Go To The Ant

Proverbs 6:6-8

November 5, 2017 • Mount Pleasant UMC

It’s called “Failure to Launch Syndrome,” and it’s a growing concern for educators and parents across the nation—and maybe across the world, though it does seem to be somewhat a uniquely American issue. It’s an issue that has grown out of the creation of a new phase of life: adolescence. While puberty has always been a thing, adolescence and the idea of a “teenager” is an American invention, unknown until the 1940’s. But even that idea has changed in the last few years; adolescence used to extend from 12 to 18. Now, in some cases, it can extend to age 30, as record numbers of young people today find themselves somehow stuck in the transition between childhood and adulthood. One report puts it this way: “Despite attending college in record numbers, millennials seem to struggle to move on to the next phase of life. Just a decade ago, a healthy majority of young adults were able to successfully fledge. Now, those who’ve managed to leave the nest are a minority.”  Granted, it’s a more challenging job market out there than what existed in the last couple of generations, but there are other factors at play here as well, not the least of which is the fact that we haven’t always well prepared our teenagers and our young adults for financial success. In our consumer culture, where we rack up incredible debt, perhaps “failure to launch” has more to do with us than it does with our kids.

Last Sunday, we began this three week series focused on issues surrounding money. Now, I know that this is not a comfortable topic, and though for the most part, messages like this are confined to one time each year, a lot of folks think this is all the church ever talks about. However, if we’re going to be faithful followers of Jesus, trying to live the way he called his people to live, we are obligated to find ways to allow him to be Lord over all of our lives, including our financial resources. We're calling this series “Greater Than,” because it’s the witness of Scripture that when we allow Jesus to be lord of all, including our wallets, we truly will experience a life that is greater than we can imagine on our own. So, last week, we began to talk about three Biblical principles regarding money, the first being “give generously.” Giving opens our heart and helps us focus on the needs of others rather than the wants we have. We're called to extravagant generosity, hilarious giving. For the second Biblical principle, though, we turn to an ancient book of wisdom, thought to have been mostly written or at least collected by King Solomon—the book of Proverbs.

You probably haven’t heard many sermons from this book (I know I haven’t preached very many) because it’s mostly a loose collection of “wisdom sayings.” There’s not a lot of structure to it, which makes it difficult to preach from. However, the book tells us that wisdom, in the Biblical tradition, is not just about knowledge or information. Wisdom, as the Biblical authors understood it, is taking what you know and learning how to apply it, live it appropriately. So Proverbs is not a guide to everything you need to know; it’s a practical book full of advice on how to live. The beginning of the book indicates that it was written as a “guide to life” from a father, perhaps Solomon, to his son, and much of the book contrasts two different ways of life: the wise life and the foolish life. The goal of Proverbs, of course, is to help the son (and anyone who reads it) live a wise life. And so there are all sorts of topics covered in these thirty-one chapters, from singleness to marriage, from truth telling to modesty, but in chapter six we come to a collection of warnings against following the wrong path, the foolish path, the path of, as one translation puts it, folly. And in the few verses we read this morning, the writer turns to an unlikely candidate as an example for his reader. He tells his son to “go to the ant,” or, as we might put it, consider the ant.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the ant is not something I’m accustomed to looking at as an example. More often, I’m outside our front door with my squirt bottle of ant killer, trying to keep them from coming inside the house. My hyper-focus on the ants around our house probably goes back to several years ago, when we decided we were going to repaint the kids’ bedrooms, give them a new look. We started in Christopher’s room, and as we started moving furniture, we noticed a few ants lurking around his bed. That didn’t strike me as odd; both kids’ rooms, in that parsonage, were in the basement, so a few ants crawling in wasn’t unusual. It was when we pulled his bed fully away from the wall and discovered his stash of food—along with hundreds (maybe thousands) of ants—that we realized why they were there. He was a pre-teen boy at that point with an insatiable appetite, and going upstairs to the kitchen in the middle of the night when hunger struck was just too hard. So he had started hoarding food in his room, just in case he needed it—and the ants were okay with that. They moved into his room. The painting project took a little longer because we had to do some exterminating first!

So that’s my impression of ants, but in reality ants are pretty amazing creatures. There are over 12,000 species of ants in the world today, which is an astounding figure to think about. It also makes me wonder who has time to count all of those ants! Of course, one of the most amazing abilities ants have is that they can lift things that are twenty times their own weight, and some queen ants can have over a million babies in their lifetimes. Think about that, mothers! In their work life, ants have one sole focus, one purpose. They go out to acquire and bring back food every day, without fail, without rest (cf. Rainer, The Money Challenge, pg. 50). Their single job is to provide for the colony; they live their entire lives with a singular focus. That’s the example the author of Proverbs admires, and it’s kind of amazing when you think about it. This son, who has the gift of speech and a brain larger than the whole anthill, is told to bend down and look at the ant as an example to follow (Hubbard, The Communicator’s Commentary: Proverbs, pg. 99). And if we pay attention to these few verses in the middle of chapter six, I think we’ll find three ideas that will help us follow the second Biblical principle: save wisely.

