Proper 23/Pentecost 21/Ordinary Time 28
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VII, Cycle C
Object:
Theme For The Day
God wants us to bloom where we're planted.
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Seek The Welfare Of The City
Jeremiah sends a letter to the dispirited exiles, newly arrived in Babylon. What are they to do. They have been imploring the prophet, in the wake of this cataclysm that has led to the utter destruction of their nation as they know it. Jeremiah supplies an answer: "Build houses and live in them ... plant gardens ... take wives and have sons and daughters" (v. 6). Make the best of the situation, in other words. Yet in verse 7, Jeremiah leaves the merely pragmatic behind, giving advice that transcends all ordinary expectations: "But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile...." Having been placed by the Lord under Babylonian authority, the Jewish exiles are to become loyal Babylonian subjects, working and praying for the welfare of the entire community. Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, among others, have written convincingly of the historical reality that, in contemporary European and American culture, Christendom is now dead. We are living, instead, as "resident aliens" -- no longer as members of a dominant culture that easily merges Christianity with national ideals, but as a religious minority. If Hauerwas and Willimon are right about that, then Jeremiah's cautious but generous outlook toward the dominant culture is timely indeed.
New Testament Lesson
2 Timothy 2:8-15
The Perseverance Of God's Word
In previous verses, the author has sounded the theme of obedience again and again, using the varied metaphors of soldiers' obedience to their commanding officers (v. 4), an athlete's adherence to the contest's rules (v. 5), and a farmer who, by diligent labor, ends up owning the first share of the produce (v. 6). Now, in verse 8, he reminds his readers of the essence of the Christian gospel, which is Christ himself. In verse 9, he alludes briefly to his own imprisonment, but declares that "the word of God is not chained" ("Word," of course, has the dual meaning of the Christian proclamation and Christ himself). Verses 11-13, a hymnic interlude, speak to the situation of persecution and martyrdom, celebrating that faithful endurance which will lead to glory in heaven. Verses 14-15 amplify the theme we have already seen in last week's lection, exhorting readers to perseverance as teachers of true doctrine. While the situation of persecution is not readily transferable to the experience of most of our listeners, 2 Timothy's insight about the perseverance of God's Word is one that does preach to our present culture. We are surrounded, in our digital culture, by a sea of words and yet there is only one word that truly matters.
The Gospel
Luke 17:11-19
Jesus Heals Ten Lepers
Jesus' encounter with ten lepers is a favorite for thanksgiving sermons, because of its easy and convenient (perhaps too easy and convenient) application: the one healed leper who returns to prostate himself at Jesus' feet and thank him is an example for us, who are called to be grateful people. Yet there is a lot more going on in this passage than simply thanksgiving. It reflects the situation of the church of Luke's era: The gospel is receiving a more enthusiastic reception among Gentiles than among Jews. The Samaritan leper is symbolic of these Gentile converts. Jesus' exasperation at the swift disappearance of the other nine former lepers mirrors the frustration of some in the Luke's church, who are grappling with the problem of the increasing absence of large numbers of Jewish Christians and the influx of believers who know little of the Hebrew roots of the faith. Jesus' instruction to the lepers to go and show themselves to a priest is a reference to the purification ritual described in Leviticus 14:2-32; they do so faithfully, and thereby fulfill the requirement of the law. The Samaritan leper's return to Jesus is an alternative path, one that Jesus explicitly honors. Luke speaks clearly, here -- as he does on so many other occasions -- of God's concern for the marginalized. Another possible preaching point is the fact that the lepers depart to follow Jesus' instructions before their bodies display any sign of healing. They depart in faith, and their healing progresses as they journey onward. They accept the challenge of becoming partners in their own healing.
