Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals. Not blessed are those who do this or that, but cursed. Cursed for trusting in mere mortals. The decisions of mortals, the actions of mortals. Those who trust in others. Those who trust in themselves. For the judgements of mortals, yours, mine and others; are not to be trusted.

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.

In a sense, this means we get what we give. Or we do not get.  Or even worse for some, we get what we deserve.

The second reading links closely to the first. This is the Sermon on the Plain, rather than the Sermon on the Mount. There are differences between the two, differences in tone and in language.

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.

Familiar beginnings, “blessed are you.” But there are shifts in the phrasing. Blessed are the poor, not the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who are hungry, not who hunger for righteousness. The Sermon on the Mount speaks in terms of spiritual concepts. The Sermon on the Plain deals with practical considerations, such as poverty and hunger.

And there is the discussion of “woe” much like the language of being cursed from Jeremiah.

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
“Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

To be rich when others are poor is wrong. To be full while others hunger is a problem. To laugh while others need comfort is shameful. To bask in the praise of others in light of these failings, is to hide from the truth. Worse, it is to make lies into the truth. And that is a grave sin indeed.

This Sunday is the last in my series of sermons on art, though I will be offering my snowed out sermon from Martin Luther King Sunday in March. Today we have an unusual artist. He is referred to as Banksy, a name for lack of his real one. He is a street artist, one known for graffiti by the side of the road more so than paintings in a museum. Depending on your perspective, he is an artist or a vandal, a political activist or an artistic opportunist. He has many fans and many critics.

Let’s take a look. It is a simple image. A white dove holding an olive branch, an obvious symbol for peace. The dove is wearing a bulletproof vest and there are the crosshairs of a gun targeting it. Nothing terribly subtle. You might notice that the black paint is dripping down. And there is strangely a little metal door on the right-hand side.

It is important to know where this painting is to understand these peculiarities. It is on a wall in the Town of Bethlehem. Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus which is in the Palestinian area known as the West Bank. It is a short drive to Jerusalem, like driving from here to Cambridge. The walls around the town are about thirty feet high, topped with razor wire. There are guard towers along the span at varying intervals.

Banksy for some reason has an affinity for the Town of Bethlehem. Multiple paintings grace the town, on the security walls and even on the side of an automotive garage. The paintings were made in the dark of night, in some cases under the guard towers of Israeli security forces.

Banksy’s art is generally oppositional. It is anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-consumerist. In this case, it was in protest of the conditions under which the Palestinians live and the occupation of the West Bank in general.

As you look at it, you might also think to yourself, it’s not very good. Meaning not very well done, not overly attractive. Much of Banksy’s art is done quickly because it is graffiti. He creates stencils and then quickly paints an image in short order. On the streets of London, another frequent site, his need for speed is about not getting arrested. In the West Bank, it is also about not getting shot.

A few years ago now, I travelled to the West Bank on my sabbatical. We lived in the Town of Bethlehem for almost a week. It is centrally located and served as a good base for our travels. We stayed in a Palestinian hotel, ate at Palestinian restaurants. We shopped in Nativity Square, which shops were solely operated by Palestinians, Muslims and Christians.

I am not typically an adventurous traveler. And so when I signed up for this tour, I had to think about what I was getting myself into. I was concerned about going, but thought it was important to try to understand what was happening on the ground in Israel and the West Bank. I had been offered the chance to tour with local groups from Newton and Brookline. Those were Israeli sponsored junkets. But I did not go on one of those. You may wonder why.

Almost ten years ago now, I started here at the church. And early on I received an invitation to go to a breakfast sponsored by the Israeli ambassador. The two groups invited were lawyers and clergy – I was doubly qualified. It was down at a fancy new hotel. I sat with the Newton clergy, mostly Protestant ministers and some rabbis.

The ambassador got up to speak while we enjoyed our eggs. He spoke about the Israeli perspective on the situation in the Middle East. It was mostly familiar territory for me, nothing new or exciting. Until the end.

