“This country’s going to hell in a handbasket.”  I’ve long wondered what a handbasket has to do with a trip to the infernal regions.  I’m not sure how that particular container became linked with shaking the hand of el Diablo.  I don’t suppose there’s anything particularly evil about handbaskets.  They frequently are taken on picnics, and there doesn’t seem to be anything especially sinister about picnics, unless a spot is chosen right next to an anthill!

(Side note: the world’s largest handbasket is the building in Newark, Ohio, former home of the Longaberger Basket Company.  In the late 90s, Banu had a Longaberger Basket party when we lived in Nebraska.  That’s when her love affair of the baskets began!)

I tried to find out the origin of that phrase.  It seems to date back to the 1600s.  Another variation was “going to hell in a wheelbarrow.”  Apparently, that wasn’t quite as catchy, so “hell in a handbasket” it was.

I think it’s safe to say, one who utters that phrase is expressing a grim outlook.  The poet of Psalm 12 clearly shares that perspective.

“Help, O Lord, for there is no longer anyone who is godly; the faithful have disappeared from the human race” (v. 1).  Everything has gone to hell in a handbasket.

There could be any number of reasons for that lamentation.  It might result from certain beliefs or attitudes or practices.

The psalmist (who traditionally is identified as David) wastes no time in uttering his complaint, his cause for concern.  In the place of the godly and faithful are those who “utter lies to each other; with flattering lips and a deceitful heart they speak” (v. 2).  The genesis of so much wrongdoing lies in the words that come out of our mouth.

What are we to make of “flattering lips and a deceitful heart”?  Has anyone ever experienced that?  Have we ever been guilty of that?

What does the psalmist suggest as a remedy?  “May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that makes great boasts” (v. 3).

I’m reminded of the song by R.E.M., “Shiny Happy People,” which came out in 1991.[1]  It was inspired by a propaganda poster distributed by the Chinese Communist Party two years after the Tiananmen Square uprising and massacre.  There is the iconic image of the lone protestor standing in front of a tank.  He came to be known as “Tank Man.”  The government wanted to promote the image of the population as “shiny, happy people holding hands.”

It was indicative of a policy of flattering lips and deceitful heart portraying deadly events in an obscenely deceptive way.

One of the ironies of that song turned out to be its popularity.  People often enjoyed the shiny, happy tune, thinking it was about shiny, happy things—not realizing it was satire, dripping with sarcasm.  R.E.M. didn’t intend it as propaganda, but it worked very well as such!

Verse 4 continues the thought of flattering lips and boastful tongue with “those who say, ‘With our tongues we will prevail; our lips are our own—who is our master?’”

The Revised English Bible puts it, “They say, ‘By our tongues we shall prevail.  With words as our ally, who can master us?’”  With words as our ally.  What a delicious phrase.  In another translation, it reads “our weapon is our lips.”[2]

In George Orwell’s 1984, Winston Smith, who is the central character, makes the statement, “Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two equals four.  If that is granted all else will follow.”  By the way, I read his book in 1983.  I wanted to be sure I read it before the year arrived!

The Orwellian concept of language focuses on Newspeak, in which the government deliberately reduces words and the ability to express freedom of thought.  For example, “bad” becomes “ungood.”  “Very good” becomes “plusgood,” and “wonderful” becomes “doubleplusgood.”  Language becomes narrowed, as does awareness, even the ability to conceive.

1984 gave us the helpful reminder, “Big brother is watching you.”  What a pleasant thought.

Would it be a surprise to know—to be “aware”—that we employ our own forms of Newspeak?  Of course in our case, the goal isn’t deletion of language but the deletion of trust.  That includes deletion of trust in definitions of words.

Once upon a time, a “vaccine” prevented, or almost certainly prevented, one from obtaining a disease and being able to spread it to others.  Sadly, that is no longer the case.  The word “appropriate” seems to have lost its contours.  Case in point would be drag shows held in schools, even elementary schools, being called appropriate.

With words as our ally.  Our weapon is our lips.

Moreso than any other, it is government who uses words to redefine the truth.  “The first casualty of war is the truth.”  So said the ancient Greek poet, Aeschylus.

In her article, “Acceptable Torture,” Karen Hunt comments, “It’s worse than that.  Truth has become the first casualty of everyday life.  The elites have manipulated, discredited, and denied the truth so convincingly that it has all but disappeared.”[3]

In a speech at Texas A&M University, a recent CIA director “jokingly asked his audience, ‘What’s the cadet motto of West Point?  You will not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate those who do…  ‘We lied, we cheated, we stole,’ he continued, laughing as if he thought that was very funny and clever.  And the brainwashed audience laughed along with him.”  He then added, “It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”[4]

I honestly don’t know what that last comment is about.  Certainly it doesn’t mean he believes deception is glorious?  Or does he believe it epitomizes America?  Beats me.

Chapter 12 of Matthew’s gospel notes “every careless word,” or “every idle word” (v. 36).  We’ve just seen plenty of careless, idle words.

Words have power.  Besides “idle,” the Greek word (argos) also means “lazy.”  We too often don’t consider the impact our words carry.  Or maybe we do!  We might intend our words to hurt, calling each other stupid, ugly, worthless.  We utter curses rather than blessings.  Jesus tells us, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”  What is in us has a way of coming out.

Words have power.  That power can be wielded for good or ill.  That power can be filled with grace or filled with reproach.

Words have power; they have energy.  We are to pronounce blessings and avoid curses, not because it’s nice, but because what comes out of us comes right back to us.  We clothe ourselves with whatever we produce.  If we emit positive energy, we are bathed in what is good and true and holy.  If we emit negative energy, we are bathed (maybe I should say defiled) in what is wrong and false and unholy.

There are some words of wisdom which state, “truth is in order to goodness.”  (It’s a nugget from our Presbyterian history, but I think it’s available to all!)  The truth must serve the good.  It must promote goodness.  It is possible to tell the truth with the purpose of crushing someone, beating them down.  The truth can be told with malevolent intent.  I call that “the devil’s truth.”  It’s meant, as I just said, to hurt and not to help.  To the extent it does that, it really isn’t the truth.

What stories do we tell about each other?  What stories do we tell about ourselves?  Are they stories of despair and discouragement?  Are they stories of acceptance and affirmation?

I’ve often wondered, how many wars have been started (both wars large and small) over a word misheard?  Once the word is out there, it’s out there.  It really is impossible to “take it back.”

There’s an illustration all of us will recognize.  What happens when we give a tube of toothpaste a little squeeze?  Here comes the toothpaste.  But what if we have a change of heart?  Well, we could return it from whence it came.  I have tried that, and to my amazement, I’ve never been successful.  It’s impossible to take the toothpaste back.

In his journals, the 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard makes an embarrassing confession.  “I have just returned from a party,” he says, “of which I was the life and soul; wit poured from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me—but I went away—and the dash should be as long as the earth’s orbit—[inserted in the text is a dash taking up half the line] and wanted to shoot myself.”[5]

Of course, none of us have ever spoken foolish words, whether accompanied by drink or not!  Idle words, indeed.  Having said that, even when we speak out of turn, our words can be transformed; they can be redeemed.