Preaching Possibilities
Turn on the television news, and you see them: the nameless multitudes, cloth bag thrown over the shoulder, tin cup clutched in the hand, worn-out shoes falling to pieces while still on their feet (if they're lucky enough to have shoes). You see them standing, dull-eyed and hollow-cheeked, in a dusty, disheveled food line in a U.N. transit camp. You see them perched on the edge of a Red Cross cot, in an emergency shelter after a hurricane, eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, hands fidgeting from worry.
They are the world's refugees and there are millions of them. Twenty percent of the world's people, according to the World Bank, live on less than a dollar a day -- and many of these are permanently on the move, fugitives from warfare, persecution, or simple starvation. Some refugees have been on the move all their lives. There are camps in Palestine where whole generations of refugees have been born, where children have known only canvas tents and food lines in their short lives. Home is a dimly remembered tale, told by misty-eyed parents.
The numbers of the world's refugees may be unprecedented, but the phenomenon is hardly new. Many centuries before Jesus was born -- to Mary and Joseph, who themselves fled to Egypt, soon enough -- there was a community of refugee Jews, dwelling in a foreign land, far from home.
Babylon was their general-delivery address: Babylon, that sprawling, imperial city, harsh taskmaster of nations large and small. Around the central square in Babylon City, in the shadow of the great ziggurats, were clustered those tiny neighborhoods, diminutive ghettos of Babylon's subject peoples.
The Babylonians were good at what they did. They were masters not only of warfare, but also of government. When their fearsome armies roared into some lesser nation's capital city, their troops were disciplined. They didn't rape and pillage and loot, leaving everything ablaze. No, Babylonian civil servants rode in the rear guard. No sooner was the fighting over than they moved forward, establishing order in the newly captured city. The Babylonians were in the government business, for the long haul. One of their first acts was to round up the nobles, the chief priests, the wealthy merchants, the scholars.
And where did these distinguished citizens, this cream of the crop, these denizens of Who's Who in Jerusalem, wind up? Why, in rather comfortable circumstances, as involuntary "guests" of the Babylonian emperor. They were free to move about the city, to engage in business, to marry and raise children. They were birds in a gilded cage. Those Jewish exiles, in fact, could do most anything they wanted to -- except return home.
The emperor of Babylon knew that his governors, in far-off captured provinces, would have a much easier time governing if the old ruling class were nowhere to be found. So the emperor simply kidnapped the ruling class, and installed them in his own backyard where he could watch them. To him, it was worth the vast expense. It was cheaper than billeting a whole army of occupation.
Life, for the exiles, was a spectrum of shades of gray. They were comfortable enough, but idle. They had sufficient food to eat, but little food for the soul. They missed the familiar sights, the songs, the places of home.
By the rivers of Babylon --
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our harps.
For there our captors asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
"Sing us one of the songs of Zion."
How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
It's a plaintive song, Psalm 137. It dates from this time of the Babylonian captivity. Generations of expatriates and refugees have known that same keen ache of homesickness.
The prophet Jeremiah is not one of the exiles. From far-off Jerusalem he sends a letter, containing words of advice for these rich and powerful citizens, whose lifestyles of privileged freedom have been snatched away, never to return:
Build houses, and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord for its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
What an incredibly gutsy letter to write! Surprising, too, for this is coming from Jeremiah, the prophet of doom -- the very one who has warned them all along that this disaster was going to happen. Jeremiah is the one man in all Jerusalem who could, with justification, say, "I told you so!"
But Jeremiah does not sneer. He does not chide. He does not gloat over the long-awaited vindication of his life's work. God has already judged the people, and passed sentence. There is no longer any need for condemnation. And so, the prophet's letter is gentle and caring. He advises the exiles to make the best of things, to try -- difficult as it may be -- to bloom where they're planted.
We do not always find, in life, that our circumstances suit us. There come times, in every life, when something hems us in, holds us back, keeps us away from the place we consider home. Faced with such circumstances, some of us struggle. Some of us fight back, twisting and writhing against the bonds that restrain us. There are times when our frantic efforts do lead to freedom; but many other times, the bonds are simply too strong. Our exile continues.