As he was concluding his remarks, the ambassador was referring to the long-standing position of Israel that Jerusalem was its capital, undivided and eternal. He embellished that old argument with a religious observation. He noted in passing that Jerusalem was not even mentioned in the Qur’an, the scriptures of Islam. He moved on with his remarks, but the guests at my table looked around to one another.

While it is literally true that the word “Jerusalem” does not appear in the Qur’an, it is manifestly false to claim that it does not figure prominently in that book. One of the crucial moments is the so-called Night Journey. The Prophet Muhammed travelled to the farthest mosque in a miraculous journey that took only one night. From that earthly place, he ascended into heaven, passing through six of the seven gates of paradise. He met with the great prophets of Islam, such as Adam, John the Baptist, Jesus, Moses, and Abraham. And there he met with God, who explained to Muhammed how the people were to pray, the cornerstone of Islamic religious life.

Where was the farthest mosque? It is not named, but it is said to be the al-Aqsa Mosque which shares the location of another holy site, the Temple of Jerusalem.

Everyone at that table was looking at each other, realizing what had happened. The ambassador either had no idea what he was talking about or he was attempting deceive us. And this was concerning one of the most sensitive aspects of the Palestinian conflict.

At first, I decided to hold off on a trip to the Middle East. It was too dangerous, it was too far, it was too much trouble. And, because of that remark made over breakfast, I worried it would simply be too much disinformation.

When I decided to go, I went with a group of ministers. I thought I had the Israeli perspective well in hand, so I sought out a Palestinian view instead. I stayed in Palestinian hotels, ate with Palestinian families. Our guides were Palestinian Christians and Muslims. We travelled to places we were advised not to go, like Hebron and Ramallah. There are big red signs warning that people who travel into these areas would not be safe.

And yet, I never felt unsafe. We would walk from our hotel in Bethlehem at night to get coffee or to buy ice cream. We walked through large crowds of men hanging out, smoking in parking lots. I grew up in the city and knew places like that, where a fight could spring up at a moment’s notice. And I never felt nervous.

Well, that is not entirely true. I felt nervous surrounded by people with guns. Israeli soldiers in Hebron, armed Israeli settlers hanging out by the Western wall. Armed guards at the airport and the border crossing when I was leaving to visit the Kingdom of Jordan. But once I crossed over, it was fine. To the Jordanians, we were just a boring bunch of tourists and that inspired a deep sigh of relief.

Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the LORD.

Who are we to trust? Everyone has a story to tell and a reason for telling it. And I have heard the Jewish story told for many years, colored by the long shadow of the Holocaust. By the way, on that same trip, I had traveled to Germany. I visited a concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin. I toured the former site of Gestapo Headquarters, now a museum in memory of the victims of Nazism. I walked through the Jewish cemetery in Prague, with overwhelming lists of names of those lost, scrawled across the walls of hollowed out synagogues. I did this intentionally to balance out the story of what had happened and what is now happening.

I came back from that trip understanding more and less than when I started. I understood more about what was happening to the Palestinians and less about why that treatment was permitted in light of the horrors of the Holocaust.

This historical context is often presented as the reason for such modern security efforts, but I found it baffling. To look at photos of the walled ghettos of Warsaw and then to place my hands on a concrete wall surrounding Bethlehem. To stand in the guard tower of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany and then to look up at a guard tower on my way to see the holy sites of Jerusalem. It breaks your brain.

I toured the only hospital in the West Bank that offers radiation treatments for Palestinians. At the time, it was on the verge of closing because aid from the U.S was being withheld. And now all aid has been cut off indefinitely, to hospitals, to food distribution, to everyone. Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopal leaders in the U.S. have called for the funding to be restored.

I wonder who will get treatment? I wonder who will be fed? I wonder who will be comforted?

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Who should those blessings fall to? Unlike, the Sermon on the Mount, these explanations of blessings are not being offered to those with spiritual longing or a desire for righteousness. They are to the poor, the hungry, the suffering. And woe to those who are satisfied now, for they will find themselves in a woeful state.

