"He Was Happy" (Luke 19:1-10)

Someone Who Believed in Me

I grew up with a soccer ball never too far from my feet. My dad made sure of that. He had taught at a high school in Nigeria for a couple of years, and while he was there he had fallen in love with soccer. My older brother took me under his wing when I was old enough to play. In our backyard, he taught me proper technique and all sorts of tricks. Entire afternoons would be lost as we played against one another. I was an attacker, he was a defender. Like iron sharpening iron, we made each other better. Because we never fell into the same age bracket, we never played on the same team. But he would show up at my games, and I would show up at his. His support meant a lot to me.

About seven years ago, I began to play in an adult recreational league. It was exhilarating to be playing soccer again, but it took a while to recover everything I had learned—in part because I was playing on a team of strangers, and it takes time to build relationships and earn the trust of your teammates. A couple years later, my brother, who had been living in Texas, returned to Virginia. (As some of you know, he’s pastor at Goochland Baptist Church.) I invited him to join my soccer team. For the first time in our lives, we would be playing on the same team. I remember vividly the first game we played together. I played better than I had in years. Usually, if I were lucky, I might score a single goal in a game. In that game, I scored four. Everything I tried came off. You know how sports players will sometimes point to the heavens after they accomplish a great feat, as if to say, that wasn’t all me? Well, that’s how I felt.

But I don’t believe that God above had preordained that I would have an amazing game that night. I believe the reason for my performance was much closer to the ground. That night, I was playing the game with someone who believed in me. My brother was shouting encouragement at every turn, urging me to shoot when I had a shot, celebrating when I scored a goal. The paradox is that what I did that night, was very much within my capabilities. My body knew all the right motions. Yet, it had never put them together like that before. It needed to be unlocked, unleashed. I think that is what my brother did, just by being there, just by believing in me.

I’m willing to bet that, if you consider your own life, you will find similar moments, when another person’s belief in you called forth from you something you did not know you had. Maybe it was a spouse’s support that inspired you in a difficult time, or a child’s love and trust that made you more responsible than you knew yourself to be.

“What Is Impossible for Mortals”

Nobody believed in Zacchaeus. We learn this in the middle of today’s scripture, when Luke tells us that everyone in the crowd grumbled about him that he was “a sinner” (19:7). Maybe this reputation is because he is a tax collector who takes more than his share. Or maybe he simply fails to live according to the moral standards of his Jewish community. In either case, his reputation precedes him. I remember as a child thinking that Jesus spoke Zacchaeus’ name as a demonstration of his divine knowledge. Now I think he spoke Zacchaeus’ name simply because he had already heard all the grumbling about Zacchaeus, this sinner of Jericho. Now I think that if Jesus’ address to Zacchaeus demonstrates any sort of divine power, it is not the power of knowing everything, but rather the power of love. Jesus believes in Zacchaeus.

Luke’s introduction of Zacchaeus—“he was a chief tax collector and was rich” (Luke 19:2)—draws a comparison between him and a rich man whom Jesus has only moments ago encountered. In the previous chapter, a rich man asks Jesus how he might receive the fullness of life. Jesus invites him to sell his possessions and follow him, but the rich man cannot let go of his riches. He walks away from Jesus sad, and Jesus laments, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” When the disciples ask, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus answers, “What is impossible for mortals is possible for God” (18:18-26).

In other words, there are some things we cannot do by our own will. It takes something outside of us to unlock us. For me on the soccer field, that outside something was my brother’s belief in me. If you’re familiar with fairy tales, you might recall that very often what breaks the evil enchantment is not a person’s own magical power or intelligence. It is someone else’s kiss. Love breaks the shackles of the spell and liberates the enslaved person.

That is precisely what we see in Zacchaeus. Luke tells us that when Jesus invites himself over to Zacchaeus’ home, Zacchaeus is “happy”—or “joyful” is probably a better translation (19:6). Perhaps for the first time in years, Zacchaeus feels that someone else loves him and believes in him. Here is someone who does not judge him, someone who does not look at him with recrimination. Here is someone who, before anything else, desires to spend time with him. He scrambles quickly down the tree, and soon he does what the rich man was unable to do. He gives away half his possessions and pays back four times all his fraudulent profits (which may well account for the remaining half of his possessions). Jesus then pronounces, “Today salvation has come to this house” (19:9).

What’s fascinating here is the order of events. Usually, in our world, repentance comes first, and forgiveness comes second. Forgiveness must be earned. “Tell me you’re sorry. Prove it to me.” But this course of action is often counter-productive. Shame does not unlock a person. It does not liberate us. If anything, it isolates a person and closes them off to the world. Shame shuts us down. Jesus shows us another way. He makes no demands on Zacchaeus other than that they eat together.[1] Zacchaeus’ joy suddenly unleashes a whole new person. This is what repentance means anyway—a change of mind. What this story suggests is that forgiveness comes before repentance, that forgiveness can help to change a person’s mind. Just as my brother unlocked certain abilities within me on the soccer field, just as a kiss awakens the sleeping beauty or transforms the toad prince, Jesus’ acceptance of Zacchaeus changes his mind. Trusting in his own goodness, he lives not out of fear and greed but out of love for others.

Jesus at Our Tables

Growing up in a church where we shared the Lord’s supper only once a month and in great solemnity, I understood the Lord’s table to be an almost magical, otherworldly fixture. The Lord’s table was the sacred property of the church; it had scripture printed on it and fine silver lying on its surface. It required silence and a recollection of my sin and shame.

But today’s scripture turns the tables on my old understanding. Jesus invites himself to Zacchaeus’ table. He turns our tables into his own. The Lord’s table is not a heavenly table descended to earth, but an earthly table blessed with God’s love. It is not a table that requires our penance, but a table that declares we are accepted just as we are. The rest of the world might look upon such a table and say it’s folly. If you just accept people as they are, they’ll never change or grow! But Zacchaeus’ story suggests otherwise.

Remember the rich man who could not let go of his money and follow Jesus? If ever there was a picture of a model disciple, it would appear to be him. He says he has followed the commandments since his youth. And as if that weren’t enough, he wants to know what else to do. He’s the student every teacher dreams of. But when it comes down to it, he cannot learn. He cannot change and grow as Zacchaeus does. Why? Let me suggest an unconventional—even ridiculous—interpretation. It’s because he’s not happy. I’m not talking about superficial happiness, but about the deep joy that Zacchaeus feels when he learns that Jesus believes in him and accepts him as he is. The rich man is uneasy and unhappy; he does not believe that God accepts him as he is. For this reason, he feels compelled to secure his life by power and wealth. He cannot let go of it.

