Introduction
This morning I want to speak
with you about stories: sacred stories,
shared
stories, private and personal stories as well as collective and cultural
stories, stories that heal and stories that hurt, stories that empty our hearts
of fear and shame and stories that bind up our wounds and even redeem our
pain. I take my cue from this morning’s
story in the Hebrew Bible; it is an odd one that simultaneously contains
elements of hope and dread, trust and doubt, grace and judgment as well as action
as well and contemplation.
· Fundamentally it
is a story of discerning new directions from out of old ways – learning to live
tenderly in the confidence that God makes a way in the wilderness for us even
when all we can see is a dead end – walking by faith in the ways of the Lord
rather than relying only upon the limitations of our comprehension.
· It has been said
that Christianity, Judaism and Islam are religions of the book – faith
traditions rooted in the stories and commentaries of the Bible, the Torah and
the Qur’an – and at their best these books contain what Huston Smith calls” the
distilled wisdom of the human race.”
Curiously, this distilled
wisdom mostly takes on the form of stories – not rules or moral and ethical
guidelines – but rather shared stories about how real people live. That means that the Bible is always more descriptive
than prescriptive, right? It is
essentially a nuanced document in need of loving interpretation because most of
the texts are evocative tales about what people like Abraham and Sarah,
Jeremiah and Judith, Jesus, Mary and Joseph along with Peter, Paul and Mary
Magdalene actually do when they discover that they are in the presence of the
Spirit of the Lord.
· Yes, there are a
few chapters containing things like the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the
Mount. And it is true that Torah
includes Deuteronomy and Leviticus – but even the Law includes Genesis, Exodus
and Numbers.
· So let’s be
clear: mostly, we are a people of the
story – shared stories, discovered stories, sacred and profane stories – and
stories that demand loving and nuanced interpretation. Because like Huston Smith once said: “Most of the words in our holy books tell us
things we already know but refuse to learn.”
Take today’s story from the
poetic prophet Jeremiah as a case in point:
it speaks of buying a farm in the middle of the chaos of a war. It tells us about a God who is at work in our
lives whether we’re living in an era of construction or destruction. And it invites us to discover what we
have in common with our ancient ancestors in faith and thus make this story our
own. So this morning I propose to
share three concerns with you:
· + First I would
like to briefly review the foundation and context of Jeremiah’s story for us so
that we’re all on the same page.
· + Second I want to
tease out at least one of the sacred insight of the Lord buried within the details
of this mysterious tale.
· + And third I hope
to explore why and how I think this story matters to us as we prepare for a new
year of mission and ministry in the Spirit of Jesus Christ at First Church.
Is that clear? In a word I hope that together we might
discover new directions from out of our old ways. And to do this, I need to
start with prayer:
Lord God, help me to communicate. Amen.
Insights
One of my favorite writers,
Ernest Kurtz, frames the challenge of discovering our place within the sacred
story like this in his book A
Spirituality of Imperfection. He
notes that when people who really belong together genuinely hear a story in
community, they fashion a safe place for one another though the story. He calls it a “narrative home… where our
anomalies of behavior, our ambivalences of thought and feeling, the ambiguities
of our human being all fit in” and feel right.
· Do you grasp the
distinction Kurtz is making between simply sharing random stories, thoughts and
feelings in a group and discovering a shared story that creates community? The theologian
Mary Daly put it like this: “The deepest
possible community is the one that is discovered rather than formed when we
meet others who are on the same voyage.”
Kurtz illustrates his point
like this: “About noon one working day,
an itinerant clown stood at the edge of New York City’s Central Park juggling
and engaging passers-by by calling out questions, inviting them to sit down and
making them laugh.”
Little by little a crowd gathered and after a time a
man in a three-piece suit looked at his watch and realized he had to return to
work. Moved by the clown’s performance, he went to drop a $20 bill into the hat
at the clown’s feet when the clown called out, “Don’t give me $20. Why not buy us all some apples instead?” The man in the three-piece suit was startled
but receptive – and within 10 minutes came bag with a bag of apples for
everyone in the group. And with those
apples a little community was discovered in the heart of Central Park: 20
people surrounding a juggler, eating apples together. And here’s the thing:
when others came by to watch, the only way newcomers could be
transformed from confused outsiders to members of this group would be if
somebody told them the story of the apples.
· Hearing the story
– and probably sharing the apples, too – helped very different people find
common ground in the middle of an ordinary working day.
And this
“narrative home” gave birth to a safe place where people could discover what
they held in common without erasing any of their differences.
That’s what the Biblical
stories hope for, too – the discovery of common ground – a safe place where we
can practice trusting our best selves in the presence of God’s grace whether
we’re in good times or bad. So let’s
turn to Jeremiah’s story, which takes a bit of interpretation to know what’s
going before we can discover our place within it, and here’s what I think is
important:
· Jeremiah did not
want to become a prophet – he avoided and argued with the Lord – but the Spirit
assured him over and again that even before he was born the Lord God had chosen
him to speak the truth to power. So,
reluctantly, Jeremiah did as God encouraged but for most of his life no one
wanted to hear what he had to say.
· You see, the
politics of the day were ugly. Early in
Jeremiah’s life, Israel was under the authority of Egypt and had relative
autonomy. But in 605 BCE, the Pharaoh
Neco was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and Israel’s king, Jehoiakim,
decided to rebel. This led to warfare and in 598 BCE Jerusalem “was besieged,
the Temple was plundered, the fields were burned and thousands of deportees
including the royal family, nobles and the prophet Ezekiel” along with the rest
of the best and the brightest were taken into captivity in Babylon.
