Liturgy for a Moral March

I wrote, or more accurately compiled, the following liturgical call and response for Shaw University Divinity School's preparatory gathering for the February 14 Moral March to the Capital.  If it is helpful for your own preparation feel free to use it.

I had some difficulty figuring out how to post the formatted text in the blog.  So I took a picture of it to add to the post.  The picture (JPG format) has text that is too small, but I can't make the posted text have an appropriate format.  So somewhere between the two, I hope you will find this readable.

Liturgy for a Moral March

Leader: O God, you are our God, we seek you, Our souls thirst for you;

People:   Our flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

               How long, O Lord, shall we cry out to you?

Leader: Have you not known?  Have you not heard?

People:   We have known.  We have heard. 

               You are the everlasting God,

               The Creator of the ends of the earth,

               Who does not faint or grow weary.

Leader: I am the light of the world.

               Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.

People:   Lord, what is the way you are going?

Leader:  Let us love one another.

               This is the commandment, just as you have heard it from the beginning.

People:   We will walk in the way of love.

               We will worship the God of love in spirit and in truth.

Leader: What worship does God choose?

People:   To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke;

               To let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke;

               To share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house;

               To cover the naked, and not to hide yourself from your own people.”

All:        The Spirit of the Lord is upon us and has anointed us to proclaim this good news.

People:   Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

               You shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

               You shall be called the repairer of the breach,

               The restorer of streets to live in.

Leader: To whom shall we cry out?

               Cry out to the public servants to fulfill their constitutional calling: 

People:   Beneficent provision for the poor, the unfortunate,

               and the orphan is one of the first duties of a civilized and a Christian state.

Leader: Cry out to the ministers of the gospel to fulfill their ecclesiastical calling: 

People:   Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 

               Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Leader: Cry out to the brokenhearted and downtrodden: 

People:   Stand up, take your mat and walk.

               Because you give power to the faint, will walk and not faint.

Leader: Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.

People:   We will walk and not faint.

Leader: Whoever obeys Jesus’ word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection.  

               By this we may be sure that we are in Christ:

               whoever says, “I abide in Christ,” ought to walk just as Jesus walked.

People:   We will walk, and not faint.

Leader: Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you.

               If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going.

               While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.

People:   Here we are.  Send us. 

All:        Because you give power to the faint, we will walk and not faint.

The Regard of God

This sermon was first preached in the Chapel service of Shaw University Divinity School on February 7, 2015.

Sermon Texts from the Revised Common Lectionary

Isaiah 40:21-31, highlighting verses 27-28, 31

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The language we use is always changing.  We commonly use the verb “disregard,” but we don’t often use its opposite “regard.”  It means to see, to pay attention, to look upon, to consider.  In the hymn we sing that “Christ has regarded my helpless estate.”  What sorrow it would be if he had disregarded us!  This morning I want us to reflect on the regard of God…the regard of God.

In today’s text from the Prophet Isaiah, we read familiar and beloved words.  As is so often the case in our reading of scripture, one verse stands out in most people’s memory—the last verse.  All of us want to mount up with wings like eagles.  Such a text can take on a life of its own, living apart from its original setting as an icon, a free-standing piece of tradition.  This process may sometimes be beneficial, characterizing key aspects of our faith.  Other times, it may open the door to distorted interpretations and wayfaring teaching.  Those of us called to lead and teach have a responsibility to read with great care so that we may guide along the path that leads to God.

As always, we must discipline ourselves to understand even these favorite texts in their context.  This text comes near the turning point in the canonical shape of Isaiah.  The book began with a denunciation of the ways of Judah and a warning that unless they changed their ways, judgment would arrive swiftly and harshly.  Those pre-exilic oracles clarify something that you and I need to understand—the judgment against Judah came because of their unjust economic practices:  debt-slavery, violence toward workers, low wages that shift wealth from the poor to the rich, laws which favor the wealthy, foreclosure and seizure of homes and land, ignoring the widows and orphans, filling rich homes with gold and silver while many are hungry.  There was a temporary repentance, and the Assyrians failed to conquer Judah.  Isaiah died.  New kings arose.  God sent other prophets.  There is much more of the story to tell, but not today.

