Jeremiah 17:5-10

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. 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.

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

The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse— who can understand it? 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.

Sermon Text

One of the first questions I was ever asked as a religious authority in someone’s life was about the human heart. Not the organ, the metaphysical concept. A cousin of mine was recently getting into their faith and so they would shoot me questions about different verses and ideas in Christianity. I only remember one of those questions though, and it was on a day I was doing yard work at the house I grew up in that they sent it. “How can it be that Proverbs calls the Heart the ‘wellspring of life,” but Jeremiah says it is, ‘devious above all else.’”[1] It’s a question that stuck with me for a few reasons.

Firstly, the one thing we all cannot escape is our own heart. That thing deep within ourselves, the seat not only of emotion but every affectation of the body. No matter what we do, body, mind, or soul – there will always be the center point of all of them, the heart that translates the ephemeral into the physical – broad concepts of emotion into physical sensation and action. Secondly, these two verses reveal something fundamental about scripture we all forget sometimes – it is meant to be read in conversation with itself. Proverbs is right to say that the wellspring of life is in the Heart and Jeremiah is right to call it deceitful about all else, but you can only know why if you’re willing to read both and see what they are saying when they say what they say.

Today we are practicing our exegetical skills, looking at two verses of scripture and understanding what lesson we can take away from them. Today we see what good gift God has given us in the form of our Heart, and how dangerous it can become if we do not take proper care of it.

Jeremiah wrote in a time of great moral degradation. Sounds sensationalist, but he was writing in hard times where everyone seemed to make the wrong choice in responding to that hardship. As the full text of Jeremiah 17 shows, the rich among God’s people had become greedy. Not content with their wealth, they exploited their workers and their neighbors, depriving them of the food and money they needed to survive. The conditions were so bad that the poor also began to become corrupt, stealing from one another rather than working together to oppose the rich or to care for each other. Jeremiah elsewhere says that walking from one end of the city to the other, he could not find one righteous person among the rich, the poor, or the palace.[2]

Jeremiah is often called the weeping prophet, not just because of his sorrow at God’s judgment of his people, but the constant disappointment his people were to him. He would frequently tell God, “Lord, have mercy, surely the people aren’t that bad?!” And then immediately have his own people turn on him and reveal the truly broken nature of their Heart. How horrible a burden it must be, to proclaim the truth and the need for a better tomorrow, only to find that the people you defend are willing to throw you away.

Jeremiah looked out at the broken world around him and called for the people to realize that they were so far gone that unless they changed their ways, abandoning everything about themselves to follow God once again… they were lost completely. The rich who stole from the poor, the poor that abused one another, all of them needed to do away with the old self and embrace the new. The Heart, the confluence of all their constituent parts was no longer helping them, only hurting them, they needed to go beyond any thought or feeling to the reality of their brokenness.

Looking to Proverbs, the full context of the verse which calls the Heart the “springs of life,” is a teacher telling their student to remember the lessons they have been taught. “The wicked,” are prone to evil and become so consumed with it that they only seem to do what hurts other people. “They cannot sleep,” the teacher says, unless they do what is wrong. The student, however, will keep the lessons of their teacher close, will keep their eyes straight ahead toward the right, and in so doing keep their heart from becoming corrupted – from becoming the source of wrongdoing in the world that “the wicked,” represent.

Both passages, it seems, have very similar messages if we are willing to understand their fuller context. Jeremiah is not calling for us to distrust ourselves out of principle, but to acknowledge how easily we give in to the negative aspects of our humanity, and how hard it is to dig ourselves out of it. As God says later in Jeremiah 17, the people of God did not need to have deceitful Hearts, they did not need to cause one another pain, they could change at any time – but they had to admit that someone other than themselves might know something about what is right in the world.

The Church is meant to be a source of correction in the world. Not judgment, not prideful looks down our nose at the world, but a legitimate place where people can find God’s teachings lived out to the fullest. We have in our hands the teachings of two thousand years of people who have understood what holiness can be. What it is to love our neighbor, to care for the members of our church and our community. When we open up our mind, our soul, our entire being to God’s teachings and God’s ways, then we become a place where life is made available to all – a wellspring spilling out from us and filling the world around us.

The Church has to be different for this to be possible. We cannot follow every little inclination of our heart – cannot strike out in anger or dig too deep into despair, we cannot take something just because we want it or deprive other’s what they need just because it would be inconvenient to give it. Likewise, we must fight against these evils in the world. Not through the same tools as everyone else, but through a commitment to righteousness that calls for people to change their ways for their own good, and the good of the whole world.

