“THE CURSED
TREE”
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A sermon preached Readings:
Jer 17:5-10, Luke 6:17-26 |
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“Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his
strength
and whose heart turns away from the
LORD.
He will be like a bush in the wastelands…”
(Jer 17:5-6)
700 years ago, Archbishop of Glasgow issued a number of curses
directed against the Border Reivers, a group of
bandits attacking his diocese.
One of the milder curses reads
“May
all the plagues that fell on Pharaoh and his people of Egypt,
their lands, crops and cattle, fall upon them, their equipment,
their places, their lands, their crops and
livestock”.
You get the drift.
Two years ago a remarkable
piece of sculpture was commissioned in Cumbria.
It took the form of a granite boulder, inscribed with all these old curses.
The local vicar took
great exception to this stone,
and wrote in the local journal,
the well known Scotby and Cotehill
with Cumwhinton Parish Magazine,
that the stone’s
“spiritual violence will act like a cancer underneath the fabric of
society.”
He wanted the stone broken
“literally and physically”.
[The Tablet, 27 Oct
2001, p.1525]
There is of course a wider on-going debate
about
whether violent works of art incite violenceor draw
attention to its failings.
Personally I am not sure I would apply that argument
to an engraved boulder in Carlisle Museum.
But we should never underestimate the power of
human evil
to ripple out across the waters of human society and history
far beyond the control of the ones who first cast the stone.
Perhaps we might wish that the 14th
Century Archbishop had read Romans 12:14:
“Bless your persecutors, never curse them, bless
them.”
And there is a Biblical lesson here
for every generation
including our own as we face the threats of terrorosm
and other forms of violence.
“Bless, do not curse”.
You may have seen in
the papers that on Thursday this week
Carol
Croydon was found guilty at Nottingham Crown
Court of murder.
It was a carefully planned and premeditated attack on her husband Philip.
Her objective was to kill him, inherit his wealth and mary her lover.
For the murdered
man’s parents it was a particularly bitter blow –
they had had three children, one had died one in infancy another as a
schoolboy.
Now their daughter in
law had murdered their one remaining son.
This is what the
grieving father said on Friday about the murderer:
"To understand the evil of this woman,
you should know that she was aware we …had already lost two
children
yet she heaps this tragedy upon us.
"I curse this woman every
day I wake.
I call on God that she cannot sleep,
that she knows no peace of mind,
that her food is harsh in her mouth and without taste,
that her thirst cannot be quenched,
that she sees no sun or the beauty of nature,
that she hears no bird song."
Well perhaps this is not the time to comment on
these terrible words –
spoken in the white heat of equally terrible anguish.
Perhaps like hearing some words of Job,
we are better sympathising with the pain rather than
endorsing the words.
But we do know what Christ calls us
to do –
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.
Bless those who curse you…” (Luke
6:27-8).
And again –
“Bless your persecutors, never curse them, bless them” (Rom 12:14).
Dean Inge
was a Dean of St Pauls
in the years during and following World War One.
A regular columnist in the Evening Standard,
he was frequently involved in controversy.
He once received a
particularly vitriolic letter from a lady,
concluding with these words:
'I am praying for your death.
I have been very successful in two other cases.'
Here is a very simple rule of Christian living
–
always bless, never curse.
Always pray for people, never pray against
them/
This is the Gospel of love.
So what then are we to make of this passge from Jeremiah?
“This is what the LORD says:
Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.
6 He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no-one lives”
Does God utter curses?
Does he inspire us to love and bless our
enemies,
whilst in the next breath
cursing and breathing hatred and destruction on his enemies?
No.
So how do we understand it when Jeremiah speaks
of curses
and Luke speaks of Woes?
We need to understand the grammar of the
sentence.
God is NOT seeking to inflict an injury,
to launch an evil verbal weapon.
BUT he is saying “This is how things are”
When God says “Cursed is…”
he is not issuing a command, he is making an observation.
When he says “The man who does this is
accursed”
he is saying the same sort of thing as “The man has a broken leg” –
He is not wishing ill on the man – he loves him
–
he is simply reporting the fact that the person is damaged, no longer
whole.
He is the victim of his own sin – he is cursed.
The Israelites have been doing all kinds of
terrible things –
They have put their trust in all th wrong things –
in false gods, in political strength and armies, in their own strength.
This, says God, is a disastrous route –
They have in effect been living dry and
fruitless and death dealing lives
So says Jeremiah, the children of Israel are like a tree in the Arabah –
the sterile, salty, dusty desert south of the Dead Sea.
They may live a while, but their lives are
deadly and doomed.
God does not need to issue a Boris Karloff
style curse of the Muummy -
the Israelites are condemned to endure the crippling and emaciating results
of their own wrong choices.
And perhaps we need to analyse
our life and our world.
And see all those points at which we have
trusted
·
in selfish accumulation of
material wealth instead of generosity of Spirit
·
in force of arms instead of
peace and love
·
in our own abilities instead of the power of God.
and realize how we too, like the Israelites of old, have come to grief.
For, says Jeremiah, we have chosen the way of
sterility and dryness and death.
So is all hopeless?
As we see ourselves in the desert of our own
making,
it is time to hear the good news of the God
who seeks always to turn curse into blessing.
Do you remember Paul in Galations
talks of the curse we are all under,
But says that Christ has become cursed with us,
he has shared our accursed sinful state.
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the
law by becoming a curse for us,
for as it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree”
So, you and I are like a tree in the desert
dying –
it is the innevitable and natural result of our
sinful natures.
And what is God’s answer to our sorrow? –
It is the cross –
The ultimate tree of sin and
death, the accursed tree.
And in the cross Christ says to you and to me,
”You are like an accursed tree in the desert
but I will not cast you off –
I will come to be with you in your moment of
sin and death,
I will hang on the cursed tree to be with you.”
And as the cross of Good Friday becomes
in the love and power of God the throne of Easter Day,
so may the desert bloom like a rose
So may my withered dying desert tree be
transplanted to the river bank,
where it flourishes and bears rich fruit of the Spirit.
“…blessed
is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him.
8 He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its
roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
(Jer 17:6)
·
For the Lord is my shepherd
and he makes me lie down beside still waters.
And those waters shall refresh my soul even in the vallety
of the shadow of death.
·
And my smashed life shall be
remade like a rich and gleaming window
·
And the dying shrub thorn
shall become the tree of life for the healing of the nations
Praise the Lord for his love and blessing
Which reaches even my bitter
twisted stump.
And may we in his name
Bear rich sweet
fruits of blessing –
That all who wander the desert pathways
May know his joy.
