The Fruit Of One's Doings
Sermon
The Presence In The Promise
First Lesson Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany Cycle C
A biography of Humphrey Bogart by Sperber and Lax portrays the star of the golden era of Hollywood as a troubled man. Bogart reached stardom in Hollywood as only a limited number have. He was the leading male box office attraction. He was financially secure. He married Lauren Bacall. Yet his discomfort with what he did was obvious always to those who knew him. He worked intensely at his craft. Yet one day while on the set making a new film, he remarked, "What a way to make a living!" On one occasion a friend noted how crestfallen Bogart was. The friend asked Bogart why he was always so unhappy. Bogart replied that he expected a lot more from himself, and he also knew he would never get it.
The gnawing dissatisfaction that filled the life of Bogart might help to explain his alcoholism and his smoking which combined to take his life at the age of 57. At times Mr. Bogart gave evidence of literary and speaking skills which make one wonder how much he quietly berated himself for failing to make better use of his gifts. All of us know that feeling to some extent. Yet Mr. Bogart represents the kind of case history of how devastated one's life can be if one does not experience a way in which one can deal with the failure to achieve what one ought to be. For that reason it is a wholesome exercise to examine the First Reading appointed for today. In this lesson the Prophet Jeremiah draws a contrast between the lives of those who live dependent upon their own resources alone and those who rely upon God.
The Context
People who have only a brushing acquaintance with Jeremiah think of the prophet as being highly vitriolic and extremely harsh on his people. That would be to know the man only for his reputation of speaking judgments upon his people for their failure to trust the covenant of God. In reality, Jeremiah was a deeply sensitive person who suffered much emotional depression about the fate of his people because they did not respond to calls to repentance. Jeremiah knew that his people were sowing the seeds of their own destruction, because they were indifferent to God's promises to embrace and protect them in the face of the enemy. God would rescue them if only they would trust and rely upon God for divine providence rather than to rely upon political treaties, prosperity, and their armed forces. It is no wonder then that we have this considerable collection of oracles from Jeremiah which lash out at the hard-heartedness of Israel.
However, that is not all we have from Jeremiah. He could also assure them that God would in time redeem and save them in spite of their indifference at this moment in their history. Jeremiah also served as a teacher to demonstrate how the relationship with God should be characterized. That is what we have before us today. The chapter from which this psalm is taken begins with a statement bemoaning the plight of Israel in which by their "own act" they would spoil the heritage God had planned for them. Then, using the model of Psalm 1, Jeremiah paraphrases the Psalm to remind the people that they would not have to be a part of any negative response to God's designs. There is no reason why the people of God should be put to shame. They are born by the spirit of God to enjoy the privileges that God is willing to offer them -- God's loving providence and care. There definitely is hope for them to be able to cope with whatever trials or temptations come their way.
The Problem
The prophet explains that the reason people make it difficult for themselves is that they turn "their hearts away from the Lord" in order to trust in "mere mortals" and "make flesh their strength." Most certainly the prophet would not rule out the fact that we all experience wholesome and loving experiences in people. That would be particularly true of receiving good instruction and upbringing from our parents. Nor would the prophet rule out the role models we have had in growing up and maturing. What would be threatening or disrupting in our lives is if the people who influenced our lives were not believing and trusting themselves. Either such people would be keeping us from being able to trust God or they would be discouraging that trust. Instead they would be making themselves the models of strength and help, and we would be counting on the wrong kind of help; help that would ultimately fail us. That sounds relatively easy. We should be able to discern who are the good people to emulate. Yet it is not always so.
The prophet says that the "heart is devious above all else; it is perverse -- who can understand it?" When you get down to cases, behavior is not all that easy to analyze. God says that God has to "test the mind and search the heart" to get at things the way they are. However, that is never easy. People are highly complicated. It is not easy to get at what makes them tick or what controls their thoughts and their ideas. That is especially true of what they believe in. They can have all kinds of reasons for not believing God. God wants them to have good reason to believe in God.
