An eye to the future
Commentary
Without a doubt one of the strangest questions asked again and again in the weeks just after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, was, "Is it all right to be normal again?" Over and over, in contexts ranging from the broadest general culture to the most intimate and personal, people repeatedly asked themselves if it was too soon to resume one kind of activity or another. Should professional and collegiate sports activities be postponed, and for how long? Once they did resume, how long should overt patriotic displays be a part of the pre-game pageantry?
Early on, our grief and mourning were so intense that we even asked ourselves if it was too soon to laugh. Stand-up comedy routines disappeared for a time on the late-night shows. Even when people decided it was okay to laugh, a sense quickly developed that there would never come a time for jokes even remotely touching on that national tragedy. Gallows humor could be applied to every tragedy in American life, except this one. Pundits assured us that irony was forever dead. The world had changed and there was no going back to how it was before.
We are now three years on from 9/11, and all these superficial changes to our society have passed by the wayside. Comedy is as dark, entertainment is as violent as it has ever been -- perhaps even more so. But most people would probably concede things still haven't returned to pre-9/11 "normal." The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the ongoing efforts to restore security to their populations, the March 11, 2004, attack on the trains in Madrid, even the very existence of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security all remind us that the world is more unpredictably dangerous. The question has become, "Will it ever truly be normal again?"
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
It was some of the same questions that prompted Jeremiah to write the letter that is excerpted in the Old Testament lesson for this week. Many of the leading citizens of Jerusalem had been taken into exile to the far-off city of Babylon. Once there, they were receiving contradictory advice. Some were confident that the disaster that had befallen them would be short-lived. Within a matter of weeks, certainly no more than months, they would be returned to their homeland and everything would be as it had been before. There was no reason to try to create a normal life in this foreign city because they simply would not be there long enough to make it worth the effort. Others, however, were not so sure. They could not see any signs that their exile would be brief; they wondered if they would ever see their normal lives in their native land again, and they were certain that there could never be "normalcy" in Babylon.
To both these groups in their exile, Jeremiah wrote that they needed to be about making normal lives right there in Babylon: "Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters ... seek the welfare of the city where [God has] sent you into exile ... for in its welfare you will find your welfare" (29:5-7).
The reason Jeremiah offered for this advice has been conveniently omitted from the reading as assigned in the lectionary. Jeremiah continued to say in his letter that this exile was God's judgment upon Judah, and that judgment would not be ended anytime soon: "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 [Jerusalem]" (29:10). Life in exile was to be the new norm.
Jeremiah warned them not to put their trust in those "prophets and the diviners" who were living among the exiles in Babylon. They were telling the people that God would soon return them to Judah, so there was no point in coming to terms with their exile situation. But they were only telling people what they wanted to hear, and it was a lie. God's message was to get on with life; that the exiles' hope was in their future, not in their past. There was nothing to be gained by cultivating their anger at and resentment of their captors. Jeremiah's message was a hard one to hear, and even harder to accept.
Jeremiah's message was not completely devoid of hope, however. God promised that the exile would eventually end, if not any time soon. Thus, Jeremiah called the people to a delicate balancing act. The exiles were to get on with their lives, living in the midst of the Babylonians without being absorbed by them. They had to realize that both of their fates were intertwined, that it was in the Babylonians' welfare that they would find their own welfare; but only while exile persisted. Exile would one day come to an end; they would, in a future generation, return to Jerusalem, and so their distinctiveness must be preserved. Even in that restoration, things would not go back to want they had been before. The old normal was gone forever, but the new normal of exile was not eternal, either.
2 Timothy 2:8-15
The series of readings in the lectionary from 1 and 2 Timothy continue with a section of personal admonitions directed from the apostle to his young apprentice in ministry. The tone of this letter is of a final testament of the father-figure passing on his parting wisdom to his son in the faith. This genre is often found in pseudepigraphical literature, and it is almost certainly the case that 2 Timothy belongs to that form of writing. Thus the author of the letter is using the literary device of Paul's final admonitions to Timothy in order to add importance and gravity to exhortations intended for a much broader audience.