In times like those, the words of Jeremiah may be just what we need to hear: "Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." Jeremiah is not just saying, "smile, when you heart is weary," or "keep the sunny side up." His advice goes far beyond mere positive thinking. It transcends putting up new wallpaper in the sitting room of the soul. Jeremiah's advising active engagement with the world, cultivating a creative relationship with the people and places where we find ourselves. He is counseling a fundamental change of perspective: seeing "the city" not as a fearful place, a den of crime and poverty and incivility, but rather as a teeming, bustling community.
Prayer For The Day
Almighty God,
you have given us a land in which to live,
a place in which to dwell:
give us eyes to see it for a good place.
You have given us a life to live,
tasks to fulfill, people to love:
give us eyes to see it for a good life.
Save us from resignation and despair.
Help us to bloom where we're planted,
that we may display for your glory
a life worth living
and well-lived. Amen.
To Illustrate
The word, "welfare" that Jeremiah uses is a poor translation. It's kind of like trying to capture the view from the rim of the Grand Canyon on a disposable camera. The Hebrew word underneath the word "welfare" is the well-known word, shalom. "Seek the shalom of the city where I have sent you into exile." We might just as well say, "seek the peace of the city" -- for that's what shalom means.
Yet shalom means so much more than that. Shalom is the daily greeting of neighbor to neighbor, in the Middle East. It means not only peace, but also wholeness, and healing, and freedom. A person who's enjoying shalom is experiencing not merely the absence of conflict, but a deep and perfect inner peace, a tranquility of heart and mind and soul. This is the shalom that Jeremiah is wishing for the Babylonians and wishing his compatriots, the exiles, would wish for them, too.
***
Chicago's famous Art Institute displays Grant Wood's well-known painting, American Gothic. This is the one of the farm couple standing in front of their gingerbread Victorian, he's holding a pitchfork and she standing beside him, lips pursed tight.
Grant Wood grew up in Anamosa, Iowa. Yet when this Iowa farm boy decided to become a painter, he imagined there was only one place for him to go: Paris. He joined the expatriate American art community there, and rubbed shoulders with the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Yet one day in 1926, Wood woke up with a chilling thought. "Everything I've done up to now," he told his friend, the historian William Shirer, "is wrong -- and, my God, I'm halfway through my life!"
"You're only 35," Bill Shirer pointed out.
"All those landscapes of mine of the French countryside and the familiar places in Paris. There's not a one that the French Impressionists didn't do a hundred times better!... All these years wasted because I thought you couldn't get started as a painter unless you went to Paris, and studied and painted like a Frenchman. I used to go back to Iowa and think how ugly it all was. Nothing to paint. And all I could think of was getting back here so I could find something to paint -- these pretty landscapes that I should have known -- Cézanne and Renoir and Monet and the others had done once and for all."
Shirer tells how he offered some lukewarm encouragement, along the lines of "Don't worry, things will get better." But his friend plunges on: "Listen, Bill. I think ... at last ... I've learned something. At least, about myself. I think you have to paint ... what you know. And despite the years in Europe -- all I really know is home. Iowa. The farm at Anamosa. Milking cows. Cedar Rapids. The typical small town, all right. Everything commonplace. Your neighbors, the quiet streets, the clapboard homes, the drab clothes, the dried-up lives, the hypocritical talk, the silly boosters, the poverty of culture. Bill, I'm going home for good. And I'm going to paint those cows and barns and barnyards and cornfields and little red schoolhouses and all those pinched faces and the women in their aprons and the men in their overalls and the storefronts and the look of a field or a street in the heat of summer or when it's ten below and the snow is piled six feet high. I'm going to do it."