Be Like The Father
An art exhibit that has traveled the country is titled "Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman." Mary Cassatt was an American artist who worked principally in the last century in France as an impressionist painter closely associated with Degas. In her middle years and during the last decade of the nineteenth century, Cassatt featured principally mothers and children in her paintings. Having never married herself, she was deeply touched mainly by the bond between mothers and daughters. Her paintings reflect quite plainly the emotional and sensual feelings between mothers and daughters. The subject of children also reflects the commonly held notion of the day that children are innocent. One painting featuring a group admiring one child was believed to have been inspired by one of the nativity scenes of the Holy Child. One striking painting of a parent and child focused on a father and son. The subjects were Cassatt's brother and nephew. The resemblance between father and son arrest the attention of the viewer. The eyes of both father and son penetrate the same way. Their features are most similar, suggesting that the son will grow to be a clone of the father. What is even more striking is the fact that as the son rests upon the arm of the father's easy chair the bodies of both are blended as their tailored suits appear to melt into one another. The overall impression is that the father and the son are one.
If you can appreciate what it was that Mary Cassatt was trying to convey in this portrait of the one-ness of a father and son, you have an inkling of what it was that the prophet was trying to convey in the description of godly life which he gives us in the First Reading for today. The prophet's intention was to convince his readers that God had given expression of the divine revelation of God's love and trustworthiness to the people. The history of God's relationship to the people was expressed in a history of salvation that is a tribute to God's patience and divine ingenuity. The prophet acknowledges this as having been obvious from the very beginning of God's relationship with Israel as a parent with a child reflecting the image of the parent.
How It Is Done
Asking people to reflect the image of God sounds like a tall order. And it would be if God did not give us the resources for doing so. However, God does give us the assurance that we can rely on God. "Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord," writes the prophet. Left to our own resources and relying on ourselves will always make us come up short. Tom De Haven penned a novel about the cartoonists in the era of the Great Depression. Titled Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, the story relates how the cartoonists worked to ease the pain of the public during the Depression. The mythical team of Geebus and Brady produced the character of Derby Dugan. Brady produces a magic wallet for Derby that could produce a ten spot whenever needed. The public loved it.
Then there was Abe Ongo, the immortal street barber who severed hair clippings from the heads of Samson, Solomon, Julius Caesar, Abe Lincoln, and the heads of other famous people of the past 2,000 years. Dubious at first, Geebus was inspired by the Ongo character, whose name meant he "would go on and on." It dawned on Geebus that all it would take is "one." "One guy that doesn't croak," he explained, can inspire optimism. The Depression funnies faded as America became more affluent. Yet they remain as historic reminders how people have to create their own fantasies, dreams, and mythical heroes in order to cope with the pain and hardship that come their way. The prophet would remind us that we do not have to place our hope and trust in such ephemeral characters as the characters of funny papers or any other medium. The help God offers is for real.
The Faded Blooms
To explain the contrast between those who rely on the Lord and those who do not, the prophet resorts to the comparison of the non-trusters with the fate of the shrub in the desert. For them there just is no real relief. We all recognize the contrast between the verdant growth when there is plenty of rain and mild temperatures to produce wholesome vegetation and those drought periods when the summer heat parches all the earth. However, the prophet makes the contrast between the growth in desert places that has no chance compared to the growth at the side of the waters that is untouched by the arid seasons. Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington, published a study called The Rise of Christianity. The subtitle suggests that the Jesus movement became a dominant religious force within a few centuries. With the canons or rules of sociology, Stark analyzed why the pagan population decreased in the same period. In addition to epidemics and plagues, the Greco-Roman culture diminished itself by its affluence, its views on marriage, and its birth control methods. At the same time Stark ventures to say, as few sociologists are inclined to do, that the Christian believers were able to cope with problems and disasters by virtue of their faith.
The belief system of the Christian adherents was vastly superior to anything the pagan religions and cults offered through the multitude of gods they had fashioned in their idolatrous practices. The Prophet Jeremiah claimed the same for the Hebrew faith in his day. He envisioned that the people who did not trust in the God who had been revealed in the covenant of grace were those people who were like the shrub in the desert that has to wither and fade away when the heat of troubles come. It is most certainly true to say that the Christian faith today must compete against philosophies, cults, and idolatries like those that were prevalent in the day of the prophet. It is equally true that the faith we espouse along with the prophet is superior in every way to the folly of the cultic and idolatrous practices of our day.