These particular admonitions are explicitly set in the context of Paul's imprisonment. He calls on Timothy to see to markedly different realities in direct juxtaposition: the resurrection of Christ with its promise of hope, and the hardship and chains that have come to the apostle because he has proclaimed that gospel. To many people, that latter reality would be evidence of the undoing of the former. How can Jesus' resurrection be Paul's good news if it has led to his imprisonment? The answer provided is that while the messenger may be "chained like a criminal," the message of "the word of God is not chained" (2:9). Those who are able to see the glorious future beyond the present hardship will be able to endure and obtain salvation.
A brief bit of hymnic material is included in support of this position (2:11-13). Like many sermon illustrations, the quotation of this material probably already familiar to the readers from their worship experience would underscore that the argument being developed should not seem novel to them. Just as their sufferings for the cause of Christ parallel Jesus' own passion, so shall their future parallel his resurrection and glorification.
The last two strophes (2:12b-13) seem on their face somewhat contradictory. How is it that Christ's denial of those who deny him can be consistent with his faithfulness to those who are faithless because "he cannot deny himself"? Probably we are to understand the statement regarding those who "deny him" as referring to those who publicly renounce Christianity, possibly in a context of formal persecution. As such, it would differ fundamentally from those who struggle to hold on to hope and live out the requirements of Christian life and are only in that sense "faithless." The salvation of those who struggle to believe is secured by Christ's own faithfulness to them; but for those who would deny and reject Christ's faithfulness to them, that ground for hope is taken away.
The final exhortations in this section concern the responsibilities of teachers "to avoid wrangling over words" because such arguing over minutia only tends to undermine the faith of those who observe such fights over interpretation (2:14). A presumption remains that there is a proper interpretation of scripture ("rightly explaining the word of truth," 2:15), but public debates and feuds are counterproductive. The focus must remain where the apostle placed the emphasis: "Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David." God's action through Christ in the sequence of human history is the basis for hope in eternal salvation no matter how dire the present circumstances. Maintaining that focus is as sage counsel for the modern church as it was for the ancient one.
Luke 17:11-19
We all have our "lesser angels," those places and voices inside ourselves that when we heed them usually get us into trouble. Among my "lesser angels" is, at times, a rather caustic and cynical sense of humor. Perhaps the biggest danger these lesser angels pose, however, is when we can't name them, when we simply won't claim them as our own. But I am helped in owning up to my satirical sense of humor by this Gospel Lesson -- helped because I see that even Jesus could sometimes resort to sarcasm.
Having received the adoration and thanks of a leper he had healed, Jesus quipped, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?" The question almost drips with sarcasm, but its very sharpness and edge cuts through all our defenses and pretensions. Why didn't all the cleansed lepers return to thank to Jesus? I can't help but wonder whether what they all shared in common, the "lesser angel" to whom they all gave heed, was ingratitude that arose from a sense of entitlement. I can almost hear them now, "Why shouldn't I have been healed? I didn't do anything to deserve having leprosy anyway!" Yet one of those healed was full of gratitude and joy. Maybe it is not coincidental that he was a Samaritan, an outsider, someone who would never have expected mercy from a Jew -- an exile.
But wait a minute; it wasn't the Samaritan who was an exile in the literal sense of having been uprooted from his homeland. This healing is set as Jesus was traveling south from Galilee to Jerusalem, passing directly through the region of Samaria. It was the nine Jewish lepers who were the exiles, possibly driven from the areas of Jewish settlement precisely because of their leprosy. Maybe the ingratitude of the nine Jewish former-lepers was also fueled by bitterness, by resentment that they were in a foreign place that proved strong enough to strangle any thankfulness for the blessings of God they had now found there. Maybe that bitterness and resentment was further inflamed by the ancient prejudices and hatreds that Samaria was a region that had once been Israel. They had become exiles in their own land!
There is a danger that we may become so bitter as a result of experience that we cannot even give thanks for the blessings of God that found us in our exile. We may become so wrapped up in past grievances and hurts that we cannot rejoice with the one who opens a new future for us. Like those who had the leprosy on their skin healed, the deteriorating disease on our spirits may take more time to be made whole.
