Death Behind Us, Death Before Us

This sermon for the Lenten season was first preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on April 2, 2017.  It seems highly relevant for Good Friday or Holy Saturday.

Ezekiel 37:1-14
    1 The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.  2 He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.  3 He said to me, "Mortal, can these bones live?"
    I answered, "O Lord GOD, you know."
    4 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.  5 Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.  6 I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD."
    7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.  8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them.
    9 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live."
    10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
    11 Then he said to me, "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.'  12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.  13 And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people.  14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act," says the LORD.

John  11:1-45
     1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.
    3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill."
    4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, "This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it."  5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
    7 Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again."
    8 The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?"
    9 Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10 But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them."  11 After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him."
    12 The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right."
    13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep.  14 Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. 15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."
    16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."
    17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
    18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.
    20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home.  21 Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.  22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him."
    23 Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."
    24 Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."
    25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
    27 She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."
    28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you."
29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him.
    30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him.  31 The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there.  32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
    33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.  34 He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see."
    35 Jesus began to weep.
    36 So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!"
    37 But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"
    38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.  39 Jesus said, "Take away the stone."
    Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days."
    40 Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"
    41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me.  42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me."
    43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"
    44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."
    45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

    We already heard the reading from the prophet Ezekiel.  I’ve had a special affinity for Ezekiel, for his many acted out prophecies and for the pathos of his life as a prophet who was rejected among his people.  Ezekiel’s visions, another sermon for another day, make a crucial theological turning point, along with the other great prophets of his era–Jeremiah and the Exilic Isaiah.  They reshape the vision of a people under God who are not dependent on an earthly army or king, or even on a land of their own.  They elevate the doctrine of the Hebrew God to One who is not limited to land or ethnicity, but rules in all places and among all peoples. 
    This passage in the 37th chapter, one of the most famous ones from Ezekiel, is a text I have preached more than once.  I want to highlight the first verse before I read from the gospel text.  If you want to turn to the 11th chapter of John’s gospel, I will start there in the first verse.  But first, let me repeat the first verse of Ezekiel 37.  “The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.”
    Now if you will join me in the Gospel reading from John, chapter 11.  The lectionary selects verses 1-45, telling a familiar story of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.  I will narrow the focus to the first 16 verses.  John 11:1-16.... 
    And look again with me at that final verse, 16.  “Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’”
    Join me today as we consider these two passages on the theme, “Death with us; death behind us; death before us.”  Death behind us. Death before us.
    The first thing to strike me about these lectionary readings for the Fifth Sunday of Lent was the pervasive presence of death.  The prophet Ezekiel was carried away by the power of the Spirit and set down in a place of death.  It was some kind of historic battlefield scene, but one in which the traditional practice of burying the dead must have been too overwhelming.  Instead, a field of dried, bleached bones lay scattered before the prophet.  As so many other times in his prophetic ministry, Ezekiel found himself overwhelmed.  Here he stood, surrounded by the signs of death of so many who had lived before his time.  He was immersed in the memory, or perhaps it was the forgotten memory, of so much death behind him, so much death that loomed heavy behind him.
    Then we look at the Gospel text and find another very familiar story in which Jesus initially feels no pressure to check on his friend, only to find out soon that Lazarus had died. I was struck by more death.  With his disciples, he has to face going to the home of his dead friend.  Moreover, his disciples are concerned that to take this journey could also mean the death of Jesus and even their own deaths.  In the midst of their work of ministry, they are looking down a road toward death.  Death looms before them.
    My mind quickly jumped to a famous Irish prayer associated with St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.  One of the most remembered sections of the prayer repeats one affirmation after another about the presence of Christ:

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise...

But my mind replaced the affirmation of Christ with the recognition of the presence of death. 

Death with us, death before us, death behind us,
Death in us, death beneath us, death above us,
Death on our right, death on our left,
Death where we lie, death where we sit, death where we arise...