In the long run, the rulers were afraid to change their policies for fear of becoming unpopular with their supporters or for fear of crossing and offending the neighboring empires.  The wealthy did not believe things would go wrong for them, since they were too big to fail.  The priests and prophets glibly said whatever their patrons wanted to hear.  Finally judgment came.  Jerusalem was invaded, conquered, and destroyed.  Many people of all ranks and classes died.  A large number of the elite were forced to go into exile in Babylon and serve their conquerors.  The people who were left behind suffered the results of war and the insecurity of having their defenses destroyed.

After decades had left the prior Kingdom in ruins, a new set of oracles came to the people, and these oracles were later canonized in this book of Isaiah.  A new calling to a prophet appeared in that time, most likely among those who had carried on the traditions of Isaiah and preserved his oracles.  Chapter 40 begins with this new calling to the prophet, “Comfort my people.”  It speaks of a new beginning.

But as the chapter continues, it becomes apparent that the people are not hearing what the prophet is saying.  They are set in their ways.  They and their parents have followed Jeremiah’s advice to build homes, raise families, marry off their kids, and make a life where they are.  Many things are not what they want them to be, but they are not expecting their lives to change.  They figure that the God of their ancestors has lost interest in them, stopped paying attention to them.  They believe that God has disregarded their situation.  

I don’t mean that they have all rejected God.  This era in exile is most likely the era in which the Jewish faith practices that we read about in the New Testament began to take form:  the collecting of writings, the editing of histories, the compilation of liturgical and wisdom texts.  Clearly many of the people had made a place in their lives for God and for the regular observance of the Sabbath.  New practices of reading, study, and conversation about sacred texts were taking hold.

People had God in their lives, but they did not expect much from God.  They had worked on preserving a way of life and the stories of their past.  However, they did not really think God would have much to offer beyond that.  They were resident aliens in a place where they would always be second-class citizens and outsiders.  They regularly ran into problems with the empire, so they just tried to keep to themselves and be left alone.  Of course they knew it was true that God had led their ancestors out of Egypt, but that was back in the day.  They did not live as if God had any regard for them.

Now and then I hear the same kind of comments in church.  When someone starts talking about the injustices that the poor endure, some church people are likely to say, “You know Jesus said that the poor will always be with us.  That means there’s nothing we can do to change poverty.  It’s just going to keep on being the same old same old.”  Or if church people get started talking about racial injustice, somebody is going to say, “Racism goes back to the beginning of time, and it’s never going to go away.”  They will shake their heads with doubt that anything can change.  Whatever the social ills we face, it seems that far too often our congregations just want to throw up their hands and give up.  One of the hardest things to do is to get church people to talk through and think through and plan for making changes in the way things are.  We don’t even like to change the arrangement of the Sunday service or change where we sit in the church house.

Somehow church people have gotten satisfied to go through the weekly practices of reading, singing, studying, preaching, and holding meetings without believing things can be different.  We figure if we can just get a little recharge to get us through the week, that’s enough.  If we can sometimes get a little shout on, we’ll be satisfied that we have a little bit of God in our lives.  If we can fill all the nominations for committees and offices, and if we can repeat the same calendar events year after year, then we are satisfied that church is being church, and God is being God.  

Some other churches have trained their focus on getting a little piece of what the world loves.  They go to church to get in on the money machine.  They figure if they say the right incantations and perform the right sacrificial offerings and rub shoulders with the right holy people, the money will come their way.  They aren’t concerned to think about what is wrong with the world we live in.  They just want to get a little piece of the world’s action.  Maybe we would rather not have the regard of God.

In one way or another, most of our church life ends up being confined to a building and unconnected to the rest of our lives.  Outside of service or Bible study, when people struggle with injustice, when the poor cry out for bread, when the thrown away people are longing for a friend to walk with them, we find ourselves throwing up our hands and giving up.  Those problems seem too big.  Mass incarceration is too complicated to understand.  Voter ID restrictions are just an irritation to be ignored.  Underpaid teachers and underfunded schools are too big for us to manage.  Low wages, no safety net for the poor and marginalized, and no access to health care are just too many things to wrap our little heads around.

It seems we have found ourselves right where those people in exile were.  We think we meet God at church for our limited purposes, but as for the rest of our lives, our day-to-day issues and the injustices all around us, those must be hidden from God.  Our God is only concerned with saving souls from hell and not with the problems of this world.  Our God has disregarded us.  As for dreaming about a world we think would be right, we’ve settled on the belief that God has no regard for it.  At least that’s what our ways show.