The good news of Zacchaeus is that we do not need to secure God’s love. It is already ours. Christ accepts us as we are and makes our broken tables his own. And his acceptance does what we could never do on our own. It is like the kiss that breaks the enchantment. It is like when someone’s belief in us unlocks unbelievable capabilities within ourselves. When we receive Christ’s acceptance, it makes us deeply happy; it changes our mind about who we are…and may transform us in ways we could never foresee.

Prayer

Dear Christ,
You make our tables
Your own table.
Help us to know
The joy Zacchaeus felt.
Help us to feel your kiss on our lives,
Your steadfast belief in us.
…
Awaken us to a fuller life.
May salvation come to our houses today:
Amen.

---

[1] Scholars point out that the language in this text bears strong connotations of table hospitality.

Written on the Heart (Jer 31:27-34)

Is It All Over?

For the people of Judah, the Temple was not only a site of worship. It was a symbol of God’s presence and protection. Seeing the smoke rise from its daily sacrifices and smelling their pleasing odors would have assured the people of God’s nearness. Many people assumed that the Temple would stand forever. After all, God had promised King David that his kingdom would have no end (2 Sam 7:12-13). According to Jeremiah, the leaders of Judah encouraged this perception. They would say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord” (7:4). Imagine a national parade in which flags are raised and glory is proclaimed and the nation’s demise is simply inconceivable. For many people, that feeling of triumph and eternity accompanied the Temple. As long as it was standing, they knew that God was on their side. And they believed it would always be standing.

But then one day, it wasn’t. When Babylon conquered Jerusalem in 587 BCE, it destroyed the Temple. Suddenly the people were thrown into doubt. The Temple’s destruction meant that maybe God was not on their side. It meant that maybe God had left them. They felt desolate and wondered if they had thrown it all away. They wondered if they had broken God’s covenant beyond repair.

Maybe you know what this feels like. We all have little Temples of our own—people, places, possessions, achievements that somehow become the meaning of life for us. When these little Temples suddenly collapse, we are left wondering if it is all over. Maybe it is divorce, or the loss of a job, or serious financial trouble, or a relapse. Whatever it is, we are suddenly left feeling very alone and wondering if we blew it.

Getting Past Our Deeds to God’s Love

To a people who felt like they had blown it, Jeremiah announces a curious prophecy. On the one hand, the first thirty chapters or so of Jeremiah are precisely an announcement of having blown it. Jeremiah declares the unsavory truth that deeds have consequences. In the case of Judah, the people had violated God’s covenant so boldly and for so long, neglecting the poor and vulnerable and chasing after their own greed, that their society had become divided against itself and crumbled. God describes the consequences that Judah must endure in terms of a clearing out: God will “pluck up and break down,” “overthrow” and “destroy” (31:28). We might flinch to hear this terminology of judgment, particularly if we apply it to our own lives and those moments when our world has suddenly collapsed, but it may help to understand that God’s judgment here is not a matter of punishment or retribution. It is simply the consequence of our own deeds.

But if Jeremiah proclaims the difficult truth that deeds have consequences, he also proclaims an even deeper truth. Consequences do not define us. God’s love does. “As I have watched over them to pluck up and break down…so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord” (31:28). Earlier in the same chapter, God declares God’s motivation for restoration, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (31:3).

When our Temples collapse, the tendency is to think that we are done. We mistake our identity for what we have done—in particular what we have done wrong. We identify with our scars. We think they tell the whole story, a story of our failure and our not-enough-ness. (We might forget that when God first marked a human for his wrongdoing, it was not a mark of punishment, but a mark of protection. God marked Cain out of love, so that he would live.)

“I’m Gonna Tattoo That on My Heart”

Father Greg Boyle is a Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries, a gang intervention and rehabilitation program in Los Angeles. Today his ministry supports over 10,000 men and women who are escaping the vicious cycle of violence and incarceration. Greg explains that the gang members who enter into the program share one thing in common: they all have grown up in terribly deprived and hurtful settings. Early in their lives, they absorb the destructive message that they are not worth anything, which becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy as they embark on destructive gang careers. Degraded and abandoned as little children, they act out their perceived worthlessness on the streets.

One day, Greg was struggling with Sharkey, a “particularly exasperating homie.” (“Homie” is the affectionate name that the former gang members have for one another). Greg realized that he had been acting harshly toward Sharkey and expecting too much from him. So, he decided to switch his strategy and catch Sharkey in the act of doing something good. He praised him for his bravery. He pointed out that Sharkey’s old peers had a “hollow” bravery, acting violently but never trying to change their circumstances, whereas Sharkey had actually given up his old ways and was forging a new life for himself. He told Sharkey, “You are a giant among men. I mean it.” Suddenly, Sharkey grew silent and stared at him. Then he said, “[Dang], G…I’m gonna tattoo that on my heart.”[1]

Many of the homies whom Greg serves are covered in tattoos. In fact, one of the services his ministry provides is tattoo-removal. It can be a big help when a homie is looking for employment—as most employers steer away from people with hateful words and images etched prominently onto their faces or forearms. It strikes me that tattoo removal for these homies is more than simply erasing a piece of body art. It is liberating them from their old identity, promising them that they are not defined by their past deeds. They didn’t blow it. Their race is not run. What defines them is not the past tattooed on their skin, but the unconditional love that gives them new life—the unconditional love that Sharkey wanted to tattoo on his heart.

Covenant Re-understood

When God declares God’s love to the people of Judah and promises restoration, God also declares a new covenant that will be different from the old covenant. To hear God describe it, the difference is not so much the content of the covenant, which was and always will be God’s unconditional love for the people (cf. Deut 30:1-5); the difference is how the people understand the covenant. Earlier, God says, the people broke the covenant. They did not trust in it. They did not trust that God’s love would give them life, but instead sought life in the competitive realms of wealth and power and reputation. But this time, God says, they will trust in God and know God “for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (31:34). In other words, the difference between their first understanding of the covenant and this second, renewed understanding of the covenant, is what has happened in between. They have done all the wrong things, and God still loves them. They blew it, but God loves them just as much as ever. God cannot magically erase all the consequences of their past deeds, but God’s love can draw them beyond the past into new life.

God describes this renewed understanding of covenant in the most intimate of terms. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it”—tattoo it?—“on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (31:33).