I admit it’s not a pleasant set of thoughts.  We live in an age of denial.  We like to call our denial positive thinking.  We think we can mentally hide from the realities of life.  So faced with the pervasive presence of death, we are most often inclined to say to ourselves or to one another, “Why don’t we change the subject?  Let’s talk about something happier.” 
    I’m not criticizing that strategy.  Sometimes that’s the best way to cope with some of the hard truths of our existence.  But we should not confuse coping through occasional denial with opening our hearts to the truth about what people face every day in our world.  We, as Ezekiel and as Jesus, live in a world where death surrounds us.
    Many of us have in recent months had to entertain the possibility of death’s presenting itself in our families as national leaders threatened to eliminate health insurance for millions of us.  What kind of logic, or should I call it greed, drives people to believe it’s acceptable to cause the deaths of many thousands of fellow citizens by taking away access to health care?  What does it mean to call health care a responsibility and not a privilege, when at least half of workers make such low wages they could never take the responsibility to purchase health care on their own?  Death with us, death in us, death where we lie down.
    I’ve heard people say that when I preach they know to expect a social justice sermon, a sermon about ministry in our community.  I don’t mind that reputation.  I hope that along with that reputation I can also have a holistic faith and ministry that touches all kinds of needs and hopes of God’s people.  But I don’t apologize for always seeking to look beyond our inward well-being toward the well-being of the world God loves.
    Yet today I want to say that while there are obviously social justice implications for this message, it is also an attempt to delve into the depths of what it means to live and love, to lose and die, and to be God’s creatures, to be human in this marvelous and mysterious world God has made.
    In day-to-day living, we don’t always have time or energy to think about the mysteries and marvels.  We stay busy putting one foot in front of the other.  We count on the continuity of having the people around us present today and tomorrow and next month and next year.  Jesus probably felt the same way about his friends in Bethany.  When he got word that Lazarus was sick, maybe he did not initially take it very seriously.  Everybody gets sick now and then.  I had a head cold this week.  Some of you may have had a rougher time with the flu recently.  We think of getting sick as something to endure, with the assumption that “this, too, shall pass.”
    A couple of days later, Jesus decided it was time to go to Bethany.  Had another person come to give him a message?  We don’t know that, but we soon find out that he had somehow come to know that Lazarus had died.  Maybe he had a vision or an intuition.  Moreover, John does not give us much insight into his mood or feelings at this point.  Later we learn how sad he was about Lazarus’s death.  At this point we only know that he has made up his mind to go to Bethany.
    His disciples are pretty upset about this plan.  They have been doing their work farther north, and across the Jordan, outside of the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem authorities.  The reason is that Jesus has not always been respectful and diplomatic in his dealings with the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Herodians, and the Roman authorities.  During his last visit to Jerusalem, of which Bethany is a near suburb, a mob had actually picked up stones to kill him.  Jesus and his buddies slipped away before the stoning could happen, and they had stayed far away ever since.
    Now Jesus is facing the death of his beloved friend Lazarus down the road, near Jerusalem.  The disciples are thinking about that angry mob with the rocks.  We know from the other three gospels that Jesus has warned his disciples that when he goes to Jerusalem, the rulers there are going to kill him.  Their strategy has been to keep their distance.  They are not sure Jesus is thinking straight.  He insists on going, so Thomas gives a plainspoken response–“I guess we can all go die together.”
    Under the rule of empire, the residents of Palestine were acquainted with death.  They had the experience of harsh treatment by the Roman overlords and the Herodian interloper kings.  They could not get out of their minds the image of their friend John who had been beheaded because he would not mince his words.  And they had seen the way crowds can shift to mobs in a moment when the conversation turns an unpopular way.  They weren’t ready to die, and they were not convinced they or Jesus needed to die.  If Jesus would just get organized for battle like a real Messiah was supposed to do, they could gather enough fighters to sweep into Jerusalem and take out all the enemies of the people.  But Jesus showed no interest in being a Messiah under those conditions.  So maybe they were doomed to die together.
    The slogan Black Lives Matter is a response to the pervasiveness of death in times and places where it just should not happen.  The former president stood in the role of every person when he confessed that in the killing of Trayvon Martin it was clear that the boy could have been the son of any black parent, including himself.  The blood of Trayvon, of Michael, of Sandra, of Freddie, of Rekia, of Jonathan, of José, of Uniece, and of so many more cries out from the ground.  How many deaths until young people’s lives matter?  How many killings until accountability becomes a reality?  Death on our right side, death on our left side, death where we rise up, death where we sit down.
    The rest of the story from John 11 is very familiar.  Jesus goes on to meet Martha and Mary.  He weeps over the death of his friend.  And God performs a powerful sign through the Incarnate Son to demonstrate that there is nothing out of the reach of God’s power.  The story of Lazarus’s coming forth from the grave is a powerful moment in the gospel account of Jesus’ life.  It foreshadows something even greater to come when Jesus comes out of his grave.  In and of itself, this event does not abolish death.  Lazarus went on to die at a later time, as did his sisters and everyone else gathered in Bethany that day.  And so we still find ourselves living in the midst of death, as did Jesus and his disciples and friends in this story.
    I stumbled upon a book of poetry by Audre Lorde this week as I was preparing for this sermon.  The title of the book is Our Dead Behind Us.   I decided I needed to understand what she meant by that title, so I got a copy of the book and started reading the poems.  I was not too surprised to find that title phrase in the first poem, one called “Sisters in Arms.”  It is a poetic narration of two women who find themselves in a crisis.  Both live as expatriates from different societies–one from the USA and one from South Africa.  The South African woman gets news that in a horrific and violent series of repressive acts, her fifteen-year-old daughter in South Africa has been murdered by the police forces.  In the same sequence of events, elementary school children have also been massacred for protesting against injustice and apartheid–six-year-olds, nine-year-olds, even a three-week-old infant.
    The mother heads to South Africa to bury her daughter and join in the struggle.  The other woman remains behind, and in her pain and anger is working in her garden.  Let me quote a few lines from the poem,

my hand comes down like a brown vise over the marigolds
reckless through despair
we were two black women touching our flame
and we left our dead behind us