Far from words as our ally, from words that are idle, the psalmist paints a new picture.  “The promises of the Lord are promises that are pure, silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times” (v. 6).

All the impurity, all the duplicitous language is burned away.  The promises of the Lord—the words of the Lord—are rock solid to the ends of the earth.

“No more let sins and sorrows grow / Nor thorns infest the ground / He comes to make His blessings flow / Far as the curse is found / Far as the curse is found.”

The Lord promises protection to all who seek it, because “on every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among the human race” (v. 8).  Another translation puts it, “The wicked parade about, and what is of little worth wins general esteem.”[6]  What is of little worth wins general esteem.  That’s almost as delicious as “with words as our ally.”

Where are you with your words?  What are you uttering?  What are you claiming?  What are you rejecting or owning?  Words have energy.  They indeed have power.  We either build with our words or destroy with our words.

In Deuteronomy 30 the Lord says, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.  Choose life so that you and your descendants may live” (v. 19).  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44).

That’s a tall order!  I don’t know if anyone ever really gets there, but it is a lofty goal.  If that’s the stratosphere, it makes it all the more doable here at ground level.  It makes it all the more likely that idle words are silenced.  It makes it all more likely that we see the faithful reappearing among the human race.  That includes the face in the mirror.

There is a word which liberates.  It is the word—the word permeating the cosmos.  It is the word with all power.  It is the living word.  It is the word that defeats death, Jesus the Christ.  It is the word rising from the dead and letting us know that in the end, nothing has truly been wasted.

[1] www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYOKMUTTDdA

[2] Mitchell Dahood, Psalms 1 (1-50) (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1966), 72.

[3] khmezek.substack.com/p/acceptable-torture?publication_id=258694&post_id=101510344&isFreemail=false

[4] www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPt-zXn05ac

[5] Søren Kierkegaard, A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. Robert Bretall (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1948), 7.

[6] Revised English Bible

A text in 1 Kings 2 comes from the synagogue Sabbath reading for yesterday the 7th.  It features Jacob’s final words to his sons and David’s final words to his son, Solomon.  As a meditation for the beginning of the new year, deathbed instructions might seem to be an unusual choice, to say the least.

I should add that the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah (that is, “head of the year”) falls at various times in September.  The current year on the Jewish calendar is 5783.

I imagine there were quite a few of us who were happy to pronounce the death sentence on 2020.  Some probably wanted to drive a stake through its heart to make sure the monster had been slain!

Still, taking into consideration the coming of Covid into the world, there is always much to celebrate about God’s good creation, which we’ll hear more about later.

David couches his closing wishes in terms of strength, courage, and faithfulness.  “Hear my words, beloved son, and you will follow the way of the Lord.  In pursuing them, you will guarantee that my lineage will continue through you.”  That’s no big responsibility.

What follows is a list of names and how Solomon is to deal with each of them.  I’m reminded of how certain Roman emperors decided the fate of gladiators.  Thumbs up, and they lived.  Thumbs down, and that’s all she wrote.

(At least, that’s how the story goes!)

First on the list is Joab, one of David’s mighty commanders.  He retaliated “in time of peace for blood that had been shed in war” (v. 5).  Very briefly: Joab killed Abner and Amasa, two military leaders, and Absalom, David’s rebellious son.  This was despite David’s explicit instructions.  He made it clear that he did not want any of them to be slain.

Joab, known for his violent temperament, was unable to let go of blood vengeance, however justified it might have seemed.  David didn’t want to be seen responsible for “innocent blood.”  The verdict: “do not let his gray head go down to Sheol in peace” (v. 6).  Thumbs down.

However, Barzillai treated David honorably, so permit his sons to live in peace with you.  Thumbs up.

And then there is Shimei, who uttered a curse on David, but later tried to make nice.  David promised he would do no harm to him.  He wouldn’t touch a hair on his head but said nothing about how his offspring would treat Shimei while he visits the beauty parlor.  So, thumbs down.

I just said Joab was unable to let go of blood vengeance.  He dragged what happened in time of war into a time of peace.

Is he the only one who couldn’t let go?  Could not the king have behaved any differently?  Was he truly compelled to settle those scores?  I don’t know; perhaps by the standards of his time, it was to be expected.  Nevertheless, it seems like he could have acted in a nobler manner—perhaps in a spirit of royal largesse?

I doubt any of us have the blood of queens and kings flowing through our veins, but how often do we dwell in the past?  How often are we trapped by the past?

We have now entered 2023.  On every New Year’s Day, I am reminded of the song by that name which was done by the band U2.  Bono sings, “All is quiet on New Year’s Day / A world in white gets underway.  I want to be with you / Be with you night and day.  Nothing changes on New Year’s Day / On New Year’s Day.”

Other people have their own memories or practices when January rolls around.  This year there is the realization of that song being released forty years ago.  Forty years ago!  In 1983, I was a freshman in college.  Tempus fugit.

In his masterpiece, The Sabbath (which reads almost like poetry), the beloved twentieth century rabbi Abraham Heschel suggests, “Time to us is sarcasm, a slick treacherous monster with a jaw like a furnace incinerating every moment of our lives.”[1]  He isn’t saying time is evil, rather it’s our reaction to it.

“We know what to do with space,” Heschel comments, “but do not know what to do about time, except to make it subservient to space.  Most of us seem to labor for the sake of things of space.  As a result we suffer from a deeply rooted dread of time and stand aghast when compelled to look into its face.”

It’s fascinating.  Genesis has God pronouncing aspects of creation—that is, space—as “good.”  Creation of earth and sea, plants and animals, are pronounced “good.”  “And God saw that it was good.”  Even after the creation of the human race, all is pronounced “very good.”

It is only the Sabbath—time—that is hallowed, pronounced holy.  The word in Hebrew has to do with being sanctified, being set apart.  It is set apart from all we can see.

We so often want to grasp time, as if it were an object.  We want to stop it, or at least slow it down, and just take a breath.  We want that fire-breathing monster consuming every moment to be held at bay.  Time flies, like a dragon.

Are we indeed unwilling to let go?  Do we need to, so to speak, die to the past before we can truly live?

Today is the Baptism of the Lord.  We hear the story of another dying to the past.  We engage with a narrative of one passing through a portal.  The heavens themselves open up like a shower from on high, and there is a powerful proclamation of perpetual passion.

John offers a baptism for the forgiveness of sin.  He offers a baptism of repentance.  He questions Jesus when he comes to him for this ritual.  Wait, we’ve got this totally backward.  I’m supposed to be the forerunner for you.  You should be the one dunking me into the river!

He doesn’t need to do this for his own sake, but Jesus models moving from the death of sin.  He shows the way from the grave of the past to the life of the future.

A couple of decades later, regarding baptism, the apostle Paul establishes the connection, he develops the theology, between the dying of Jesus and his being raised from the grave by God to an indestructible life.