But Isaiah will have none of it.  He is not satisfied to have a God who shows up for worship and ignores the rest of our lives.  He does not believe that the God of the Exodus has decided to go into retirement.  So he brings a word from God that is mostly in the form of questions.

“Haven’t you heard who God is?  Haven’t your Momma and Daddy told you from the beginning?”  At times, the inquisitor is God’s own self.  “Who do you think I am?  Don’t you know what I have done?  I made the world, by the way.  No earthly ruler can stand up to me.  And NO, I did not get tired and go into retirement.”

The Psalm for today says,

The LORD builds up Jerusalem, and gathers the outcasts of Israel.

The LORD heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.

The LORD determines the number of the stars, and gives to all of them their names.

Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; God’s understanding is beyond measure.

The LORD lifts up the downtrodden, and casts the wicked to the ground.

When we settle, in one way or another, for the world as it is—the world with all its injustices, its unjust structures of economic life, its domination systems that aim to keep the masses down—we show ourselves to have forgotten who God is.  We may still be going to church and reading our Bibles and certainly praying for God to do things that we can’t be bothered to do.  But we are not really thinking of who God is.  We are not thinking through the stories that we have heard about what God has done.  If, in fact, we can put those stories out of our minds, we can just settle in to this old world and have our church routines and not have to be bothered.

But the problem Isaiah is noticing is that this kind of living falls far short of all the good that God wants for us.  God made this wide world and placed us in it so that people could share loving and just lives together.  God did not want us to give token worship and all the while let ourselves and our neighbors continue to be crushed under the feet of unjust systems.  God wants us to soar into the fullness of beloved community.  God wants us to run like the prodigal son into the loving arms of blessing.  But most of all, God wants us to walk and not faint.

What does it mean to have the regard of God?  God’s eye is on us,in the same way that God’s eye was on the children of Israel who were slaves in Egypt.  God hears our cries.  God knows our struggles.  And God comes among us to deliver us.  But the Israelites could not have headed out of Egypt to make a better life if they refused to walk.  It turned out to be a whole lot of walking, but they walked and did not faint.  

In our text, the Jews in exile are being told that God will make a new beginning, so they will have to shake their old habits of settling for the world as it is and start walking toward the world as it should be.  God sees a better life for humanity, and God sees us living it.  This is what it means to have the regard of God.

When the economy crashed half a dozen years ago, the easiest thing to do was to relegate economic injustices to the realm of things too complicated for action.  Church people too often shrank back from the challenges the world was throwing at us and said, “[Sigh!] All we can do is pray.”  When I hear that, it often seems to be a way of saying, “We give up, and we don’t plan to use our energy trying to make a difference.  We will just leave it to God and ask God to fix it without us.”  That is a sad kind of prayer.

Praying is actually a big thing to do, if we do it right.  Praying, contrary to much of our actual practice, is not about changing God’s mind.  It is about God changing our minds.  If we had prayed seriously, we would have come out of prayer meeting working on a plan for action against economic injustice.  If God hates injustice, then praying ought to ignite hunger and thirst for justice in us.  That hunger and thirst should stir us to walk and not faint.  A congregation cannot do everything, but it can do something.  We can do the obvious things of offering relief to those who struggle, but we can also do the less obvious things of economic development, forming credit unions, insuring the health of our poor members, creating business incubators, growing fresh and healthy foods, investing in our neighborhoods, providing job training and jobs, shutting down the usurious lenders, pressuring businesses and governments to act justly toward the people.

Next Saturday is an important day on the calendar for churches in North Carolina.  It is the day of the Moral March on the Capital, the Historic Thousands on Jones Street, the Forward Together Movement.  Right outside Boyd Chapel, people will gather when some of us are in class.  Our chapel hour will be a brief observance to affirm the God of justice whom we serve.  And then we will walk.  We will walk symbolically and demonstratively.  It will be a walk of witness.  We will be bearing witness to the God whom we serve, a God who does not faint and does not grow weary.