And so he did. American Gothic is very possibly the most famous American painting of the twentieth century. It's one of the very few paintings that's instantly recognizable the world over, to everyone from art critics to grocery clerks. That image of the farmer in his overalls with his pitchfork, and his wife in the apron with the cameo at her neck, is a little bit of scathing social commentary that's been reproduced on posters and buttons and T-shirts and book covers. It's become a beloved icon of our culture.
There was a time when Grant Wood considered the rolling hills and dairy farms of eastern Iowa a wasteland, a place of artistic exile. It was only when he learned to seek the shalom that could be found there that he discovered his own distinctive style as a painter.
***
Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.
-- Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days (New York: Viking, 1985)
***
In one of his plays, Arthur Miller has a woman reflect back on her many years of life with her husband, in these words: "Everything was always temporary with us ... We were always about-to-be."
The exiles in Babylon are "always about-to-be." They imagine life will not begin again for them, in all its fullness, until the day God brings them home to Jerusalem. Jeremiah is just astute enough to know that this is not going to happen: not for this generation, anyway. Those exiles will live the rest of their lives in Babylon, and will be buried there. So there's no sense, the prophet's advising, living their lives "always about-to-be." It's time to live in the present.
***
The psalm writer of old has proclaimed, "This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it" (Psalm 118:24). There is great truth in that deceptively simple instruction. This is the day: it's the only day just like it we will ever have. More than that, it's God's day: God has blessed it, and blessed it to us. It is ours to do with as we wish. Such a day will never come again, with all its unique wonder and promise. When this day is ended, our span of life will be shorter by one, and that one can never be recovered.
Far too many of us lose our effectiveness, dull the cutting edge of our living, because we spend too much time either living in the past, or mooning and dreaming about the future. Every moment of this God-given life of ours contains a seed of eternity. From time to time, if we trust the Lord and aren't afraid to take a few risks, we may glimpse that eternity, shining back at us like sunlight glinting off a mud puddle. Live in the present, dwell in the now. Seek the shalom of that present moment that is like the cutting edge of a sharp knife, separating future from past.
This day -- such as it is -- is the day, the Lord's day. It is God who has made it, and has made us to dwell in it.
God wants us to bloom where we're planted.
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Seek The Welfare Of The City
Jeremiah sends a letter to the dispirited exiles, newly arrived in Babylon. What are they to do. They have been imploring the prophet, in the wake of this cataclysm that has led to the utter destruction of their nation as they know it. Jeremiah supplies an answer: "Build houses and live in them ... plant gardens ... take wives and have sons and daughters" (v. 6). Make the best of the situation, in other words. Yet in verse 7, Jeremiah leaves the merely pragmatic behind, giving advice that transcends all ordinary expectations: "But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile...." Having been placed by the Lord under Babylonian authority, the Jewish exiles are to become loyal Babylonian subjects, working and praying for the welfare of the entire community. Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, among others, have written convincingly of the historical reality that, in contemporary European and American culture, Christendom is now dead. We are living, instead, as "resident aliens" -- no longer as members of a dominant culture that easily merges Christianity with national ideals, but as a religious minority. If Hauerwas and Willimon are right about that, then Jeremiah's cautious but generous outlook toward the dominant culture is timely indeed.
New Testament Lesson
2 Timothy 2:8-15
The Perseverance Of God's Word
In previous verses, the author has sounded the theme of obedience again and again, using the varied metaphors of soldiers' obedience to their commanding officers (v. 4), an athlete's adherence to the contest's rules (v. 5), and a farmer who, by diligent labor, ends up owning the first share of the produce (v. 6). Now, in verse 8, he reminds his readers of the essence of the Christian gospel, which is Christ himself. In verse 9, he alludes briefly to his own imprisonment, but declares that "the word of God is not chained" ("Word," of course, has the dual meaning of the Christian proclamation and Christ himself). Verses 11-13, a hymnic interlude, speak to the situation of persecution and martyrdom, celebrating that faithful endurance which will lead to glory in heaven. Verses 14-15 amplify the theme we have already seen in last week's lection, exhorting readers to perseverance as teachers of true doctrine. While the situation of persecution is not readily transferable to the experience of most of our listeners, 2 Timothy's insight about the perseverance of God's Word is one that does preach to our present culture. We are surrounded, in our digital culture, by a sea of words and yet there is only one word that truly matters.