In his letter to the Roman church, Paul shares the glorious news, “We were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life” (6:4).

In the letter to the Colossians, he says in similar words, “When you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead” (2:12).

There are two key events of the Christian faith: Christmas and Easter.  Christmas, of course, tells the story of God becoming incarnate.  It is God becoming enfleshed as the baby of Bethlehem.

More to our point here is the story of Easter.  Jesus was dead, with no life whatsoever, dead as a doornail.  His mission had apparently ended in utter and complete failure.  Jesus was right when he spoke the words, “It is finished.”  It’s difficult to do worse than that.  We go from the bitter tears of defeat of Holy Saturday to the inexpressible and impossible euphoria of Easter Sunday.

So again, here we are in 2023.  We have been focused on Covid.  In some ways, we have been focused on death.  We’ve had lockdowns.  Many small businesses have not survived.  So many children held out of school have seemingly fallen hopelessly behind.  Getting close to each other has been forbidden.  We have been told to not shake hands!

(Please note: I do understand the logic expressed here.)

The 20s have indeed gotten off to an alarming start.  One cause for concern is that over the past couple of years or so, we’ve become used to accepting ever increasing levels of control and surveillance from the government and from big tech.

By the grace of God, we are becoming ever more aware of our ability to recognize and challenge the lies.  Banu and I invite you to join us.  By the grace of God, death is being exposed.

In the movie, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Winona Ryder plays Mina and Gary Oldman plays Dracula.  In Mina, Dracula sees his centuries-dead wife, Elisabeth, as having returned.  In the scene in which Dracula pledges his eternal love for Mina, she pleads with him, “take me away from all this death.”  Of course, she’s putting that request to the wrong fellow!

We all have been so focused on death, I fear we might have forgotten how to live.

That is the meaning of baptism, however.  It is more than an emphasis on space, an emphasis on physicality.  It also deals with time.  It is the movement from a season of death to a season of life.  That is what it means to be saved.  Salvation is not a one-time reality.  Salvation is ongoing.  Salvation is what we look to in the future.

Still, salvation does require the element of choice.  It requires what the baptism of John models for those coming after, that is, repentance.  Repentance isn’t a furious escape from a hammer descending from above.  It is a turning around, an about face.  And it doesn’t happen once and for all time.  It also is a lifestyle—a lifestyle which is based in joy.

Our focus on death requires repentance, salvation.  Joy is the defeat of death.  It is time to repent as a congregation, shake off the dust of death, and enter into a 2023 full of the life that God wants to show us.  Whatever we think is enough, God says I have more.  It is time for the remnant to rise from the dead and share in the promises of the Kingdom here and now.

[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), 5.

Have you ever been so confused that you didn’t know up from down, black from white, in from out?  Have you ever forgotten someone’s name?  I’m sure we’ve all done that.  However, I’m not talking about someone we’ve only met once or twice.  I’m talking about someone we really know—a person whose name we ought to remember.  I’ll admit, that’s been me on more than one occasion!

Now that is being confused.  We could think of other examples of confusion, unless we’re too confused to do so.

In 1 Kings 19, we catch someone in his own state of confusion, the prophet Elijah.  We’ll get to that later on.

Here’s a bit of the back-story.  Ahab is king, and Jezebel is his foreign wife.  Her father is a priest of the goddess Astarte.  Astarte, also known as Asherah, is the consort, the companion, of Baal.  At this time, the land is experiencing a terrible drought.  Elijah, the prophet of the Lord, says the rain will come only when he gives the word.  The priests of Baal can call on their god all they want.  Only the prophet of Yahweh can announce the end of this vicious drought.

In chapter 18, we have a quite bloody scene.  Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal to see which god can burn up the sacrificial offering which has been laid out.  When fire from heaven descends and consumes the offering, Elijah is proven right.  In a moment that can only be called zealous, he has the other prophets put to death.

But before all the butchery, there is a note of humor!  While the prophets of Baal are crying out to their god, Elijah decides to be a comedian.  He says, “Cry aloud!  Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened” (v. 27).  Some translations, instead of “he has wandered away,”[1] have “he is relieving himself,” or he “is out sitting on the toilet”! (New Living Translation, Living Bible)

[not the same Baal, but maybe the point is made]

So basically, that is what’s been going on as we get to chapter 19.

The king lets the queen know what Elijah has done.  To say that Jezebel is displeased with Elijah would be an understatement.  She sends a messenger to tell the prophet, “You’re a dead man.”

So, on the heels of his greatest victory, Elijah takes to his heels!  He has defeated the prophets of Baal; the rains have returned at his word, but he is scared for his life.  He takes off, and not only does he take off; he leaves the country.  Elijah flees all the way to Beer-sheba, about one hundred miles away, in the southern kingdom of Judah.

Something to understand about Elijah is he is considered perhaps the foremost of the prophets.  For example, in the book of Malachi, his return is expected.  “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.  He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse” (4:5-6).  Receive his family counseling or else!

On the nights when the Passover seder is observed, a chair is always left empty for Elijah.

In the New Testament, Jesus says Elijah has come in the person of John the Baptist.  This is right after he has taken Peter, James, and John up the mountain where the Transfiguration occurs, and Moses and Elijah have had a little conversation with Jesus (Mt 17).

So Elijah winds up with some hefty credentials!

Very briefly, he leaves his servant in Beer-sheba, and strikes off alone into the wilderness where he finds “a solitary broom tree,” also known as a juniper tree (v. 4).  He lies down, ready to die.  An angel visits, giving him food and water, and lets him know he must continue his journey.  Elijah travels “forty days and forty nights,” symbolic in the Bible of a very long time (v. 8).

He takes refuge in a cave at Mount Horeb, where Moses received the Ten Commandments.

“Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’” (v. 9).  Here’s his response.  It’s rather lengthy, and we’ll hear it again.  “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword.  I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away” (v. 10).

What are you doing here?

On the face of it, the answer seems obvious.  He just woke up; he had been asleep.  Of course, that’s not really the question.  Aside from the “here,” there’s the desire to know, “why are you here”?  Putting a finer point on it, we might see it as, “Why did you run from Jezebel?”  Why were you afraid?  Why did you fear?

Is it possible that the full weight of hearing a death sentence pronounced shook his resolve?  Does it make it more real?

The Lord tells Elijah to take his place on the mountain, as Moses did centuries earlier, because there’s about to be a divine visitation.  Where is the Lord?  A storm arrives, leaving destruction in its wake.  But no, the Lord isn’t there.  Then there’s an earthquake, shaking up the place, sending boulders loose.  After that, a raging fire breaks out, filling the sky with smoke.  Still, neither one is a sign of God’s presence.

After all the drama—after the blowing, shaking, and burning—there is an eerie stillness.  Remember if there’s anyone who can appreciate spectacle, it’s Elijah.  We are introduced to him just as he’s going to confront the king regarding the drought.  And of course, there’s the high drama when he faces the prophets of Baal.