Application
Similar to the people of Judah following the destruction of Jerusalem, we are now living in a kind of exile. Actually, it would be more correct to say that we have been profoundly awakened to the fact that we have always been in exile. You see, ours is not an exile of divine judgment. Ours is the exile of a people redeemed by God and restored to fellowship with the divine. People who continue to make their way as pilgrims through a world corrupted by sin to a heavenly city of God where their communion with the divine will be complete and unimpeded by evil. So blessed to be citizens of privilege in this land, we had in some ways lost sight of just how dark and evil this world can be. No more. The feeling of fear and terror in the wake of the attacks is the awareness of our exile.
Although the circumstances of our exile may be different than that of Jeremiah's contemporaries, his advice to them is just as relevant to us. It is time to get back to the normal rhythms of life -- to go on with living, even in the midst of exile. No one can know whether our exile will last seventy years, but it already has become years rather than months. It is time to get on with life, seeking the welfare of those with whom we live in exile, for our welfare is wrapped up in their welfare.
I have asked myself whether this is a kind of fatalism. Have I given myself over to a "lesser angel" and succumbed to a kind of gallows humor nihilism that takes as its motto: "Life is fatal; you'll never get out of it alive"? I don't think so. Rather, I think that I have become even more aware that in the thousand details of daily living -- from driving, traveling by plane or rail, mixing with crowds and being alone -- my life and my fate are ultimately in God's hands rather than my own. As the Epistle Lesson says, "If we have died with [Christ], we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him ... if we are faithless, he remains faithful." In God's faithfulness to us who live in exile in a faithless world, we can find the courage to keep an eye to the future and get on with life.
An Alternative Application
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Luke 17:11-19. Have you ever become so overwhelmed by the societal and cultural changes all around you that you felt like a stranger in your own land, an exile in your own home? Did you ever feel a building sense of resentment that you were being denied your heritage, were losing something to which you felt entitled?
I can't help but believe that such feelings are partly responsible for the low morale that is plaguing so many churches. Just think about it. The church I currently serve in the Maryland suburbs of Washington was founded in the post-war glory days, when everyone "liked Ike," and the population was booming. In part, by riding this cultural wave, the church grew from zero to 519 members in the nine years from its founding until 1967. But 1968 was a turning point in our nation. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated; there were riots in the streets of Washington; the Vietnam War drove Lyndon Johnson from the presidential election; and this church's membership dropped by 100 -- twenty percent -- in a single year. For the next three decades, the membership gradually declined or had brief periods when it held steady. As the society and community changed, the congregation began to feel like exiles.
Those of us who are baby-boomers were indoctrinated in a view of America as a Christian nation. It was in the Cold War struggle against "godless Communism" that the phrase "under God" was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance we recited at the beginning of each school day, and the Deity so affirmed was the Christian, or perhaps the Judeo-Christian, God. But as Diana Eck's book A New Religious America: How A "Christian Country" Has Become The World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation has shown, if it was ever true that the United States was a "Christian nation" it certainly is true no longer. Going to church on Sunday places one in a minority not only over against a secular culture but also as compared to an ever more religiously diverse one. The folks in our pews have become exiles in an increasingly strange land.
Do you hear Jeremiah's message to us? Can you accept it? Like the ancient exiles from Judah, our hope, too, lies in the future and not in the past. Well-being for our congregations will come not by looking inwardly and focusing on our own needs; our well-being will only be found in bringing God's welfare to the cities and communities around us. In a way, that fact should be self-evident once we accept that the reason God has brought us to this place is to be servants of God to the people who live here. As one sloganeer once put it, "God has created the church to be a hospital for a sin-sick world, not a country club for the saints."
It is a hard thing to do. Hard because we are all wounded-healers, certainly always more in need of blessing than able within ourselves to be a source of blessing to others. Hard because we know that the welfare of the city is to be found in the eternal constancy of God, and yet we know that we must bring this message to a rapidly changing world. Still, "the word of the LORD" to us in these scripture lessons is that our welfare is to be found in their welfare. Our hope lies in the future we will forge together with our changing and new community, and as the church I serve has begun adapting itself, allowing itself to be changed so as to be able to connect with and minister to its changing community, it has over the past five years begun to grow. Haltingly, slowly, but grow, nonetheless.
