The Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany February 11, 2007
Jeremiah 17:5-10
Psalm 1
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Luke 6:17-26
It is not easy, being a Christian. It’s not easy because being a Christian requires that we see ourselves and our world in categories which are often much different from the categories of this world. Even more, being a Christian requires that we live into the life of our faith, even as we live in this world. We are all familiar with the challenge and conflict that can bring to our life. And that’s not a bad thing. Even when we make decisions for our life which are not consistent with our faith, as Christians we have choices, and they are real for us. We have choices because we can choose to live our life in the default modes of this world, or we can choose to live by the tenets of our faith. The choices, however, are not equal in weight or merit. It is easier to live in the default modes of our family and community, in the organizations we belong to, even in our church. It is easier to live in the social, political, economic (and other) patterns set for us by the operating systems of our nation and of our world. The challenge of living our life as God would have us live it is more difficult. But as Christians I think we can agree that making choices which reflect our faith and religious practices brings us satisfaction and reward which the world cannot give.
In our Hebrew scriptures we can see our choices reflected in Jeremiah’s tree and shrub metaphor. There are times when we are like the shrub planted in the trust of this world, and there are times when we are like the tree planted in the trust of God. In our Gospel lesson today we can find ourselves on both sides of the blessings and woes which characterize the choices we make for our life when God is present in it and when he is not. It may not be easy being a Christian, and we might fail more often than we might want to in the decisions we make for our life, but our scripture lessons show us the difference it can make when we really have a choice about whether we will live in the default systems of this world or in the religious practices of our faith. It is critical for Christians to always know we have a choice, because it is so easy to fall into default patterns which do not honor our faith or our religious practices.
An example of how easy it is for us to fall into default modes of this world was recently highlighted in a syndicated column I read just a few days ago in a local newspaper. I had only read the first few lines of the column when I found myself becoming quite agitated—in a good way, even though it didn’t feel so good at the time. The columnist was seeking to illustrate how recent technologies have cut us off from ourselves and from true relationship with each other. He mentioned a few of these technologies, all of which have become common to our life, but he drew particular attention to the cell phone. Now, I must admit, I have a love/hate relationship with my cell phone. Perhaps it is more like a need/don’t need relationship. Maybe even a want/don’t want relationship. In fact, as I think about our scripture lessons for today I believe I have a blessing/woe relationship with my cell phone. And when I think about our lesson from Jeremiah I can say that there are times when using my cell phone makes me feel as if I am a “tree planted by [living] water…sending out its roots by the stream.” More often than not, however, using my cell phone makes me feel as if I am a “shrub in the desert…held captive in the parched places of a technological wilderness. As I read the thoughtful and heartfelt words of the columnist I began to understand why I feel as I do about my cell phone and other technologies which have lured me into believing my life is made better by them.
There is no doubt that a cell phone can be a good thing to have. Lives have been saved by them and people can be connected immediately to information which is important and necessary in the moment. But cell phones, as well as other communications technologies, can also imbed us so deeply in the default modes of this world that we do not even know how they impact on our lives. We don’t even know how they change us and how they change our relationship each other.
The writer of the column illustrates some of those changes in a story he tells about being invited to lunch by a friend he hadn’t seen in a while. They were far enough into their meal and their conversation to be engaged in ways which characterize a close friendship. The food was good and the conversation was deep. And then his friend’s cell phone rang. Well, actually, it didn’t ring. The columnist observed his friend make a sudden twitch, then he reach into his pocket where his phone had obviously been vibrating. Instead of deferring the call to his answering machine he answered his phone, leaving his columnist friend hanging in mid-sentence. This was not bad enough. Instead of postponing the call to a later time, his friend decided to have an actual conversation with the caller, a conversation which was an abrupt segue from the one he was so deeply involved in. The conversation, of course, was public enough and revealing enough to let the columnist know that the call was from his friend’s place of work. The conversation was about a problem the caller was having with another employee. There was no immediate need or urgency in the situation, but the columnist’s friend continued to listen and to talk about it with the caller. By the time the call ended and he closed his phone, the columnist could not recall where he and his friend left off in their conversation. His friend apologized for the interruption and tried to pick up the conversation where they left off. But it didn’t happen. There were some feeble attempts and some awkward silences before they began making some polite and superficial conversation, and it wasn’t long before the columnist’s friend excused himself from lunch and prematurely ended the time he had carved out for his friend. He said that he thought he should get back to work.