The power and pain of death, even in their sympathy and care for one another, was breaking them down and breaking them apart.  Their lives kept going on, and their dead were left behind them.  This experience is not far away from many people throughout this world in which we live and die.  Death before us, death behind us.  We don’t escape it if we live in this world.
    God has made us finite beings.  We are born, we live, we die.  Even Jesus’ coming into the world has as a crucial part of it his full sharing of our existence, all the way to the point of death, and more specifically an undignified death. 
    By the time most of us reach middle age, we have become far more acquainted with death than we wish.  Grandparents and parents whose love filled and shaped our lives leave us in this world without their presence.  Too many of us lose loved ones far too early for their time.  The mystery and grief of their absence weighs heavy on us.  We sometimes are tempted to join with the writer of Ecclesiastes and wonder if all of life is in vain.
    I do feel some trepidation in taking you down this difficult road of thinking about death today, but I can’t help but testify to the light the Spirit has shed on these texts.  From Ezekiel to Lazarus, even when we walk with Jesus, we walk amidst death in a dying world.  Part of what we must recognize in Thomas’s remark from John 11:16 is that if we are going to be faithful to Jesus, we may even have to challenge death.  The way of Jesus, we see now in hindsight, is a way of the cross.  It is a road to execution.  It is a pilgrimage of standing strong for God and God’s justice even in the face of those who would kill us for doing so.
    Many of us have grappled in recent months with the likelihood that struggling for justice may become harder in our time.  It may not be adequate to call the congressional representative or write a letter in support of some legislation.  It may not be adequate to have celebratory marches in which we are happy to be together in the cause of justice, then stop off at our favorite restaurant on the way home.  It may be that we will have to face down harsher opponents in our time.  We may begin to catch on that when our young people are beaten and shot in the streets, we cannot keep telling ourselves that it was because they were not acting respectably enough.  In some circles and places, the forces of evil are gathering their strength.  They are already lashing out at Muslims and refugees and transgendered persons.  They are looking for ways to cut away the safety net for the poor, for the elderly, for school children, and for children of immigrants. 
    Protecting the vulnerable may become costly for us in ways that it has not been.  Standing up against official injustice, against warmongering, against government sanctioned discrimination, against unfair voting practices–these may become as dangerous as it was for children in Birmingham, for citizens walking on a bridge in Selma, and for Dr. King organizing with sanitation workers in Memphis.
    I’m not predicting these things will happen to you or to me.  I am simply reminding myself and all of us that when we take up the calling to follow Jesus, a cross may be near in our path.  If any of you would follow me, you must deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me. Anyone who would save his or her own life will lose it, but all who would lose their life for Jesus’ sake will find it.
    There is a deep logic of death and resurrection in the very nature of the church.  Our sacramental practice of baptism articulates that logic.  We ought not to be unfamiliar with death, but we ought to be able to see it differently than the world does. 
    For part of the reason that Jesus was ready to head to Bethany was that he had become convinced by his faith in God that death was not final.  He had come to realize that even if he were captured and executed as an enemy of the state, that God still had a purpose for him beyond that moment of death.  Moreover, his dying as an act of defiance and protest to the injustice of the empire would be far greater than the regime’s acting against one person.  He had come to realize that the death he would endure was one which would encompass the deaths of all of us.  In his role as the Second Adam, he would be recapitulating, reconstituting, rebooting humanity into a new creation.  This is what he tried to explain to Martha later in Bethany--he himself is the resurrection in which we also share.
    Paul wrote about this logic of death and resurrection often.  In Jesus we all die, and in his resurrection we all are raised.  In his death, our past inadequate way of living passes away.  In his resurrection a whole new life already has begun in us.  He, who is our Savior, is our new life.  As Paul wrote in Galatians, I am crucified with Christ, yet nevertheless I live.  But it is not I who live, but Christ lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live in faithfulness to the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.  He reminds us in Romans that we die and are buried with Christ in our baptism.  We rise from the waters of baptism into a new life.
    So there is another sense in which we might say without despair, and perhaps even with rejoicing, that death is behind us.  Although Ezekiel looked at the bones and saw death in its brutality in the history of that valley of bones, his eyes were opened to see that those parched and desiccated bones can live when God raises them to new life.  Jesus, on the road to Bethany, can face the likely wrath of the powerful in Jerusalem because he has fixed his eyes on the joy that is before him.  He is willing to despise the shame of the cross, of the jeering crowd, and of the mocking crown on his brow.  He can endure the cross for the sake of the new creation.  He can endure death because he will bring us all through it with him.  Oh, Death, where is your sting?  Oh, grave, where is your victory?  In bringing all of us together into his death, Jesus puts our deaths behind us.
    Now some of you may rightly want to complain that it’s not quite right, Rev. Broadway, for you to lay on all this thick death conversation and then try to turn it around to be happy in the last minute or two of the sermon.  Let me say that I also hope I know better than that.  It ought not to be a rule that we have to leave church feeling giddy and happy all the time.  Sometimes we may have to leave with some burdens to bear.  So I’m not going to try to dress up death in a pretty outfit so you can forget about what these texts teach us.
    What I do want to say is that in our baptism, we are united to Jesus in his death.  We undergo the death of our sinful ways.  The death of our rebelliousness and rejection of God is accomplished.  The old short-sighted and egocentric self dies in order to be joined to the new self, the true human self, the Second and True Adam, Jesus.  Our new humanity is constituted by being joined to him.  We live in Christ.  Christ lives in us.  We are made new.  This is great and wonderful news.  But that is not the same as saying that we no longer have to face the troubles of the world. 
    I think there is something to be learned here from Jesus’ baptism.  The gospel accounts tell us of the remarkable experience of his baptism in which all three persons of the Triune God are made manifest together as the Son is baptized.  It is a crucial moment of Jesus’ life and ministry, and yet he comes up out of the water only to face some of the greatest trials he ever had to face.  He goes alone, driven by the Spirit, into a deserted wilderness, and great temptations befall him.  He struggles with his mission and Messiahship.  How should his life count in the world?  What kind of Messiah should he be?  It was not easy for him, and it will not be easy for us.  Yet still, because of his example in baptism, and because of the way he embodied that baptism through faithful life, death, burial, and resurrection, we have become united to God through him.
    Would you go on living on your own, alienated from God, if you knew that you could have your life joined to God for every moment and every day?  Would you seek to have the courage to face whatever troubles and trials come, knowing that in all of them, Christ is living in you and you in him?  That is what God is offering to each of us today.  If you have not yet answered the call to unite your life to Jesus, to follow in his way, and to enter with him into baptism that demonstrates our passage from death into life, then there is no better time than today for you to follow Jesus.  Follow him through this vale of tears, through the pervasiveness of death, with hope that God is at work even now to transform this world we live in to become the Kingdom of God, the beloved community, a land where peace and justice reign in the lives of women and men.  Follow Jesus today.  Pass from death to life in him.
    There may be some present today who are struggling with loss and grief.  You have lost a friend, a family member, a spouse, a parent, or some other loved one to death.  You know you are supposed to acknowledge that such a death is a mere passing on to another dimension of life, an entry into the presence of God even more fully than we know on this earth. Still, it does not take away the emptiness and hurt you feel on this side of that transition.  Perhaps you need to turn toward God and ask for comfort and healing as you continue on the road of life that remains for you, before and until the joyful reunion you long for beyond the grave.  If you need to come and cry out for God’s Spirit to fill and heal you, then now is the time to come.  Don’t be embarrassed for having grief.  It means you are human and that you know what it means to love and be loved.  God is a healing God.
    If you live in Durham, but you are not currently united with a congregation, take a moment now to call on the Holy Spirit for guidance.  It may be that God has brought you here today because you should be united to this local body of Christ’s followers as we fight against the pervasive power of death and shine the light of life in the world.  If you feel the calling to join with us in the ministry that God has called us to in this city and this neighborhood, why not go ahead and join with us today.  Amen.
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An addendum:  a few words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Whoever enters discipleship enters Jesus’ death, and puts his or her own life into death; this has been so from the beginning. The cross is not the horrible end of a pious, happy life, but stands rather at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ.

Mom's Death and What Is Lost with Her

I've written a few things about Mom over the past three months--mostly short comments on facebook.   For those of you who remember my outpouring of pain and suffering in dealing with the death of Everly, you might notice a difference in my grieving this time.  Some of you remember that the family has endured a series of losses, beginning with the long illnesses of Herbie (Everly's dad) and Everly, Everly's death in July 2013, Herbie's death in May 2014, Aunt Dot's death in June 2015, and Hugh Delle's death on February 15 this year.  Each death, each relationship, has it's own weight on our family members' capacity to cope.