There is a social movement known as Post-Modernism. It is defined as a response to Modernism, which represents an urban, industrial, and secular outlook. Post-Modernism responds to all that with skepticism and irony, skepticism to the idea that there are any cohesive themes or ideas in society and irony regarding Modernism and traditional outlooks alike. One might consider it a smart-aleck’s guide to life – a jaded outlook and a distrustful way of being.

Banksy might well be classed in this school of thinking. He rejects the ways of the modern world: consumerism, capitalism, and the like. And not coincidentally he uses that perspective as a means for making money. He decries capitalism all the way to the bank, but is saved by an ironic wink to the audience. Banksy might well say that neither he nor anyone else should be trusted, in the worlds of art, politics, or commerce. Not a terribly great way to look at life.

When I was in Bethlehem, a new hotel opened. It was called the Walled Off Hotel, an obvious reference to the surrounding security walls. The hotel was notable for being sponsored by the artist Banksy. He apparently personally designed the décor and his paintings and murals fill the hotel. One night, a group of my fellow travelers wanted to go to the hotel for its grand opening. I decided to stay back at the ranch. They looked upon me sadly, like a wallflower at a dance. They went off into the night.

The next morning, we gathered for breakfast. Several of my colleague sat over their eggs, smugly. One said, “Mark, you will never guess who we met at the hotel?” Of course, it was Banksy, the anonymous street artist. Now this was supposition on their part. The fellow they met was British and seemed to be putting the finishing touches upon the place. He had a drink with them and explained all about the art in the place. They did not know it was him, but boy did they not let me forget that missed opportunity for the remainder of our travels. Who knows what this all truly meant.

Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the LORD.

We know this. We have been told a form of this message for thousands of years. If you trust mere mortals, you will regret it. If you place your trust in princes or kings, if you listen to those of soft words and hard hearts, you will find strife. You cannot trust the words of mortals. Which leaves us with the difficult task of figuring out how we might trust anything in this world. Whose explanations and stories. Whose protests and pleadings.

It takes time to come to trust someone, an ill-advised path according to Jeremiah, but how can we live with one another otherwise? Hard won trust comes through the assessment of actions. There is the old saying, do what I say and not what I do. That is exactly wrong. I do not care what someone says if those words are never followed up with actions. It does not matter if someone says all the right things about taking care of the poor or the hungry if they never get around to helping them.

This is the reason we hear woe unto the rich for they have already received their consolation. To be rich is to have more than what is needed. And to have more than what is needed, when others are in need, is the sin. That is the problem. If everyone has a coat, no big deal if you have two. If someone however does not have a coat, then why should anyone have more than is needed?

Notice what is not mentioned in that list of blessings and woes. Feed the hungry, assuming they deserve it. Take care of the poor, unless they are just sitting around. This is not a determination of worth, of sinlessness, of righteousness. It is about giving because one can to someone in need.

I know that if I were to have a conversation about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict in our neighborhood, there would be a range of opinion, but mostly centered on the Israeli perspective. There are credible reasons for the Jews of the world to fear for their safety and longstanding arguments for the need of a Jewish homeland. In my mind, those are givens.

The question for me becomes not whether either group is deserving, but whether one has an abundance while the other does not. It is not whether either group is sinless, but whether any among them is suffering. It is not whether one story is more tragic than the other, but whether there is a way of comforting those who mourn. A way to make it so no one ever again has to mourn for a loved one lost to violence in the Middle East. We cannot wipe away the sins of the past. We can only struggle along seeking to find reconciliation and to foster healing now and in the future.

We know that we cannot trust the words of mortals. We can only look to their actions, look to their deeds. And while we wait for actions to reach beyond words, we can listen to heartfelt grief, to stories of suffering. We can comfort those who mourn now, so in time their children or grandchildren may learn how to live and to laugh together.   Amen.