Many years ago, I saw a poster that showed a single, simple wildflower. What was striking about the image was the incongruity of the setting. The cool green of the stem and the bright yellow blossom stood out starkly against a background of a dirty, grey concrete. Through the tightly zoomed frame you could see the blur of passing feet. Obviously this wildflower had sprouted in the cracks of some inner city sidewalk, far from the country meadow where one might have expected to find it. Emblazoned across the bottom of the poster was the simple message, "Bloom where you're planted."
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 66:1-12
All successful sports programs include a vigorous practice regimen. These practice sessions have a dual purpose. First, there is physical conditioning. Players must have the strength and endurance to play through the whole game. Without conditioning they might falter in the fourth quarter or in the last inning. The other purpose of practice is to teach players how to react. Practice sessions simulate any number of responses from the other team, or situations on the field. The players must learn to think and act in a certain way. They must know their position and responsibility, but also what others on the team are doing and where they will be in different situations. Players must know before the ball is snapped or the pitch hit exactly what they will do, what their role is. Practice sessions rehearse these scenarios over and over again until they become second nature.
In a sense, that is what the psalmist is doing. For him worship is a practice session -- practicing the presence of God. In the safety of the sanctuary, surrounded by a company of like-minded believers, the psalmist invokes praise and thanksgiving. In the setting of worship it is easy to say: "Sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise." The psalmist believes that whatever the situation on the field, praise is the proper response.
The conditioning he provides is theological memory. The psalmist knows, and the worshipers must learn, that it will not always be easy or safe to sing God's praises. Obstacles of many sorts may arise. Unexpected exiles or injuries or wars or social collapse may strike at the heart of our ability to express praise. When these events come, the psalmist wants his people ready. He wants their minds and their memories sharp.
"Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds among mortals" (v. 5). Week after week the worship leader guides the community to remember God's "awesome deeds." The people are reminded that their forbears suffered under the cruel hand of Pharaoh's oppression, but God brought God's people out on dry land.
This is not merely an exercise in wishful thinking. It is an act of faith. The psalmist's community is either already in the midst of a difficult situation or it is headed for one. "For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried" (v. 10). If he can prepare them to think theologically about their situation, if they can remember the pathways of worship and praise, when the trouble comes, or as it continues, the people of the community of faith can remain faithful.
"Remember," the worship leader intones. "Remember, and praise while it is easy, so that when your day of trouble comes you will continue to remember and will be able to praise."
Early on, our grief and mourning were so intense that we even asked ourselves if it was too soon to laugh. Stand-up comedy routines disappeared for a time on the late-night shows. Even when people decided it was okay to laugh, a sense quickly developed that there would never come a time for jokes even remotely touching on that national tragedy. Gallows humor could be applied to every tragedy in American life, except this one. Pundits assured us that irony was forever dead. The world had changed and there was no going back to how it was before.
We are now three years on from 9/11, and all these superficial changes to our society have passed by the wayside. Comedy is as dark, entertainment is as violent as it has ever been -- perhaps even more so. But most people would probably concede things still haven't returned to pre-9/11 "normal." The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the ongoing efforts to restore security to their populations, the March 11, 2004, attack on the trains in Madrid, even the very existence of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security all remind us that the world is more unpredictably dangerous. The question has become, "Will it ever truly be normal again?"
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
It was some of the same questions that prompted Jeremiah to write the letter that is excerpted in the Old Testament lesson for this week. Many of the leading citizens of Jerusalem had been taken into exile to the far-off city of Babylon. Once there, they were receiving contradictory advice. Some were confident that the disaster that had befallen them would be short-lived. Within a matter of weeks, certainly no more than months, they would be returned to their homeland and everything would be as it had been before. There was no reason to try to create a normal life in this foreign city because they simply would not be there long enough to make it worth the effort. Others, however, were not so sure. They could not see any signs that their exile would be brief; they wondered if they would ever see their normal lives in their native land again, and they were certain that there could never be "normalcy" in Babylon.
To both these groups in their exile, Jeremiah wrote that they needed to be about making normal lives right there in Babylon: "Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters ... seek the welfare of the city where [God has] sent you into exile ... for in its welfare you will find your welfare" (29:5-7).