I was not surprised by the incapacitating grief that overcame me when Everly died.  I was a little surprised by the different kind of grieving I've had since my mother died.  People's experiences of loss don't come in a standardized schedule.  As a child and a very young man, my grandparents' deaths happened at the stage of life in which it was not unexpected.  Through the sadness of losing them I somehow made sense of their deaths.  But there was a turning point in my psyche with Everly's death, a different understanding of what a human life is and what anyone can expect from living in the world.  Dealing with loss moved from the margins to the center.

I go to this effort to write and post about grief, as I have said before, because many of you have told me that you appreciate thinking through these things with me.  Some of you say it helps you grapple with the confusion of grief and loss in your own lives.  So what follows is some storytelling about the past few years with Mom, with particular attention to her declining health.  More than any other reason, I write about this to help myself gain insight into how to live through loss and grief as a follower of Jesus.

Hugh Delle and I were privileged in the past few years to be together more than we had been since I left home for college.  Everly and I moved in to W. D.'s and Hugh Delle's home in 2010 to share life on a daily basis.  During that time, we developed everyday household routines as well as working through big decisions and life changes.  It was planned to be a short stay while Everly and I worked out housing, but it dragged out longer because the real estate market made it hard to sell our house in Durham.  By the time that finally happened, we were seven months into cancer treatments, and buying a house did not seem like a wise next step.  Mom and Dad welcomed us to stay, and we continued in our habits of living in one house that branched off into two wings, each with our private retreats when needed.  The common space for meals and conversations was a blessing to us all.  After Everly's death, I continued living with Mom and Dad for another year while I sought the direction for the next steps of my life.

Going through so much together built a mature kind of intimacy of mother-son relationship.  Growing closer, we knew much more about one another's lives than before.  Closeness brings blessings and warmth.  It also can give opportunity for disagreement or conflict.  We had our share of both, but I guess even the disagreements and conflict are a kind of blessing.

While Everly was so sick, Hugh Delle played down her own health issues, always claiming that "everything is fine."  Yet it was not fine, and long hospital stays, times of being near death, and the ever-present yet hidden matter of her chronic heart failure made it impossible for the rest of us to ignore her tenuous condition.  One of the pitfalls of living with one's parents is that too often adult child and aging parent revert to patterns of relationship that hark back to the child's adolescence.  In my own way, I sometimes reacted resentfully or critically toward Mom, especially about her health.  It frustrated me that she could not openly accept that her shortness of breath represented an underlying health issue to confront directly.  I could confess a whole range of my shortcomings of kindness in communicating with her, but let it suffice to say that our closeness included both harmonious times and painful times.  I suspect that is true for many of us.

After I moved back to Durham in August 2014, our time together was drastically cut back.  I had hoped to be able to continue a cycle of long stays in Texas with Mom and Dad, but as my faculty responsibilities returned to normal and my community involvement increased, I found it harder than I had expected to get away for more than a couple of weeks at a time.  Consequently, each visit met me with evidence of advancing health issues and change, and not much time to try to deal with the newness.  Mom became less able to do the things she wanted to do.  We would discuss options for making things better, and we added some support and help. 

For the most part, she continued to treat symptoms as passing acute illness rather than declining abilities.  In retrospect, I can't be sure whether her approach of proceeding as if things are fine while continuing to seek medical answers led to any different results than if she had done as I imagined her doing and aggressively pursued solutions to her heart failure.  As her heart grew progressively weaker, it may not have mattered whether she had been more aggressively attentive to that problem.  So probably part of the disagreement we had was about how to handle the grief of her decline. 

She preferred not to accept the idea that she was in rapid decline and hope that things would reverse and improve.  That's not such a bad approach, in that she could without much effort keep herself in a fairly happy condition at least part of each day.  Maybe she saw my perspective of admitting the progress of the chronic condition and dealing with it "head on" as a form of giving up hope.  I can't begrudge her her own way of facing challenges, of dealing with the grief of her declining health.

One result of her way of facing down the struggle was that most of us did not see the rapid decline she was in for the last eight months.  Only W. D. and Lydia were very aware of it.  After graduating form Baylor, Lydia had moved in the room where Everly and I had lived.  She was job hunting, and interviews were slow to get started.  She was glad to be able to offer some care for her grandparents, and she became increasingly concerned for the advancing pain and weakness Hugh Delle was displaying.  Remotely, the rest of us did not get the full impact of the night and day pain and struggle she was having.  Hugh Delle could usually muster up her happy and hopeful self for a phone call.  Sometimes she let us in on the harder parts of her life.

When the doctors began to tell Mom, at the beginning of 2016, that her heart condition was so far advanced that she should not expect it to improve, the seriousness of the condition became clear to all of us.  Jerene made the first trip down to see her.  At the end of a hospital stay for tests and decisions about next steps, it became clear that all the interventions that the doctors had considered were too risky for Hugh Delle's weakened condition.  They thought she probably had a limited time for her heart to continue working.  Already heart monitors revealed that her heart had brought her near death, and sometime in the next few weeks or months it would finally give out.

As we made the decision to bring her home and begin hospice care, I was able to go and stay for a while, with the cooperation of my employer and students.  I went back to teaching my North Carolina classes from Texas for an indefinite time.  Mom was glad to have her two kids home, and we helped organize her medications and treatments with the expectation that she and Dad would continue the routines with assistance from the hospice team and their fellow church members.  Almost as soon as we would make decisions and get the house in order, Mom's situation would change.  Spending many hours sleeping, she would sometimes become alert and join us for meals, only to get fatigued and go back to sleeping soon after.  Every few days, the obvious changes made clear to us that she was growing weaker and losing ground.

Eventually, she became confined to bed.  She did not have the strength or muscle control to help us get her up and move her around.  She stopped wanting to eat.  She was less and less able to communicate.  Her niece and nephew, Pat and Tim, both came to stay and help care for her.  All of my children made their way to Texas to be with their MeeMaw.  They sang to her, sat with her, talked with her, did everything they could, as she held on for her last days.  She lived to see her 86th birthday.  She was no longer very communicative, and she was not really eating.  The best we could do was touch her mouth with a little bit of cake and icing.  We read the scriptures, sang to her, and prayed with her.  On her last Sunday, we shared communion around her bed and offered prayers.  The next day, she died, surrounded by us.

