February 17 Sermon

Luke 6:17-26; Psalm 1; Jeremiah 17:5-10

02/17/19

My early adulthood—while I was still single—seemed all in all to be rather simple.

When Deborah and I became engaged and got married, life became more complex.

When we began having children, life became even more complex. I expect it has been

the same for many of you in the same circumstances.

Well, in some respects, that’s how three of today’s readings seem to be: they seem to

move from simplicity to an ever greater complexity. At least that’s how it looks like to

me—beginning with the psalm of the day to the first reading and finally to the

Gospel.1

Psalm 1—just six verses long—is what’s known as a wisdom psalm. This is a bit of an

aside, but in a seminary class it was the very first one that we students studied—in a

course entitled, “The Hebrew Psalms.” It was taught by Dr. Frank Seilhamer, a name

some of you may know. After leaving the school, he became senior minister at Advent

Lutheran Church on East Market Street. What he was like as a parish pastor, I don’t

know. But as a teacher, let me tell you, he was demanding! I was glad I took the class

pass/fail instead of for a grade.

As difficult as it was for me to translate that psalm, it does have a simple, straight-up

message: Obey God and live; or go your own way and suffer for it. In other words, the

truly happy belong to the congregation of the righteous. They delight in God’s law,

meditating on it day and night. They will be like trees planted by streams of water,

prospering and yielding fruit. On the other hand, there are the wicked, the sinners,

those who sit in the seat of scoffers. They will be like chaff that the wind blows away.

• Good and bad.

• Right and wrong.

• Life and death.

The passage from Jeremiah seems equally clear-cut, equally black and white. Those

who trust in mere flesh turn their hearts away from God. They will be like shrubs in

the desert, in parched places, in an uninhabited salt land. Again, in contrast are those

who are blessed, those who trust in the Lord. As in the psalm, they will be like a tree

planted by water. Its leaves remain green, and it does not cease to bear fruit.

At the same time, it’s important to know the overall message God speaks through the

mouth of Jeremiah. Most of the book is actually an indictment of the chosen people,

who far too often lack trust in the Lord, who regularly go after other gods. As in this

passage from Chapter 11 that, like the others, uses the image of a tree:

The Lord once called you, “A green olive tree, fair with goodly fruit”; but with

the roar of a great tempest he will set fire to it, and its branches will be

consumed. The LORD of hosts, who planted you, has pronounced evil against

you, because of the evil that the house of Israel and the house of Judah have

done…

So the comparison here is not quite as simple as in the psalm. Yes, there are those

who trust in God and those who trust in mere flesh. Yet in much of Jeremiah, the vast

majority end up failing to trust in the One who has made them, planted them in good

soil, provided water for them. They seem to prefer death to life.2

Like Psalm 1, the gospel may at first seem somewhat simple, but, like Jeremiah,

quickly becomes more complex—much more. For starters, known as the Sermon on

the Plain, it has an edge to it missing in the Sermon on the Mount, which appears in

Matthew. Unlike that gospel—and for that matter, Psalm 1 and the Jeremiah passage—

it isn’t applied in the third person. It isn’t “Blessed are those who are poor,” and so

on, but rather in a direct, personal way: “Blessed are you who are poor.” Also unlike

Matthew, Jesus in Luke includes a list of woes, for example, “Woe to you who are full

now, for you will be hungry.”

The only consolation most of us might feel is this: Jesus addresses the blessings and

woes strictly to the disciples rather than the crowd in general. So if we see ourselves

as Christians in general, then these two lists apply much less to us, but exclusively to

a number of mainly super-Christians—like a number of priests and nuns who, among

other things, take a vow of poverty.3

Most striking of all is that today’s gospel flies in the face of much of the wisdom in the

Old Testament. The basic premise is that prosperity comes from right living, while

poverty and misery come mainly from irresolute living. It reminds me of the Fable of

the Ant and the Grasshopper. You know how it goes. The ant works diligently during

the warm weather, storing up food and preparing a home for the winter. On the other

hand, the grasshopper enjoys a carefree, live-for-the-day existence. But when the

season changes, he reaps what he doesn’t expect—cold and hunger.

The Sermon on the Plain turns this conventional wisdom on its head. The way things

are today will be totally the opposite in the world to come. Now on the face of it,

that may somehow seem unfair. It’s a reminder, maybe, that most people who have

good lives have not earned all of it on their own. And not everyone who has a tough

go of things is to be blamed for it. Some do, after all, begin life with an abundance of

advantages—it’s certainly been that way for me—while others start out with little in

the way of resources. That then is how it goes through the rest of life—not always,

but usually.