The reason Jeremiah offered for this advice has been conveniently omitted from the reading as assigned in the lectionary. Jeremiah continued to say in his letter that this exile was God's judgment upon Judah, and that judgment would not be ended anytime soon: "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 [Jerusalem]" (29:10). Life in exile was to be the new norm.
Jeremiah warned them not to put their trust in those "prophets and the diviners" who were living among the exiles in Babylon. They were telling the people that God would soon return them to Judah, so there was no point in coming to terms with their exile situation. But they were only telling people what they wanted to hear, and it was a lie. God's message was to get on with life; that the exiles' hope was in their future, not in their past. There was nothing to be gained by cultivating their anger at and resentment of their captors. Jeremiah's message was a hard one to hear, and even harder to accept.
Jeremiah's message was not completely devoid of hope, however. God promised that the exile would eventually end, if not any time soon. Thus, Jeremiah called the people to a delicate balancing act. The exiles were to get on with their lives, living in the midst of the Babylonians without being absorbed by them. They had to realize that both of their fates were intertwined, that it was in the Babylonians' welfare that they would find their own welfare; but only while exile persisted. Exile would one day come to an end; they would, in a future generation, return to Jerusalem, and so their distinctiveness must be preserved. Even in that restoration, things would not go back to want they had been before. The old normal was gone forever, but the new normal of exile was not eternal, either.
2 Timothy 2:8-15
The series of readings in the lectionary from 1 and 2 Timothy continue with a section of personal admonitions directed from the apostle to his young apprentice in ministry. The tone of this letter is of a final testament of the father-figure passing on his parting wisdom to his son in the faith. This genre is often found in pseudepigraphical literature, and it is almost certainly the case that 2 Timothy belongs to that form of writing. Thus the author of the letter is using the literary device of Paul's final admonitions to Timothy in order to add importance and gravity to exhortations intended for a much broader audience.
These particular admonitions are explicitly set in the context of Paul's imprisonment. He calls on Timothy to see to markedly different realities in direct juxtaposition: the resurrection of Christ with its promise of hope, and the hardship and chains that have come to the apostle because he has proclaimed that gospel. To many people, that latter reality would be evidence of the undoing of the former. How can Jesus' resurrection be Paul's good news if it has led to his imprisonment? The answer provided is that while the messenger may be "chained like a criminal," the message of "the word of God is not chained" (2:9). Those who are able to see the glorious future beyond the present hardship will be able to endure and obtain salvation.
A brief bit of hymnic material is included in support of this position (2:11-13). Like many sermon illustrations, the quotation of this material probably already familiar to the readers from their worship experience would underscore that the argument being developed should not seem novel to them. Just as their sufferings for the cause of Christ parallel Jesus' own passion, so shall their future parallel his resurrection and glorification.
The last two strophes (2:12b-13) seem on their face somewhat contradictory. How is it that Christ's denial of those who deny him can be consistent with his faithfulness to those who are faithless because "he cannot deny himself"? Probably we are to understand the statement regarding those who "deny him" as referring to those who publicly renounce Christianity, possibly in a context of formal persecution. As such, it would differ fundamentally from those who struggle to hold on to hope and live out the requirements of Christian life and are only in that sense "faithless." The salvation of those who struggle to believe is secured by Christ's own faithfulness to them; but for those who would deny and reject Christ's faithfulness to them, that ground for hope is taken away.
The final exhortations in this section concern the responsibilities of teachers "to avoid wrangling over words" because such arguing over minutia only tends to undermine the faith of those who observe such fights over interpretation (2:14). A presumption remains that there is a proper interpretation of scripture ("rightly explaining the word of truth," 2:15), but public debates and feuds are counterproductive. The focus must remain where the apostle placed the emphasis: "Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David." God's action through Christ in the sequence of human history is the basis for hope in eternal salvation no matter how dire the present circumstances. Maintaining that focus is as sage counsel for the modern church as it was for the ancient one.
Luke 17:11-19
We all have our "lesser angels," those places and voices inside ourselves that when we heed them usually get us into trouble. Among my "lesser angels" is, at times, a rather caustic and cynical sense of humor. Perhaps the biggest danger these lesser angels pose, however, is when we can't name them, when we simply won't claim them as our own. But I am helped in owning up to my satirical sense of humor by this Gospel Lesson -- helped because I see that even Jesus could sometimes resort to sarcasm.