The Gospel
Luke 17:11-19
Jesus Heals Ten Lepers
Jesus' encounter with ten lepers is a favorite for thanksgiving sermons, because of its easy and convenient (perhaps too easy and convenient) application: the one healed leper who returns to prostate himself at Jesus' feet and thank him is an example for us, who are called to be grateful people. Yet there is a lot more going on in this passage than simply thanksgiving. It reflects the situation of the church of Luke's era: The gospel is receiving a more enthusiastic reception among Gentiles than among Jews. The Samaritan leper is symbolic of these Gentile converts. Jesus' exasperation at the swift disappearance of the other nine former lepers mirrors the frustration of some in the Luke's church, who are grappling with the problem of the increasing absence of large numbers of Jewish Christians and the influx of believers who know little of the Hebrew roots of the faith. Jesus' instruction to the lepers to go and show themselves to a priest is a reference to the purification ritual described in Leviticus 14:2-32; they do so faithfully, and thereby fulfill the requirement of the law. The Samaritan leper's return to Jesus is an alternative path, one that Jesus explicitly honors. Luke speaks clearly, here -- as he does on so many other occasions -- of God's concern for the marginalized. Another possible preaching point is the fact that the lepers depart to follow Jesus' instructions before their bodies display any sign of healing. They depart in faith, and their healing progresses as they journey onward. They accept the challenge of becoming partners in their own healing.
Preaching Possibilities
Turn on the television news, and you see them: the nameless multitudes, cloth bag thrown over the shoulder, tin cup clutched in the hand, worn-out shoes falling to pieces while still on their feet (if they're lucky enough to have shoes). You see them standing, dull-eyed and hollow-cheeked, in a dusty, disheveled food line in a U.N. transit camp. You see them perched on the edge of a Red Cross cot, in an emergency shelter after a hurricane, eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, hands fidgeting from worry.
They are the world's refugees and there are millions of them. Twenty percent of the world's people, according to the World Bank, live on less than a dollar a day -- and many of these are permanently on the move, fugitives from warfare, persecution, or simple starvation. Some refugees have been on the move all their lives. There are camps in Palestine where whole generations of refugees have been born, where children have known only canvas tents and food lines in their short lives. Home is a dimly remembered tale, told by misty-eyed parents.
The numbers of the world's refugees may be unprecedented, but the phenomenon is hardly new. Many centuries before Jesus was born -- to Mary and Joseph, who themselves fled to Egypt, soon enough -- there was a community of refugee Jews, dwelling in a foreign land, far from home.
Babylon was their general-delivery address: Babylon, that sprawling, imperial city, harsh taskmaster of nations large and small. Around the central square in Babylon City, in the shadow of the great ziggurats, were clustered those tiny neighborhoods, diminutive ghettos of Babylon's subject peoples.
The Babylonians were good at what they did. They were masters not only of warfare, but also of government. When their fearsome armies roared into some lesser nation's capital city, their troops were disciplined. They didn't rape and pillage and loot, leaving everything ablaze. No, Babylonian civil servants rode in the rear guard. No sooner was the fighting over than they moved forward, establishing order in the newly captured city. The Babylonians were in the government business, for the long haul. One of their first acts was to round up the nobles, the chief priests, the wealthy merchants, the scholars.
And where did these distinguished citizens, this cream of the crop, these denizens of Who's Who in Jerusalem, wind up? Why, in rather comfortable circumstances, as involuntary "guests" of the Babylonian emperor. They were free to move about the city, to engage in business, to marry and raise children. They were birds in a gilded cage. Those Jewish exiles, in fact, could do most anything they wanted to -- except return home.
