"What Do You Give Authority To?"
Rev. Peter Heinrichs (2/17/2019)
Jeremiah 17:5-10 (NRSV)
5 Thus says the Lord:
Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
and make mere flesh their strength,
whose hearts turn away from the Lord.
6 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.
7 Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
8 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.
9 The heart is devious above all else;
it is perverse--
who can understand it?
10 I the Lord test the mind
and search the heart,
to give to all according to their ways,
according to the fruit of their doings.
Ancient “blessings and woes.” What of them? Why should we care?
Perhaps they are old history. But if I were to point out that each of us has two possible inner masters to choose between – trust or fear – and that one cannot give authority in your life to both masters – we might sense the relevance of “blessing and woe.” We might nod our heads and remember times when we have served fear, and what that felt like. We might recall moments when we have trusted, and what that was like. We could pray to make better choices between trust and fear and then sing a hymn, hear a benediction, and go home to lunch. The choice between trust and fear will seem a bit conceptual and “put-offable” until tomorrow. But would this be enough to change a lifetime of giving in to fear and woe?
So let’s drill down a bit, as the prophet Jeremiah does when he posits, the human heart is devious, who can understand it. Forced to consider the inconsistency of our own heart, we might sit up and pay attention. Indeed, if I were to ask the question, why do we tend to resist trust and embrace fear, why, we might be here all afternoon arguing about the “yeah-buts.” You heard me right: the “yeah-buts.” I am quite sure you are acquainted with them: Yeah, trust is important, but I need to figure out what to DO about this problem. Or, Yeah, but the experts say I should be afraid so who am I to trust that I’m actually okay. You know, the “yeah-buts.” Where fear pretends to be our friend and says, “Yeah, but you know I only have your best interests at heart.”
Here’s the thing. The language of “blessing and woe” is a way of asking you and me to make a choice. What will it be – trust or fear? Blessing or woe? Everything follows from this choice. No “yeah-buts.” This instant. Every instant. What do we choose? For as Jeremiah says in v. 7: trust is the Lord.
What happens when fear is the Lord? Every decision and every step and every choice is fraught with consequences in a cascade of worry. Every decision is a big decision. We become infected with the virus of self-doubt.
What happens when trust is Lord? There is only one decision between two options: Do I choose, in Jeremiah’s language, that trust is my Lord, or do I choose that fear is my Lord?
What does trust is my Lord look like?
A story. A story about our mailbox at home. A story of woe and blessing! If you have lived in Maine for a number of years, this mailbox story may sound familiar. Every winter since we moved to our current home, our mail box has been destroyed by snowplows. At least twice a season, I’m out there with a drill or a screwdriver to reattach the thing. Or dump it and start all over. A couple of years ago we went out and bought a new, state-of-the-art mailbox, this one big and strong and expensive and advertised to be invulnerable. As advertised, this mail box has lasted two years. True, two years later its handle looks like the nose of a boxer who fought one fight too many and there are dents in the box and it got torn off its screws a couple times. But it’s still attached to the wooden post -- with bungy cords instead of screws. Now after a plowable storm and our mailbox gets blown askew, all I have to do is wrench it back around to face the road. Until, that is, December of this year, when during a big storm a snowplow with a “wing blade” took out not only our mailbox, but four neighbor’s mailboxes standing in a row with ours. Our little tank of a mailbox survived, still tied to what was left of the post, sticking out of the snow about ten feet from where it belonged.
Next morning there was a confab of neighbors, mostly men, around the mailbox mess. There were not many blessings flying about, and not a few curses. We looked a woe-full group standing there, surveying the mess and trying not to get run down in the street, which is a busy major road. One wanted to argue with the Public Works Dept, one wanted to find a contractor to rebuild the whole neighborhood mailbox site; and still another (with me) decided to see if we could prop the mailboxes back up together so the mail person could at least deliver the mail until we figured out a more permanent solution. Some old wood, some new wood, what was left of mailboxes, a bucket of cement and several building blocks later, and we had a temporary fix. I do mean temporary, as in propped up. I don’t know that you could call it prayer, but we opined that it sure would be good if there were to be no more snowstorms this winter. Silly us. Remember, this was only December.
