Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 15, 2004

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Most of us here are old enough to remember the civil rights movement of the 1960s. That movement was characterized by, among other things, a couple of powerful songs that the protestors would sing as they marched or engaged in acts of peaceful civil disobedience in defiance of the immoral laws and practices of segregation. The best known song was, of course, "We Shall Overcome." I still get chills every time I hear or sing it. But as I remember it, at least, there was another one that was frequently sung that went like this:

We shall not, we shall not be moved.
We shall not, we shall not be moved.
Just like a tree that stands beside the water,
We shall not be moved.

There were other verses, but this was the main one. The idea, of course, was that those standing for equal rights and dignity would not be moved from their commitment to justice or, in some cases, that they would not move voluntarily from the segregated lunch counter or other segregated establishment that they had occupied.

The civil rights movement, of course, grew out of the Black churches and was led almost exclusively by leaders of the Black churches. Those leaders knew Psalm 1, part of which formed our Call to Worship this morning. They also knew Jeremiah 17:7 and 8, which we just heard, from which I assume that song took its inspiration. Let’s hear them again:

Blessed are those who trust in
the LORD,
whose trust is in the LORD.
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.

Can’t you just hear Martin Luther King, Jr., reading those words with his incomparable delivery, ringing with passion and truth? With Scripture verses like that in their hearts he and his colleagues withstood the fire hoses, attack dogs, and Billy clubs of Bull Connor and his vicious, hateful ilk. With Scripture verses like that in their hearts, they changed a nation. We are forever in their debt.

We can learn a lot from them and from these Scripture verses for our own lives. Let me tell you a story. Last Wednesday a pastor of a very conservative local church whom I know slightly but whom I hadn’t seen for well over a year came to see me. He wanted to talk to me about the Monroe Monitor article about our Open and Affirming position. He asked me if I really believed what the article reported. I told him that the article was generally correct. He asked me to help him understand our position. I tried. I suggested that he read Marcus Borg’s book The Heart of Christianity. He said he would. Up to this point our conversation had been, I thought, mutually respectful if not exactly cordial. We agreed on a lot, specifically on the free and unmerited nature of God’s grace. Nonetheless, as he ended the conversation he said to me: "I can no longer have any association with you because I consider your position to be apostate."

Apostasy means "rebellion or abandonment of faith," specifically for us the Christian faith. In the early history of the church, people who renounced the faith and engaged in Emperor worship to avoid martyrdom were called apostates. I knew that’s what the word means when I heard this pastor use it, and I assume he too knows its meaning and intended that meaning when he said it. Because I do not perpetuate the ancient cultural prejudices against gay and lesbian people that made their way into the Bible, I am, in this man’s opinion, not a Christian. It struck me as a bit strange that he was ending an association that hasn’t existed for well over a year. Still, the fact that we didn’t really have an association to end served only to highlight the rejection for me. Somehow he felt so strongly that I have turned my back on true Christianity that he had to come to end something that didn’t even exist. That’s a pretty powerful rejection, or so it seemed to me.

I have to tell you that this pastor’s rejection of a core value of mine and his personal rejection of me because I hold that value hit me pretty hard. I won’t compare the blow to one from Bull Connor’s Billy club. After all, I suffered no physical assault, no searing physical pain. But on an emotional level his remarks had at least something of the same impact. It’s not fun being told by a brother in Christ that you have abandoned, indeed rebelled against, the faith to which you have devoted your life. I know perfectly well that I have not done that, but it still hurts to hear another Christian say that I have.

Maybe, then, it’s not coincidence that this man came to excommunicate me in the week when the lectionary includes those wonderful, powerful words from Jeremiah. Jeremiah tells us that we’re in trouble when we put our trust in mere mortals. Mere mortals are, after all, entirely fallible human beings, as we all are. When I put my trust in other people, I have gained nothing because my trust is in nothing greater than myself. I might as well trust only in myself as to trust in other humans; and I know that if I trust only in myself I’m in for a really rough time. Jeremiah says doing that leads to a life that is like living "in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land."

I felt a little bit of that after my conversation with this other pastor. Since then I have spent a good deal of time pondering the question why. Why did I take this rejection by someone whose theology I already knew to be very different from mine so hard? I think Jeremiah suggests the answer. I took a human rejection so hard because I put my trust too much in the approval of other people and not enough in God. If I put my trust more in God, human rejection wouldn’t bother me so much. That’s some of the learning I take from Jeremiah this morning.

Now let me tell you about another experience I had later that same day. Late in the afternoon, before choir practice, I was practicing a kind of prayer, a spiritual exercise called lectio divina. Lectio divina (which is Latin for divine reading) is a way of reading scripture that is intensely introspective and prayerful. I was doing it together with one of you who had come to me for assistance with her prayer life. I used for our Scripture verse the lines from Jeremiah: "Blessed are those who trust in the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water." As I meditated on those lines, I had a powerful sensation in my ankles and feet. I felt roots growing, not into soil but into God. I felt planted. I felt grounded. I felt safe and nourished by the Holy Spirit. I felt in my body what Jeremiah was saying with his powerful words. These feelings said to me: Put your trust in God and not in mere mortals. There you will find nourishment. There you will find strength for the journey. Having just a few hours earlier taken what felt like an emotional body blow, it was a powerful experience.

Now, I doubt that any of you will have a Fundamentalist pastor come into your office and call you apostate. At least, I hope you don’t. Still, we all face trials in our lives. As trials go, this one I’ve been talking about is actually pretty minor. I’ve survived far worse ones, as most of you know. And I know that most if not all of you have survived far worse ones too--trials of illness and the death of loved ones, for example. Those trials feel like body blows far stronger than being called un-Christian by someone you already know disagrees with you. Those trials feel like gale force winds that threaten to blow us away. If we aren’t firmly rooted, they will.

Jeremiah tells us where we have to put our roots if we are to survive those trials. If we trust only in ourselves and other humans, we "will not see when relief comes." We will have no relief. Our lives will be parched. We will wither and perish for lack of spiritual water. The winds of life will blow us away like dried leaves or dandelion seeds.

Put your roots into the fertile soil of God. Trust in the Lord. Draw spiritual nourishment from your faith in God, from your faith in the one who said I am the living water, that whoever drinks of me will never thirst. You will be like a tree planted beside water. Your roots will run deep and wide. You will survive the searing heat of hardship and the parched drought of despair. Your soul will flourish and bear fruit in the midst of loss and pain. You will find the strength to endure. You will survive when all around you those who trusted in mere flesh perish. Jeremiah was right. Blessed are those who trust in the Lord. With the civil rights marchers of recent history they can sing:

We shall not, we shall not be moved.
We shall not, we shall not be moved.
Just like a tree that stands beside the water,
We shall not be moved.

Amen.