Scripture is a broad and far reaching source of God’s instruction. Written across fourteen hundred years, it tells the story of God’s commitment to redeem the world. Reading scripture in its context and in conversation, we find deeper truths about the world than we would ever know otherwise. From the cynical Jeremiah, to the guarded writer of Proverbs, today we see that the Heart is truly an amazing – and dangerous – thing. If we embrace the goodness it offers, we can change this world… If only we can safeguard this amazing gift God has given us.

So, I leave you with these word’s from Proverbs, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward and your gaze be straight before you. Keep straight the path of your feet, and all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.”[3]

And these from Jeremiah, “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse— who can understand it? 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. Like the partridge hatching what it did not lay, so are all who amass wealth unjustly; in midlife it will leave them, and at their end they will prove to be fools.

O glorious throne, exalted from the beginning, shrine of our sanctuary! O hope of Israel! O Lord! All who forsake you shall be put to shame; those who turn away from you shall be recorded in the underworld, for they have forsaken the fountain of living water, the Lord.

Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for you are my praise.”[4]

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[1] C.f. Proverbs 4

[2] Jeremiah 5

[3] Proverbs 4:23-27

[4] Jeremiah 17:9-14

The Gospel Lesson                                                            Luke 5:1-11

Once while Jesus was standing beside the Lake of Gennesaret and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to burst. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were astounded at the catch of fish that they had taken, and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

Sermon Text

What is it that lets people really meet Jesus? Its such a simple question, but I think it is one we struggle to answer. The communities that we serve are all around us – there are people who know about Jesus everywhere, maybe even people who once knew Jesus well – but I think we are all very aware that when it comes to an active and involved relationship with Jesus, people are really lacking a true connection with Christ. We live in a part of the world where most everyone will tell you they’re “Christian,” but few people actually could tell you what that faith actually does for them. Maybe it makes them feel a bit better about the world around them, but does it change the world around them? I’m not so sure.

I think that one of the largest problems is that, in the atmosphere of nominal Christianity, the Church took the perspective that it was inevitable. “Everyone goes to a church, if not now they will when they settle down and start a family, they’ll find their way eventually!” And yet, that just is not the case anymore. Even people who say they are Christian just do not see Church as something essential to their faith, they have no interest in joining a congregation, in finding a community, in taking on the mutual responsibility that comes with a community of faith, in knowing Jesus Christ through the body of Christ that is the Church.

The reason, people of God, is not a fault in the world around us. We are always ready to point the finger at young people or at a secular society or at any number of other external factors, but we have to make something clear. Christ never tells the disciples, “The workers are many but the harvest is really too difficult to take care of, so don’t feel too bad if things aren’t working out.” No, Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.”[1] The Church is responsible for its own vitality and its own willingness to follow Christ and serve the world.

In our scripture today we see Jesus calling some of his first disciples. The disciples were out fishing, they had caught nothing all night, and Jesus told them that if they went out now, they would find their nets full. The disciples doubted, but the second that the net touched the water it began to fill, and fill, and fill. It was a miracle! But it also should no surprise anyone who knows what God typically is up to. There is a pattern we are given in Simon’s willingness to listen to Jesus, and if we follow that model we are going to see miracles in our own life.

Jesus came out and was preaching, and the people wanted to hear what Jesus had to offer. The crowd was pushing too much though, and Jesus needed a place he could stand where everyone could see him and where he could stand without being swarmed. Simon listened and gave him his boat as a pulpit. It was after this that Jesus sends him out to the waters to catch more fish, and after that that he tells Peter his job will be to catch people from now on.

The issue that initiates this episode is that people want to see Jesus. People still want to see Jesus, believe it or not. Christ is the center of everything – the source of all creation and the end to which every piece of creation aspires to. People want to hear Jesus, to know Jesus, to feel the redemption and the revivification that comes from Jesus. The Church needs to be a place that people can heart Jesus. More than that, we need to be a people that are willing to put up our anchor and move to make Jesus easier for people to hear.

We have wonderful outreach programs in this church, but everything we do is still attractional. We want people to come to us, but they’re not looking for us – they’re looking for Jesus! Simon Peter saw that people were looking for Jesus and gave his boat, he moved away from the work he was busy with, to meet the needs of what Jesus wanted to do to reach the people. What are we doing to break away from this building? Have we really chased any of the inroads we have into the community? We’ve got so many people around us that are never going to come into this building, so what are we doing to go out to them?

