Sunday, October 20, 2013

The Days Are Surely Coming

The Communion Table at the Church in Purple Conference (Montreat, NC)


October 20, 2013
Jeremiah 31:27-34

27The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. 28And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the LORD. 29In those days they shall no longer say: "The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." 30But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.

31The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt-a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Sermon: The Days are Surely Coming

One hot summer’s day, a fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of grapes just ripening on a vine which grew over a lofty branch. “Just the things to quench my thirst,” said he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: “I am sure they are sour.”
“It is easy to despise what you cannot get.”

Perhaps you’ve heard this famous fable from Aesop before.  I have to confess, when I read this morning’s Jeremiah passage, I got all sorts of confused, by the mention of ‘sour grapes’ and ‘teeth set on edge.’  After studying the Hebrew, and thinking about what the socio-cultural impact of this statement might have been for the people of Israel, I reached a place of desperation.  I googled it.

And all I got (other than some very questionable Christian writings on children inheriting the evil of their parents automatically) was Aesop telling the story of a frustrated fox trying to eat some grapes.  He jumped and jumped, trying to reach them (I sympathize with him being vertically challenged).  All he became was more frustrated and more hungry.  Eventually, he got snarky and said, “Well, I didn’t want those sour grapes anyway!”

The people of Israel were a bit like that fox: they were liberated from slavery by God and promised a land flowing with milk and honey, but jumping, grasping, grumbling because they just couldn’t get there soon enough.  Eventually, they decided the covenant God made with them was rotten because it didn’t lead to their immediate comfort.  “We don’t want Yahweh, anyway,” they grumbled, as they served gods of gold and self-importance instead.

It’s better to just stay the same, never reaching for what seems beyond us, because it’s probably not worth the effort anyway.  It is easy to despise what (think) you cannot get.

But there’s the catch: we cannot “get” the covenantal grace God offers us, but we can receive it.  And we don’t even have to jump awkwardly to reach it, it is there for us, in 5 beautiful words in this text. These words have the power to turn the sour sweet, to lead us higher and farther than we ever thought we could go.  These words have the power to remake our relationship with God when we break it because it’s “just not doing much for us today.”

These words are: The Days Are Surely Coming.

It takes monumental courage to utter, and even more to trust, in these words.  Last week I gathered with church leaders across the nation at Montreat for the Church in Purple Conference, aimed at finding common ground in a politics of red and blue. 

We saw purple as a joining of red and blue, but even more than that, as a key color for the church, one discovered in the seasons of Lent and Advent.  Embracing Lenten repentance, we together mourned the fact that our denomination is more divided than ever, that the venomous political climate of our time has influenced the life and work of the church, while the love and grace of the church has failed to influence all areas of society. 

We confessed to the ways “us and them” language, whether it be liberal or conservative, progressive or evangelical, young or old, traditional or contemporary, has made the church a place where, jump as we might, we never seem to reach sweet unity in Jesus Christ. 

And the saddest part of all, on a national scale, is when parts of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) decide unity is probably not that sweet anyway, and stop reaching for it, choosing to leave instead.

Remembering the power of that purple season of Lent to lead us in repentance to the cross of the Savior who came to reconcile all things, we confessed our shared sin. 

And then we also remembered another season of purple, one that will soon be upon us: Advent.  Like the people of Israel breaking the covenant to love God and one another, we heard a word from the God who never gives up on us,

The days are surely coming.

Having confessed our sin and felt the weight of our covenant-breaking, we embraced the joy of grace together.  Each evening, we gathered around the Table and broke bread and shared a cup.  Each morning, we heard of the Advent breaking-in of God into this fractured world, transforming even the deepest of hostility with the fragility and power of an infant’s cry. 

We remembered that a culture of individualism and political maneuvering is not our ultimate reality as a people of God, just as a place of wilderness wandering and sin was not the ultimate reality for the chosen people of Israel.

The days are surely coming.

As I wrote this sermon in a coffee shop in that mountain village, I looked out the window.  What I saw was three people, sitting at a table, talking and drinking coffee.  Perhaps it was the most ordinary of scenes.

There was the young girl with her black hoodie pulled over her head as a sort of shield from the world.

There was the young man with oversized hair, spilling out of his haphazardly-placed backwards baseball cap.

There was the older man in red flannel, red suspenders and an oversized fluffy white goatee.