As verse 12 puts it, there was “after the fire a sound of sheer silence.”  The King James Version has the familiar “after the fire a still small voice.”

[photo by Kelly3339 on Pixabay]

“When Elijah heard it…”  He heard in the quiet of the hush.  He listened to the absence of sound.  Elijah…  Elijah…  Elijah!

“What are you doing here?”

I said earlier Elijah has his own state of confusion.  This, I would submit, is evidence of such.  I also would submit there’s a bit of speculation on my part!

What is Elijah’s response?  “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword.  I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away” (v. 14).  Wait, haven’t we heard that before?

Elijah repeats his previous answer verbatim.  (Here’s more speculation.)  It seems to be rehearsed.  Does he have nothing else to say?  Is he making excuses?  Could he be trying to prove his worth?  Is he trying to convince himself of something?  Is he trying to convince the Lord?

Thinking of Elijah’s repeated answer as a narrative as to where he is, I wonder if there’s a narrative I hold onto?  Do I have a story I repeat to deflect those kinds of questions and concerns?  Why am I here?  Why do I run, not necessarily from Jezebel, but from whatever?  Why do I fear?  Are there excuses I make?

However, more importantly, whose am I?  To whom do I belong?

In the collected Letters and Papers from Prison, there is a poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer which he wrote about nine months before being executed by the Nazis.  He was killed mere weeks before his prison camp was liberated by the Allies.  Here are the final lines of the poem, titled “Who am I?”[2]

“Who am I?  This or the Other? / Am I one person today and tomorrow another? / Am I both at once?  A hypocrite before others, / And before myself a contemptible, woebegone weakling? / Or is something within me like a beaten army / Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

“Who am I?  They mock me, these lonely questions of mine, / Whoever I am, Thou Knowest, O God, I am thine.”

Can anyone relate to the thought, “Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?”  I think Elijah demonstrates that vividly.  In ways, I feel like I also display that quality.

And then, those final words.  “Who am I?  They mock me, these lonely questions of mine, / Whoever I am, Thou Knowest, O God, I am thine.”

The Lord answers Elijah.  The Lord gives him a mission.  He is to be a kingmaker: Hazael in Aram and Jehu in Israel.  As his protégé, he is to anoint Elisha.

To Elijah, the Lord affirms, you are my prophet.  You are my servant.  However, you aren’t the only faithful one.  Verse 18 says, “Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”  That’s both a comfort and a correction.

The Lord uses the language of “kiss,” with all the intimacy and consequences it carries.  Every mouth that has not kissed Baal.  The faithful ones have not given themselves to this foreign god, this false god.  They have not pledged their allegiance.  They have not promised their hearts.

We should take note: in Hebrew thought, “heart” is not the seat of emotion.  It is not where we feel love, the way we reckon it.  It is the source of attention, choice, concern, imagination, understanding.  It is where we love God and love our neighbor.  Pledging ourselves to a false god, to an idol, interferes with all of that.  Indeed, it sends it in the wrong direction.

We have here a tale of rediscovery.  Despite his protests to the contrary, Elijah’s actions reveal he has forgotten he is a prophet of God.  He flees in disorder from victory already achieved.  Elijah is reminded who he is.  True to his nature as one with a flair for the dramatic, when he ascends from the earth, he does so in a chariot of fire.

So often, we forget who we are.  As the children of God, as the saved of our Lord Jesus Christ, as those sustained by the Holy Spirit—when we remember that and act on it—confusion is set aside.  Harmony and order are set in place.

Though we might flee in disorder from victory already achieved, Jesus makes us more than conquerors.

What are you doing here?

Whatever I am doing, whoever I am, Thou Knowest, O God, I am thine.

[1] the word for “wander” is שִֺיג, sig

[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison: The Enlarged Edition (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 348.

We’re all familiar with Murphy’s Law, aren’t we?  It basically states, “If anything can go wrong, it will.”  I did a little bit of research to find out who this Murphy actually was.  There is more than one candidate.  Many people suggest Capt. Edward Murphy, an engineer in the US Air Force.  After a technician had made a mistake in wiring, Murphy claimed, “If there is any way to do it wrong, he’ll find it.”[1]

Others, like me, suspect an origin further back in history.  Understanding that Murphy is an Irish name, some say that the English pinned it on the Irish.  Of course, as a rule, the English have always held the Irish in the very highest regard, so it’s hard to believe they would do such a thing!

Whatever the case: if there’s anybody in the Bible who might possibly believe in Murphy’s Law, it would be the prophet Jeremiah.

Jeremiah lives at a time when the Babylonian Empire is knocking at the door.  People are nervous.  They fear destruction and exile.  And at the same time, injustice is rampant throughout the country.  As the prophet of the Lord, Jeremiah is given the task of opposing idolatry and corruption—speaking truth to power.  As true prophets do, his job is to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted.

Jeremiah does not have a happy life.  His social life is all but nonexistent.  Saying “yes” to God has meant for him dealing with name-calling and far worse: slander, beating, imprisonment.  After the Babylonians do invade, he’s labeled a traitor when he warns against fighting back.  Saying “yes” to God means that Jeremiah becomes public enemy number one.

One of the things I really love about this book is Jeremiah’s ruthless honesty about his calling and ministry.  In chapter 1, when he is called to be a prophet, we get a little taste of things to come when the Lord says, “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you” (v. 8).  Jeremiah knows that trouble is in store for him.  It’s not for nothing that he has been called “the weeping prophet.”

There are several poems in the book that are often called the Confessions of Jeremiah.  We have a reading from the first and the last ones.  In these poems, he sounds a lot like Job.  More than with any other prophet, we see in Jeremiah a picture of his inner being.  At times, he verges on the depths of despair.

As our friend Murphy might say, “If anything can go wrong, it will.”

Jeremiah feels like God has betrayed him, and he isn’t shy about letting God know it!  More than once, he decides that he’s had enough; he is not going to do this anymore.  Let somebody else do this job!  But he finds it impossible to stop.  Chapter 20, verse 9, has the perfect example of this.  “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.”

“The Prophet Jeremiah” by Michelangelo

The Contemporary English Version puts it this way: “Sometimes I tell myself not to think about you, Lord, or even mention your name.  But your message burns in my heart and bones, and I cannot keep silent.”

That’s a confession that only someone who is in love can make!  Jeremiah loves the Lord, but he’s also mad and disappointed.

In chapter 11, we see something that would have anyone wondering what’s going on.  The people of his hometown issue him a warning: shut up or change your tune—or you won’t like what’s coming!  It’s been said that they’re “shamed to the depths that one of themselves should undermine the very foundations of the nation by what he said, and should make himself the most hated man in the country.  So they threaten to murder him.”[2]

Jeremiah laments that he is “like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter” (v. 19).  That’s one of the comparisons people make between him and Jesus.

And at the end of chapter 20, we see him cursing the day of his birth.  There’s a comparison with Job.  He even curses the man who brought glad tidings of his birth to his father!  That wasn’t good news!  Why didn’t he just kill me?  “Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?” (v. 18).