Greg Boyle tells another story about a homie named Miguel. As a little child, Miguel had been mistreated and abused by his family. Then one day they abandoned him. He grew up an orphan. Over a recent Thanksgiving holiday, he had no family to join, so he invited several other homies who were orphans like him over to his home. Later, he proudly told Greg that he had cooked a turkey. “How’d you do that?” Greg asked. “You know, ghetto-style,” he replied. When Greg shared that he wasn’t familiar with the recipe, Miguel explained, “Well, you just rub it with a gang a’ butter, throw a bunch a’ salt and pepper on it, squeeze a couple of limones over it and put it in the oven. It tasted proper.” Marveling over Miguel’s hospitality and kindness of heart, Greg asked him, “How do you do it? I mean, given all that you’ve been through—all the pain and stuff you’ve suffered—how are you like the way you are?” Miguel responded, “You know, I always suspected that there was something of goodness in me, but I just couldn’t find it. Until one day,”—he quieted a bit—“one day, I discovered it in here, in my heart. I found it…goodness. And ever since that day, I have always known who I was. And now, nothing can touch me.”[2]

Miguel had discovered the ancient, everlasting covenant of which Jeremiah spoke. Just like Sharkey before him, who gave us an updated translation of Jeremiah, “Dang, G…I’m gonna tattoo that on my heart.” This covenant written on our heart is not that our temples will stand forever and that we will be successful in all that we do. It’s deeper than that. It’s a covenant of God’s care, and it will be standing even when our temples collapse. (And for some of us, it may be only when our temples collapse that we become fully aware of it.) It’s a covenant that cannot be broken by the past or anything we’ve done or even death itself. When this covenant is written on our heart, when God’s love defines us, everything is transformed. It’s like we were in a prison of our own making, and suddenly we are free. Nothing can touch us because we know who we are. We are God’s beloved, and we are here to love.

Prayer

Tender father and mother of us all,
God of steadfast care—
Help us to accept
Our past,
Its difficult consequences,
And our responsibility
…
And help us to know
What defines us—
Not these things
But what is written on our heart:
Your love,
Which is making all things new.
In Christ, our brother: Amen.

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[1] Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (New York: Free, 2010), xiv.

[2] Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart, 88-89.

Right Where You Are (Jer 29:1, 4-7)

“I Know the Plans I Have for You”

There’s a good chance you’ve read it on a piece of devotional paraphernalia, maybe a magnet or a bumper sticker or a card of encouragement. You may have heard it on television or the radio, spoken by someone promising good things just around the corner. If you grew up in the church, you may have memorized it at some point. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’”—Jeremiah 29:11.

But did you know that those words were spoken to a people who were doomed to live the rest of their lives in the land of their enemy? Did you know those words were spoken to a people whose future was learning a new language, scraping out a subsistence among strangers, and living under the suspicious eyes of their Babylonian conquerors?

When the people of Judah first went into exile, many of them hoped for a speedy return to their homeland. In fact, in the chapter before our scripture today, Jeremiah gets into a fierce debate with another prophet, Hananiah. Hananiah tells the people not to worry. He prophesies that they will return to their homeland in just a couple of years. Jeremiah disagrees. He prophesies that they will only return to their homeland after seventy years. If you’re like me, and you choose whichever weather forecast suits your plans best, then you can imagine which of these prophets was more popular among the people. 

“Make Your Homes There”

Yet it is the unpopular prophet, Jeremiah, the one who announces that they are in Babylon for the long haul, who declares God’s famous promise to prosper the people and not to harm them, to give them hope and a future. All of which begs the question: how does a lifetime of exile fit in with God’s promise of prospering?  Where is the hope in knowing that you and your children will spend most if not all of your lives living in the land of your enemy?

We read elsewhere in scripture that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, God’s ways not our ways (Isa 55:8-9). This situation is a perfect example. The typical human response to a difficult or uncomfortable situation is fight, flight, or freeze and appease. First, the people of Judah had fought the Babylonians. Now that they are defeated, some of them are hoping for a speedy flight from their exile, a quick return to their homeland. Others of them are frozen in fear. They are playing dead, so to speak; they are considering putting their Israelite identity to death in order to become as Babylonian as possible, to appease their new lords and make their lives easier in the land.

But God has a different plan than fight, flight, or freeze and appease. We hear it in our scripture today, which is actually part of the same scripture from which we get that famous promise to prosper the people and to give them hope and a future. To all the exiles in Babylon, God says, “Make your homes there. Grow your families there. Seek the peace of the enemy among whom you live, and pray for them. Their peace is your peace” (29:5-7).

I’m going to go out on a limb and say, this is not what the people of Judah wanted to hear. No more than Jesus’ disciples would have wanted to hear him say, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you” (Luke 6:27-28). This way of living does not come naturally to us. It is counterintuitive. God is effectively saying, “The good life is right where you are. Live it there!” (Excuse me, God, have you seen where I’m living?)

Fight, flight, and freeze and appease, are all responses that look for life somewhere else: in the future or in a different place. They all presuppose that the present time and place is somehow lacking and needs to be changed. They either try to change it themselves by force, or they wait for the change to happen. By contrast, God invites the people to make their home in the present and to bless it. We see this in other Bible stories of exile, such as the stories of Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These young Hebrew men neither fought the Babylonian empire nor fled from it nor tried to appease it. Instead, they made their home there. They even served in its high court. They lived, however, not as citizens of Babylon, but as followers of God. In all their life—from what they ate to how they worshipped—they bore witness to God’s care.

From Daniel in Babylon to Dan in America

Dan Nanamkin is a Native American of the Colville Reservation in Washington state. Like the people to whom Jeremiah prophesied, Dan and his people are living in a sort of exile themselves. They will never be able to return to the life that their ancestors once enjoyed. Many of them fought the changes to their land a long time ago. Now many of them flee from it; the rates of addiction among Native Americans are disproportionately high. Some of them have relinquished their cultural heritage in an attempt to assimilate. But Dan has chosen a different response. He has dedicated his life to sharing the sacred stories of his tradition and seeking the welfare of the land and the people who dwell on it.

Several years ago, Dan showed up at Standing Rock, where many Native Americans and others were pleading against the construction of an oil pipeline through reservation territory. The threat to the land had brought together a diverse company, as more and more people came to share a concern for the land. Dan’s appearance made for quite a scene. On the one side of the blockade was a massive armed force, which occasionally resorted to tear gas and rubber bullets. On the other side, was Dan, in full regalia, and always singing. His presence was magnetic and made a particular impression on one reporter, who identified him as “one of the most prayerful, peaceful people” there.[1]

Crushed Into the Ground…As Seeds

Dan’s story inspires me. It is like the story of Judah in Babylon. It is like the story of Jesus in our world. All of these stories show us the way of God. It is the way of God to make a home right where you are and to bless those around you. To meet the sword with a song. There is a Oaxacan saying that captures this way of God beautifully, “You crushed us into the ground, but you didn’t know we were seeds.” That’s it. We are seeds. Right where we are.