The emperor of Babylon knew that his governors, in far-off captured provinces, would have a much easier time governing if the old ruling class were nowhere to be found. So the emperor simply kidnapped the ruling class, and installed them in his own backyard where he could watch them. To him, it was worth the vast expense. It was cheaper than billeting a whole army of occupation.
Life, for the exiles, was a spectrum of shades of gray. They were comfortable enough, but idle. They had sufficient food to eat, but little food for the soul. They missed the familiar sights, the songs, the places of home.
By the rivers of Babylon --
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our harps.
For there our captors asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
"Sing us one of the songs of Zion."
How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
It's a plaintive song, Psalm 137. It dates from this time of the Babylonian captivity. Generations of expatriates and refugees have known that same keen ache of homesickness.
The prophet Jeremiah is not one of the exiles. From far-off Jerusalem he sends a letter, containing words of advice for these rich and powerful citizens, whose lifestyles of privileged freedom have been snatched away, never to return:
Build houses, and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord for its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
What an incredibly gutsy letter to write! Surprising, too, for this is coming from Jeremiah, the prophet of doom -- the very one who has warned them all along that this disaster was going to happen. Jeremiah is the one man in all Jerusalem who could, with justification, say, "I told you so!"
But Jeremiah does not sneer. He does not chide. He does not gloat over the long-awaited vindication of his life's work. God has already judged the people, and passed sentence. There is no longer any need for condemnation. And so, the prophet's letter is gentle and caring. He advises the exiles to make the best of things, to try -- difficult as it may be -- to bloom where they're planted.
We do not always find, in life, that our circumstances suit us. There come times, in every life, when something hems us in, holds us back, keeps us away from the place we consider home. Faced with such circumstances, some of us struggle. Some of us fight back, twisting and writhing against the bonds that restrain us. There are times when our frantic efforts do lead to freedom; but many other times, the bonds are simply too strong. Our exile continues.
In times like those, the words of Jeremiah may be just what we need to hear: "Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." Jeremiah is not just saying, "smile, when you heart is weary," or "keep the sunny side up." His advice goes far beyond mere positive thinking. It transcends putting up new wallpaper in the sitting room of the soul. Jeremiah's advising active engagement with the world, cultivating a creative relationship with the people and places where we find ourselves. He is counseling a fundamental change of perspective: seeing "the city" not as a fearful place, a den of crime and poverty and incivility, but rather as a teeming, bustling community.
Prayer For The Day
Almighty God,
you have given us a land in which to live,
a place in which to dwell:
give us eyes to see it for a good place.
You have given us a life to live,
tasks to fulfill, people to love:
give us eyes to see it for a good life.
Save us from resignation and despair.
Help us to bloom where we're planted,
that we may display for your glory
a life worth living
and well-lived. Amen.
To Illustrate
The word, "welfare" that Jeremiah uses is a poor translation. It's kind of like trying to capture the view from the rim of the Grand Canyon on a disposable camera. The Hebrew word underneath the word "welfare" is the well-known word, shalom. "Seek the shalom of the city where I have sent you into exile." We might just as well say, "seek the peace of the city" -- for that's what shalom means.
Yet shalom means so much more than that. Shalom is the daily greeting of neighbor to neighbor, in the Middle East. It means not only peace, but also wholeness, and healing, and freedom. A person who's enjoying shalom is experiencing not merely the absence of conflict, but a deep and perfect inner peace, a tranquility of heart and mind and soul. This is the shalom that Jeremiah is wishing for the Babylonians and wishing his compatriots, the exiles, would wish for them, too.
***
Chicago's famous Art Institute displays Grant Wood's well-known painting, American Gothic. This is the one of the farm couple standing in front of their gingerbread Victorian, he's holding a pitchfork and she standing beside him, lips pursed tight.