Of course, Jeremiah is far from alone in wanting to just call it quits.

A story is told about John Robertson, a 19th century minister in the Church of Scotland.  Having preached for forty years, he “decided one morning to resign.  He prayed: ‘O God, Thou didst commission me forty years ago, but I have blundered and failed and I want to resign this morning.’  But as he prayed and sobbed, he heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘John Robertson…‘tis true you have blundered and failed; but…I am not here for you to resign your commission but to re-sign your commission.’  He went on to new and greater things in his ministry.  And so did Jeremiah.”[3]

After everything falls apart—after everything crashes and burns—after the Babylonians destroy the temple—Jeremiah has a message of hope.  The exiles, one day, will return.  Rebuilding will happen.  Of course, if he had just quit (speaking of the prophet and John Robertson), he wouldn’t have been able to give that message of consolation.

I want to change gears and look at the value of Jeremiah’s Confessions.  Actually, I should probably ask, “Do we think they have value?”  As expressions of lament, do they have value?  What is the value of lament?  What is the value of giving voice to our grief?

The Confessions are about stuff that happens to more than just one person.  They are about the community, the people of Israel.  And they’re also about us—all of us, in every time and place.  We haven’t gone through what the people in Jeremiah’s time do, but we also know what trauma and disaster are all about.

Clearly, the last two years have taught us a few things about that.

Some people say that we shouldn’t talk about the bad things that happen, certainly not in church.  I wonder, have they ever looked at a cross?

I’m sure none of you have ever experienced this, but sometimes when tragedy strikes, we can offer some unwanted explanations.  Stuff like, “God never gives us more than we can handle.”  Let’s ignore the fact that isn’t in the Bible—it’s an altering of something in 1 Corinthians about God giving us a way out of testing and temptation (10:13).  But aside from that, does that really help anyone?

This is among my favorite unhelpful explanations: when someone loses a loved one, especially if that person was young, I’ve sometimes heard that “God needed another angel in heaven.”  We should understand humans and angels are two completely different types of beings!  Aside from that, something far worse, in my opinion, is the funeral poem claiming, “God broke our hearts to prove to us He only takes the best.”  That seems to say nothing less than God is a monster.

Still, I think we can see that those types of remarks say more about the person uttering them than anything else.  When we’re at a loss for words, we too often offer things that are unhelpful and painful and stupid.  Maybe a better approach is simply to be present.

That leads us to the value of lament in the scriptures, with the example of Jeremiah’s Confessions.  Old Testament scholar Kathleen O’Connor says, “They give voice to profound fidelity because they keep communication with God alive in the midst of destruction and despair.”[4]

When it comes to reflecting on our fears and insecurities versus relying on God, I think it’s safe to choose the latter.  As a result, I think I like her advice better:

“Here is what to do in the pit of hopelessness.  Cling to God, even when God has slipped away from you.  Yell at the top of your collective lungs.  Hold tightly, mercilessly, and, with every ounce of strength, shout and scream at the deity…  Hold nothing back. Complain, protest, resist.  Reach into yourself to claim your experience and your capacity to see and name reality.  Rise up, ‘give God an account,’ and approach God ‘like a prince’ [or a princess] (Job 31:37).”[5]

The good news for Jeremiah is that he doesn’t remain in the pit of hopelessness.  His love of God is what sees him through.  It is precisely because he loves God that he’s able to say the things he does.  His honesty, joined with his love, is what honors that relationship.  It keeps the relationship alive.

It might feel wrong to be angry with God, but that’s okay.  God already knows how we feel, and when something terrible happens, God is saddened even more than we are.  At the time, it might not seem that way, and that’s also okay.  We can be honest with God, and we also can make our confessions of ruthless love.

So it’s important to ask, for those of us here, how can we welcome expressions of lament?  How can we, as the apostle Paul advises, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep”? (Ro 12:15).  It is more than appropriate for the church to do that.  It’s a sure sign that we are on our way to becoming the beloved community.

The Confessions of Jeremiah, as opposed to Murphy’s Law, is a good and faithful road to follow.

[1] www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-true.html

[2] Klaus Koch, The Prophets: The Babylonian and Persian Periods (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 39.

[3] www.directionjournal.org/article/?168

[4] Kathleen O’Connor, “Lamenting Back to Life,” Interpretation 62:1 (Jan 2008), 42.

[5] O’Connor, 45.

I sometimes speak of particular psalms as works of art, that is, as real works of art!  Psalm 91 is certainly in that category.  It has so many rich and vivid images.  “You will not fear the terror of the night…  or the destruction that wastes at noonday…  You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.”  But we’ll get to all those in a few minutes!

It also has a personal connection for me.  Psalm 91 is my mom’s favorite.  She has spoken of how she sometimes inserts her name where the appropriate pronoun appears.  For example, “Ida will not fear the terror of the night.”  “The young lion and the serpent Ida will trample under foot.”  (Banu reminded me it is also her favorite, which she recites and does the same thing my mom does.)

I can speak of a quite intimate moment.  It happened when she was about to have surgery to implant a pacemaker.  Banu and I were in the hospital with her just before they were ready to roll her away and knock her out.  We prayed this psalm with her.  As you go through verse after verse, the promises of the Lord keep adding up, until we get to the end, “With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation” (v. 16).

This is a song, or a poem, of trust and confidence.  The writer is assured of victory, of obstacles overcome.  This assurance isn’t based on anything within herself or himself.  This assurance, this conviction, is based on living “in the shelter of the Most High, [abiding] in the shadow of the Almighty (v. 1).

The word “Almighty” comes from the Hebrew שַׁדַּי (shaday) Shaddai.

It’s like the Amy Grant song, which was written by Michael Card and John Thompson.  “El-Shaddai, El-Shaddai [“God Almighty”] / El-Elyon na Adonai [“God in the highest, Oh, Lord”] / Age to age, You’re still the same / By the power of the name.”  And of course, the song goes on.  There’s a good case of a psalm inspiring a work of art.

Shaddai is the “self-sufficient one,” the “one who suffices.”  That’s a shelter impervious to the storms of life.  One who needs nothing else.

And yes, our psalmist, our poet, has seen some tough times.  There’s been the threat of being snared by the fowler—the danger of being trapped, like a bird rendered helpless.[1]  Who knows what snares, what traps, have lain in wait?  What has been escaped?

“Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come; ‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”

Who can speak of the “deadly pestilence”?  Our writer has been set free—has been protected—from that which would leave desolation in its wake.

We’re told by Gregg Braden the ancient rabbis held that “Psalm 91 protected the prophet Moses the second time he climbed to the top of Mount Sinai, which is when he received the Ten Commandments.  [He] was enveloped during his ascent by a mysterious cloud of unknown substance of unknown origin.  The cloud became so dense that he could no longer see ahead of him, nor could he be seen by those watching him from below the cloud…”[2]

“It’s during this time of uncertainty and fear that Moses composed and recited Psalm 91 for his protection.  For reasons that he attributed to the power of this prayer, Moses, in fact, was protected.”[3]  While it’s not likely Moses actually wrote the psalm, we can see how it was regarded to have served as a shield.