The vision of what can happen when we take the step away from our usual busywork is found in Jesus’s miracle in those fishing nets. So many people flood the nets that there isn’t enough room in one boat to fill them, multiple boats are needed to hold them. A ministry that goes out into the world, you see, may not bring people into a relationship with the congregation that first reaches out to them, but a good ministry will make people seek Jesus wherever they can get him, and a good ministry is humble enough to acknowledge that may be a congregation other than the one we ourselves come from. What matters, is not that the boat that cast the net receives the catch, it matter that the catch is caught at all.

Now, some people may rightly say to me, “Pastor John, I love our church, but you’re putting a lot of emphasis on the Church here. Faith in Christ is all that is sufficient for salvation, so why the emphasis on bringing people into a church community?” Thank you, theoretical worried congregation member. You’re right that faith is, “the one thing needful,” and you’re right! Membership and participation in a Church do not immediately equal a vibrant and engaged Christian life… However, I have seldom met someone who is thriving in their faith and does not have a faith community to support them.

We’re an individualistic society. We do not want anyone telling us what to do. We do not want to share our things with other people unless we have a good reasons. We’re content to build a bubble all around us and only ever work with the people we want to in the ways we want to when we want to. That is not, however, the society that Jesus is calling us to be a part of. When Jesus opens the door for us and invites us to participate in the Kingdom of Heaven, it is not something we do on our own terms or on our own time. When Jesus comes to the lakeshore, we have a boat to offer and we either let Jesus get in or we don’t.

A Church that follows Jesus is not worried about attendance on Sundays, but on a community of people who are connected and supporting each other. A community that reaches out to each other to make sure everyone has what they need, that they’re living the life Christ called them to live – not only in terms of holiness and service to one another – but in terms of Joy. A vibrant church is able to hold each other as we cry and lift each other up as we celebrate. When I say that people need the Church, I am also saying that the Church needs to act like the Church – not just on Sundays and especially not just in this room.

Christ calls us to be “fishers of men,” “catchers of people.” The word used here can also mean “ensnare,” and I think I like that word better. I like it because, if we are really showing people what Jesus is doing, what a Church that is living out the life Jesus called them to is doing, then they should not be able to get us out of their head. We should be a community everyone wants to be a part of, pushing against the lakeshore to see more of what they can see of Jesus through us. Whether that be on a Sunday morning, a Saturday evening, or at some other hereto unplanned congregational activity does not matter. However, we need to be people who are willing to show the world Jesus, and trust that Jesus is enough.

We need to plan for a church that goes beyond these walls more and more, and we need to be serious about sharing the hope we have. People want Jesus, why do we keep holding him in this room where no one can see him? We need to push our boat from the shore, and we need to see what happens when we let people see what God can really do. – Amen

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[1] Matthew 9:37

The Gospel Lesson                                                                Luke 2:22-40

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”

And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.”

There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him.

Sermon Text

The world needs light. The world needs hope. The world needs something to testify to the fact that there is more than sadness at the end of the long road of life. Amidst hardships, amidst struggle, amidst the endless complications we face – there must be something that can give direction to the scattered particles of life. To paraphrase a favorite song of mine, “this page of strange gibberish [must] find a final punctuation mark.”[1]

Trouble is not unique to any age or any people, but shared across time and space. While we have been born into one of the most prosperous eras of history, at least relative to all other times, we are still faced with trouble. There’s the sorts of trouble that are seemingly universal and ever evolving: the increasing cost of living that shows no sign of slowing will continue to put pressure on each and every one of us, the weather will be increasingly unpredictable, global tensions show no sign of simplifying in our lifetime. Then there is the sort of trouble that never changes, but always takes on new forms for the people who face it – the threat of hunger and disease, the specter of conflict, and the very real and existential threats to life that come as a consequence of simply living.

The broken world in which we live, further orchestrated to be crueler by human sin, is the same world Christ was born into – simply in a different era of living out its troubles. Christ, who was born fully into humanity was also born fully into creation – a universe that is always changing, but essentially constant. The Hope of Christ is therefore unchanging, available to everyone in all ages equally – something that was clear to those with eyes to see from the moment he entered the world.