Grant Wood grew up in Anamosa, Iowa. Yet when this Iowa farm boy decided to become a painter, he imagined there was only one place for him to go: Paris. He joined the expatriate American art community there, and rubbed shoulders with the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Yet one day in 1926, Wood woke up with a chilling thought. "Everything I've done up to now," he told his friend, the historian William Shirer, "is wrong -- and, my God, I'm halfway through my life!"
"You're only 35," Bill Shirer pointed out.
"All those landscapes of mine of the French countryside and the familiar places in Paris. There's not a one that the French Impressionists didn't do a hundred times better!... All these years wasted because I thought you couldn't get started as a painter unless you went to Paris, and studied and painted like a Frenchman. I used to go back to Iowa and think how ugly it all was. Nothing to paint. And all I could think of was getting back here so I could find something to paint -- these pretty landscapes that I should have known -- Cézanne and Renoir and Monet and the others had done once and for all."
Shirer tells how he offered some lukewarm encouragement, along the lines of "Don't worry, things will get better." But his friend plunges on: "Listen, Bill. I think ... at last ... I've learned something. At least, about myself. I think you have to paint ... what you know. And despite the years in Europe -- all I really know is home. Iowa. The farm at Anamosa. Milking cows. Cedar Rapids. The typical small town, all right. Everything commonplace. Your neighbors, the quiet streets, the clapboard homes, the drab clothes, the dried-up lives, the hypocritical talk, the silly boosters, the poverty of culture. Bill, I'm going home for good. And I'm going to paint those cows and barns and barnyards and cornfields and little red schoolhouses and all those pinched faces and the women in their aprons and the men in their overalls and the storefronts and the look of a field or a street in the heat of summer or when it's ten below and the snow is piled six feet high. I'm going to do it."
And so he did. American Gothic is very possibly the most famous American painting of the twentieth century. It's one of the very few paintings that's instantly recognizable the world over, to everyone from art critics to grocery clerks. That image of the farmer in his overalls with his pitchfork, and his wife in the apron with the cameo at her neck, is a little bit of scathing social commentary that's been reproduced on posters and buttons and T-shirts and book covers. It's become a beloved icon of our culture.
There was a time when Grant Wood considered the rolling hills and dairy farms of eastern Iowa a wasteland, a place of artistic exile. It was only when he learned to seek the shalom that could be found there that he discovered his own distinctive style as a painter.
***
Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.
-- Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days (New York: Viking, 1985)
***
In one of his plays, Arthur Miller has a woman reflect back on her many years of life with her husband, in these words: "Everything was always temporary with us ... We were always about-to-be."
The exiles in Babylon are "always about-to-be." They imagine life will not begin again for them, in all its fullness, until the day God brings them home to Jerusalem. Jeremiah is just astute enough to know that this is not going to happen: not for this generation, anyway. Those exiles will live the rest of their lives in Babylon, and will be buried there. So there's no sense, the prophet's advising, living their lives "always about-to-be." It's time to live in the present.
***
The psalm writer of old has proclaimed, "This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it" (Psalm 118:24). There is great truth in that deceptively simple instruction. This is the day: it's the only day just like it we will ever have. More than that, it's God's day: God has blessed it, and blessed it to us. It is ours to do with as we wish. Such a day will never come again, with all its unique wonder and promise. When this day is ended, our span of life will be shorter by one, and that one can never be recovered.
Far too many of us lose our effectiveness, dull the cutting edge of our living, because we spend too much time either living in the past, or mooning and dreaming about the future. Every moment of this God-given life of ours contains a seed of eternity. From time to time, if we trust the Lord and aren't afraid to take a few risks, we may glimpse that eternity, shining back at us like sunlight glinting off a mud puddle. Live in the present, dwell in the now. Seek the shalom of that present moment that is like the cutting edge of a sharp knife, separating future from past.
This day -- such as it is -- is the day, the Lord's day. It is God who has made it, and has made us to dwell in it.
