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.