I spoke of rich and vivid images, including verses 5 and 6.  There is defense from dangers of night and day.  No “terror of the night,” no “arrow that flies by day” will bring harm.  In verse 6, we once again hear about pestilence.  The psalmist is told to not fear “the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday.”

The destruction that wastes at noonday.  Many have seen that as a reference to “the noonday devil” or “noonday demon.”  Now that’s a colorful character.  Throughout the centuries of church history, it became associated with one of the seven deadly sins, the one known as sloth.  We might be tempted to laugh it off as mere laziness, but it is more than that.  It is the condition called acedia.  In Latin, it literally means “lack of care.”  It is a refusal to act on the demands of love.

Andrew Michel is a professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.  He says, “As an absence of care, acedia can seem harmless enough since it is not an observable…offense.  However, whenever there is an absence of care in the world, an absence of intentionality, then someone is left lacking—an elderly person unattended, a starving person unfed, a woman battered, a child uneducated, a life’s gifting uncelebrated.”[4]  It might seem the only person harmed is the one afflicted by it, but as we see, it spreads outward.  It is not a victimless crime!

“Therefore,” Michel continues, “acedia is difficult to notice because it [deals with] an absence.  Perhaps this is the reason it has been associated with the Psalmist’s noonday demon, who seems to terrorize his prey in the light of day, not fearing being seen or noticed.”[5]

I’ve taken some time with this, because “the destruction that wastes at noonday” doesn’t have to be something dramatic.  In fact, it can hide in the ordinary run of the day.  We get so busy with busy-ness that we demonstrate the prayer of confession of sin in which we ask forgiveness, not so much for “what we have done,” but “what we have left undone.”

But there’s good news!  As Michel contemplated studying acedia, he feared it “might turn into turn into a project in moralizing.  Yet, to my delight,” he realized, “as I have explored the richness of acedia, I have paradoxically discovered that the concept is refreshing and illuminating.  Rather than heaping judgment on a person, the recognition of acedia offers an invitation to abundant living.”[6]  The richness of acedia, the noonday devil: that sounds like a contradiction in terms!  Refreshing?  Illuminating?

Still, that is the hope the psalmist holds out.  Fear not.

The promises of deliverance continue.  Consider verses 9 and 10: “Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.”  The word for “scourge” is נֶגַצ (nega`).  It has several nuances, but probably the best one here is “contagion.”  That could include the contagion of acedia, that noonday devil.

The promise here is that “contagion…shall not approach into your tent.”  It shall not rest in your home, because the Lord is in your home.  Something we’ve become familiar with in this past year and a half is indeed contagion.  It has swept through the land; it has swept through the world.  It has visited so many of us. I wonder, though, is there a difference between visiting and taking up residence?  Moving in?

Assuming we take verse 10 literally, at some level, we have no control over being visited by the contagion of Covid, or any other contagion for that matter.  Of course, we take precautions, but there are no firm guarantees in this fallen, disease-infested world.  (I guess I’m scaring all the germophobes!)

Still, as I just suggested, maybe there’s a difference between having a visitor and having someone walk in unannounced, go to the fridge, grab a snack, plop down in your favorite chair, and put their feet up.

So unfortunately, we have become familiar with contagion.  It seems to have brought to the surface some disconcerting realities.

I’ve been reading a book on Dietrich Bonhoeffer written by Eric Metaxas.  Bonhoeffer, as you may or may not know, was a church leader in Germany during the time of the Nazis.  His best-known book was The Cost of Discipleship.  He was arrested for his anti-government activities, including participation in the plot to assassinate Hitler.  He was imprisoned for two years.  Bonhoeffer was executed just a matter of days before the surrender of the Nazis.

In the book, Metaxas quotes Bonhoeffer on his thoughts about what the war has revealed.  I would suggest in the place of the word “war,” we substitute the word “contagion.”  (It’s kind of like what Banu and my mother have done with Psalm 91, inserting their names in various places.)  Here are some of his reflections on the realities that World War 2 revealed:

“It is not war [contagion] that first brings death, not war that first invents the pains and torments of human bodies and souls…  It is not war that first makes our existence so utterly precarious and renders human beings powerless, forcing them to watch their desires and plans being thwarted and destroyed…  But war makes all of this, which existed already apart from it and before it, vast and unavoidable to us who would gladly prefer to overlook it all.”[7]

Does it seem like I’m overstating the effects of the pandemic by comparing it to war?  Perhaps, but I don’t think it’s by very much.  Maybe I’m alone in this, but I think these past months have revealed how crazy we make each other!  Lengthy traumatic experiences have a way of doing that.

Going along with Bonhoeffer, those realities and forces were already there.  The divisions, the shaming of each other, the recriminations…  Covid has given all that an elevated platform.  Especially with the forced lockdowns, it has exposed in detail the economic inequality, the imbalanced opportunities for education, the scourge (yes, the contagion) of domestic violence.

Hasn’t this talk of the noonday devil and contagion been fun?  Fortunately, there’s more to the story.

To those who love the Lord and know his name, these vows are made: “When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them” (v. 15).  The word for “honor” כָּבַד (kabad) is the same word for “glorify.”  Imagine that: the Lord will glorify us!  Plagues and contagions might surround us.  That includes the self-imposed contagion of acedia, of sloth—the one that has us saying “no” to love, “no” to the Spirit.

God is ever present, wanting so badly to glorify us.  Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ says, “No contagion will harm you.”  Glory be to God in the highest!

[1] also in Psalm 124:7

[2] Gregg Braden, The Wisdom Codes (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2020), Kindle edition, Chapter 1, section 2, paragraph 1.

[3] Braden, 1.2.2

[4] Andrew A. Michel, “In Pursuit of Sophia: A Pilgrimage with Depression and Acedia,” Acedia: Christian Reflection (Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2013), 29-30.

[5] Michel, 30.

[6] Michel, 29.

[7] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), 373.

“Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”  “You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy” (vv. 5, 11).

These beautiful, elegant verses from Psalm 30 often adorn little knick-knacks and more serious pieces of art.  They are truly inspiring lines of poetry.

"Angel of Grief" sculpted by William Wetmore Story (left), a happy woman (right)

“What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit?” (v. 9).  How about that one?  Is it poetry?  Sure it is, but how likely are we to see it on a coffee mug—or as a decoration on someone’s tee shirt?  Probably not so much!

What about the book of Lamentations?

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (vv. 22-23).  This is truly majestic stuff!  I imagine there are some people who don’t realize it comes from this book.  Of course, it’s the inspiration for one of the most beloved hymns of the church, “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”

There’s a worship chorus many of us have learned, those who are familiar with some of the music of the Maranatha Singers: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; / his mercies never come to an end. / They are new every morning, new every morning; / great is thy faithfulness, O Lord, / great is thy faithfulness.”