And they were laughing, gesturing wildly, storytelling and reveling in one another’s company.  It didn’t seem to matter that they weren’t the same age or didn’t have the same style.  There was joy at that table.

As I watched them I thought, “the days are surely coming.”

Days when the church will look like that sort of joyful, come-as-you-are, intergenerational community.  Days when whether you like the NRSV or the King James Version, or whether you know when to sit and when to stand, or whether or not you have the Apostle’s Creed memorized, will seem irrelevant. 

As Jeremiah says, people will no longer need to teach one another about God’s promises, for those promises will be written on their hearts, and they will no longer say “know the Lord” for all, all, will know God.

The question for us in the wilderness of a seemingly-forgotten or painfully-fractured church is the exact same question the people of Israel faced in their wilderness: do we believe this?  Do we believe that God is bringing days of hope and unity?

Most of the time, the message we in the church send to the world, perhaps without even meaning to, is that we do not.  Or worse, that we believe that days are coming, but they are days of membership decline, dying congregations and an irrelevant church.  And so we obsess about numbers, while God obsesses over every single lost sheep.  We mourn that we “have” no children, while children mourn that they “have” no real role models, like we could be.  We put up walls of doctrine and “right worship” against a secular society and thus keep out the very people who most need a place of grace.
It sounds harsh, I know.  But it’s important to admit our fearful clinging to the past and even more fearful cowering from the future, because that is what repentance is all about.  We confess this to God, and before those heavy words have even left our lips, God says,

“I will forgive your shortcomings, and forget your sin.  Now, go and proclaim a different message to the world.”

We proclaim that, for God’s church, the glory days are yet to come.  God has not given up on us, and so we will not give up jumping, reaching, to do God’s work in this world, until all know the sweet, good news that is for them.

It seems like a tall order, doesn’t it?  But here’s the good news: you are already doing this.  You are already proclaiming the advent of hope in the church, I’ve seen it.

I’ve seen it when Earl fistbumps everyone within a twenty-foot radius during the Passing of the Peace.

I’ve seen it when you pray for each other and our community, when cards are lovingly sent, and when you call me to get an update on someone who’s been sick.

I’ve seen it when the Republican election judge and the Democrat election judge worship God together in this space and break bread together, proclaiming that God’s Table of grace never shuts down.

I’ve seen it when you joyfully pass plates of barbecue to strangers at the street fair, and even when Ed proclaims to passerbys that “this isn’t Baptist barbecue – it’s Presbyterian, sprinkled, not dunked, with barbecue sauce!”

I’ve seen it when you welcome visitors like they’ve been part of this family all along.

You are proclaiming that days of joy and unity are surely coming, and it’s possible you don’t even realize it!  Never stop sharing that good news, because that is the joyful task God has set before us, until everyone, everyone, knows that they are God’s, and knows that this community is a place of purple: of honest Lenten repentance and of expectant Advent hope, a place where they are not only welcome, but needed.  Not as a number, but as a witness and new voice to God’s work in our midst.

The days are surely coming…thanks be to God!  Amen.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Shared Shalom



World Communion Sunday
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-11

These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. 

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:  Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce; Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage; multiply there, do not decrease. 

But seek the shalom of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its shalom you will find your shalom.  For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, thus says the Lord. 

For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.  For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your shalom and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.

“Shared Shalom”

Jeremiah 29:11 is the Mister Rogers of Bible verses (just go with me here).  It is gentle and warm as a well-loved cardigan and never fails to just make us feel so good.  No one can be angry reading it (like no one can be angry watching Mister Rogers, who was a Presby pastor, by the way.) 

Jeremiah 29:11 is so loved you can find it on painted pieces of wood to stick on your wall, stamped into jewelry, and even on cell phone cases.  “For I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare/shalom and not for harm, plans to give you a future with hope.” 

It’s right up there with John 3:16.  We Christian folk love it, because it sounds like God’s own personal promise to each of us.  God has great plans for ME!  Plans with a future and hope for ME! 

Though Jeremiah was from a hillside village called Ananoth, to the north-east of Jerusalem, I have news for you.  I think Jeremiah was a Southern boy, y’all.  We know this because he was not speaking of God’s plans for you (or me).  He was speaking in plural: 

“For I know the plans I have for y’all, says the Lord. Plans for all y’all’s welfare and not for y’all’s harm, plans to give y’all a future with hope.”