First, saving is an act of wisdom, not foolishness. The writer here is using the ant as an example of wisdom to help correct the actions of someone he labels as a “sluggard.” In other translations, this person is called “lazybones” (NLT) or a “lazy fool” (MSG). Laziness, equated here with a refusal to work, is seen as an example of stupidity as compared to the constantly working ant, the embodiment of wisdom according to Proverbs (cf. Goldingay, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes & Song of Songs for Everyone, pg. 28). The Apostle Paul reflected this same wisdom tradition when he told the Thessalonians, “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Now, let me say quickly, neither Paul nor Proverbs is condemning those who have physical challenges that prevent them from working. Nor are they condemning retirement specifically. Nor is anything said about stay-at-home parents who choose to sacrifice for the sake of their children (because, believe me, they work!). What they are both concerned about are those who are able to earn and save yet choose to remain idle. The Biblical work ethic expects us to take responsibility for our lives and those who depend on us, to live wisely and save some of what we earn so that we are ready when challenges come along, such as unexpected large expenditures, as we know they inevitably will. And that leads us to the second principle we learn from the ant.

The ant stores away what she needs for those times when scarcity comes along (cf. Hubbard 99). You know it’s true: there are times of abundance in our lives and there are times of scarcity (or times where resources are not-so-abundant). The ant prepares in the summer and gathers in the harvest—times of abundance—to prepare for times of scarcity in the winter (6:8), and that’s a good model for us as well. We tend to do the opposite—maybe not to the extreme. We’re not the person, maybe, who spends every dollar as soon as we get it, but many of us secretly fear scarcity while we’re busy burning through our abundance. We live as if scarcity will not come. That’s not meant to provoke fear; this is just reality. However, we can do something about it. As one author puts it, “An increase in your paycheck should not immediately create an increase in your spending. Take advantage of the opportunity to set money aside” (Rainer 51).

But how much? There is always a danger here of hoarding, of selfishness, of trying to keep it all for ourselves. Financial experts generally recommend two sorts of savings during times of abundance. The first kind is an emergency fund, for when the unexpected happens, whether that’s a significant expense or a time when you suddenly lose your job. There’s no magic number, but most financial planners suggest starting with setting aside $1,500 and eventually building up to where you have three to six months of your salary saved in case it takes a while to replace your lost income (Rainer 61-62). So, for instance, if we get a tax refund check in the spring, our first inclination is to buy something extra with it. I know that temptation; we’ve done that ourselves. We used that extra money to get something we wanted but didn’t necessarily need (and didn’t have money for in the regular budget). But what if we treated that perhaps unexpected income as a good way to boost our savings? Rather than spending it on something you don’t really need, why not use it to follow the example of the ant and begin to save wisely?

The second kind of fund financial planners suggest is longer-term savings. One of reasons for this has to do with the cost of a college education today. In 2017, the average student loan debt for a graduate is $37,172. Making minimum payments, that will take a long time to pay off, especially for those who begin at what we call “entry-level positions” and entry-level salaries. It made me think of a cartoon I saw many years ago that had an older couple writing checks, and she says to him, “Our Social Security check would go further if we didn’t have to pay so much for your college loans.” Funny, perhaps, but more and more true today.

I had a good example from my parents who put away money for both my brother and I to go to college. I think they did that from the day we were born. I later learned they did the same thing for my kids and my brother’s daughter as soon as they were born. Now, I remember as a kid there were times I wanted something and would protest loudly when I was told we didn’t have the money for that. In the long term, whatever “it” was that I wanted so badly would have broken and been thrown away by now. But my folks were determined to save so that we didn’t have any college debt, and that has been of much more long-term benefit than any toy or item I could have bought. We’re set on doing the same thing for our kids; I started a savings plan which converted into a 529 investment plan for their college funds. Not everyone can put away large sums of money; I get that. We haven’t hard large sums to put away, but we started early and put a little away here, a little there. The reality is that anything we can save will only benefit us in the long run, and longer-term savings is something we need to have as a financial priority, for college expenses (probably first) and then retirement. Do you know how much will you need for retirement? Have you had that conversation about what you will have to do to make that happen? Most of us have not. We don’t follow the example of the ant. I remember one of my seminary professors telling us if we just give a bit more than the minimum to our pension fund every year, we would be amazed at how much it grows, but when I got into full-time ministry, I started at below Conference minimum salary, so that was hard to do. One financial planner suggests that if a person at age 16 puts $2,000 into a mutual fund that just basically follows the annual return of the stock market, and does the same thing for the next two years, then never puts another penny into that same fund, that basic $6,000 investment, even with the ups and downs of the investment world, will have turned into over half a million dollars set aside for retirement (Rainer 68-69). It doesn’t have to be complicated, and it doesn’t have to be costly to “go to the ant,” to follow the principle of using times of abundance and scarcity to our advantage.