These stories invite me to ask, “What is my hope?” Is it that God will make things the way that I want them to be? If that’s the case, I may well be disappointed. If, as Paul suggests, hope is about what I cannot possibly see or foresee (Rom 8;24; cf. Heb 11:1), then perhaps I need to relinquish what I wish for in my mind’s eye. I wonder: what would the people of Judah have hoped for, marooned among their enemies? What does Dan hope for, living amid an empire that threatens his people’s land? What did Jesus hope for, as he made his way toward Jerusalem and the cross? Perhaps their hope all has less to do with certain results, which are out of our hands anyway, and more to do with their witness and the way that they lived. Perhaps they are simply hoping for the strength to make their home right where they are and to bless the world around them.

What results from making our home right where we are and blessing the world around us, is not for us to say. But God does indicate in Jeremiah’s prophecy that it may take a surprising shape. “In their welfare (shalom) will be your welfare (shalom)” (29:7; my trans.). In other words, what first seemed like an irredeemably hostile situation may turn into a new community of friends.

When I pause to think about it…that looks and sounds a lot like the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed.

Prayer

Courageous Christ,
Whose way leads
To the cross and beyond—
In your tender care,
Disarm us of our selfish hopes
…
Help us to make our home
Right where we are,
And to bear witness to your love,
By which we and others may together know peace. 

Amen.

 

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[1] Camille Seaman, “A Native American Faces Teargas, Baton Charges and Rubber Bullets,” https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/may/04/standing-rock-pipeline-protest-native-american-tear-gas-batons-rubber-bullets-camille-seamans-best-photograph, accessed October 4, 2022.

"Salvation in the Earth" (Ps 74:1-17)

A Lesson in Honesty

This World Communion Sunday, we’re taking a small break from Jeremiah. Our scripture today is instead from the Psalms. But Psalm 74 is not very far from Jeremiah. It is written in the same circumstances, in the aftermath of the Babylonian conquest—after the temple has been destroyed and desecrated and the people have been exiled to a strange land.

The Psalms have long served as models for prayer in both Jewish and Christian traditions. Which is fascinating, because their prayers are sometimes scandalously unorthodox, wishing vengeance on their opponents and death on their enemies. Rabbis and priests have long pointed out that the psalms actually contain some “bad” theology. That is, they do not always portray God in an even-handed way. Yet for whatever they might get wrong, they get the first thing right: honesty. Honesty is the first step in any prayer, just as it is in any real relationship. If we are always pretending, always wearing a mask, always guarding ourselves, then the relationship will never reach our heart. We will never grow. We will never heal.

As we read our scripture this morning, notice the psalmist’s honest feelings. Notice his accusations against God. Notice his doubts and fears. And then, notice how his tone changes. Notice how after he has opened his heart, hope enters in. Notice how his feelings do not give way to despair but are transformed, as though by some quiet whisper from God.

[Read scripture.]

A Hymn of Creation

“Why have you left us, God? Do you see what they have done to us—to you? Why do you keep silent?” These are the honest questions that plague the psalmist, and so the psalmist gives voice to them. The truth, as we have explored in the past weeks, is not so much that God has left Judah, but that Judah had long ago left God. But the psalmist is not completely wrong. Feelings never tell the whole truth, but they usually contain a kernel of it. The psalmist’s feeling of alienation is accurate. It feels like God is missing. Where is God?

After the psalmist bears their heart, there is a pregnant pause and then a different voice seems to speak. “Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the earth” (Ps 74:12). Who is this hopeful voice? The psalmist still? Many scholars believe that here the psalmist is actually reciting an ancient hymn. It is as though in the quiet of their heart, a song of faith, perhaps one from their childhood, stirs and reminds them where God is and where God works salvation. God “work[s] salvation in the earth.” The ancient hymn recounts how God created the earth: how God tamed the chaos of the sea; how God arranged the various water ways so that they would nourish the dry land; how God choreographed the dance of the sun and the moon and the stars so that there would be daylight in which to work and darkness in which to rest; how God orchestrated the weather and the seasons from summer to winter so that a healthy rhythm of life could be established.

This ancient hymn views life through the wide lens of faith rather than the narrow lens of the psalmist’s feelings. It’s like moving from an iPhone screen to an IMAX screen. This is not to say that the psalmist’s feelings are wrong. It is, rather, to say that only by being honest about their feelings are they able to move authentically through them and beyond them. Only by first feeling God’s absence are they able to consider a response to their feelings, something bigger and more real than their feelings. Something about this ancient hymn of creation rings true with the psalmist, and that’s why they sing it. We might reimagine the psalmist’s inner dialogue as something like this: “It feels like God is absent now that the temple is destroyed and the land is lost…. But surely God is bigger than any temple or any plot of land. God’s care is still evident in all of creation, isn’t it? In the sun that keeps coming up, the rains that keep falling, the seasons and the soil that yields the harvest in due time….These are echoes of God’s salvation.”

A Second-Rate Salvation?

It is not uncommon for Christians to identify salvation as the afterlife, as something that happens later. But as Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out, the biblical story presents salvation as this-worldly, as something that happens in the here and now. In the Old Testament, God’s salvation for the Israelites is freedom from slavery and oppression; it is water and manna when they are hungry and thirsty; it is homes and fields and vineyards for the landless poor. As our psalm puts it today, God works salvation “in the earth.” In the New Testament, Jesus declares the good news that God’s kingdom is at hand, and even that it’s already here. On the few occasions when Jesus tells stories that envision a reality after death (such as the rich man in Hades, or the people separated as sheep and goats), these stories always serve to invite his listeners into a fuller life now, one that is rooted and grounded in God’s ever-present love. Jesus doesn’t glorify an otherworldly afterlife, where streets are paved with gold and you have everything you could ever want. He glorifies the stuff of this life—the serenity of birds, the beauty of wild flowers, the sun and the rain that fall on us all; children who dance and play flutes, brothers and bridesmaids, weddings and feasts. All of these things sing God’s love, which is salvation for us now (and of course salvation for us later too!).