Having received the adoration and thanks of a leper he had healed, Jesus quipped, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?" The question almost drips with sarcasm, but its very sharpness and edge cuts through all our defenses and pretensions. Why didn't all the cleansed lepers return to thank to Jesus? I can't help but wonder whether what they all shared in common, the "lesser angel" to whom they all gave heed, was ingratitude that arose from a sense of entitlement. I can almost hear them now, "Why shouldn't I have been healed? I didn't do anything to deserve having leprosy anyway!" Yet one of those healed was full of gratitude and joy. Maybe it is not coincidental that he was a Samaritan, an outsider, someone who would never have expected mercy from a Jew -- an exile.
But wait a minute; it wasn't the Samaritan who was an exile in the literal sense of having been uprooted from his homeland. This healing is set as Jesus was traveling south from Galilee to Jerusalem, passing directly through the region of Samaria. It was the nine Jewish lepers who were the exiles, possibly driven from the areas of Jewish settlement precisely because of their leprosy. Maybe the ingratitude of the nine Jewish former-lepers was also fueled by bitterness, by resentment that they were in a foreign place that proved strong enough to strangle any thankfulness for the blessings of God they had now found there. Maybe that bitterness and resentment was further inflamed by the ancient prejudices and hatreds that Samaria was a region that had once been Israel. They had become exiles in their own land!
There is a danger that we may become so bitter as a result of experience that we cannot even give thanks for the blessings of God that found us in our exile. We may become so wrapped up in past grievances and hurts that we cannot rejoice with the one who opens a new future for us. Like those who had the leprosy on their skin healed, the deteriorating disease on our spirits may take more time to be made whole.
Application
Similar to the people of Judah following the destruction of Jerusalem, we are now living in a kind of exile. Actually, it would be more correct to say that we have been profoundly awakened to the fact that we have always been in exile. You see, ours is not an exile of divine judgment. Ours is the exile of a people redeemed by God and restored to fellowship with the divine. People who continue to make their way as pilgrims through a world corrupted by sin to a heavenly city of God where their communion with the divine will be complete and unimpeded by evil. So blessed to be citizens of privilege in this land, we had in some ways lost sight of just how dark and evil this world can be. No more. The feeling of fear and terror in the wake of the attacks is the awareness of our exile.
Although the circumstances of our exile may be different than that of Jeremiah's contemporaries, his advice to them is just as relevant to us. It is time to get back to the normal rhythms of life -- to go on with living, even in the midst of exile. No one can know whether our exile will last seventy years, but it already has become years rather than months. It is time to get on with life, seeking the welfare of those with whom we live in exile, for our welfare is wrapped up in their welfare.
I have asked myself whether this is a kind of fatalism. Have I given myself over to a "lesser angel" and succumbed to a kind of gallows humor nihilism that takes as its motto: "Life is fatal; you'll never get out of it alive"? I don't think so. Rather, I think that I have become even more aware that in the thousand details of daily living -- from driving, traveling by plane or rail, mixing with crowds and being alone -- my life and my fate are ultimately in God's hands rather than my own. As the Epistle Lesson says, "If we have died with [Christ], we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him ... if we are faithless, he remains faithful." In God's faithfulness to us who live in exile in a faithless world, we can find the courage to keep an eye to the future and get on with life.
An Alternative Application
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Luke 17:11-19. Have you ever become so overwhelmed by the societal and cultural changes all around you that you felt like a stranger in your own land, an exile in your own home? Did you ever feel a building sense of resentment that you were being denied your heritage, were losing something to which you felt entitled?
I can't help but believe that such feelings are partly responsible for the low morale that is plaguing so many churches. Just think about it. The church I currently serve in the Maryland suburbs of Washington was founded in the post-war glory days, when everyone "liked Ike," and the population was booming. In part, by riding this cultural wave, the church grew from zero to 519 members in the nine years from its founding until 1967. But 1968 was a turning point in our nation. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated; there were riots in the streets of Washington; the Vietnam War drove Lyndon Johnson from the presidential election; and this church's membership dropped by 100 -- twenty percent -- in a single year. For the next three decades, the membership gradually declined or had brief periods when it held steady. As the society and community changed, the congregation began to feel like exiles.