I was very worried about Dad and Jerene.  I knew how I had fallen apart with Everly's death, and I felt some kind of responsibility to try to hold them up in the immediate crisis of Mom's death.  So I was feeling the emotions of losing Mom very differently than I had expected.  Grief is a strange thing.  It is not well scripted, although liturgical and poetic scripting can be a great help in uncovering thoughts and feelings that are hiding just below the level of consciousness.  The funeral service, planned by Hugh Delle, was filled with beautiful tributes and familiar songs.  Mom was beloved, and many people came from near and far to honor her life.  That day was an emotional day for me, and the structured events served me well in drawing out my pain and ministering to me.

On Easter weekend, March 27, I was surprised by grief.  If you go through our family's photo collection, you would find that year after year, there are family pictures taken at church on Easter Sunday.  For many years, David, Naomi, and Lydia are wearing outfits sent to them by Hugh Delle.  Easters were family days.  Even if we could not regularly spend them with Hugh Delle and W. D., there was a kind of presence of the whole family.  As I walked into church on Easter Sunday I felt overwhelmed by the loss of my mother and my children's loss of their mother.  It was a very tearful weekend for me.

I was feeling a new kind of loss for the first time on that day.  It has recurred on most Sundays since that day.  I was trying to explain it this week to Ruth, Everly's sister, and to a friend and fellow minister.  The experience of no longer having my mother living in this world with me seems to have opened up a space of loneliness that I did not know before.  For a long time, when I went to church or to a restaurant or some other place familiar to me because of being there with Everly in the past, it was as if Everly's palpable absence was my companion.  Her absence somehow took on a kind of presence through memory and familiarity of her having been there so many times by my side. 

Yes, that is a form of loneliness, but in recent weeks the loneliness has changed.  I found myself in the foyer of the church wondering whether I would have anyone to sit by.  Now inside, of course, were pews full of people.  I know most of them and would, as an act of fellowship or ministry, gladly sit on any pew with any person.  There is a kind of joy and purposeful satisfaction in doing that.  But it was not that kind of question my mind was pressing on me.  The question came from a lack, an empty place, a need.  I was feeling the need to sit with someone to whom I am already beloved, someone whose presence already speaks to me of their care for me.  My first thought was to look and see if Willie and Joanne Jennings were at the service.  Because they were out of town  that day, I found myself looked around for others. 

The point is that with Mom's death, I am finding myself again in a new place in the world.  Even living far away from her for most of my adult life, there lurked in my consciousness her presence to me at all times.  The one who had nurtured me, believed in me, prayed for me, and done all that she could to seek the best for me is no longer in the land of the living.  Where does that leave me?  Without Mom, I am alone in a new way in the world.  She had borne on her tired shoulders all of the burden of Everly's struggle with cancer and our family's grief at her loss.  And now she who held us up is also gone, leaving me alone in a new way.  Of course I am not absolutely alone.  I have my family and friends.  My church and coworkers look out for me.  God has never deserted me.  Even so, God's presence mediated through my mother's love has been muted by her absence.  I will need to recognize new habits and different relationships in which God's love will be manifest in my life.  It took some time for that to soak in, and I'm just now figuring out how to describe it.

Facing the Future

This sermon was originally preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church in Durham, NC, on September 30, 2013.

Jeremiah 32:1-3, 6-15

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the tenth year of King Zedekiah of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar--At that time the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and the prophet Jeremiah was confined in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah, where King Zedekiah of Judah had confined him.

Zedekiah had said, “Why do you prophesy and say: Thus says the Lord: I am going to give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it?”

Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came to me: Hanamel son of your uncle Shallum is going to come to you and say, “Buy my field that is at Anathoth, for the right of redemption by purchase is yours.”Then my cousin Hanamel came to me in the court of the guard, in accordance with the word of the Lord, and said to me, “Buy my field that is at Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, for the right of possession and redemption is yours; buy it for yourself.” Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord.

And I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel, and weighed out the money to him, seventeen shekels of silver. I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales. Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing the terms and conditions, and the open copy; and I gave the deed of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel, in the presence of the witnesses who signed the deed of purchase, and in the presence of all the Judeans who were sitting in the court of the guard.

In their presence I charged Baruch, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these deeds, both this sealed deed of purchase and this open deed, and put them in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last for a long time. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.

I want to restate a few words from this text in Jeremiah… And from this story of a city at war, of a king, and of a prophet, I want to speak today about “Facing the Future.” Facing the Future. And let me go ahead now to say that I may have to stop and catch my breath now and then as we go. I may shed some tears here among people who love me and understand my tears. And those tears are part of the testimony of truth that we trust God’s Spirit to bear us up and guide our steps, to be a lamp to our feet even when the darkness surrounds us.

It was the tenth year of Zedekiah, King of Judah. Zedekiah reigned for about eleven years in all. All of his reign coincided with the imperial reign of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar had already invaded Jerusalem a decade earlier. He wanted to make sure that the people of Judah knew who was in charge. He took over Jerusalem around 597 BC. He took the temple treasure and desecrated it back in Babylon. He deported the young king, Jehoiachin, to imprisonment in Babylon. Zedekiah, Jehoiachin’s uncle, was the emperor’s own choice to sit on the throne. It was supposed to be a puppet reign for Zedekiah. Nebuchadnezzar would leave one of the royal family on the throne, but Zedekiah was expected to do the beck and call of the emperor, be Nebuchadnezzar’s man in charge.

Who knows how Nebuchadnezzar decided Zedekiah should be his puppet king? He was a young member of the royal family, who had been destined to anonymity after two of his older brothers had already succeeded their father, Josiah, as kings. Jehoahaz had succeeded their great father when Josiah died in battle against Pharaoh Necho’s army. It was the beginning of the end. When the Pharaoh finished a failed invasion of Babylon, he stopped back by Jerusalem and took Jehoahaz prisoner. Another brother, Jehoiakim, was the Pharaoh’s choice for king. Jehoiakim reigned for over a decade, until the Babylonians stretched their imperial influence down into the land of Judah. Then his son Jehoiachin succeeded him, but not for long. That’s when the Babylonians put Zedekiah on the throne.

What a messy story the kingship of Judah had become after Josiah’s death. Josiah, one of the few kings that the Bible has praise for, had restored the temple worship to focus on the God of Moses and promoted the reading and study of the Torah, the written scriptures that have their origin back in the days of the Exodus.  Much had happened since then, and many kings had turned to other gods.  Josiah reversed that trend and sought to focus on the one true God.  However, he seems to have made a fatal mistake when he decided to fight against his more powerful neighbor, Egypt, rather than simply standing by to let the big empires fight it out among themselves.