“How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!  How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations!” (v. 1).

That’s how Lamentations begins.  I wonder, what are the chances of those lines embellishing a plaque mounted on a wall in your house?  Compared with “great is thy faithfulness,” what are the odds of that appearing on the welcome mat at your front door?  Probably not so much!

As you can see, celebration and lament often go together.  We’re good with the celebration, but how about the lament?  About 40 percent of the psalms are psalms of lament.  Lament is shot through the books of Job and of course, Lamentations.  Psalm 22 appears on the lips of Jesus on the cross.  (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”)  Lament appears throughout the scriptures.

Given the weight the Bible puts on lament, it would seem our worship would include at least a tiny bit more of it.  Our hymns scarcely mention it.  Churches that do lament better are the traditionally black churches.  No doubt, they’ve experienced much more of it.

Here’s a question I’ve asked myself: how can we include lament—how can we include it in song—without getting morbid?  Is there such a thing as a liturgical Debbie Downer?

Psalm 30 portrays the other side of the danger, of the misfortune.  It is used as one of the psalms in the Easter season.  It speaks of life from death.  Aside from the little goody we’ve already seen, “What profit is there in my death,” we have verse 3: “O Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.”

Sheol is the land of the grave.  It is the underworld.  It is the land of the dead; it’s like Hades in Greek thought.  Not much happens in Sheol.  It’s a gloomy, gray place.  All the restaurants are closed.  All the musical instruments have been confiscated.  There’s nothing to read, nothing to watch, no fun whatsoever.  And as we see in verse 9, addressed to the Lord, “Will the dust praise you?  Will it tell of your faithfulness?”  The worship of God is absent.

Sheol is the land of the grave.  As such, it can include death in many forms: whatever is destructive, whatever is harmful, whatever is shameful.  As for the psalmist, what is presented is recovery from a serious illness.  Indeed, it’s an illness that first appeared to be terminal.

It has been a long night.

I’m sure we can relate to this in a literal way.  There are those nights that seem to never end.  Maybe we’ve even looked to the east, wondering when the sky would begin to show signs of light.  Perhaps we’ve been sick in body.  Perhaps we’ve been sick in heart.

Finally, here comes the dawn.  Maybe we’re still sick, but a sense of relief takes hold.  We’ve made it through the night!  Hallelujah.

“Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”  “You have turned my mourning into dancing.”

It’s been a hard road, as verses 6 and 7 tell us.  “As for me,” according to our poet, “I said in my prosperity, ‘I shall never be moved.’  By your favor, O Lord, you had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed.”

I like the way the New Jerusalem Bible puts it.  “Carefree, I used to think, ‘Nothing can ever shake me!’  Your favour, Yahweh, set me on impregnable heights, but you turned away your face and I was terrified.”  In Biblical thought, when God’s face is turned away, favor, special privilege, is suspended—if not canceled altogether.  Who can say what that would mean for any single person?  For that matter, who can say what that would mean for any single group?

The other night, while we were talking about the virus, Banu wondered about the next thing we’re supposed to be afraid of!

We must admit that for many, favor and special privilege are too often absent.

In 1996, Pastor Soong-Chan Rah and his wife Sue started a church in inner-city Cambridge, Massachusetts.  It is the Central Square neighborhood, positioned between Harvard and MIT.  The students called it “Central Scare.”  That is, “the scary urban neighborhood into which you dare not venture.”[1]

After the church had been going for a little while, Rah was planning a sermon series, but he wondered, “What should I use?”  He considered the gospel of Mark, Paul’s letter to the Romans, or even Revelation, with God’s vision of the heavenly city.  Eventually, he decided to go with the book of Lamentations.  It’s safe to say the church growth gurus rarely suggest that one!

He felt the need to meet the people where they were.  Instead of glossing over their suffering, he wanted to address it.  He wanted to give them the language for it.  He didn’t want the “rah-rah,” exuberance to be the only word that was heard.

The status quo—the way things are now—isn’t necessarily a cause for celebration.  In many ways, the status quo is a cause for mourning, a cause for grief.

In his book, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times, Rah comments, “Christian communities arising from celebration do not want their lives changed, because their lives are in a good place.  Tax rates should remain low.  Home prices and stocks should continue to rise unabated, while interest rates should remain low to borrow more money to feed a lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.”[2]

The book of Lamentations pictures a city and temple that have been destroyed and a people who have been forcibly relocated by a mighty empire.  Jerusalem, who “was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal” (v. 1).  She’s had to exchange her fine garments for a burlap sack.

“Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude; she lives now among the nations and finds no resting place” (v. 3).  They have no place to call their own.

There is something we already incorporate into our worship that has a resemblance to lament.  It’s when we join in our prayer of confession.  When we confess our sin, we admit the wrong in our action and in our inaction.  We do this at the corporate and at the personal levels, that is, as a body and as individuals.  One would presume—one would hope—that at least a smidgen of lamentation goes with it!

As for lament itself, it also is expressed for all of us and for each of us.  Are we to take responsibility, to follow up on lament?  Is it enough to simply “feel bad” when it’s within our power to act?  I would suggest that St. James’ maxim of “faith without works is dead” would apply (2:14-26).

How about when we have little or no control over the situation?

Rev. Rah describes the book of Lamentations in several ways, including that of a funeral dirge.  Already in chapter 1 we see references to widowhood (v. 1), young girls grieving (v. 4), priests and elders perishing (v. 19), and a note that “in the house it is like death” (v. 20).

“Lamentations 1 depicts the reality of death and suffering that leads to the appropriate response of lament.  The city of Jerusalem has died, and Lamentations 1 initiates a funeral dirge in response.”[3]  Jerusalem is a dead body.  It must be acknowledged and mourned.  It must be honored.  “The funeral dirge is a reality check for those who witness suffering and allows mourning that is essential for dealing with death.”[4]

When we mourn, we remember.  Christopher Wright says, “Part of the horror of human suffering is to be unheard, forgotten, and nameless.  Lamentations is a summons to remember.”[5]  It “forces us to listen to every mood that the deepest suffering causes, whether we approve or not.  We are called not to judge, but to witness.  Not to speak, but to listen.”[6]

When Job’s friends heard of his misfortune, they traveled great distances to be with him.  They were true friends, being with him in his pain.  They were witnesses.  Of course, when he began venting his “every mood that the deepest suffering causes,” they began to judge!

Earlier, I expressed the concern about being morbid, being a Debbie Downer.  With that in mind, can we see the power of lament?  Can we see how it helps us to be real?  Can we see how it enables us to honor and care for each other?  Can we see how, through a meandering, circuitous route, lament leads to joy?

Clearly, not everyone has experienced the same degree of sorrow; not everyone has had the same amount of misfortune.  However, I think there’s something we all have in common—something we’ve all gone through.  And that is, the pain of growing up.  The feelings of rejection, of awkwardness, of embarrassment—that’s all part of the package.