If Christians have sometimes been guilty of treating this-worldly salvation as second-rate compared to whatever may happen later—instead of treating everything as the single, continuous reality of God’s love for us—then the example of Francis of Assisi from the thirteenth century shows us it doesn’t have to be that way. Included in your bulletin is an excerpt from Francis’ famous “Canticle of Creation,” a song of praise which is not unlike what we find in the ancient hymn of creation in Psalm 74. In it, Francis praises God through the many elements of creation, including sun, moon, and stars, wind and weather, earth and its produce. Addressing each element intimately as brother or sister, he celebrates how it contributes to the full flourishing of life. Such is the depth of his appreciation, that he seems to be living fully in the presence of God already. One of his acquaintances remarked: “We who were with him saw him always in such joy, inwardly and outwardly, over all creatures, touching and looking at them, so that it seemed that his spirit was no longer on earth but in heaven.”^[1]

Safe and at Home in the World:

God in All Things

Francis lived in such close communion with creation, that he could not help but feel close to the Creator. Francis felt at home on this earth. He felt safe. (Which is the root meaning of salvation.) He felt God’s love in all things. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to feel that way. I’d like to look at creation and have a deep sense, along with the psalmist and with Francis, that God’s love is in all things.

I heard the story once of a man who taught his children reverence for the bugs that made it into their house, even the dangerous ones. When a wasp intruded, he would wait until it stopped frantically bumping against the windowpane; then he would place a glass on it and slowly slide a thick piece of paper under the glass. His children would come close and study the wasp as it cautiously explored its new temporary home. He would then gently take the glass outside and remove the paper, and the children would watch as the rescued wasp slowly walked to the edge of the glass, spread its wings, and flew off into the garden.

One day, as a neighbor was visiting in their yard, the man’s youngest son suddenly exclaimed, “Look, Daddy! What’s that?” He looked and replied, “A beetle.” The son was fascinated with the iridescent colors of its shell. The neighbor, completely oblivious, lifted his shoe and stomped on the insect. “That ought to do it,” he laughed. The boy looked up to his father, waiting for an explanation. But his father didn’t want to embarrass their neighbor. That night, as the father was turning out his son’s lights, the son whispered, “I liked that beetle, Daddy.” The father whispered back, “I did too.”[2]

Strangely, this story fills me with sadness and hope at the same time. Sadness for the boy’s innocence and sense of loss. But hope to be reminded that such hearts still beat in our world, and hope that mine might become one too. For the spirit here seems to me to be the spirit of Francis, who was at home in our world, who felt safe because he sensed God’s presence and love in all of life—in wasps and beetles, in sun and rain, at day and at night. He even sensed God’s presence and love in death (or as he called her, Sister Death). He grasped the same good news that our psalmist grasped, a good news that is bigger than any of our feelings, whatever kernel of truth they contain. Creation—reality—the here and hereafter—is God’s work of salvation, a labor of love.

Prayer

Tender God,
Whose love finds fullest expression
In flesh and flora and fauna—
When we honestly cannot see you,
Help us to say so,
And to listen
…
Lead us from our feelings
To a faith that is older than time,
That senses your work of salvation
In all of creation. In Christ, who takes flesh and dwells among us: Amen.

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[1] Richard Rohr, “A Cosmic Mutuality,” https://cac.org/daily-meditations/a-cosmic-mutuality-2020-10-06/, accessed September 26, 2022.

[2] Paraphrased from Christopher De Vinck, The Power of the Powerless (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 4-5.

Why Bother? (Jer 32:1-3a, 6-15)

A Sandcastle That Outlasted the Waves

They arrived early in the morning as the sun was just beginning to peek over the waves. The man secured the umbrella deep in the sand, the woman unfolded a few faded chairs, and the three children ran down from the dunes to the shore, where the cool water kissed their toes. They splashed deeper into the ocean and danced with the waves. Soon their lips were shivering—yet still upturned in irrepressible smiles. Finally they stumbled out of the water. After retrieving some tools from underneath the umbrella, they returned close to the waves and began work on a sandcastle.

They worked painstakingly for hours. The oldest of the three carefully plotted out the towers and the ramparts, using several sizes of buckets and a shovel. The middle child dug a moat around the castle and then used her fingers to transform some of the higher towers into turrets. The youngest scoured the shore for small seashells to stick into the castle as decoration.

When their father wandered down to admire their work, he pointed out that the tide had turned and soon their creation would be lost to the waves. Would they like help recreating their kingdom somewhere safer? Engrossed in their work, they shook their heads and carried on. Even as the waves came closer, they persisted, patiently putting the finishing touches on their masterpiece. Just when they finished, the first wave filled the moat. Soon after, another wave crashed into a rampart. The children stood back and watched with awe. Within minutes, their sandcastle was gone. There was no crying, however, for they were hungry, and lunch was ready. As the children devoured their sandwiches, they reminisced. Had anyone ever seen such a castle? It was magnificent, wasn’t it? And indeed, it must have been, for it lasted a long time in their memory and inspired a tradition that they would maintain for years and eventually pass on to their own children.

A Pointless Purchase

This tale was inspired by a recent picture book written by JonArno Lawson, who was himself inspired after a day at a beach in Virginia with his three children. He puzzled over why his kids built their sandcastle so close to the waves. Why bother building something that was sure to be destroyed?[1]

Today’s scripture presents us with a similar question. It is the tenth year of King Zedekiah, which is the very year that Babylon conquers Judah and destroys the temple and sends many of the people into exile. It is the end of the world for Judah. But right before the end, Jeremiah’s cousin, Hanamel, who has fallen upon hard times, comes to Jeremiah and asks him to purchase his field in order to keep it in the family. This request actually originates in an important Hebrew law. When God delivered the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt and gave them the promised land, God also gave them a set of laws designed to ensure that no Hebrew person would ever again live as a landless slave. These laws permanently assigned plots of land to Hebrew families. In the worst-case scenario, if land was sold outside the family, then after fifty years it would revert to the family to which it had originally belonged. When Jeremiah’s cousin asks him to purchase his land, he’s following a stipulation of this ancient law that is designed to preserve the people’s freedom on their own land.

But here’s the thing. Babylon is besieging Jerusalem, and it’s only a matter of days before all of the land is lost. In view of this certain outcome, any transaction of property seems pointless. It would be like buying a seafront cottage on a beach that is fast eroding. Why bother? Yet God tells Jeremiah to fulfill his duty and to purchase his cousin’s land. Today’s scripture recounts Jeremiah’s scrupulous fulfillment of his responsibility. To get a sense of the absurdity, try to imagine the sounds of war just outside Jerusalem’s gate—steel clashing on steel, the spinetingling cries of the wounded, the desperate shouts of commanders. But on the other side of the gate, there is Jeremiah along with a small group of witnesses; he is delicately weighing out silver for the purchase, piece by piece, patiently reviewing the terms and conditions, line after line, and carefully signing the deed to complete the transaction of a piece of land that will soon be trampled and destroyed by the Babylonian army. When Jeremiah is finished, he gives the deeds of purchase to his associate, Baruch, and then relays God’s instructions: put these deeds of purchase into an earthenware jar, so that they may last for a long time, because, according to God, “houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in the land” (32:14-15). Although this is certainly a word of promise and hope, we should remember that it is not a promise that Jeremiah will live to see. It will only happen after his lifetime.