According To One's Ways
The prophet maintains that not only are the ways of the faithful superior to those who do not believe, but that God also deals with people according to their ways. That is not always apparent to us at the moment. At times it would appear that those who seize power in the world are the one's having their way. Every day we read about the struggles for power in the worlds of politics and finance. For the most part, the daily news is about the people who are successful or who fail in dealing with power. Paul Erdman wrote an exciting novel about struggles in the world of finance called The Setup. The story is about Charles Black, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Charles had met regularly with nine other men representing the banking institutions of their nations. The ten men met each month in Basel to determine the fate of interest rates for the banking institutions of the world. The system depended upon the integrity and faithfulness of the players. However, Charles becomes the victim of a plot by one of the members who seizes the opportunity to make Charles the fall guy for actions that served the greed of the plotter. Eventually the plot is exposed. The story is meant to illustrate the truism that power can and does corrupt. Yet eventually, on their own terms, those who flirt with and maneuver power to their own advantage will pay the price. As the prophet says it, the Lord "will give to all according to their ways." Sooner or later the perpetrators of evil will pay a price for living according to their ways.
Bearing Fruit
On the other hand, it is equally true that God rewards those who draw strength and nourishment from what God offers in love and grace. As the tree that is planted by the water is able to "stay green ... and does not cease to bear fruit," the faithful are able to give and yield blessings through the exercise of their faith. The blessing for the children of God who thrive on the love of God which has been revealed to them in our Lord Jesus Christ is that they know that their lives are secure because they are able to draw strength from him who is the Living Water. Jeremiah could fall back on the tradition of how God provided water for the children of Israel when they wandered in the wilderness. As he faced the threatened future of his people who were to face the humiliation of deportation as a people into an alien nation, he could still be confident of how God would be the source of strength in the time of their direst needs. That is made all the more sure for us.
We have the history of salvation as it was lived out in the people of Israel, and they were delivered. Jeremiah's confidence that there would always be a remnant who would rely upon God as the source of their strength speaks to us, also. That becomes all the more clear as the history of our salvation comes to its climax in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. For him the tree planted by water became the tree of the cross. So it was that the Evangelist John reports that when they pierced Christ's side, blood and water flowed from him. Obviously, it is the evangelist's attempt to help us understand that Jesus truly became the Living Water for us through all that he achieved by his life, death, and resurrection. Tragically, those who fail to trust God are the people who keep seeing oases in the deserts and wildernesses of life. There are all kinds of attractive ideas, notions, proposals, gospels, and cure-alls that are ever so alluring. However, they all turn out to be mirages, and they wither away and no lasting relief comes. For us the opposite is true. The cross is no attractive scene. However, it does reveal the truth. Our sin and our death had to be dealt with. And our Lord accomplished that for us. Our Lord Jesus Christ achieved for us the final victory over death as the true source of life. The life we live in him is the life that does "not cease to bear fruit."
The gnawing dissatisfaction that filled the life of Bogart might help to explain his alcoholism and his smoking which combined to take his life at the age of 57. At times Mr. Bogart gave evidence of literary and speaking skills which make one wonder how much he quietly berated himself for failing to make better use of his gifts. All of us know that feeling to some extent. Yet Mr. Bogart represents the kind of case history of how devastated one's life can be if one does not experience a way in which one can deal with the failure to achieve what one ought to be. For that reason it is a wholesome exercise to examine the First Reading appointed for today. In this lesson the Prophet Jeremiah draws a contrast between the lives of those who live dependent upon their own resources alone and those who rely upon God.
The Context
People who have only a brushing acquaintance with Jeremiah think of the prophet as being highly vitriolic and extremely harsh on his people. That would be to know the man only for his reputation of speaking judgments upon his people for their failure to trust the covenant of God. In reality, Jeremiah was a deeply sensitive person who suffered much emotional depression about the fate of his people because they did not respond to calls to repentance. Jeremiah knew that his people were sowing the seeds of their own destruction, because they were indifferent to God's promises to embrace and protect them in the face of the enemy. God would rescue them if only they would trust and rely upon God for divine providence rather than to rely upon political treaties, prosperity, and their armed forces. It is no wonder then that we have this considerable collection of oracles from Jeremiah which lash out at the hard-heartedness of Israel.
However, that is not all we have from Jeremiah. He could also assure them that God would in time redeem and save them in spite of their indifference at this moment in their history. Jeremiah also served as a teacher to demonstrate how the relationship with God should be characterized. That is what we have before us today. The chapter from which this psalm is taken begins with a statement bemoaning the plight of Israel in which by their "own act" they would spoil the heritage God had planned for them. Then, using the model of Psalm 1, Jeremiah paraphrases the Psalm to remind the people that they would not have to be a part of any negative response to God's designs. There is no reason why the people of God should be put to shame. They are born by the spirit of God to enjoy the privileges that God is willing to offer them -- God's loving providence and care. There definitely is hope for them to be able to cope with whatever trials or temptations come their way.
