Sunday February 16th, 2025 Worship

One of our favorite movies to quote in our house is Disney’s Mulan, specifically the part where Mushu the dragon says to Mulan and her horse, “Dishonor! Dishonor on your whole family! Dishonor on you! Dishonor on your cow! While this is a funny quote to jokingly yell across our living room, I was thinking about that a lot this week when I kept hearing all of the “woes” in our Scripture readings. Not only do we get in them in our Gospel of blessings and woes (Luke 6: 20-26), but we also beginning our readings today with a word of cursing from Jeremiah (Jeremiah 17: 5-6). While dishonor isn’t the same as woe, they serve a similar function in noting the challenges and hardships to come, especially when one is not acting the way that they should.
But I also don’t want us to get so lost in the harshness of all these words of woe today, that we lose focus on what is at the heart of these messages today. To simplify, they are all talking about what it means to have faith in God. The explanations get more complex, and we’ll get into that more, but I want us to remember that these lessons are all wrestling with and trying to explain what it means to have faith in God and to be grounded in that faith.
I want to actually continue with the tree metaphor that we are getting in our readings this morning. There are a lot of things we can learn from trees about faith, including: how to communicate with and support one another during times of distress, a visual representation of death and new life, an emphasis on being interconnected with the whole ecosystem, and patience. These are just a few examples, and I’m not going to get into them more today because when I did with my sermon for the UCC church, it was another four pages! But the one I haven’t mentioned yet, that our stories really pick up on as well, is remaining grounded, or being rooted.
The Psalm today gives us two contrasting images: a tree planted by the water and chaff blowing in the wind (Psalm 1: 3-4). And this sense of being grounded comes back to our ability to have faith in and trust in God. Jeremiah warns against putting our trust in humans as opposed to putting it in God (Jeremiah 17: 5). This sense is picked up in the imagery of the Psalm, because when our trust is in humans, like the chaff blowing in the wind, we are constantly changing, blowing from one thing to the next looking for what will best serve us and support us at that current time. Human leaders will let us down, because after all they are still human. They will live and they will die, they will change their own minds, and in one moment they might make a choice that benefits us, while in the next moment they make a choice that causes us harm. If we do not have morals and values that we are grounded in, despite all of the changing times, instead of being rooted, we too will drift from one thing to the next seeking that which will care for us in the current moment. Yet, we’re often going to be let down if we do this, so we’ll have to drift on to the next thing.
Yet, when we put our trust in God, especially when we remain grounded in the values and morals we have gained from our faith, we are able to stay rooted no matter what is happening around us. I think about all the trees that have lived for hundreds of years, slowly growing taller and taller. It isn’t something that happens overnight, but even those large trees take extreme weather conditions to bring them down. It has taken a long time for them to get to this point, but there isn’t much that will shake them, at least until humans come ready to chop them down for our next endeavor. But, maybe there is something to be said about that too because there will be people who will challenge us when we remain rooted in these values that we have. They aren’t going to like it when we aren’t drifting along with them, or they will try to see us as something they can use. Our rootedness will be a threat to them, whether we think it should be or not.
Today’s Gospel doesn’t tell us that life is going to be easy. It doesn’t get to the systemic issues of why we might be hungry or grieving, but it serves as a reminder to have patience and remain grounded. To lean into hope because there might be better days around the corner. This is where I remind you that hope is an active verb, that we can start enacting some of the changes we wish to see in the world. After all, it takes bravery and courage to stay rooted even when things are difficult. It can feel like a risk to trust in the promises of God, especially when the promises of human leaders seem like they will come more quickly and give us what we want. But, these readings ask us what we are giving up in order to drift from what benefits us from this moment to the next. And, they also ask us if we will be satisfied and cared for in the long term.
I want to add my usual caveat that this doesn’t mean that we can’t doubt or ask questions of God. It doesn’t take from us our ability to lament. It does ask us however to trust in God’s promises of hope for the world to come, this hope that we get to keep living into, as opposed to just seeking what will be best for us in the current moment. It asks us to risk being rooted in our faith. It’s not that our faith is unchanging while we’re rooted either, but like a tree that goes through seasons and grows taller over the years, it will look different and change still. In our rootedness, our faith is connected to that of others too. Like the trees, what may look individual is actually communal, and we can draw some strength from that as well.
When we think about the woes that Jesus is giving out today, it’s not like Jesus is out here cursing the people. He doesn’t say that all of their crops are going to die, or that all of their loved ones will suddenly perish, or that someone is going to come and steal all of their money. Instead, it is more of a warning that the things they thought would bring them happiness in life: hoarding food and wealth, refusing to care about anyone so that they did not feel grief, always seeking to do what makes other people like them even if it means doing something that doesn’t align with who they are, these things will ultimately let them down. They are fleeting and can suddenly turn. But when they trust in God instead, there will still be rough days ahead, but there is something they can keep rooted in, instead of feeling like their entire world is pulled out from underneath them with every shift and change.
All of this requires a really big shift in thinking from the way that we are used to, especially in the United States. We want to look to others to make decisions for us. We want to have answers to why life is challenging and sometimes cruel. One of the ways we do this too is by looking for someone else that we can blame, so that when things fall apart, it isn’t because of the mortal leaders but because of this group or that group. The world asks us to put our trust in wealth, in power, and in prestige. It tells us that if we have those things, we will be comfortable and happy. Yet, there is an emptiness that remains if we have to give up everything that we are in order to make those things happen. We might have the relief of feeling okay for the moment, but like the chaff, we became unattached to the things that matter most in our lives.
I’m not going to stand up here and tell you which values and morals you should take from your faith, because I don’t want to be just another human telling you what to do and what to believe. It’s up to you to risk the courage and bravery to determine those for yourselves and then decide if you want to remain rooted in them. There will be a lot of pressure to sway, to follow the easier path in the moment, and it will be really tempting. But, you get to figure out for yourselves if you want to be like a tree planted by the stream, and what those roots, that foundation will look like for you. And, if you choose to do that, may you come back to those values, those roots, whenever life gives you a challenging choice to make, and may you have the courage to make the decision that best honors who you are created and called to be.