The Difficulties of Faith:

When Love Seems Powerless

Which leads me to ask the same question that JonArno asked about his children building the sandcastle close to the waves: “Why bother?” It’s a question worth asking. Faith in God will inevitably bump up against the question, “Why bother?” because faith in God will inevitably bump up against difficult realities that we cannot change. These circumstances are where the rubber really hits the road—or where the waves hit the ramparts. Why bother with love when love seems powerless?

For example, why bother with listening when your conversation partner does not listen to you? Why bother with a troubled teen when he flagrantly throws away all you have given him and stubbornly sets a course for destruction? Why bother with recycling your plastic when nations and corporations maintain practices and policies that are exponentially worse for the environment than your little bit of waste? There is a saying in our culture that has come to express a spirit of cynicism: “I don’t give a…”—I’ll let you fill in the blank! The idea is clear. “I’m not going to bother.” I’m not going to care. If whatever I do will just come undone, then what’s the point? It’s a waste of my time and effort.

The Bird in the Cage Sings

I never saw the movie Titanic, but I’m very familiar with one of its famous scenes, which is based on historical fact. As the ship was sinking, the band leader Wallace Hartley and his string quartet played beautiful music, including the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee.” Why bother? There was nothing in it for them. They wouldn’t get a raise for their fidelity to the job. I doubt they were expecting a rousing applause. They had no guarantee of fame. Why bother? There would be no reason—unless their music was their utmost expression of life, even more expressive of life than breathing. Perhaps they were saying, to steal a phrase from Timothy in our lectionary scripture, “This music is ‘the life that is really life.’ We believe in it, even in the face of death.”

For people of faith, the question “Why bother?” is met with an insistent, “Because. Because this is the life that is really life. We believe in it, even in the face of death.” When I consider the string quartet on the Titanic, or the children on the beach, or Jesus on the cross, the common thread that I see is this: their faith insists on a reality that is more than meets the eye. Their faith insists on a deeper reality, a longer reality, a reality that resists the weathering of time. When Jeremiah gave the deeds of purchase to Baruch, he told him to put them in a jar “in order that they may last for a long time” (32:14). These acts of faith, whether they are remembered in family lore or celebrated on movie screens or preserved in clay jars, or not, are defiant declarations of what is really life. The result of the deed has no bearing on the declaration itself. The children on the beach declared, even as the waves came in, “This sandcastle, this fun is worth it. This is life!” Jeremiah signing the deeds declared, “This heritage of freedom that God gives us, it’s the truth!” Jesus on the cross declared, “This love is life, and I believe in it, even in the face of death.”

Jesuit priest Gregory Boyle, who helps ex-gang members to reenter society, likes to say that if he’s getting burned out from his ministry, he knows he’s doing something wrong. If he finds himself asking, “Why bother?” he’s thinking too selfishly. Faith is not about us changing the world. Faith is about celebrating the life that is really life, even (or especially) in circumstances that threaten to take it away. To steal an image from the poet Maya Angelou, the bird in the cage does not ask, “Why bother?” The bird in the cage sings.

Prayer

Faithful God,
Whose love is patient
And bears all things—
Empty us of the belief
That we need to be in control.
Fill us instead with the faith
Of the caged bird, and Jeremiah, and Wallace Hartley and his string quartet.
Attune our hearts to the life that is really life
That we may sing its goodness,
Regardless of the result.
…
In Christ, who sings your love: Amen.

 

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[1] Samantha Balaban, “A Kids’ Story Unfolds Without Words in ‘A Day for Sandcastles,’” https://www.npr.org/2022/05/22/1093588533/a-day-for-sandcastles-book, accessed September 19, 2022.

From Exile to Our Eternal Homes (Jer 8:18-9:1; Luke 16:1-13)

A Weeping Middle Schooler

These last few weeks in Jeremiah have not been easy reading, and today’s text offers little respite. So, before we dive in, allow me to begin with a more lighthearted tale.

I remember an incident when I was a middle schooler at a summer youth camp. It was “quiet time,” and everyone had spread out in the room to read their devotionals. For once, all was silent. A rare thing among a group of middle schoolers. Suddenly I felt a cough deep in my throat. Not just a solitary cough, but the kind that signals the onslaught of a violent coughing fit. I knew that suppressing the first cough was crucial; otherwise, I would be coughing up a storm. So, I kept my mouth shut and tried to swallow the cough. The last thing I wanted was to disturb the peace of the room and draw attention to myself. But the cough did not go easy. As I fidgeted in silence, tears began to creep out of the corner of my eye. Soon they were flowing freely down my face. I tried, as casually as possible, to wipe them away before anyone would notice.

I have to laugh as I remember the experience, because even though I avoided coughing, I’m pretty sure I ended up drawing just as much attention to myself through my fidgeting and my tears. I have to wonder if others had any clue about what was going on. Maybe they just thought I was an especially spiritual middle schooler who had been deeply moved by the morning devotional.

The Weeping Prophet

Jeremiah was caught weeping on so many occasions he’s become known as “the weeping prophet.” Most of the time, Old Testament prophets identify with God and speak on God’s behalf to the people. But Jeremiah regularly identifies with the people and weeps on their behalf to God. In today’s passage, Jeremiah sees the death, destruction, and despair that fall upon Judah as Babylon forces its people into exile. “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,” Jeremiah cries (8:21). “Why has the health of my poor people not been restored?” (8:22). It’s a rhetorical question. In fact, Jeremiah already knows why his people are hurting. He knows they have abandoned God and sought security in other things, like possessions and political power. He knows that suffering is the natural and unavoidable consequence of trusting in one’s own strength. But in this passage, what matters most to Jeremiah is not whether the people deserve their suffering. (In our conventional way of judging things, they have gotten what was coming to them.) What matters most to Jeremiah is simply that they are suffering. Not only are they living in a forced physical exile away from their homeland, even worse, they are also living in a spiritual exile, feeling the full brunt of their alienation from God.

God’s Eyes, Filled with Tears

There’s a hint in the text that Jeremiah is not the only party crying. The people ask, “Is the Lord not in Zion?” and then in parentheses Jeremiah gives whispered expression to God’s anguished response, “Why have they provoked me to anger with their images?” (8:19). We can almost hear the tears in God’s response. The people sit in exile, wondering how God could have let this happen—had God left them?—while God looks on them from afar, asking, “Why have they left me?” God suffers to see them suffer.