The Problem
The prophet explains that the reason people make it difficult for themselves is that they turn "their hearts away from the Lord" in order to trust in "mere mortals" and "make flesh their strength." Most certainly the prophet would not rule out the fact that we all experience wholesome and loving experiences in people. That would be particularly true of receiving good instruction and upbringing from our parents. Nor would the prophet rule out the role models we have had in growing up and maturing. What would be threatening or disrupting in our lives is if the people who influenced our lives were not believing and trusting themselves. Either such people would be keeping us from being able to trust God or they would be discouraging that trust. Instead they would be making themselves the models of strength and help, and we would be counting on the wrong kind of help; help that would ultimately fail us. That sounds relatively easy. We should be able to discern who are the good people to emulate. Yet it is not always so.
The prophet says that the "heart is devious above all else; it is perverse -- who can understand it?" When you get down to cases, behavior is not all that easy to analyze. God says that God has to "test the mind and search the heart" to get at things the way they are. However, that is never easy. People are highly complicated. It is not easy to get at what makes them tick or what controls their thoughts and their ideas. That is especially true of what they believe in. They can have all kinds of reasons for not believing God. God wants them to have good reason to believe in God.
Be Like The Father
An art exhibit that has traveled the country is titled "Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman." Mary Cassatt was an American artist who worked principally in the last century in France as an impressionist painter closely associated with Degas. In her middle years and during the last decade of the nineteenth century, Cassatt featured principally mothers and children in her paintings. Having never married herself, she was deeply touched mainly by the bond between mothers and daughters. Her paintings reflect quite plainly the emotional and sensual feelings between mothers and daughters. The subject of children also reflects the commonly held notion of the day that children are innocent. One painting featuring a group admiring one child was believed to have been inspired by one of the nativity scenes of the Holy Child. One striking painting of a parent and child focused on a father and son. The subjects were Cassatt's brother and nephew. The resemblance between father and son arrest the attention of the viewer. The eyes of both father and son penetrate the same way. Their features are most similar, suggesting that the son will grow to be a clone of the father. What is even more striking is the fact that as the son rests upon the arm of the father's easy chair the bodies of both are blended as their tailored suits appear to melt into one another. The overall impression is that the father and the son are one.
If you can appreciate what it was that Mary Cassatt was trying to convey in this portrait of the one-ness of a father and son, you have an inkling of what it was that the prophet was trying to convey in the description of godly life which he gives us in the First Reading for today. The prophet's intention was to convince his readers that God had given expression of the divine revelation of God's love and trustworthiness to the people. The history of God's relationship to the people was expressed in a history of salvation that is a tribute to God's patience and divine ingenuity. The prophet acknowledges this as having been obvious from the very beginning of God's relationship with Israel as a parent with a child reflecting the image of the parent.
How It Is Done
Asking people to reflect the image of God sounds like a tall order. And it would be if God did not give us the resources for doing so. However, God does give us the assurance that we can rely on God. "Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord," writes the prophet. Left to our own resources and relying on ourselves will always make us come up short. Tom De Haven penned a novel about the cartoonists in the era of the Great Depression. Titled Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, the story relates how the cartoonists worked to ease the pain of the public during the Depression. The mythical team of Geebus and Brady produced the character of Derby Dugan. Brady produces a magic wallet for Derby that could produce a ten spot whenever needed. The public loved it.
Then there was Abe Ongo, the immortal street barber who severed hair clippings from the heads of Samson, Solomon, Julius Caesar, Abe Lincoln, and the heads of other famous people of the past 2,000 years. Dubious at first, Geebus was inspired by the Ongo character, whose name meant he "would go on and on." It dawned on Geebus that all it would take is "one." "One guy that doesn't croak," he explained, can inspire optimism. The Depression funnies faded as America became more affluent. Yet they remain as historic reminders how people have to create their own fantasies, dreams, and mythical heroes in order to cope with the pain and hardship that come their way. The prophet would remind us that we do not have to place our hope and trust in such ephemeral characters as the characters of funny papers or any other medium. The help God offers is for real.
