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Bad Examples - A Sermon for Good Youngsters
Address by Lars-Erik Wiberg
for Sunday, July 19, 1998
Scripture: Jeremiah 7: 1-5, Matthew 22: 34-40, Luke 11: 33-36
We learn useful things when we are young which we carry forward when we are old. You youngsters look at us adults and often wonder what makes us tick. The truth is that it is much the same for us as it is for you, just that we get set in our ways, worry a lot about stuff, and forget what fun it was when we were learning with our ears and eyes freshly wide open. We older folks often forget that you can learn about all sorts of things and have a good time at the same time. So let's hear what A.A. Milne (The A.A. stands for Alan Alexander - - see you've learned something already) has to teach us about a "bad example" in his marvelous verse:
The Knight Whose Armour Didn't Squeak
Of all the Knights in Appledore
The wisest was Sir Thomas Tom
He multiplied as far as four
And knew what nine was taken from
To make eleven. He could write
A letter to another Knight.
No other Knight in all the land
Could do the things that he could do.
Not only did he understand
The way to polish swords, but knew
What remedy a Knight should seek
Whose armour had begun to squeak.
And, if he didn't fight too much
It wasn't that he did not care
For blips and buffetings and such,
But felt that it was hardly fair
To risk, by frequent injuries,
A brain as delicate as his.
His castle (Castle Tom) was set
Conveniently on a hill;
And daily, when it wasn't wet,
He paced the battlements until
Some smaller Knight who couldn't swim
Should reach the moat and challenge him.
Or sometimes feeling full of fight,
He hurried out to scour the plain;
And; seeing some approaching Knight,
He either hurried home again,
Or hid; and, when the foe was past,
Blew a triumphant trumpet blast.
One day when good Sir Thomas Tom
Was resting in a handy ditch,
The noises he was hiding from
Though very much the noises which
He'd always hidden from before
Seemed somehow less. . . . Or was it more?
The trotting horse, the trumpet's blast
The whistling sword, the armour's squeak
These, and especially the last,
Had clattered by him all the week.
Was this the same, or was it not?
Something was different. But what?
Sir Thomas raised a cautious ear
And listened as Sir Hugh went by,
And suddenly he seemed to hear
(Or not to hear) the reason why
This stranger made a nicer sound
Than other Knights who lived around
Sir Thomas watched the way he went - -
His rage was such he couldn't speak.
For years they'd called him down in Kent
The Knight Whose Armour Didn't Squeak
Yet here and now he looked upon
Another Knight whose squeak had gone.
He rushed to where his horse was tied;
He spurred it to a rapid trot.
The only fear he felt inside
About his enemy was not
"How sharp his sword?" "How stout his heart?"
But "Has he got too long a start?"
Sir Hugh was singing hand on hip,
When something sudden came along,
And caught him a terrific blip
Right in the middle of his song.
"A thunderstorm!" He thought. "Of course."
And toppled gently off his horse.
Then said the good Sir Thomas Tom,
Dismounting with a friendly air,
"Allow me to extract you from
The heavy armour that you wear.
At time like these the bravest Knight
May find his armour much too tight."
A hundred yards or so beyond
The scene of brave Sir Hugh's defeat
Sir Thomas found a useful pond,
And, careful not to wet his feet,
He brought the armour to the brink
And flung it in . . . and watched it sink.
So ever after, more and more,
The men of Kent would proudly speak
Of Thomas Tom of Appledore,
"The Knight Whose Armour Didn't Squeak"
Whilst Hugh, the Knight who gave him best,
Squeaks just as loudly as the rest.
Well! Good Sir Thomas Tom indeed! We all have have a clear idea, I am sure, that he was not a good Swedenborgian. He may have been an amusing character in the hands of a gifted writer like A.A. Milne, but to us he is useful mainly for setting a perfectly dreadful example. He was evidently quite smart, but he was not a very nice man. Yet there is something useful for us to learn from Sir Thomas Tom's bad example. And we can often learn from bad examples because they show us exactly what we should not do, or should not be. The challenge for us is is to tell whether the example is bad or not. So what is so bad about Sir Thomas Tom?
Of course today's readings from the Word are an obvious clue. The answer is right there in our Bible as it so often is with so many problems. Jesus has told us in the second great Commandment "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Now he isn't simply making a suggestion, he is telling us what to do. He isn't saying that it would be a good idea if we thought about it; he is giving us a commandment to do something. He is very good at telling us what we should do because he knows what it is. So, we should make it our business to be neighborly, and that's that.
Now about Sir Thomas Tom, what sort of a neighbor was he? I suppose we could ask Sir Hugh what he thought of him, after he regained consciousness and fished his now-squeaky armour out of the pond. He wouldn't give Sir Thomas very high marks I'm sure. As a good neighbor Sir Thomas is a miserable failure. He is a good example, however, of a bad example. He shows us exactly what we should never do, how we should never take advantage of others. As Swedenborgians we learn that the word neighbor means not only the people in the next house but all the folks with whom we may come in contact. Swedenborg teaches us in his book Arcana Celestia, "... man is the neighbor not only in the singular, but also in the plural; for a society less or greater is; our country is; the Church is; the Lord's Kingdom is; and above all, the Lord is." So all of humankind is our neighbor as we meet others one by one. We never meet them all, of course, but those we meet deserve neighborly treatment. The Lord, our chief neighbor, loves us all - - all of the time. That may be a bit much for us to do, but we can try very hard always to express kindness and consideration to others as we meet them - - and to help them if needs be.
But what about Sir Thomas Tom's great gift? And it was important. Armor makes quite a racket when it is used actively. He chose not to share his secret; he was greedy (and that's another problem he had). But he could have behaved quite differently and come out of it with even more fame had he paid attention to what Jesus tells us when he says, "No man when he hath lighted a candle putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light." Just think what could have happened if Sir Thomas Tom had shared his candle of knowledge, if he had lit it for others instead of hiding it under a bushel, so to speak. He could have had fame and fortune far beyond Kent and throughout all of England with the knowledge that he had. But no, he chose to be a bad example - - to squirrel his knowledge away. He preferred to be "The Knight Whose Armor Didn't Squeak" rather than "The Knight Who Kept Armour From Squeaking." There's a big difference in the form of well-earned respect and in being useful. He wasn't so wise after all. If we pay attention to the Lord's instructions to us as to how we ought to get along with each other and how we should share our knowledge, we wind up as good examples - - of not only youngsters, but also men and women, who follow the greatest of the Commandments..
But you may ask, "What if my neighbor is a real stinker? It still isn't impossible to show him affection, or at least to get along with him. Once again look at wise Sir Thomas Tom. Mean and stingy as he was, we still see him as being more amusing than hateful. That's our neighborly attitude; that is the way to be neighborly. He is a bad example, but somehow we don't hate him, and we don't want bad things to happen to him. And if we can have that attitude toward Sir Thomas Tom, we can have it toward any neighbor, whether he's a bad example or not.
Let us Pray:
Dear Lord: Help us not to judge the bad examples that we see along the way, but to learn the lessons they teach and avoid the mistakes they make. We understand that loving our neighbor, and sharing whatever we are good at, will do much to help us make our way along the path that you have made for us. Amen
Copyright 1998 by Lars-Erik Wiberg
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