This scene is perhaps a helpful corrective to the judgmentalism of our world. God does not look upon Judah and say, “Told you so! You deserved this!” God weeps with them. Jeremiah weeps with them, even though he knows that they have reaped what they’ve sown. Our world can be so quick to pass judgment and then leave people behind to rot in their just desserts. But that is not the way of God. The ultimate divine work is not judgment but restoration, and its seed is sown with tears. Here we see that the primary response of God and Jeremiah to Judah’s suffering is grief.

What a revolution in perspective. When I look upon a world that is filled with anger and hate and conflict, I can easily lose track of the gospel and join the game, assigning blame and then celebrating when the wrongdoers get what’s coming to them. Today’s passage invites me to look upon the world’s rage and violence not with judgment, but with God’s eyes, with eyes filled with tears for the despair and loneliness and for the hurt that those things cause.

The Isolation of Wealth

By itself, today’s scripture from Jeremiah does not reveal a way out of Judah’s loneliness and despair. We are left with a people in exile who feel God-forsaken, precisely because they themselves have left God. We are left with a prophet and a God who weep for the people, lamenting their hurt and their lost hearts.

Today’s gospel text, however, may illumine a way forward. In it, Jesus tells his disciples a parable about money (Luke 16:1-9). The financial manager of a rich man has squandered the rich man’s money, presumably in an effort to benefit himself. When the rich man threatens to fire the financial manager, the manager goes to the rich man’s various debtors and cuts their debts in an effort to build relationships so that, in his words, “when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes” (Luke 16:4). Jesus, surprisingly, holds up this wheeling-and-dealing financial manager as an example (16:8-9). Where the law would find him guilty of fraud, Jesus finds him praiseworthy for his new ethics, in which he uses money to build relationships, rather than relationships to make more money. Jesus goes even further to characterize wealth as an “unrighteous” value and a temporary thing, but relationships as eternally significant: “Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes” (Luke 16:9).

This parable is filled with surprising revelations. Notice, for instance, that Jesus identifies God’s eternal embrace with other people’s homes.[1] The kingdom of God is when others welcome us into their homes. The parable also suggests that the accumulation of wealth is not a prize to seek but a matter to grieve, for it is a form of exile. It threatens to isolate us and ultimately leave us without a home. (Which is maybe not such a surprise, when we consider that among the “developed” world, our wealthy nation ranks highest in the statistics of loneliness and despair—in suicides and homicides.) I wonder if the isolation and despair of money is not a cousin of Judah’s spiritual exile. They have lived for themselves, and so now all they have is themselves. It feels like God has abandoned them. But that is only because long ago they abandoned God and their neighbor, seeking security in possessions and political power.

“What’s Mine Is Yours”

Jesus’ parable invites me to consider how I use my money. Generously, to build relationships and discover God’s eternal welcome (Luke 16:4)? Or stingily, to secure myself in what is actually a very lonely place (16:3)?

Perhaps it is a question worth pondering as we approach our stewardship Sunday. For me, the question is larger than simply, “How much money do I commit to this or to that?” The question is, “Do I ever feel disconnected from others? Do I ever feel that life is just an endless struggle, just one thing after another with no real purpose?” If I do, then perhaps what I am actually feeling is the loneliness of self-seeking, which is what Judah felt when it went into exile. Jesus’ parable points the way home for me. It is better to give than to receive. For giving draws me into relationship. Giving reconnects me to my neighbor, to my God, and to myself. Giving draws me into my “eternal home” (16:9).

Rhonda Sneed, the woman who started the Blessing Warriors homeless ministry, shares how the folks on the street whom she has befriended will sometimes approach her with a spare dollar or two and insist that she take it for gas or for her next grocery run. They may have a lot less than I do, but perhaps some of them also have more. For their self-giving draws them into closer relationship with one another. If their money is gone, that is no matter. Jesus bluntly says in his parable that there will be a time for all of us when our money is gone, and whenever that time comes, our eternal reality will become readily apparent. We will discover ourselves either very alone indeed or in the good company of others. In the case of these generous individuals, they are already in good company, even as they still struggle for a life that is worthy of their inherent dignity as children of God.

Their example illustrates the motto, “What’s mine is yours.” Is there any other saying so frequently said yet so seldom practiced? Perhaps we keep saying it, because even as we fall short, we sense its deeper truth. Perhaps it is, in fact, the way of God’s eternal kingdom. For when we live otherwise and seek to secure ourselves, what’s “mine,” we isolate ourselves. But when “mine” is actually “yours,” we find ourselves already connected, already welcome into our “eternal homes.”

Prayer

God of eternal welcome,
Who never leaves us,
Even though we sometimes leave you—
Help us to grieve with you
The isolation that results
From our pursuit of wealth and possession
…
Invite us anew
Into our eternal homes—
Which are found in the good company of others. 

In Jesus Christ, who ate with tax collectors and sinners: Amen.

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[1] In fact, the word “homes” is skenas, more literally translated as “tents.” The implication may be that our home is not a permanent brick-and-mortar structure but rather a contingency oriented toward our neighbor. Wherever they are, is our “eternal tent.”

The End or the Beginning (Jer 4:11-12, 22-28)

Haunted by Doomsday

In the last century or so, our culture has shown an increasing fascination with the doomsday genre. Perhaps you’re familiar with the famous 1938 radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. It caused a significant public panic among listeners who actually thought Martians were overtaking our world. Since then, the genre has only proliferated. The list of books and movies is endless: Armageddon, The Day after Tomorrow, 2012, Interstellar, and one of my favorites, The Road. It seems that we love telling stories about the end of the world. Or, maybe “love” is not the right word. Maybe it is more accurate to say that we are haunted by stories about the end of the world. It is a story that we cannot escape. It is the truth visiting us in a dream.

There is a theme that pervades many doomsday stories. Whether the final disaster is ecological or inter-terrestrial or nuclear, the underlying cause is the same. It is we humans who are ultimately responsible. Maybe it is a piece of technology that goes awry and escapes our control and wreaks havoc on all the earth. Maybe it is a disease, and instead of fighting it together, people become suspicious of others and compete for limited resources. Maybe it is warfare, where the desire for control simply grows to astronomical levels and wipes everyone off the face of the earth. In each scenario, we are the common denominator. Our short-sighted, self-seeking tendencies prove to be our undoing. Or, to put it in theological language: our sin kills us.

