Sermon

St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Durham, NC

February 11, 2007 - Sixth Sunday of Epiphany

The Rev. Vicki L. Smith

I am nobody’s excuse for a gardener.  My grandmother could make anything grow.  So can my sister.  I can barely tell a spruce from a sequoia or an azalea from an aster. 

But even I, looking at two plants, can tell which one is healthy and strong and which one is on its way out.  Looking at a brown, shriveled, dried up plant and a healthy, lush, green one makes the choice quite clear, even for a plant-illiterate like me.

This morning we heard Jeremiah use this sort of agricultural imagery to make an important point about our choices and our lives. Jeremiah is talking about trust, about who and what we choose to trust, and he makes the results of those choices concretely visible for us. The withered tree and the thriving tree make very clear what’s at stake. 

Jeremiah says,

Thus says the Lord, cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength …

Do you think he has an opinion about this?

… whose hearts turn away from the Lord.  They shall be like a shrub in the desert and shall not see when relief comes.  They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.

Not a pretty picture.

But blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.  They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream.  It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious and it does not cease to bear fruit.

It almost sounds like Jeremiah is contrasting life and death here, or the very least thriving and shriveling. 

It is important for us to realize when we read or listen to this beautiful passage that while God speaks of us being blessed or cursed, that is not a description of God’s action.  Jeremiah is not saying that God will actively curse those who trust in mere mortals and will actively bless those who trust in him.  What Jeremiah, and God, wants us to understand is that those who trust in mere mortals live a cursed life, because trusting in mere mortals makes it cursed; while those who trust in God live blessed lives, because trusting in God brings blessings in and of itself.  Jeremiah is describing the realities of life, not God’s action in the world.  We need to remember that.

When we choose to put all our trust in ourselves, in our own strength, our intelligence, and our capabilities, or when we decide to place our ultimate trust in the technology that we’ve developed or the society we’ve created – when we give our ultimate trust to anything that is not God, our lives will become dry, parched and fragile.  It will be as though we live in an uninhabited salt land.  We become like trees struggling to live in the desert, undernourished, shriveled up and failing to thrive.

This is because nothing and no one is worthy of our ultimate trust but God. Not ourselves, not other people, not medicine, not technology, not our laws, not our society.  When we give our ultimate trust to anything other than God, we set ourselves up for disappointment and struggle. 

It is a simple fact that someday our flesh will fail us; we age, we get sick, we break bones, eventually we die.  At 19 we feel immortal, like our bodies can take us anywhere and do anything.  By 39 we’ve begun to realize our limitations and by 59 we know just how transitory and fragile our flesh really is.  We learn that some of our goals will remain beyond our reach, that we can’t do or see everything, that we all make mistakes, sometimes really big ones.  While we must value and care for ourselves, neither our bodies nor our minds are worthy of our ultimate trust.  And other people are as fallible and fragile as we are.

Technology and medicine are wonderful – both bring tremendous benefits to our lives, but the fact remains that cars and airplanes crash, medicines fail and our new gadgets are seldom quite as good as we thought they’d be.  There is nothing in this life that is worthy of our ultimate trust but God who created us. 

Now that is not to say that we should live our lives suspicious of ourselves and one another and doubting everything that is said or done.  Such a life would be miserable and a denial of the goodness of God’s creation.  Because God’s creation is good, people are good, and for the most part reliable, technology and medicine bring important positive innovations to our lives.  We have to trust ourselves and our world – but as good as all this is; it cannot bear the burden of our ultimate trust.

Only God is worthy, only God is strong enough and good enough, to sustain us in the wilderness and give us the water of life.  To give our ultimate trust to anyone or anything but God, as Jeremiah says, makes our lives like shrubs struggling to live in the desert.        

On the other hand, if we place our trust in God, we will be by that action alone blessed and sustained.  We will be like trees planted by water, nourished, sustained and strong.  We need not fear when heat comes, nor in the season of drought.  Those difficult times will come, they always do, but we who place our trust in God will be blessed even then for God will sustain and nourish us whatever comes our way.  We can even continue to bear fruit in the deepest drought, in the driest, hardest of seasons, because our trust in God keeps us strong; it makes us resilient, it helps us live. 

We all give our ultimate trust to something – the only question is what?  Will we give our trust to mere mortals and mere flesh – to ourselves, our technology, and our accomplishments, or will we give our trust to God?  Will we sink our roots in the sandy, windblown soil of the world or in the rich nourishing depths of the stream of the water of life?

Jeremiah reminds us that it is our choice – one that seems quite clear.

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