This week’s gospel text from Mark 1 tells about the intensity of Jesus’ ministry when great multitudes of people were crowding him all day and even into the night. It was hard for him to get any rest.  Sometimes his disciples would get caught up in the mob excitement.  One problem for Jesus revealed by the gospels is that the crowds often interfered with the tasks Jesus believed he needed to be doing.  The worst example comes later in Mark, when they began organizing to force him to be their king.  But in this passage, Jesus gets away for some rest.  Your fellow student, James McRavion, is preaching on these same texts today in High Point.  We compared our notes, and he pointed out something from this text.  After Jesus rested, then he spent time in prayer.  The prayer must have stirred him to do his work. You could say he got his marching orders.  He tells his disciples to get to walking.  They need to go on to other towns and proclaim the Reign of God.

People from many communities will come to Wilmington Street for many reasons.  Some believe in democracy.  Some believe in America.  Some have suffered financial loss and felt what it’s like to be abandoned.  Some have struggled without means to get health care, housing, or a job.  Some care for their neighbors deeply.  Some have learned the hard way about the strength of solidarity.  Some come out of self-interest.  Many are angry.  Many are frustrated.  Many are hopeful.  

We will march because we have known.  We will march because we have heard.  We will march because it has been told to us from the beginning.  We will march because we have understood from the foundations of the world.  We join the march because it is a sign of who we are.  We march on that day as a foretaste of our discipleship for the long haul.  We march under the everlasting, unsearchable regard of God.  

If next Saturday is the only day we walk, we have not heard who God is.  God is the one who has regard for us.  The everlasting God, creator of the ends of the earth, created our little corner of it too.  God has regard for us.  We walk in the regard of God who does not faint or grow weary.  Saturday’s walk is another beginning of a long walk to justice, to love, and to community.  Let’s plan to walk and not faint, thankful that we live and move and have our being in the regard of God.

Palpable Absence

These are challenging days for the Broadways and Esteses.  We are still tender from the losses of our beloved Everly and Herbie, and we will be for the foreseeable future.  Today what stands out to me is a palpable absence.

It is the absence that is filling all available space.  It is not so much that I am thinking about specific things that Everly said or did, nor that I am seeing her in my imagination. All of that is true, but what seems to press most on me is the lack of the one who for so long was always in the midst of my life.

It struck me last weekend when I was attending a professional conference in Pennsylvania.  I have attended these meetings at this time for almost two decades.  On a few occasions, Everly and children have joined me for the early summer getaway.  Usually, I have gone on my own to be with friends.  We would call our wives or husbands during the evenings to catch up.  If I were giving a paper, I would report on how it went and whether I believed I was making significant scholarly progress.  I would tell her about various friends at the meeting, and she would fill me in on job, home, and the kids.

Thus my attendance at the CTS/NABPR meeting in late May and early June was a regular rhythm of our lives.  Though usually not together during those days, it was a time for mutual investment in my career progress, for thinking ahead into the summer plans for our kids, and for a period of years, a season of planning and sharing family time around our kids' high school graduations.  It was a time, even though apart, that we were in the work together.

That must be why on Saturday afternoon I began to be overwhelmed by waves of grief.  As I thought about how Everly would have enjoyed the weather and the beautiful scenery of Latrobe, PA, and the Lincoln Highway that took me there, her absence overwhelmed me.  I had driven alone from Durham to Latrobe, and it was a pleasant trip.  But car travel was often some of our most important conversation time.  Everly enjoyed sleeping in the car, but she also enjoyed working things out, figuring out problems, making plans, and generally talking through whatever was on our agenda.  I was feeling the absence in the car and at the many sights and stops we would have shared.

That night I turned on the iTunes playlist that I had made on our anniversary, May 24, 2013.  Everly never actually heard too much of it.  She was not much for listening to other people's music, or for much variety of music at all.  But I had put together the songs believing she would like them tolerably, and in the last weeks of her life I played this music often for my own help and comfort.  One of my friends came by my room to find me lying in the bed, listening to music, and sobbing.  He was at a loss, wanting to provide support if appropriate, but not sure how to respond.  I told him I was doing what Kate Campbell says in a song, "fading to blue."  I made as much sense of my mood as I could for him, and let him off the hook of needing to help me get through it.

Again, it was a palpable absence.  She and I would not share a traveler's room again.  We would not take scenic drives.  We would not enjoy the beauty of a new place.  The next day, I would drive home alone, and she would not be there when I got there.  It's the absence, above all, that weighed on me.