Another professor—not in seminary, but in graduate school—once told us students that

we who are people of means don’t best help those who are not by ourselves becoming

poor. There are instead better ways to make a positive difference. It’s also important

to keep in mind—when it comes to ethical or moral behavior—that those with little

aren’t any worse than we are who have much, or, for that matter, any better. We

should neither idealize nor demonize those who have a hard time in this world.

A first helpful thing to do is trying to imagine what it may be like not to have those

things that make for a stable life. So here are some highlights from a source that

helps get us there.

It’s a novel, from one of my favorite American authors—Mark Twain. The name of the

book is

The Prince and the Pauper. Maybe, like me, you read it for a high-school English class.

If not, or if you don’t remember, here’s the basic storyline.

The time is the mid-1500s, and the location is Great Britain. A peasant boy and goodnatured

fellow—Tom is his name—stands with a large crowd outside Westminster

Abbey, to get a peek at Prince Edward VI, the first and only son of the king—Henry

VIII. Both boys happen to be ten years of age. Dressed in rags, Tom gets too close to

the gates and is being roughly removed by one of the guards. However, seeing what’s

happening, the prince indignantly calls out:

“How dar’st thou use a poor lad like that? How dar’st thou use the King my father’s

meanest subject so? Open the gates, and let him in!”—a command that the guards

immediately obey.

The prince addresses Tom directly: “Thou lookest tired and hungry: thou’st been

treated ill. Come with me.”

Dumbfounded, the servants accompany both of them to the prince’s private quarters,

from which he immediately dismisses them. He then asks Tom about his family and

life, learning that while Tom enjoys the company of friends, when he returns home his

father often beats him for failing to beg for money out on the streets.

The prince is intrigued by T’s daily adventures, especially getting all muddy with his

friends down by the River Thames. He exclaims:

“If that I could but clothe me in raiment like to thine, and strip my feet, and revel in

the mud once, just once, with none to rebuke me or forbid, me seemth I could forego

the crown!”

Tom replies: “And if that I could clothe me once, sweet sir, as thou art clad—just once

—”

“Then so shall it be!”

The boys change into each other’s clothes. And upon looking at each other and in a

mirror, they discover they appear as twins! The prince then notices a bruise on Tom’s

hand, where the guard had manhandled him. Incensed, he immediately “flies through

the palace grounds in his [new clothes] of rags, with a hot face and glowing eyes. As

soon as he reache[s] the…gate, he seize[s] the bars and trie[s] to shake them,

shouting, ‘Open! Unbar the gates!’”

The soldier who had mistreated Tom obeyed promptly…[then boxing him] on the ear

sent him whirling [in]to the roadway…” So the prince’s misadventures begin. Edward

is unable to convince anyone who he really is. Instead, they all laugh at him, and

there’s no way he can get back into the palace. Soon he ends up in Tom’s filthy home

and before his abusive father,

Naturally runs away, and, in the chapters to come, suffers many misfortunes—

although occasionally befriended by a few kind hearts.

Meanwhile, Tom is beside himself. The servants eventually enter his quarters, mistake

him for the prince, and prepare him for the remaining events of the day. He’s too

scared to tell them who he is. But in playing along, his ignorance of all things princely

cannot escape their notice and, to some degree, that of the royal family. The servants

chalk it up to some illness that has besieged the prince, temporarily causing, they

believe, severe lapses in his memory. So they do their best to re-educate him about

the do’s and don’ts of royal living.

In the midst of this reversal of fortunes, Henry VIII dies. And plans commence for the

coronation of the new king. The true prince learns of it and, with help, makes his way

back to the palace. With great difficulty he and Tom convince others who the real

prince is. The happy ending is that the king is crowned, Tom becomes his special

advisor, and Edward VI renders justice to those he met while living the life of a

peasant boy:

• “The [new] King sought out the farmer who had been branded and sold as a

slave, reclaimed him,…and put him in the way

of a comfortable livelihood.

• “He also [delivered a] lawyer out of prison and remitted his fine.

• “He provided good homes for the daughters of the…women… whom he saw

burned at the stake…

• “…he saved from the gallows a boy who had been wrongly accused of theft]

and [a] woman who had [snatched] a [piece] of cloth from [the workbench of]

a weaver…

• “And [h]e showed favor to [a judge] who had pitied him when he [had]

supposed[ly] stolen a pig…”

For the rest of the short years of his life, King Edward [kept] “the [story of his

misadventures] fresh in his memory and the springs of [mercy] replenished in his

heart.”

By the mercy that blesses us through the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, may we

ourselves, in our own small ways, do likewise. Amen.