Well, needless to say, this columnist spoke of his frustration and disappointment over a good lunch and meaningful conversation aborted by a needless cell phone call. It was obvious that the columnist had experienced this situation many other times, but it was this event which caused him to really think about why cell phones were changing his life and his relationships. He came to the conclusion that cell phones were becoming more intrusive in our life than they were helpful; and he was certain they were also becoming damaging to relationships (not to mention a good meal) which need quiet space and sustained time to be nurtured. But the columnist did not blame the cell phone. He blamed people who do not exercise their choice in using them. And in the end, he did not even blame people so much as he blamed a world which made cell phones our default mode for communicating with each other, at any time or in any place they ring or vibrate. Consequently, we have become a people who cannot seem to defer our calls, no less turn our cell phones off or leave them home. Cell phones have become so necessary to our life that everything else takes second place anytime they ring or vibrate—including the relationships we value, the important events we attend, and the necessary work or play we engage in.
Now, at this point my sermon is probably sounding to you like a major rant against cell phones. And I have to admit, you are right to think that because, like the columnist, I have suffered from the use and abuse of cell phone conversations. I have found myself in too many situations where an important conversation I was having was cut off by someone’s cell phone. And nothing can bring that conversation back to what it was. In fact, I have been in the company of friends and colleagues and family members in many different venues where our conversation was interrupted by a cell phone call which made me wonder how much I was valued in a relationship where an important, even intimate conversation was put on hold for the sake of a chat on a cell phone. Now you know why this editorial had such an impact on me. But you have yet to know why I have chosen to make it so large a part of this sermon. My reason is simple, really. I believe, and I know from scripture, that God created us for relationship. I believe he created us for relationship so that we might become the persons he created us to be. I believe that can only happen in deep and abiding relationships. Relationships which are valued and honored by the people who are in them. Relationships which develop over time and in places which enhance our opportunities to explore who we are and enable us to grow in them. Relationships which mean something. Relationships which matter. Relationships which make a difference in our life.
Such relationships look to me like Jeremiah’s tree planted in streams of living water. And such relationships look like the blessings (not like the woes) Jesus spells out to his disciples. It seems to me that one of the messages we can take from our scripture lessons today is about how we become the persons God made us to be, how the blessings of life in him and in relationship with each other can make that happen. Unless, of course, something gets in the way—like a cell phone, for example. Because as useful as they can be, our new technologies can seriously get in the way of forming and growing and sustaining deep and meaning-filled relationship. They can isolate us and intrude on our relationships. We know we are becoming hostage to them when the needs and wants of family and friends become more like interruptions in our life as our relationship to technologies becomes more necessary to it. Our relationships begin to diminish in meaning and value; at best they become superficially deep. But that does not have to happen. Not if we remember that we have a choice. Not if we remember who we are as a people of God and followers of Christ. Not if we remember that the things of this world are given to us to serve God’s purposes for us and for his creation. Even as that puts us at odds against the world—even as we enjoy the benefits of living in it.
This is the message I believe Jesus was trying to get across to his disciples that day as he welcomed the people who came to him for teaching and healing. They were people who took time out of their busy lives to be with Jesus so that they might receive from him the things that would make their lives healthy and whole. He called them poor, but there is no indication that they had no money. He called them hungry, but there is no indication that they came for food to eat. He called them people who weep, but there is no indication that any of them were depressed or crying. So what is the point Jesus wants to make to his disciples as he turns away from the crowd to address them? And what is Jesus saying to us in his words of blessing and woe?