Josiah’s sons did not seem to learn a lesson from their father.  They also tried to use military might to thwart the wishes of their powerful neighbors.  Jehoiakim had made the mistake of trying to use an alliance with Babylon to hold off Egyptian power, only to have Babylon come back and invade.  You would think that Zedekiah would have learned something from his brother’s failure, but instead he switched it around and made an alliance with Egypt to hold off the Babylonian power.  Father and sons trusted in military might rather than leaving things in the hands of God.  It cost all of them their lives, Zedekiah included.

             

One of the oddest parts of the story is that both Jehoiakim and Zedekiah kept the Prophet Jeremiah nearby.  Kings of Israel and Judah had many kinds of advisors, including prophets.  Some were false prophets, and some were even prophets of Ba’al, as in the case of Ahab and some others.  But the way the story of Josiah’s heirs plays out, Jeremiah is never too far off, even when he is in jail, from these kings.  As this passage of scripture tells us, Jeremiah was confined in the royal courts.  He was often protected and fed when the city was filled with danger and empty of food.  That is the situation here in the story we are examining today.  Zedekiah seems to understand that Jeremiah is a special case among the prophets.  Jeremiah does not say what the king wants to hear.  This prophet speaks a troubling word in the presence of the powerful.  When Jeremiah gets punished for what he says, he comes back and sticks to his story under threat of worse punishment.

            

 Zedekiah probably had some level of belief that among all the prophets who advised him, Jeremiah might actually speak a word from God.  It was regularly not the word Zedekiah wanted to hear.  Maybe he kept Jeremiah around hoping for the day to come that this true prophet would get a different message from God.  He was probably hoping Jeremiah would finally come through to say that God is on Zedekiah’s side.  That may be what is bugging Zedekiah right here in this text.  He asks Jeremiah why he has to keep on saying that God is going to let Babylon conquer the city.  If you read more of the story, you find that Jeremiah has told these kings that God wants them not to fight against the Babylonians.  Since Babylon will win, these kings should go ahead and give up before the fight.  You can imagine that those are not popular words among the rulers of the land.

             

Yet Jeremiah does not change his prophecy.  He still holds to the message from God that Babylon will conquer Jerusalem and the surrounding Kingdom of Judah.  Zedekiah’s only hope is to go along with Babylonian rule.  But then again, by this tenth year of Zedekiah’s reign it is probably to late for him.  He could have gone along with Babylonian rule as Jeremiah advised him long before, and his family might have survived.  But now, the time is up for him.  The Babylonian army has laid siege to Jerusalem for many months.  Nebuchadnezzar will want to punish Zedekiah and the political establishment.  Things are already very bad in Jerusalem.  People are hungry.  Violence awaits outside the door.  And Zedekiah is desperate to hear that things will change.  No doubt, Jeremiah himself also hoped to hear that things will change.  They were living in very hard times.

             

Today’s lectionary text from Jeremiah speaks a word to people living in hard times.  It is about a time when God’s people were struggling through an economic crisis brought on by war.  It was probably worse than a recession.  Surrounded by the Babylonian army and cut off from their usual access to production and trade of necessary goods, the people were barely getting by.  Starvation and illness were everywhere.  Fear gripped their hearts.  The future seemed to offer little except more of the same or even worse.  People called out to God and wondered if God even listened to them any more.

             

When we read Jeremiah and other prophets we know that corruption was rampant among the powerful in Israel and Judah.  The rich did not always come by their wealth honestly.  They did not pay a living wage.  They cheated their workers, and if that was not enough, they beat them.  They grew wealthy on the sweat and blood of others.  They drove the poor deep into debt, then took their homes and their lands.  They made debt slaves of the masses.  The kings were either in on the scams or turned a blind eye to the plight of the people.

             

Add war to the equation, and things only get worse.  Scarcity means that those who have very little become those who have nothing.  People become ill and don’t have the strength to recover.  Families lose loved ones to the army, to starvation, and to disease.  In every street there is mourning and sorrow.  No one knows what to expect.  Even people who have faith see nothing but trouble as they look to the future.

            

Economic crisis, war, family hardship, losing loved ones—we don’t have to be in the ancient Kingdom of Judah to find ourselves in hard times.  Things are not exactly the same for us now as they were for the people of Zedekiah’s time.  But some things may still resonate from the story.  Some things ring true.  We do face uncertain futures.  We do find ourselves fearing whether what comes next will be more of the same or even worse.  We do feel the deep ache of loss and grief.  You know that today I speak as one who has seen my life reshaped by the loss of my beloved Everly.  The future we had expected will not come to pass.   

Many of you have walked this same road.  For others it may not have been the loss of a loved one, but another form of crisis that reshaped your life and made you wonder just where the future would lead.  Someone lost a job that had provided food for a family, and there was no union to stand up and intervene to help keep the job.  Someone lost a home to foreclosure and had no place to go.  Someone saw a son or daughter drift away physically and emotionally.  Or your loved one was taken far away by a job and can hardly ever visit.  Someone lost a neighborhood to rising crime and violence and does not feel safe to go outside.  Yes there are many reasons why we struggle to face our futures.

             

In this story we find two primary characters who struggle to face their future:  King Zedekiah and the Prophet Jeremiah.  We remember that Jeremiah is sometimes called “the weeping prophet.”  He was not especially happy about what life had handed him.  It is hard enough to be a prophet in any times, but when the whole political system is collapsing and your job is to deliver the message of doom, well let’s just say Jeremiah did not apply for this job.  It wasn’t his chosen career.  As the son of a priest, he could imagine plenty of other ways to have lived out his life in relative peace.  And now that all those doomsday prophecies were coming true, Jeremiah probably felt worse than ever.

             

Zedekiah, on the other hand, as the son of a king, probably had always hoped he would get a shot to be the king.  When the Babylonians hauled his nephew away and put him on the throne, he probably thought his future looked pretty bright.  If only Jeremiah could come through with a word from God that matched up with Zedekiah’s hopes, then he could be sure.  But now the game was in its final rounds.  The clock was ticking, and the outcome was not going to get better.  How was Zedekiah going to face the future?