Today was another day of absence.  I have been looking at houses in Durham for the past few weeks.  I am relocating back to North Carolina, and I want to make this move a good match for my convictions about where to live in relation to my church and ministry.  It is my effort to respond to the first "R" of John Perkins's "Three Rs:"  relocation.  Perkins came to believe that the only way that church people can play a role in transforming their communities is to relocate to the neighborhoods where they feel called to minister.  In one way, it is a reaction against the dominant pattern of "commuter churches" which functions within a consumer model of "church shopping."  It elevates the neighborliness of being in walking distance of one another, of making friends of those around us.  In another way, it is the response to Jesus' incarnation, to go to the people where they are and live among them.  There are many implications for class and race that you should be able to imagine.

I had identified three neighborhoods in which to search.  Rather than go into detail about them and raise all kinds of questions about why I did or did not end up in a specific place, let me simply characterize them generally.  One neighborhood already has in it a number of friends who share similar views about relocation.  That would be a place to become part of existing structures and practices of community life, a very attractive possibility.  Another neighborhood has some churches involved in community organizing, as well as several which would likely be willing and even eager to join the broad based organizing efforts with the right kind of relationships and leadership to pull them into the fray.  Another neighborhood is near the church I have been attending, as a "commuter member," for almost twenty years.  It would mean putting my body and energy into sharing life with the neighbors who are in close proximity to the place our church meets.

All of these neighborhoods are outside of the main popular areas of town.  That means housing prices are somewhat or even significantly lower than the "aspirational" neighborhoods.  That is a good thing, since my income is much lower now than when Everly was our major breadwinner.  Combining the money from selling our Demerius Street house in 2012, savings, and insurance money, I am hoping to keep a purchased house as affordable as possible.  Yet, having lived in a very small house for 25 years, I do wish for a bit more space to spread out.  I also want plenty of room for my kids to come and stay a while as needed over the next few years.  Finally, I want to be able to be hospitable to neighbors and other folks God will send my way.

So today I was taking a third look at what seems to be the most promising house to come along.  No house has been perfect.  These are not perfect house neighborhoods.  Most houses are old.  The ones that are renovated to match the trends of the times start to be priced out of my range.  The ones that have not been renovated much at all often look like nightmares of slow, even interminable repairs.  Many are too small, too deteriorated, or too oddly arranged.  Buried oil tanks, water leaks, poor drainage, and shifting foundations crop up everywhere.  This house I was looking at had big promise:  priced low for its size, all new inside renovations which are done well, new HVAC, all new bathrooms, a big yard, nice porches, including an upstairs porch.  I know I could be pretty comfortable in the house.  Another small one not very far away lacks any "extra" room for me to spread out, and it also is not within the walking distance criterion that I want to stick by.

So on the third look, I can't help but see the things that undermine the house's promise.  There are some old structural concrete items that need to go, a dead tree in the yard, and branches from another tree too close to the house.  There are questions that will require an inspector to search around in the crawl space, which I have not yet tried to do.  A few details of the renovations are consistently left undone.  I'm uncertain about many things.  I need to talk it through.  My good friends Nancy Bumgardner and Joanne Jennings have been kind enough to go with me on separate occasions to look at this house.  They each have different and good insights into how to look at and evaluate it.  My realtor thinks it will be possible to have certain work done as part of the purchase contract.

But the absence is palpable.  There is one that I trust, one whom I want to please.  She understands the strengths in how I think and also recognizes my blind spots.  She is not here to talk this through.  So I go on trying to think on my own.  I can see multiple points of view, strengths and weaknesses, promises and potential dangers.  The yard is so big, and I'm not a lover of yard work.  The house has idiosyncrasies.  Will I get sick of them, or will they just become normal to me?  Can I make the space work as a place of hospitality for neighbors and for my family when they come to visit?

I would love above all to be able to sit and dream together about this or some other house and what we think about the life we could live in it.  We did that in Austin about a year ago, and we were actually in the midst of buying a house just twelve months ago.  It would have been the home for our last years.  We were trying to be near a certain church and in a certain neighborhood.  We felt pretty good about our options.  We were making room for all our kids to be comfortable visiting with us.  But the change in her cancer led us to back out of that contract.

