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.