The fate of a tree

Text: Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 11: 18-21, OT page 713 Somethings are puzzling, if you stop and think about them. Take sweet tea for example. What you do with sweet tea is heat up the water – but then once you’ve made it hot you add your tea bags, only to add ice and make it cold. You pour in sugar to make it sweet, but then you squeeze in a lemon to make it sour. It’s puzzling when you think about it. Almost as puzzling as what you see when you go to the hospital. You walk up and notice the folks out by the fountain, oxygen tubes stuck up their nose to help out their lungs, cigarette in their hands to ease the addiction. And it’s the strangest thing in the world to imagine a heart patient listening to his doctor, hearing her say that he’s going to have to cut back on salt and cholesterol and fat only to leave the hospital and pull into the McDonalds that’s right across the street. There they are – right across the street from the institution that does the most to promote our community’s physical health are McDonald’s, Burger King, and Dunkin Donuts – the three institutions that are doing our bodies the most harm. It’s ironic is what it is – but all around us are such ironies. All around us are mixed messages. So often, being human is grasping two ideas simultaneously, even when those two ideas are in opposition to each other. Life can be like sweet tea – which you want to be sweet but then you also use a lemon to make it sour. You doctor your heart but then you fill your body with food that does your body harm. Just as on the one hand we read Psalm 1 and hear that if we are obedient – if we do not follow the advice of the wicked nor take the path that sinners tread, if we delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it day and night, then we will be like trees planted by streams of water, which yield fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. That is Scripture, but right there on the other hand is the prophet Jeremiah, who despite his obedience is like a tree soon to be cut off from the land of the living. Remember that. Remember that both of these passages of Scripture are true even though their claims are nearly opposite. Certainly it is true that obedience to the Law will put you on the right path – and that playing by the rules will pay off. Life is not so different from Kindergarten, where the teacher rewards those good boys and girls who were quiet during class and who refrained from putting glue in their classmate’s hair with a popcorn party or something like that. There can be no doubt that good behavior offers its own rewards and that those who live lives of kindness, honesty, and gentleness will be rewarded for their efforts. But it’s also true that bad things happen to good people – and that bad things happen especially to those good people who are compelled to speak the truth that no one really wants to hear. The prophet Jeremiah – what a burden he bears – and who laid this heavy burden upon him? It was the Lord. “It was the Lord who made it known to me, and I knew,” Jeremiah says to the Lord. He brings his complaint directly to God saying, “You showed me their evil deeds. But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter.” Do you know what that is like? A little Muslim boy named Mohammed, the new kid at school, he brings a homemade clock to his teacher – the teacher looked at the clock with its wires, it’s digital numbers counting down to who knows what – the teacher’s fear and the fear of the school administers boiled over when they remembered his name and his faith and next thing you know this skinny little boy with coke bottle glasses is in a room by himself being interrogated by police officers – and who was there to stand with him? Who was there to risk being condemned alongside him? To do so would make you like a “gentle lamb led to the slaughter.” Certainly Psalm 1 gets it right – you have to play by the rules – but Jeremiah is true as well, because sometimes standing up for what is right will get you crucified. What we have here in the 11th chapter of Jeremiah is a prelude to Christ’s death on the Cross – a foretaste of that day when the Son of God who walked the earth, as innocent as a gentle lamb, as pure as a flake of snow, but who spoke the truth to people who didn’t want to hear it and so he was like a tree “cut off from the land of the living.” The message may seem confusing. On the one hand Scripture tells us to be good Christians and we must be good Christians – but don’t think that being good will keep you out of trouble, because sometimes it’s being good that will get you in it. So Christianity is a little more complicated than we would like it to be, which might be true about most things. We go to the dentist, who tells us to floss and brush and stay away from sugary soft drinks, and some of those who do will be like trees planted by streams of water, but others, because of genetics or who knows what will never get a pat on the back from the dental hygienist because we can’t control everything by our good behavior. The same is true of the cancer patient. You’ve seen it happen – that the one who smoked his whole life lives to be 150 and the one who never touched a cigarette dies of lung cancer at 55. It’s not fair. It’s not fair that some just have the right constitution to never put on a pound, but the one who diets obsessively can’t lose any weight. They’ll try to explain it. No one wants you to stop trying. But if you spend some time thinking about it – it’s enough to drive you to eat a pound of bacon twice a day. Why – O Lord, would you make the innocent suffer? Why – O Lord, do you let the guilty go free? Why – O Lord, do you allow them to devise schemes against us? Why do you stand idle while they say, “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will no longer be remembered”? Unfortunately for us, Scripture does not provide any one perfect answer, but it is clear on this point – Scripture provides no room for the kind of self-righteousness so prevalent in our church and in our world. The great liberation theologian, Robert McAfee Brown calls us to be careful when we try to live by the rules, for in step one of our obedience we may come to the conclusion that “those who obey the laws are good, and God rewards them. Those who disobey the laws are bad, and God punishes them.” This is a logical conclusion, and so often it leads to a second step in logic: that if “there is a man who is prosperous, he must be obeying the law…if there is a man who is in trouble, he must be disobeying the law.” (Robert McAfee Brown, The Bible Speaks to You (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955) 248) The Bible criticizes this way of thinking sharply – though many who make such conclusions call themselves Christians – but we cannot comprehend the Cross if we go around thinking that obedience to God leads to earthly comfort, for on the Cross he was crucified though innocent, obedient to the Law, and always speaking the truth. Maybe that’s the dangerous part. Honesty is dangerous. I suppose that’s why I am prone to dishonesty. When the waitress comes by to check on my meal – I could be eating cat hair with spaghetti sauce and I’d tell her it was delicious. Honesty is dangerous. Children don’t like to go out with their grandmother once she reaches a certain age because she has just gotten too honest. “Looks like you’ve put on some weight,” she’ll say. “Are you going to wear that?” she’ll ask. “Why don’t you come visit me more often,” she wants to know. And what can you tell her? O – You could be honest too – but you won’t because you know how dangerous honesty can be, and because you’re already accustomed to keeping your real opinions to yourself. Are you disappointed in your politicians – of course you are. Are you mad at your husband – yes, but why bring it up now? Do you think she’s drinking too much? That he shouldn’t be talking to her like that? Do you think that something is wrong and do you wonder why no one is doing anything about it? Well sure you do – but you also know what happens to people who speak the truth. But you know what I say – not that I always do it – but you know what I say – I’d rather be cut off from the land of the living – no longer remembered – than have to look at myself in the mirror and wonder who I’ve become. For even when I walk through the shades of death – his presence is my stay. One word of his supporting breath – drives all my fears away. His hand, in sight of all my foes, does still my table spread; My cup with blessings over flows, his oil anoints my head. It is a strange world we live in. You may never feel completely at home here, so like a pilgrim search for something better. Like an alien whose homeland is so far away, seek the truth in this life and despite all your trouble, challenge, and hardship – in the Lord you will be “no more a stranger, or a guest, but like a child at home.” Amen.