I wonder if the end of the world is more than a storytelling device for providing us the vicarious moviegoing thrills of danger and survival. I wonder if it is not a prophetic expression of a difficult spiritual truth, namely that we are in danger of destroying ourselves and all creation, perhaps now more than ever.

Human Conduct, Cosmic Consequences

If that sounds a bit dramatic, just remember it’s not me—or anyone else today—who said it first. In fact, we find this message regularly in the Old Testament prophets. Over two thousand years ago, they declared that human conduct has cosmic consequences. In other words, how we treat our neighbor somehow has consequences for the trees and the rivers and the birds and the beasts of the field. This is not an obvious, common-sense observation. We like to think that we can contain and control the effects of our behavior. But the prophets tell us that our actions have an unseen, spiritual dimension that often unfolds in very real, unexpected ways.

In today’s passage, God begins with the charge against Judah that they are “skilled in doing evil” and “do not know how to do good” (Jer 4:22). Elsewhere, God elaborates that their wickedness is not simply a private, religious misdemeanor but a comprehensive failure to do justice. “Everyone,” God says, “is greedy for unjust gain,” and therefore they take advantage of the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow (cf. Jer 6:13; 7:6). But in today’s passage, after Jeremiah broadcasts God’s accusation of injustice, he shares a shocking vision that would rival any of our doomsday stories. The first line is about as end-of-the-world as you could get: “I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void” (4:23). If that language sounds somehow familiar, it’s no accident. “Waste” and “void”—tohu va-bohu—are the very same words used at the beginning of Genesis, when we are told that before creation the earth was “[waste and] void and darkness covered the face of the deep” (Gen 1:2). Jeremiah is saying that when he looks into the future, he does not even see the recognizable forms of creation; he sees only the dark, murky elements of the chaos that preceded creation. To a modern audience, we might say that he sees the dark, mysterious nothingness that precedes the Big Bang. Jeremiah then expands on this image, saying that he cannot see the light that God created, he cannot see the creatures or vegetation that God created, he cannot see the natural boundaries between land and water that God created. He cannot make his point any more forcefully. It seems as though all creation has somehow been “uncreated.”

It’s difficult not to see parallels between Jeremiah’s vision and the world around us today. Just as Jeremiah envisioned a drastic collapse of creation into chaos, so we see in our world a host of ecological emergencies that threaten humanity’s wellbeing. This past week, I read about the flooding in Pakistan, a country that is twice the size of California and contains six times its population. Right now, over one third of the country is underwater. There are so many people displaced by the flooding, that the biggest concern is no longer safe shelter or housing but rather starvation. The emergency response has only been able to reach a fraction of the evacuated so far with food.[1] Although the scope of Pakistan’s flooding is what caught my attention, I’m all too aware that many people closer to home have also had to deal with more frequent flooding. It seems like David and God’s Pit Crew are going somewhere new for “muck-outs” every week. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when I enter the word “flooding” into Google, the automated suggested response “flooding near me” pops up.

Our world’s climate can be a divisive subject of conversation. For me, it’s a not a matter of debate. I have no stake in party politics, nor am I a climate scientist. I simply observe that many of our brothers and sisters are already living through their own doomsday. And I’m haunted by the possibility that the same consumerist and materialist attitudes that devalue and disregard the poor and disadvantaged, have also devalued the earth, treating it as a resource rather than as a gift to be tended and shared. I’m haunted by the story that our short-sighted, self-seeking tendencies—or sinful tendencies—might be our own undoing.

A New Creation

Reading Jeremiah’s doomsday vision leaves me on the edge of a cliff. As I observe some similarities between his times and my own, I find myself asking, “How should you live when the world is ending?” Because maybe it is—at least in the sense that it is undergoing profound change and may look very different in a hundred years’ time.

Around one millennium ago, the archbishop of York, Wulfstan, preached to a people whose world was ending. Vikings raids had become increasingly common, and it was only a matter of time before the Vikings would prevail in England. Wulfstan’s sermon was unorthodox, to say the least. Like Jeremiah, he boldly proclaimed that the end would come and in fact had already come as many English had turned on each other in fear, suspicion, and power struggles. His response was disarmingly simple. No matter—keep living faithfully to God and one another. Do not worry about the result of things, but about your responsibility in things. Let your speech be honest. Uphold your commitments. Care for the vulnerable and the poor. It is common in difficult times for people to circle the wagons and live for themselves in a mode of self-preservation, but Wulfstan essentially invited his congregation to live even more than before for others.[2]

Concealed within Jeremiah’s doomsday prophecy is a similar call to faithfulness and hope. There’s a rascally ambiguity in his use of creational language, such as when he envisions the tohu va-bohu, the “waste” and “void” (Jer 4:23). For on the one hand, these words signal a return to chaos; they signal the end. On the other hand, these same words were originally the prelude to a good and beautiful creation. If they mean that creation has been undone, they also mean that it can be remade. Paul writes about this. He says, on the one hand, “The present form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor 7:31), but on the other hand, “In Christ, there is a new creation” (2 Cor 5:17). What the world sees as an end, Christ-followers see as a beginning. Followers of Christ see redemption in every circumstance and faithfully bear witness to Christ’s reconciling love, in which all things are being made new. 

Seeing crisis as an opportunity for God’s love, as a stage for our peculiar witness, is perhaps pertinent as we talk about stewardship this month and consider making commitments to Trinity. I won’t say much about your pledge. I will be honest that, in the past, I have looked cynically upon church stewardship drives. The request for money often seems to be more about self-preservation than the gospel’s call for self-giving. So my hope is that, if you do give, it is not to preserve Trinity or postpone its inevitable end—for all worldly things will come to their natural end (cf. Heb 12:26-28). My hope is instead that, if you give, you will be motivated by a desire to bear witness to God’s new beginning that happens wherever love welcomes the stranger and befriends the enemy and cares for the vulnerable. If you see that love here, if you have experienced it here, if you desire it here, then by all means please be a part of it in any way that you can. For our world, which is haunted by the end, needs to know about this love, which invites us into a new beginning.

Prayer

Creator God,
Who looks upon the waste and void
And sees within it a very good world—
In Christ, you reveal
That the end
May in fact be a beginning.
Give us courage
To live as joyful, faithful witnesses
To your way of love,
Even as the present form of things
Passes away.
In Christ, crucified and risen: Amen.

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[1] The Guardian, “‘There Is Nothing for Us’: Pakistan’s Flood Homeless Start to Despair,” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/06/we-screamed-our-hearts-out-for-help-homeless-escape-pakistan-floods, accessed September 6, 2022.

[2] Eleanor Parker, “The Sermon of the Wolf,” Plough 32 (2022): 32-37.