The Faded Blooms
To explain the contrast between those who rely on the Lord and those who do not, the prophet resorts to the comparison of the non-trusters with the fate of the shrub in the desert. For them there just is no real relief. We all recognize the contrast between the verdant growth when there is plenty of rain and mild temperatures to produce wholesome vegetation and those drought periods when the summer heat parches all the earth. However, the prophet makes the contrast between the growth in desert places that has no chance compared to the growth at the side of the waters that is untouched by the arid seasons. Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington, published a study called The Rise of Christianity. The subtitle suggests that the Jesus movement became a dominant religious force within a few centuries. With the canons or rules of sociology, Stark analyzed why the pagan population decreased in the same period. In addition to epidemics and plagues, the Greco-Roman culture diminished itself by its affluence, its views on marriage, and its birth control methods. At the same time Stark ventures to say, as few sociologists are inclined to do, that the Christian believers were able to cope with problems and disasters by virtue of their faith.
The belief system of the Christian adherents was vastly superior to anything the pagan religions and cults offered through the multitude of gods they had fashioned in their idolatrous practices. The Prophet Jeremiah claimed the same for the Hebrew faith in his day. He envisioned that the people who did not trust in the God who had been revealed in the covenant of grace were those people who were like the shrub in the desert that has to wither and fade away when the heat of troubles come. It is most certainly true to say that the Christian faith today must compete against philosophies, cults, and idolatries like those that were prevalent in the day of the prophet. It is equally true that the faith we espouse along with the prophet is superior in every way to the folly of the cultic and idolatrous practices of our day.
According To One's Ways
The prophet maintains that not only are the ways of the faithful superior to those who do not believe, but that God also deals with people according to their ways. That is not always apparent to us at the moment. At times it would appear that those who seize power in the world are the one's having their way. Every day we read about the struggles for power in the worlds of politics and finance. For the most part, the daily news is about the people who are successful or who fail in dealing with power. Paul Erdman wrote an exciting novel about struggles in the world of finance called The Setup. The story is about Charles Black, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Charles had met regularly with nine other men representing the banking institutions of their nations. The ten men met each month in Basel to determine the fate of interest rates for the banking institutions of the world. The system depended upon the integrity and faithfulness of the players. However, Charles becomes the victim of a plot by one of the members who seizes the opportunity to make Charles the fall guy for actions that served the greed of the plotter. Eventually the plot is exposed. The story is meant to illustrate the truism that power can and does corrupt. Yet eventually, on their own terms, those who flirt with and maneuver power to their own advantage will pay the price. As the prophet says it, the Lord "will give to all according to their ways." Sooner or later the perpetrators of evil will pay a price for living according to their ways.
Bearing Fruit
On the other hand, it is equally true that God rewards those who draw strength and nourishment from what God offers in love and grace. As the tree that is planted by the water is able to "stay green ... and does not cease to bear fruit," the faithful are able to give and yield blessings through the exercise of their faith. The blessing for the children of God who thrive on the love of God which has been revealed to them in our Lord Jesus Christ is that they know that their lives are secure because they are able to draw strength from him who is the Living Water. Jeremiah could fall back on the tradition of how God provided water for the children of Israel when they wandered in the wilderness. As he faced the threatened future of his people who were to face the humiliation of deportation as a people into an alien nation, he could still be confident of how God would be the source of strength in the time of their direst needs. That is made all the more sure for us.
We have the history of salvation as it was lived out in the people of Israel, and they were delivered. Jeremiah's confidence that there would always be a remnant who would rely upon God as the source of their strength speaks to us, also. That becomes all the more clear as the history of our salvation comes to its climax in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. For him the tree planted by water became the tree of the cross. So it was that the Evangelist John reports that when they pierced Christ's side, blood and water flowed from him. Obviously, it is the evangelist's attempt to help us understand that Jesus truly became the Living Water for us through all that he achieved by his life, death, and resurrection. Tragically, those who fail to trust God are the people who keep seeing oases in the deserts and wildernesses of life. There are all kinds of attractive ideas, notions, proposals, gospels, and cure-alls that are ever so alluring. However, they all turn out to be mirages, and they wither away and no lasting relief comes. For us the opposite is true. The cross is no attractive scene. However, it does reveal the truth. Our sin and our death had to be dealt with. And our Lord accomplished that for us. Our Lord Jesus Christ achieved for us the final victory over death as the true source of life. The life we live in him is the life that does "not cease to bear fruit."