Here I am a year later about to start the same process.  I wish I could sit and chat, share a drive, and ease into the comfort of knowing that the two of us are ready to face the challenges of a new home together.  I won't get that this time around.  And wherever I end up, there will be an empty side of the bed, empty closet space, and a big room with an even bigger palpable absence.  Yes, there is a constant and abiding presence of Everly in and with me all the time.  But that presence exists in and alongside her absence.

An Outpouring of Thanks for My Last Post: Here's What I Think It Means

When I posted last Friday about dealing with my emotional/intellectual/spiritual/material struggles with professorial and professional work, I kept hearing in the back of my head some advice about preaching and teaching I received long ago.  I believe it is good advice, which is why I keep it close in mind.  I was warned not to let my sermons and teaching presentations get too focused around my own experiences.  First, it betrays a kind of egocentrism (even egotism) that seems to think of oneself as the prime example of whatever topic is at hand.  Second, it presumptuously asserts that one's own experiences are the same as those who are hearing what one says.  I do agree that these are dangers and temptations.

Yet there is another side of this question about whether to use one's own experiences in teaching and preaching.  That side is the one that recognizes preaching and teaching is in part about building a relationship of teaching-learning between the teacher and the people in the classroom or other setting.  That relationship itself becomes a powerful part of a teaching-learning process.

In the past few days, some of the most encouraging words of appreciation I received were from fellow academics, people who find themselves in a similar functional role as I do.  Although I did not get too heavily into details of my own struggle, I tried to reveal enough to make some sense of it to readers.  Apparently it did make some sense, and there have been a wide range of responses.

Through the past two years, one of the most common responses to my writing about Everly, cancer, struggle, death, loss, and faith, have been those from people who told how my writing honestly about the struggle helped them to think about and deal with struggles in their own lives.  Over and over people have encouraged me to keep on writing, as many of you did this past weekend.

One colleague who wrote some beautiful encouragement to me sparked me to think about how dealing with this struggle has affected my teaching.  So I'm going to post here a response I sent to him about what I think it means that students are finding blessing in my current teaching.  Again, for all who teach and preach, I hope this will give some insight into why a certain kind of telling one's own story and reflecting on one's own faith can make a great difference in teaching and learning.

Thanks.  It has emerged through these two years since Everly's diagnosis in April of 2012 that my lived theological reflection is among the most important parts of my teaching.  As you indicated during your presentation last week, a personal story is powerful for impact and memory.  Add to that my sometimes raw emotions, and the students find this part of my reflection to serve their learning in many ways. 

At perhaps the first level, my up-to-date reflections as I "go through" are an example of how theology operates in a lived context with real questions people are asking.  So I will keep writing and bringing my reflections to the classroom as I make this pilgrimage that will not end until I end.

At another level, my reflections become a mirror to them.  While they are not going through the same thing (although sometimes it is very close with a terminally ill spouse or other family member), they are finding analogies to my story in their story.  Sometimes this has led to powerful testimony or confession on the part of a student in class who becomes willing to let her or his struggle become part of our conversation.  I have to say that they get a bit less "respect" from their peers, in that classmates feel more permission to comment on one another didactically than they do to comment in that way on my stories.  But that gives me a chance to talk about how we listen and do not rush to offer easy answers. 

Maybe it's a third level at which they find themselves in a new relation with me, walking along as a fellow struggler.  There is no small amount of recurring reference to Claypool's sermons in my ongoing reflections, as you may have noted in my refrain about walking one step at a time.  I don't doubt that this third element is significant in my being asked to preach by one of our students for the first time in fourteen years of teaching at the seminary.  Over the years, there have always been a small cadre of students who saw in me a colleague or mentor, someone whose overall faith and walk they might hope to emulate.  But they have been few, and it has much to do with my personality and background.  That seems to have changed as I have changed during this crisis.  Many more see in me an example of faith from whom they would hope to learn, not just a guy who knows about so many things and so many words and so many people. 

So I will, as best I can, try to let this season reshape me as a teacher.  It's strange that some of my most effective classroom teaching may be going on when I am by habits and performance so far from what I ought to be as a professor.  Bringing some of those good habits back into my daily life can perhaps give me a decade or so of teaching that will be the best of my career.

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.