             

What is Zedekiah’s tone in these verses?  Is he merely puzzled by Jeremiah?  Is he deeply troubled and asking a question because he sincerely does not understand?  On the other hand, is he angry, as his brother Jehoiakim often had been with this prophet?  Is he asking a rhetorical question only, but intending through the question to be blaming Jeremiah for his problems?  I have to say I can’t be sure from the evidence in the text.

             

From one angle I can see a king who feels defeated already.  He may be facing the future with resignation and fear.  Jeremiah keeps telling him that even if he fights, he will not win.  Jeremiah has told him that he will not escape the Babylonians.  He will lose the war and be captured.  Eventually he will die as a prisoner.  His family will no longer be on the throne.  Zedekiah may be grieving the loss of his dreams and resigning himself to doom.  In any case, Zedekiah has little reason to hope.   

For too long, Zedekiah had refused to listen to the word of God that came through the mouth of the prophet.  He had made up his own plans for the future in defiance of God’s word.  He had believed in his own cleverness and strength to handle life’s challenges.  He had treated his best adviser as a false prophet, and perhaps even as a traitor.  Who would dare to stand up to the king and say, “The invading army is coming, and I advise you to surrender”?  So Zedekiah had ignored the bad news during good times, and now there was no way to ignore it any longer. 

             

So maybe Zedekiah had gotten so used to ignoring God’s guidance for his life that he was deeply confused and puzzled by Jeremiah’s persistent message.  Maybe he was crying out this “why” to Jeremiah as a “why” to God.  Why me, God?  Why is this happening now?  Why can’t it go away?  Why are you still sending this message through this irritating man Jeremiah? 

But of course, Zedekiah knew deep within himself why the message never had changed.  The message a decade ago had called on the king and the people to change their ways, but they never had been willing to do so.  Zedekiah had spent too many years facing the future with denial.  He was hearing God’s word, but acting like it didn’t apply to him.  He was denying that God could see the way that things would go.  He was throwing matches into a parched field, denying that he would soon set the land on fire.  Let’s pick an example of this behavior.

Elsewhere in the book of Jeremiah, it tells of Zedekiah proclaiming a Year of Restoration, a Sabbath year, maybe even a Jubilee.  Slaves were set free.  Debts were cancelled.  But it turns out it was a sham.  It was just for show.  The wealthy people who had owned the slaves went around and gathered them back up and enslaved them again.  That kind of sham righteousness was the problem.  Putting on a show of piety in the midst of injustice is what made God’s stomach turn.  It still does.   

When we face the future, we can’t be scheming to do things our way, ignoring the righteous calling of God.  We can’t be assuming that if we keep messing things up that God will come along at the last minute and sweep away all the mess we made.  God wants honest piety and faithfulness.  God wants us, in the midst of struggle, to live with integrity, love, mercy, and justice.  God wants us to choose nonviolence even when we would rather gather up our weapons and fight the King of Babylon.  God has a way that we should go and sends messengers to help us understand it.  We ought not to be puzzled when we refuse to listen, for decades at a time, and then keep on thinking God will come around to our way of thinking.  We don’t want to be like Zedekiah, facing the future with puzzlement that God does not do things our way, that God doesn’t join up with us in our schemes.

Or maybe Zedekiah called Jeremiah in to ask these questions out of anger.  Maybe he was blaming Jeremiah for all his problems.  In some kind of twisted logic of rage, he was saying that if Jeremiah had just prophesied what Zedekiah wanted to hear, then all this mess would not have happened.  Maybe he thought Jeremiah’s words had broken the rules of positive thinking.  Maybe he thought Jeremiah had spoken the disaster into existence.  Whatever messed up logic that anger brought about, Zedekiah may have been blaming Jeremiah for his problems.  And through Jeremiah he was blaming God.

Never mind that God had given ample warning for the king to change his ways.  Never mind that God had placed Jeremiah in the midst of Zedekiah’s life, even in the worst of times, to help him find the error of his ways and repent.  Never mind that time after time, Zedekiah had been willing to make choices exactly the opposite of the word of God.  Now, it’s Jeremiah’s fault.  Now it’s God’s fault.  Blaming anyone but himself, Zedekiah may have been lashing out.  Everything has gone wrong and somebody is going to have to take the blame.

But chapter 27 of Jeremiah tells us that the prophet told Zedekiah early in his reign that he did not have to die.  Any of the lands that did not rise up to fight against Babylon would be allowed to remain in their homes.  They would be subject to Babylon, but they could continue living much as they had lived in their own homeland.  But Zedekiah preferred the words of the false prophets that Babylon would soon grow weak and good times would be just around the corner.  Jeremiah was an irritant, even a traitor in his eyes.  He did not want to hear God’s word, and he now faced the consequences of his rebellion against God and against Babylon.  That unwanted turn of events may have caused the anger to well up within him.  Now in this story, he may have been lashing out in anger toward God, as if God were just picking on him.

We are blessed to have the word of God to guide our lives.  Even more than Zedekiah and Jeremiah, we have the revelation of God in Jesus Christ to show us the path to take.  We have the light of the Spirit shining in our hearts and on our paths.  Why do we refuse to heed the word of God?  Why do we continue in our own ways, thinking we can make it turn out better?  But God is not mocked.  It makes no sense to be angry with God about consequences we should have anticipated.  We don’t want to find ourselves in the place of Zedekiah, angry at God, at God’s people, and at the world in general because things are not going our way.   

Frankly, one of the truths we have to face about the world is that it is not organized around making things go our way.  None of us is at the center of the universe.  We have to be ready to deal with hardships and unexpected turns of events.  It’s a complex world, and we are not in control.  Whether kings in Judah, emperors in Babylon, financiers on Wall Street, terrorists in a mall, people handing out bribes in the halls of government--powerful people will try to twist the world to their wills.  The repercussions of their actions may send ripples out to affect millions and billions of people in our world.  And God has left open the possibility that people will freely choose to do what they ought never to do.  It’s not God’s fault when we turn to our own ways.  And when powerful people do so, the effects may reach all of us.  God is still with us in the crisis.  God is still making a way when the world is handing us no way.