· A puppet king,
Zedekiah, was installed in Israel – and for a few years the siege of Jerusalem
was interrupted by other battles – during which time the prophet Jeremiah told
his king that he needed to get the people ready for even more trouble and
exile. But this was considered treason,
so Jeremiah was arrested and held under house arrest. And during this arrest the
siege of Jerusalem resumed and things went from bad to worse for everyone.
That’s the context: terror, destruction and rampant fear. And as the walls of the city are being
destroyed, Jeremiah doesn’t quit for he tells his king that there was no escaping
reality. Death and tragedy were
inevitable at the hands of Babylon. At
which point in time King Zedekiah demands to know why Jeremiah doesn’t tell him
some good news? Listen to what the
prophet says: For now there is no good news to share. What we have to do is face our reality honestly
and deal with it. It is like the Serenity Prayer tells us: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot
change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the
difference.
But after Jeremiah’s reality
check, he tells the king something else: even in
the middle of all of this pain, the
Lord had sent my cousin Hanamel to me and he wants me to buy his farm. Now I have to tell you I think this is one
totally weird request while the walls of Jerusalem are being destroyed.
And if that isn’t weird
enough, Jeremiah insists that he it is the will of the Lord for him to buy his
cousin’s farm because it is an embodied act of hope pointing to a time when the
tragedy and pain would be over. God’s
people, he tells the king, must start to live in ways that point to the hope
even while accepting the reality of the tragedies – so Jeremiah literally buys
the farm.
· Now is that story
clear: do you get what’s going on in it
and what Jeremiah is trying to accomplish through buying the farm? All around him is violence, chaos and fear –
and nobody can do anything to make it go away – and at the same time he
understands that to live as people of the Lord means we do real things that
point beyond the pain towards God’s promises.
· So can you think
of where you know something of this story? Can you articulate a time in your life when
you shared something like the prophet’s buying the farm?
Part
of the challenge of faithful living has to do with acceptance: nobody escapes
suffering – nobody avoids the consequences of sin – and everybody hates to
acknowledge that this is true. We want
to be the exception to the rule. Fr.
Richard Rohr recently put it like this:
the upside-down perspective of our story as people of faith does not fit
with the popular cultural and political stories of America. We want to believe that progress is always
possible – that upward mobility is truly the will of the Lord – and that if we
just work hard enough we can really fix
all our problems.
To
which the testimony of the prophets, the stories of our mothers and fathers in
faith and the witness of Jesus Christ say, “Sorry but that is wrong – it is
dangerous – and even destructive.” Sometimes, you see, there is simply NOTHING
we can do to fix things – or people – or events. And I mean NOTHING. Sometimes life is just going to be tragic and
painful and ugly.
· And part of the
human condition is that we hate this: we hate not being able to fix things and we
hate not being able to take pain away from our loved ones, right?
· We hate when the bad
guys win and the poor and defenseless are wounded in ever more vicious ways and
we hate our impotence –we hate our powerlessness – and we hate our fears and
confusion.
So
here’s the sacred irony of all this hatred:
until we make peace with what we hate in ourselves – our fears and our
powerlessness – there won’t be room in our hearts for God’s grace to move
through us. St. Paul teaches that it is
in our weakness that God is strong – in our littleness that the Lord
becomes great – and in our emptiness God’s will fills us full.
I
think that’s what Jeremiah realized: he
couldn’t stop the war. He couldn’t heal
his people from their sins. And he
couldn’t take away anybody’s suffering.
But he could buy the farm – he could invest in the future in a loving
way that pointed to grace beyond the tragedy – so that when the hard times
passed his people could rebuild and renew their lives in the place they loved.
Conclusion
And that takes me to how I
understand Jeremiah’s story in relationship to our own at this moment in time. We come out of a story of power – a story of
being in control – a story of being in charge.
That’s what it meant to the historic first church of our town: our members called the shots and set the
social, spiritual and economic agenda for the whole community.
· + First, as we continue to give up any illusion of
control in our community, I believe God is giving us permission to exchange power
for tenderness. More than anything
else at this moment in time I see people who are aching for compassion and
gentle love. We don’t need more loud
voices or pushy leaders insisting on their own way: we need tender women and men who can hear the
stories of those who are hurting the most.
· + Second, as we cast off our delusions of grandeur, God
is teaching us to simply share small acts of mercy with our neighbors. We aren’t in
charge any more – nobody notices or even cares what we do – so now we have the
freedom to be insignificant. We can sit
and listen to those who are lonely. We
can just hold one another’s hands when we are afraid. We can bake a loaf of bread – or maybe a few
hundred pies – so that some body’s else’s day is just a bit brighter. We know that there is almost nothing we can
fix, so now we have the freedom to do just what we can.
· + And third, because we are increasingly on the
periphery or sidelines of our society, God is encouraging us to be playful
while the world rushes by in all seriousness to an early grave. We
don’t have to hurry – or get addicted to the latest gadget – or pay attention
to the most recent trash. Rather, we can
put our compulsions on the cross and become like children who, Jesus said, are really
the ones who know how to enter and live in the kingdom of God.
Our sacred story is
changing: from out of our old ways, new
directions are being discovered. And the more we listen to the invitation to be
tender, small and unhurried, the more we will be blessed and empowered by God’s
grace and peace. Beloved, Jeremiah came
to understand that all he could do was buy the farm – to invest in small acts
of tenderness beyond the raging madness of the moment – and point with his life
towards God’s hope.
Like Jesus said in today’s other
story: we already KNOW what the Lord
requires – we already have Moses and all the prophets – and they all urge us to
nourish tenderness, mercy and playful patience.
Today our story resonates with the sacred story – and the stories of
countless others all around us – if we have ears to hear. Let this be for us a time of listening – and
discovery – and quiet acts of tender mercy for so sayeth the word of the Lord
now and forever more. Amen.
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