It was my wife Susan, who came up with a blessing. She was not part of the woeful group, by the way. Later that same day, she rummaged in our garage to come up with three fluorescent orange metal rods. She jammed them into the snow and frozen ground in front of the mailboxes where the snowplow drivers couldn’t possibly miss them, even in a raging storm. She didn’t curse. She didn’t argue. She didn’t ask permission. She just did it. Since that day our rickety, propped up mailboxes haven’t come close to being destroyed. They are not pretty, but by God they are standing and taking mail. What a blessing!!
You might ask why we didn’t think of this before. {You might also possibly wonder about how men tend to argue with life while women just deal with it.} Perhaps we can talk about that another time?
Notice in the story how worry and anger pile up and we seem to end up without a prayer. Notice the ease with which a helpful solution arises.
I know this is not a big deal. Mailboxes are a “first world problem” as some would call them. My point is that there are no big decisions, after the first one, the one about living in trust or fear. It is our choice to say whether we live for the Lord of trust or for the Lord of fear. Our choice now; our choice every moment. What is helpful – even if it is not pretty or permanent – flows into every aspect of our lives.
One more note. You can make this decision between trust and fear any time. God isn’t ever going to say to you, Nope, too late, you missed your chance. Never going to say, Nope, Nope, you should have thought of this before. God isn’t going to say, No, you don’t get another chance. Ours is a God who has placed trust in us that when at last we’re ready, we’ll try the one thing we’ve resisted so long: to seek guidance from the Source of all Life, instead from our worry and fear.
Amen
Rev. Peter Heinrichs (2/17/2019)
Jeremiah 17:5-10 (NRSV)
5 Thus says the Lord:
Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
and make mere flesh their strength,
whose hearts turn away from the Lord.
6 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.
7 Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
8 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.
9 The heart is devious above all else;
it is perverse--
who can understand it?
10 I the Lord test the mind
and search the heart,
to give to all according to their ways,
according to the fruit of their doings.
Ancient “blessings and woes.” What of them? Why should we care?
Perhaps they are old history. But if I were to point out that each of us has two possible inner masters to choose between – trust or fear – and that one cannot give authority in your life to both masters – we might sense the relevance of “blessing and woe.” We might nod our heads and remember times when we have served fear, and what that felt like. We might recall moments when we have trusted, and what that was like. We could pray to make better choices between trust and fear and then sing a hymn, hear a benediction, and go home to lunch. The choice between trust and fear will seem a bit conceptual and “put-offable” until tomorrow. But would this be enough to change a lifetime of giving in to fear and woe?
So let’s drill down a bit, as the prophet Jeremiah does when he posits, the human heart is devious, who can understand it. Forced to consider the inconsistency of our own heart, we might sit up and pay attention. Indeed, if I were to ask the question, why do we tend to resist trust and embrace fear, why, we might be here all afternoon arguing about the “yeah-buts.” You heard me right: the “yeah-buts.” I am quite sure you are acquainted with them: Yeah, trust is important, but I need to figure out what to DO about this problem. Or, Yeah, but the experts say I should be afraid so who am I to trust that I’m actually okay. You know, the “yeah-buts.” Where fear pretends to be our friend and says, “Yeah, but you know I only have your best interests at heart.”
Here’s the thing. The language of “blessing and woe” is a way of asking you and me to make a choice. What will it be – trust or fear? Blessing or woe? Everything follows from this choice. No “yeah-buts.” This instant. Every instant. What do we choose? For as Jeremiah says in v. 7: trust is the Lord.
What happens when fear is the Lord? Every decision and every step and every choice is fraught with consequences in a cascade of worry. Every decision is a big decision. We become infected with the virus of self-doubt.