This way-making God is the reason Jeremiah can see beyond the intense pain of the crisis they were facing.  When Zedekiah calls him in to ask these questions, Jeremiah has an answer.  The answer reminds us a little of the Friend of Sinners.  When people asked Jesus questions, sometimes he answered indirectly by telling a story.  That’s what Jeremiah did on this occasion.  He told the king a story. 

At first it seems a bit confusing.  Jeremiah starts talking about his cousin.  His cousin came over to say, “Hey, Jeremiah.  Jairman.  Listen to me a minute.  I’ve got a way to hook you up with something.  Now don’t look at me that way.  Don’t go walking off.  Hear me out, cuz.  You know I wouldn’t steer you wrong.  Look, it’s me, your boy Hanamel.  You know me, man.  Okay, here’s the deal.  There’s this piece of land down in Anathoth, and I can help you work out a good deal on it.  Anyway, you already have the right of first refusal on this deal, see.  So let’s make this happen.”

Jeremiah had already heard from God that this very cousin was coming with a deal on some land.  Having trusted God until now, Jeremiah continued to trust God in these harsh times.  So he went along and made the deal.  The story almost gets tedious after that, as he goes into such detail about the price and the deed and the witnesses and the storage plans.  But all those details are there to drive home the point.

Jeremiah had been living through the same hard times as Zedekiah, without all the fringe benefits that go with being the king.  While Zedekiah had to hear so much bad news from Jeremiah, Jeremiah had to learn about it first and then go out in public and say it.  He was one of the least popular guys in town.  People got tired of hearing his messages of doom.  Jeremiah got on everyone’s last nerve.  He felt their cold stares and bitter insults.  It was not the life he had hoped for.  But when God told him it was a good idea to buy some land and store the deed for safekeeping in a place that it would last a long time, he did it.

Jeremiah was not in denial.  He had believed God’s word from the beginning, even if he did not like it.  Jeremiah was not angry with God, even if at times he begged God for things to be different.  Jeremiah had learned that God is faithful and true.  He knew that he could trust God to come through, even in the hard times.  The economy of Judah was in a mess.  The invading armies were burning cities and destroying agricultural lands.  Homes and city walls were being destroyed.  It was not really a time to be investing in property.  For sure, prices were low.  But it was not clear that an investment would pay off anytime in the near future.  Yet Jeremiah went down and bought the piece of land.

After finishing his story, Jeremiah gave Zedekiah the interpretation:  “For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:  Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”  It was not a very direct answer to Zedekiah’s questions.  But the answer it gave is this—the same God whose word is being fulfilled in the destruction of Judah’s political system and the fall of your family, the same God who offered you a way to continue to live on in this land with your family, the same God you have refused to listen to, this same God whose word is true has promised that this present time of destruction will not be a final end.  Once this corrupt system is swept away, people will start to regroup.  Eventually, the conquering empire will crumble from its own self-destructive ways.  

Out of this chaos a new beginning will arise.  God’s people will get a new start.  So I’m buying a piece of land now to be ready for what God is going to do for me and my descendents.  I may not see the promised land, but I have been to Anathoth and taken a look at it.  I see where it’s going to be.  I may not get there myself, but I’m getting it ready for future generations.  My heart is heavy now.  I hurt for my people.  I hurt for you, my King.  It didn’t have to be this way.   

But now that the walls are closing in on us, I’m not giving up.  I took a little bit of my money and put it on the future.  It may be a burned up piece of barren land right now, but there’s going to be a nice house up under some shade trees:  olives and figs growing next to the house.  There’s going to be a vineyard up on the hill.   I see the perfect spot for a vegetable garden.  Grandmas are going to teach their grandchildren about gardening there.  Over there’s a good open space for children to play.  Down below the house is a place to put a barn and pen to keep some goats for milk and cheese.  Yes, this little place in Anathoth is going to be nice.  Maybe there will be a bee-house so we can have milk and honey.  Zedekiah, I’m not giving up hope, even though I’m mighty weary right now.

How will we face the future?  Will we trust God even when we can’t see how things will turn out?  As for me, I’m trying to be with Jeremiah today.  Everything I had planned seems like it has been swept away from me.  I don’t know for sure which direction I should be going right now.  But I do know that the One who brought me this far is still with me.  The One who gave me the blessed gift of my wife still holds her and holds me.  So even if I don’t know where the next steps are going to take me, I’m still walking with the Lord.  I’m going to find my way down to Anathoth and invest in the future.

A well-known pastor of my parents’ generation published a book of four sermons entitled Tracks of a Fellow Struggler.  In it, John Claypool shared with the world his pastoral struggle and personal struggle with the loss of his ten-year-old daughter to cancer.  I found the book on my shelf not long after Everly died.  So far I’ve read two of the sermons.  The first one he preached not long after they learned of his daughter’s cancer.  The second one came when she had a severe relapse many months later.

In that second sermon, he looked at the familiar passage from Isaiah 40 that tells of the prophet’s words to those among the exiles who felt that God had abandoned them.  Isaiah reminds them of who God is—the creator, the mighty one, and also the loving one who gives power to the faint and strength to those who have no might.  Isaiah acknowledges that in difficult times even young people will faint and be exhausted, but then offers well-known comforting words to those who wait upon the Lord.  They will renew their strength.  They will mount up with wings as eagles.  They will run and not be weary.  They will walk and not faint.

Claypool says that in the past he at times might have thought that the progression of encouragement should have been in the opposite order.  Walking leading to running leading to soaring seems like an ever-upward trend.  But now in his grief and struggle he realizes that while God may bless us at times with moments of high soaring, and while God may strengthen us at times for a season of running hard, those are not the norm for our lives.  There is a grace in walking with God in our day-to-day living.  There is a steadiness of walking that is not replaceable by bursts of energy or bouts of ecstasy.  And in the midst of our hardest times, there is an utter dependence on God to lift us up on our feet to keep on walking when we are sure that all we can do is to faint.  Claypool said of his own grief that he was sure that he had no wings to fly, and what he had of legs would do no good for running.  Then he said, “but by the grace of God, I am still on my feet! …. All I am doing is walking and not fainting…. And this is the most needful gift of all.”

As you face the future, God will give you strength even in your weakest times.  God will lift you up and give power when you faint.  God will never fail us.  While we may be unfaithful, God remains faithful.  So go on down to Anathoth.  Invest in the future, because God has big plans for us.  There will be houses and fields and vineyards built and bought in this land.  Thanks be to God.