Now, if Jeremiah had just meant the scattered and battered people of Israel in Babylonian exile as “y’all,” his message might have been well received.  He told those exiles to get married, have kids, plant gardens and eat, in other words, to settle down. 

But then he took it one step further, saying, “Listen up, y’all, pray for those you hate – even these Babylonians – for in their shalom is your own shalom.”  Shalom means peace, and also wholeness and completeness, and appears anywhere it says “welfare” in this passage. 

This country prophet was saying that the people of Israel wouldn’t know peace and wholeness until they brought peace and wholeness to those they hated.  No wonder he got thrown in a cistern and left there.  He was not very popular.

And then he stirred things up even more.  All of the well-known prophets of their day, like Hananiah and Shemaiah, were saying things like “live your best life now” – God is going to bring you salvation from the Babylonians really, really soon, just you keep separate from unholy people and wait.  All of that self-focused happy-clappy stuff was exactly what the people of Israel wanted to hear (and it’s still quite popular today).  But instead of paying homage to the celebrity prophets of his day, Jeremiah said they were false prophets, and that no one should listen to them, because God did not send them.  

Jeremiah’s message from God was very different, and much more demanding.  Don’t wait for peace to descend like magic, make it right here in the midst of exile.  God will come and bring us back home again, but God doesn’t want us to just sit twiddling our thumbs until then.  God wants us to bless those who curse us.  To pray for those who persecute us (sounds like something a Jesus fellow said later on).   Don’t wait until your life feels perfect and complete to seek the peace of others.  Share shalom with those it is so easy to hate right now, right here, in the midst of tension and bitterness. 

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why the slick-talking false prophets were so popular and why this country boy Jeremiah was not.  It’s the same reason we forget that great Southern staple “y’all” when quoting this passage. 

It’s why we hear a lot of talk about a ‘personal’ relationship with God, and very little about it having to do with our relationship with a stranger in Syria, much less the family member we always seem to argue with.
A personal relationship with God is easy.  It’s much harder to see God as the God of all people: our families and community, yes, but also someone who hurt us very badly in the past, also our government leaders of both parties, also the friend we’ve fallen out with, even extremists in Iran.  It seems impossible to expect us to pray for everyone as if God cares about them as much as us.

And the truth is, on our own, it is impossible, y’all.  Just as impossible as it was for those people of Israel to plant gardens and have grandchildren in a strange land.  We’ve seen this week that there are times when it is impossible for human beings—even from the same homeland—to get along and seek the shalom of everyone. 

It is impossible, if all we ever see is “us” and “them.”  It is impossible, if we think our shalom is more important than anyone else’s.  It is impossible, if we only listen to prophets who speak comfort to us and condemnation to those we disagree with, until we deeply believe that, not only is God with us, but also that God is most certainly against those we despise.  In this line of thinking, shalom is impossible.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.  We can, like Jeremiah, refuse to play the hate game and instead say that we will, even as we are angry and betrayed, pray for those we consider enemies.  We can trust that God is bigger than the ways we divide ourselves in this country and world.  We can reject the easy path to superficial calm for the more difficult one of reconciliation. 

Only when we have taken this risky road of reconciliation can we then truly hear those words of Jeremiah as they were meant to be heard:  that God has plans for us, all of us, plans for “all y’all” that will usher in a hopeful future in place of the harm we cause one another. 

False prophets still say that this future will descend at some point on those worthy enough to share in it.  God doesn’t work that way.  God builds our shared future of hope even now, using us, in the simplest acts of sowing shalom.

Planting a garden.  Teaching our children and grandchildren how to love those they could so easily learn to hate.  Saying a prayer for those we never learned how to love, in the hopes that maybe we will.  Looking a stranger in the eyes.  Listening to someone with whom we disagree without forming our counter-argument.  Rising above retaliation and showing the grace to others that God has already shown us.

This world desperately wants us to play along in the game of hating those who hate us.  It was the same in Jeremiah’s time.  But how about we don’t?  Instead, let’s sow seeds of shalom. 

Let’s gather at a Table and say that, as a worldwide church, we are one in Christ.  Let’s break bread, and then break the patterns of us-versus-them.  Let’s pour juice into a cup, and then pour out our prayers for all whom God has made.     

Thanks be to the God who makes shalom possible, to the Savior who walked the path of peace no matter what it cost and to the Spirit who is bringing a hopeful future even now, amen.