In our scripture today, Jesus is taken to the Temple by Mary and Joseph. Mary is going to pay the price given in the Torah that a woman must pay after giving birth, Joseph is going to pay the five shekels (as best I can calculate, equivalent to half of a day’s wages for a carpenter,) required of a first-born son.[2] The two are going to do “everything required by the law of the Lord,” showing their obedience to God. However, they are gifted something far greater than the trifling amount of money they paid. They receive Hope in the form of two prophecies, given by two lay people in the Temple.

One of the things left out of the story is who was holding Baby Jesus in the midst of these prophecies. Women could not enter the inner court where Joseph would pay the redemption price, and likewise Joseph would not be likely to linger in the Court of Women. I believe that the first encounter with Simeon the two parents were together and the second encounter with Anna, Mary was alone. What does this matter to the story? Very little ultimately, but as we shall see, Anna’s words are not recorded while Simeon’s are. I believe whatever praise of God which Anna gave was something private, secret to her and Mary, something that was shared between two women in the outer courts of the Temple long ago.

The one prayer we do hear is from the mouth of Simeon, a prophet not by birth but by the gift of God’s Spirit. He knew that he would live long enough to see God deliver the world from its present troubles, but he did not know what that deliverance would look like. I’m sure he pictured God redeeming Israel the way many others did at the time. A king would appear and destroy their enemies, the nation as a political entity would be revived, a new era would break out of greatness among God’s people. Whatever his vision was, in the reality of the infant Christ he saw something grander. Taking the infant in his arms, snatching him from his parents, the Spirit showed him just what Christ was going to do.

Firstly, he gave peace to the old man – he could now after years spent worshipping God in the Temple. Secondly, the salvation which Jesus was to bring into the world was going to go far beyond God’s people in Judah. Jesus was a light to the nations, a hope for all people, and though he was “prepared,” in Judah, he was meant for the whole world. Salvation, complete and total redemption of creation, would be a light of redemption to the world, it would show God’s presence to the people of Judah, this child would change everything.

With what I have to imagine was a heavy heart, Simeon also saw the hardships the child was to face. Disease, death, poverty – common troubles faced by all people – yet still greater hardships than anyone could imagine. Death on a cross, a redemptive sacrifice that was necessary for life to conquer darkness. The child he now held in his arms, would face the most incredible pain… In giving the child back to his mother, his words must have been frightening, “a sword will pierce your soul too…” Mary would know loss that no one should have to face, the loss of a child and the constant burden of the falsehoods spoken about him.

This child, our savior, is a hope we still bring into the world. If we are willing to make Christ’s presence among us known, we have to do as Simeon did and see Christ as Christ truly is. The sight of Christ made Simeon see a salvation beyond himself, a salvation that went beyond Israel to all nations. The sight of Christ made Simeon see a suffering messiah rather than a triumphant King. Simeon met Christ and changed his view of God, and in seeing God as God truly was, found hope.

We cannot replace Christ’s image with false images of our savior. We cannot diminish the universal nature of Christ’s offer of salvation, creating any distinction that would force us to separate ourselves from the essential truth revealed in Paul’s writings, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”[3] We build up walls to separate ourselves, portioning salvation and pouring it as we see fit. Christ has called for something far greater – for grace to be poured out again and again, on all people, as many as would receive it.

The table that is set before us is clothed simply, but the moment we join together in Holy Communion, it will be the most important piece of furniture in this room. On it, bread and juice will become the Body and Blood of Christ. We who take it will receive grace to empower us, encounter our God directly. We like Simeon will take Christ into our arms, in passing the peace of Christ to one another we will look the image of God in the face again and again… Will we allow ourselves to be changed by that? To offer hope to the world after having received it ourselves? That is the choice we must make today. Christ is among us, let us act and proclaim as if we believe that to be true. – Amen.

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[1] “Let’s Get this Over With” track 1 on They Might Be Giants, I Like Fun, Idlewild, 2018.

[2] There’s several problems with my calculation. Firstly, I’m using the Tyrian shekel as my basis which may or may not be the same measurement. Secondly, I’m using the average weight of a silver denarii to compare to a shekel. Thirdly, I’m using the income of a carpenter taken from the Edict of Diocletian to determine the daily salary of someone like Joseph. Joseph was probably paid by job, and so probably made much less than this. This approximation of income is, therefore, a conjecture that tries to tie the ancient numbers and measurements to modern concepts – like spending half a day’s pay.

[3] Galatians 3: 27-28