The third principle, then, is persistence. Proverbs says the ant “has no commander, no overseer or ruler” (6:7). In other words, the ant has no one telling him or her what to do, yet the ant still doggedly pursues its goals (Hubbard 99). One commentator describes the ant this way: “By being responsible for her task, she blesses her community” (Van Leeuwen, “The Book of Proverbs,” New Interpreter’s Commentary, Vol. V, pg. 75). Biology would probably tell us the ant operates solely on instinct; in other words, that’s what the ant is “programmed” to do, but that doesn’t mean the principle is bad. The so-called “programming” came, after all, from God. The wisest man in history is telling us that this example is one we should follow. Persistence, perseverance, stubbornness—whatever you want to call it, we need a big dose of it if we’re going to get to the point where we’re financially secure and stable. It’s easy to give up, to give in to the voices that whisper, “You can’t do this. You don't have the discipline. You don’t have the time or the energy to devote to this. You don’t even know where to begin.” In times like that, we need to have decided ahead of time that this is what we’re going to do, that we’re going to be persistent and press on no matter what the objections.

But what about those who have a hard time now paying their bills? How can “saving wisely” figure into your life? Let’s be honest. Sometimes circumstances that are out of our control have robbed us of the ability to provide for our future, but other times it’s been our own bad choices, our impulsive purchases or our waste. In our own lives, I think we were better savers when we made less than we have been in the last few years, but we also didn’t have kids when we were early on in ministry and marriage. We also did a better job at limiting the things we think and thought we needed—and it was before amazon.com! (Anything you want…two-day shipping! Who can pass that up?) That’s why this principle is called “save wisely.” We need wisdom and, for many of us, better judgment about how we spend and the kind of debt we go into. The ancient writers were no stranger to this idea. They knew that if we end up in a lot of debt, we find ourselves in a form of slavery. Many of us know the verse Proverbs 22:6. In the King James (which is how I learned it), we’re told, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” The NIV has updated the language to this: “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” We usually apply that to all sorts of moral and religious training, but do you know what verse 7, the very next verse, says? Here it is: “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7). Now, it’s always “risky” to draw connections like this in Proverbs, but I think it’s possible, even probable, that the author meant us to understand that training a child must include how to handle finances. Proverbs suggests that should be a priority. We are to set a good example by not ending up as a “slave” ourselves to the one who lent us money. The psalmist, too, understood this idea: “The wicked borrow and do not repay, but the righteous give generously” (Psalm 37:21). Do you see the pattern? We work to get ourselves in a place where we can set a good example, save wisely and become generous people.

Because that’s the point. The reason for saving wisely is not so that we can build an empire for ourselves or build a massive pile of personal wealth. It’s so that we can be generous (as we talked about last week) without having to stress about it. It’s so that we can be freer to give when a need arises and share what we have with those in need. A couple of months ago, the need arose to help out with Hurricane Harvey relief, and so we asked you to give to UMCOR. Those of you who were able responded, and we collected over $3,400 on just one Sunday. When we have followed the example of the ant, when we’re freed up, we’re more able to give as we would like to.

When I was a student at Asbury Seminary, Ralph Waldo Beeson passed away. I had never heard of Ralph Waldo Beeson, but I came to learn he had worked all of his life for Liberty National Life Insurance Company. The reason his death mattered to Asbury quickly became evident. Even though he had never set foot on campus, he had put a gift for Asbury in his will, out of his desire to invest in the future of the church. When the dust had settled, Mr. Beeson’s gift to the seminary was worth $38.9 million—and that was in 1990. I’m not sure what the value would be today. He gave a gift of the same amount to Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama and in both cases, every bit of it was earmarked for buildings, endowments and such. Mr. Beeson, as I said, had a desire to invest in the future of the church and the best way he knew to do that was to invest in the future leadership of the church in lasting ways. One of the questions that was often asked about this rather unassuming man is, as you might imagine, how he got so much money. The reality is that Mr. Beeson had learned the lesson of the ant. He believed in saving wisely, so much so that if he had one pair of black pants, he didn’t believe he needed a second pair. (I think about that when I look at the five pairs of black pants in my closet!) He was frugal and because of that, he was free to give throughout his life and especially at his death. Mr. Beeson, even though I never met him, invested in my life and in the lives of many, many students since then, and he was able to that because he saved wisely, so that he could give generously.

“Go to the ant…consider its ways and be wise!” We save so we can give because we follow in the footsteps of the one who gave his very life, his all, for us. This morning, we gather at the table of the Lord, remembering Jesus’ generous gift. He gave his life so that we might find life—the life that really is life. Pastor Rick is going to come now and lead us in our time of communion, and may you find this bread and this cup not only nourishing to your soul, but empowering you with wisdom so that together we can be “Greater Than” for the sake of the world.