What happens when trust is Lord? There is only one decision between two options: Do I choose, in Jeremiah’s language, that trust is my Lord, or do I choose that fear is my Lord?
What does trust is my Lord look like?
- trust spends its time and energy on the present moment. It doesn’t dwell on the past or compulsively focus on the future.
- trust doesn’t expect life to happen according to plan
- trust sees life happening for you, not to you
- trust looks inward for guidance, not outward for answers
- trust doesn’t chase after worries. It gently dismisses them knowing that solutions will be given without fear.
A story. A story about our mailbox at home. A story of woe and blessing! If you have lived in Maine for a number of years, this mailbox story may sound familiar. Every winter since we moved to our current home, our mail box has been destroyed by snowplows. At least twice a season, I’m out there with a drill or a screwdriver to reattach the thing. Or dump it and start all over. A couple of years ago we went out and bought a new, state-of-the-art mailbox, this one big and strong and expensive and advertised to be invulnerable. As advertised, this mail box has lasted two years. True, two years later its handle looks like the nose of a boxer who fought one fight too many and there are dents in the box and it got torn off its screws a couple times. But it’s still attached to the wooden post -- with bungy cords instead of screws. Now after a plowable storm and our mailbox gets blown askew, all I have to do is wrench it back around to face the road. Until, that is, December of this year, when during a big storm a snowplow with a “wing blade” took out not only our mailbox, but four neighbor’s mailboxes standing in a row with ours. Our little tank of a mailbox survived, still tied to what was left of the post, sticking out of the snow about ten feet from where it belonged.
Next morning there was a confab of neighbors, mostly men, around the mailbox mess. There were not many blessings flying about, and not a few curses. We looked a woe-full group standing there, surveying the mess and trying not to get run down in the street, which is a busy major road. One wanted to argue with the Public Works Dept, one wanted to find a contractor to rebuild the whole neighborhood mailbox site; and still another (with me) decided to see if we could prop the mailboxes back up together so the mail person could at least deliver the mail until we figured out a more permanent solution. Some old wood, some new wood, what was left of mailboxes, a bucket of cement and several building blocks later, and we had a temporary fix. I do mean temporary, as in propped up. I don’t know that you could call it prayer, but we opined that it sure would be good if there were to be no more snowstorms this winter. Silly us. Remember, this was only December.
It was my wife Susan, who came up with a blessing. She was not part of the woeful group, by the way. Later that same day, she rummaged in our garage to come up with three fluorescent orange metal rods. She jammed them into the snow and frozen ground in front of the mailboxes where the snowplow drivers couldn’t possibly miss them, even in a raging storm. She didn’t curse. She didn’t argue. She didn’t ask permission. She just did it. Since that day our rickety, propped up mailboxes haven’t come close to being destroyed. They are not pretty, but by God they are standing and taking mail. What a blessing!!
You might ask why we didn’t think of this before. {You might also possibly wonder about how men tend to argue with life while women just deal with it.} Perhaps we can talk about that another time?
Notice in the story how worry and anger pile up and we seem to end up without a prayer. Notice the ease with which a helpful solution arises.
I know this is not a big deal. Mailboxes are a “first world problem” as some would call them. My point is that there are no big decisions, after the first one, the one about living in trust or fear. It is our choice to say whether we live for the Lord of trust or for the Lord of fear. Our choice now; our choice every moment. What is helpful – even if it is not pretty or permanent – flows into every aspect of our lives.
One more note. You can make this decision between trust and fear any time. God isn’t ever going to say to you, Nope, too late, you missed your chance. Never going to say, Nope, Nope, you should have thought of this before. God isn’t going to say, No, you don’t get another chance. Ours is a God who has placed trust in us that when at last we’re ready, we’ll try the one thing we’ve resisted so long: to seek guidance from the Source of all Life, instead from our worry and fear.
Amen