Those of us who are baby-boomers were indoctrinated in a view of America as a Christian nation. It was in the Cold War struggle against "godless Communism" that the phrase "under God" was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance we recited at the beginning of each school day, and the Deity so affirmed was the Christian, or perhaps the Judeo-Christian, God. But as Diana Eck's book A New Religious America: How A "Christian Country" Has Become The World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation has shown, if it was ever true that the United States was a "Christian nation" it certainly is true no longer. Going to church on Sunday places one in a minority not only over against a secular culture but also as compared to an ever more religiously diverse one. The folks in our pews have become exiles in an increasingly strange land.
Do you hear Jeremiah's message to us? Can you accept it? Like the ancient exiles from Judah, our hope, too, lies in the future and not in the past. Well-being for our congregations will come not by looking inwardly and focusing on our own needs; our well-being will only be found in bringing God's welfare to the cities and communities around us. In a way, that fact should be self-evident once we accept that the reason God has brought us to this place is to be servants of God to the people who live here. As one sloganeer once put it, "God has created the church to be a hospital for a sin-sick world, not a country club for the saints."
It is a hard thing to do. Hard because we are all wounded-healers, certainly always more in need of blessing than able within ourselves to be a source of blessing to others. Hard because we know that the welfare of the city is to be found in the eternal constancy of God, and yet we know that we must bring this message to a rapidly changing world. Still, "the word of the LORD" to us in these scripture lessons is that our welfare is to be found in their welfare. Our hope lies in the future we will forge together with our changing and new community, and as the church I serve has begun adapting itself, allowing itself to be changed so as to be able to connect with and minister to its changing community, it has over the past five years begun to grow. Haltingly, slowly, but grow, nonetheless.
Many years ago, I saw a poster that showed a single, simple wildflower. What was striking about the image was the incongruity of the setting. The cool green of the stem and the bright yellow blossom stood out starkly against a background of a dirty, grey concrete. Through the tightly zoomed frame you could see the blur of passing feet. Obviously this wildflower had sprouted in the cracks of some inner city sidewalk, far from the country meadow where one might have expected to find it. Emblazoned across the bottom of the poster was the simple message, "Bloom where you're planted."
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 66:1-12
All successful sports programs include a vigorous practice regimen. These practice sessions have a dual purpose. First, there is physical conditioning. Players must have the strength and endurance to play through the whole game. Without conditioning they might falter in the fourth quarter or in the last inning. The other purpose of practice is to teach players how to react. Practice sessions simulate any number of responses from the other team, or situations on the field. The players must learn to think and act in a certain way. They must know their position and responsibility, but also what others on the team are doing and where they will be in different situations. Players must know before the ball is snapped or the pitch hit exactly what they will do, what their role is. Practice sessions rehearse these scenarios over and over again until they become second nature.
In a sense, that is what the psalmist is doing. For him worship is a practice session -- practicing the presence of God. In the safety of the sanctuary, surrounded by a company of like-minded believers, the psalmist invokes praise and thanksgiving. In the setting of worship it is easy to say: "Sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise." The psalmist believes that whatever the situation on the field, praise is the proper response.
The conditioning he provides is theological memory. The psalmist knows, and the worshipers must learn, that it will not always be easy or safe to sing God's praises. Obstacles of many sorts may arise. Unexpected exiles or injuries or wars or social collapse may strike at the heart of our ability to express praise. When these events come, the psalmist wants his people ready. He wants their minds and their memories sharp.
"Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds among mortals" (v. 5). Week after week the worship leader guides the community to remember God's "awesome deeds." The people are reminded that their forbears suffered under the cruel hand of Pharaoh's oppression, but God brought God's people out on dry land.
This is not merely an exercise in wishful thinking. It is an act of faith. The psalmist's community is either already in the midst of a difficult situation or it is headed for one. "For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried" (v. 10). If he can prepare them to think theologically about their situation, if they can remember the pathways of worship and praise, when the trouble comes, or as it continues, the people of the community of faith can remain faithful.
"Remember," the worship leader intones. "Remember, and praise while it is easy, so that when your day of trouble comes you will continue to remember and will be able to praise."
