that Jesus was about! Surely he did not mean literally to gouge out your eye or cut off your limb. But he did mean to say: there are some sorts of behavior you ought to think about far more seriously than you do. I don’t think he meant for us to abandon family responsibility, but he may have meant to say: don't let even your family imprison you so that you may never become a real person yourself. Surely, he did not mean that we should make no provision for old age or a time of difficulty, or abandon all our economic resources, but if we get too hung up on our own security and let money and wealth get in the way of what's really important, we may never really live at all, or experience what the kingdom of God is about!
It may be that we have become so accustomed to hearing his words that they no longer frighten us, or alarm us, or startle us. But maybe that's exactly what he meant to do: startle us into a new way of looking at the world, and a new way of seeing ourselves and others.
Mostly, Jesus told parables to shock his listeners into seeing the world in a new way, and into breaking down the barriers between the righteous and unrighteous, saint and sinner, clean and unclean, saved and unsaved. Maybe even to tease us with a new view of God, no longer the judge who rewards and punishes on the basis of merit, but One who loves, who is gracious and compassionate. I don’t want to steal any thunder from this afternoon’s seminar on the parables – maybe entice you to attend – so I won’t give too many examples. But here’s one of my favorites that turns conventional wisdom on its head. It’s Jesus’ story about some workers who came at six o'clock in the morning and agreed to work for a fair wage in a vineyard. At nine some more showed up, and at noon still more, and finally at four a few more, just an hour before quitting time. At the end of the day, the owner of the farm paid them all the same, no matter when they signed on. Naturally the first-hired workers were mad, and felt cheated, even though they were paid fairly for what they did. (We are always angry about someone else's good fortune---I was far more upset about a neighbor who won the lottery than I was about the one who lost his job and was evicted...) But the farmer just said, hey it's my money, how can you begrudge my generosity? And that says something about God, who doesn’t play by our rules, whose generosity and grace are without bounds. It shakes up our concept of reality, the conventional wisdom by which we live. Instead of "It's a dog-eat-dog world out there," we can now affirm, "at the heart of the universe, there is a heart!" And that reality is marked by cosmic generosity.
That's really what Jesus came to tell us: that the kingdom, the realm, the presence of God is often found where you least expect it; that you cannot predict who is in and who is out, for the barriers have been broken down; and that reality is marked by a graciousness and a generosity, a heart at the heart of all things. And because of that, conventional wisdom – even that of a hero like Ben Franklin, God bless him – is turned on its head!
Of course, even among the saying of Proverbs, and Franklin, are nuggets that may be a bit unconventional even today. Proverbs:” If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.” Franklin improved upon this when he said, “Doing an Injury puts you below your enemy; revenging one makes you but even with him; forgiving one sets you above him.”
But do we really want to cause our enemy pain, or place ourselves above them, especially if we take the teachings of Jesus seriously, who blurred the lines so much? And so in our own time, Coretta Scott King said: “Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.” A simple echo, isn’t it, of Jesus’ “Love your enemies.”
That may not be something that everybody knows, not just yet. It’s still unconventional wisdom. But you and I know it. Let's proclaim it and live it until everybody does!