Well, one thing Jesus is NOT saying is that these blessings are a prescription for living life. They are not rules to follow, or the means by which we gain some reward in this life, nor are they entrance requirements to get into heaven in. These are not choices we can make; rather, these are the responses we have when we choose to live the life God wants for us to live. They are the result which comes to us when we choose to live after the example of Christ rather than in the default modes of the world. In his blessings and woes it is clear that Jesus has no issue with people who are rich in money or possessions; his issue is with people who don’t recognize how poor they are and needful of God, regardless of how much money or material possession they have. We all know wealthy people who come to see their wealth as something they earned and deserve, rather than a gift which they have been given and the opportunities they enjoy by the circumstances of their life and birth. The problem with riches and possessions is that people who have them only hunger for more; they never feel their hunger as a hunger for God. That’s because they are too full of themselves. They have no need of God because their sense of entitlement and power makes them feel as if they are God; that they are in control of their life and their wealth. But we all know what happens to people who strive to have the most toys at the end of their life. They die like the rest of us. And Jesus tells us in his woes that it will be no consolation to one who dies rich to know that he will be judged not by the power he wielded or the riches he accumulated in this life, rather he will be judged by how much his power and riches made a difference in serving God’s purposes in this world.
It does not surprise me that our relationship to our money and possessions hold much the same power over us as our relationship with new technologies. But it startled me to learn in stewardship workshops that percentage giving by the members of mainline churches is incrementally less the more wealth a person has, while giving is incrementally more the less a person has. In other words, by a standard of percentage giving, the less income or assets a church member has, the more he is likely to give to the church. The more income and assets a church member has, the less he is likely to give to the church. And that certainly says much about the relationships we value. This is one reason why I am opposed to the tithe as the measure for giving to the church. Ten percent is far more than poor or working class people are able to give to the church and still live on their net income; on the other hand, ten percent is far less than wealthy people can give and still maintain the life style to which they are accustomed. And those who are poor in Spirit know that 10 percent will never reflect the love a practicing Christian has for God or the commitment he has to his church. And so I applaud the likes of Warren Buffet, and people like him in our congregations. Mr. Buffet now gives more than forty percent of his wealth to charitable organizations which serve God’s good purpose for them in the world. But for all his modesty and generosity Mr. Buffet has not escaped the wrath Jesus says comes to such people in our scripture lesson today. He has been mocked and ridiculed and scorned by other wealthy people, but Warren Buffet stands in the spirit of the beatitudes and firm in his purpose to give back to the world what the world had so generously given to him.
What is clear to me as I encounter today’s scripture from Jeremiah is that our lives really do reflect themselves in the metaphor of shrubs planted in a desert or trees planted in living streams of water. Where and how we plant ourselves on this earth will determine how much or how little we place our life in the hands of the God who gave our life and riches to us, and how and where we plant outself in this world will determine how connected we are in relationship with others who share this planet with us. We can make a lot of money and have a lot of things and keep them for ourselves, or, as Jeremiah tells us, we can bear much fruit for the world. Jesus’ blessings and woes enhance Jeremiah’s metaphor. We can be like trees who know our poverty and our need of living water, or we can be like shrubs who have no need of anything more than the parched security of our desert habitat. We can be like the tree who fixes her roots in the waters of the earth and spreads her branches into the world to serve it, or we can be like the shrub who flourishes in his own wilderness. We can be the tree who knows how to satisfy his hunger and thirst in living waters, or we can be the shrub who does not even recognize how hungry and thirsty he is. We can be the tree who finds riches in his poverty or the shrub who does not see the poverty of his riches.
But if we choose to be a needy, trusting and life-giving tree in a world of untrusting, self-sufficient, and self-serving shrubs, life will not be easy. Because it is not easy for a Christian to live in the default modes of this world. And while we will find it necessary at times to live in them, we also have the choice. We don’t need to remain shrubs; we can return to living waters and become the trees God made us to be. We don’t need to remain trapped in the default modes of the social, political and economic systems we were born into. We can choose to live our life differently, by the tenets of our faith and our religious practices. We don’t need to remain hostage to technologies which promise more than they can give. We can choose to put our cell phones away once in a while. For the sake of the Gospel and for the sake of relationship. Because it is only in true and deep and sustained relationship with God and with each other that the poverty of our life turns to riches. It is only in such relationship that our deepest hunger can be satisfied. It is only in such relationship that we can share our deepest sorrow and know our greatest joy. And it is only in true relationship with all who share this planet with us that we can be a blessing to God in a world of woe.