For those who are still kids, I can tell you, “Hang on; you will get through it.  It might not seem like it, but you will make it.”  Of course, even as adults we still deal with that stuff, but one hopes we become better able to handle it and learn the lessons it provides.

[photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash]

The remembrance and witness that come with mourning and lament do indeed impart power.  They lead us in the path of Jesus, a man acquainted with sorrows.  He walks with us through those never-ending nights.  And finally, here comes the dawn.  Our mourning gives way to morning.

[1] Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), Kindle edition, Introduction, section 1, paragraph 1.

[2] Rah, Introduction.1.13.

[3] Rah, Epilogue.2.1.

[4] Rah, 2.1.6.

[5] Christopher J. H. Wright, “Lamentations: A Book for Today,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 39:2 (Apr 2015), 59.

[6] Wright, 60.

I said a couple of weeks ago that sometimes events happen during the week that must be addressed on Sunday.  Sometimes it works in reverse.  On Wednesday, Inauguration Day took place in an atmosphere of a, let’s say, rather argumentative transfer of power.  And look at who’s featured in today’s Old Testament reading.  It’s none other than that argumentative prophet, Jonah.  I don’t think he set out to be a curmudgeon, but that’s how he wound up.

I will connect the dots between Inauguration Day and Jonah in a few moments.

Those who know nothing else about him remember that he’s the guy who got swallowed by a fish.  (Or was it a whale?  Whales aren’t fish!)

Of the few memories I have from my brief attendance at Sunday school when I was a kid, one is of the story of Jonah.  (I didn’t start going to church in earnest until I was in my twenties.)

Our teacher, a nice old lady named Mrs. Williams, was fond of using those images that cling to a felt backboard.  Seeing the figures of the prophet and the whale floating on that two-dimensional sea of felt inspired all kinds of questions within me.  How could Jonah possibly survive inside that creature?  He was there for three days and three nights!  How could he breathe?  Why didn’t the animal’s digestive juices go to work on him?

It really doesn’t work to just talk about chapter 3 without telling the rest of the story.  And what a story it is!

The book of Jonah has plenty of satire.  There are numerous places where the humor breaks through.  If you want a story filled with zany and sarcastic images, this is the one for you.  The first word of the book in Hebrew (וַיְהׅי, vayehi) means “and it happened.”  Once upon a time.

The Lord wants Jonah to go to Nineveh and warn the people to turn from their wicked ways.  Something to understand about Nineveh is that it is a bitter enemy of Israel.  It might be the least likely place Jonah would want to visit.  He buys his ticket, but it’s for a ship sailing in the opposite direction.  It’s headed for Tarshish.  It’s thought to have been a city in modern-day Spain, at the other end of the Mediterranean.

So basically, God tells him to go to one place, and he heads off for the other side of the world.

I don’t suppose anyone can relate to Jonah, that is, sensing God would have us do something—and our really not wanting to.  It’s “really not wanting to” to the point of running away as far as possible.

Very briefly, a storm breaks out, and the sailors are doing their best to handle it.  While the tempest is raging, Jonah is down below snoozing; he’s taking a nap.  They wake him up, and he winds up telling the crew to throw him into the sea, and the storm will cease.  Jonah is ready to die.  Anything is better than setting foot in that horrible city.  Even spending time in a fishy gullet beats it!

Jesus speaks of the sign of Jonah (Mt 12:38-41).  He sees himself in Jonah’s three-day tour of the deep.  The ancient Hebrews spoke of Leviathan, the great sea monster dwelling in the watery depths.  Jonah prays, “out of the belly of Sheol I cried” (2:2).  This is a picture of death.  When that critter upchucks the prophet—that must have been a serious case of indigestion—Jonah, figuratively, goes from death to life.  And just as Jonah emerges from the grave, so does Jesus.

I’ll jump ahead to chapter 4, which is after we find out his message has done its job.

This is not what Jonah wanted.  He was hoping they’d shake his hand, say “nice sermon,” and then go right back to their deliciously evil stuff.  Unlike Abraham, who didn’t want Sodom destroyed, Jonah’s already got a spot in mind with a good view of the city.  He’ll set up his lawn chair, kick back, and get ready to watch the fire fall!  Okay Lord, smite them, O mighty smiter!

Unfortunately for Jonah, God has the best interests of the city in mind, and Nineveh is spared.  This is where we’re treated to some of that argumentative character I mentioned at the beginning.  In verse 1, the Hebrew word for “displeased” appears twice, and the word for “angry” (חׇרׇה, charah) literally means “hot,” “to burn.”  One might say Jonah is blazing with fury.

Here’s where I connect some of the dots between Inauguration Day and Jonah.  He would rather die than have things work out for the Ninevites.  Does that sound familiar?  When we watch the news networks, when we peruse social media, it seems like it would kill some people to say something good about “the others.”  I would rather die than give them a thumbs-up!

As for Nineveh, things work out so well that when the king hears Jonah’s message, he not only repents but he also issues a decree.  “No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything.  They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water.  Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God.  All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands” (3:7-8).

Even the animals have to repent!

Maybe it’s clear by now that Jonah is a bundle of contradictions.  He senses his God-given duty, but he fights like the devil against it.  He sets off on the longest journey he possibly can and finds himself back at square one.  The thing that he believed would destroy him becomes the vehicle of his deliverance.  The message of the grace and forgiveness of the Lord becomes in him an occasion for anger and bigotry.

Jonah almost literally has to be dragged kicking and screaming to do his job.  He’s successful in his God-given task, and you better believe, he’s mad as a wet hen about it!  And yet Jesus sees in Jonah a lesson for others.  That’s the power of grace in action.

Maybe we can see in Jonah the contradictions in all of us.  Indeed, even as the book is drawing to a close, Jonah still has his priorities messed up.  He’s upset because the plant that gave him shade from the hot sun has dried up, but he couldn’t care less what happens to the people in the city.

There is another connection between Inauguration Day and Jonah, and it’s a contrast, thanks to Amanda Gorman.  At 22, she is the youngest poet in US history to appear at an inaugural event.  Her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” begins with these words: “When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? / The loss we carry. A sea we must wade. / We braved the belly of the beast.” [1]  Maybe Jonah can relate to that.

["There is always light, if only we're brave enough to see it. If only we're brave enough to be it."]

She also references words from the prophet Micah.  Speaking of the vision of the Lord’s embrace of all peoples, we hear, “they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken” (Mi 4:4).  Vines and fig trees are signs of prosperity.

What a contrast.  Micah speaks of hope and courage, and Jonah sits under a bush, stewing with anger!

Still, we hear the words of Jesus.  “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:43-44).  Inauguration Day was four days ago.  How are we doing with loving our enemies?  Must we regard each other as enemies?

(By the way, the last verse in that passage, verse 48, has created plenty of confusion.  “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  The word “perfect” doesn’t mean “flawless.”  Rather, it means “complete.”  Jesus is saying we are to be completed, we are to be perfected.  In the same way, the US Constitution’s “a more perfect union” doesn’t mean a flawless union.  If that’s the case, Lord help us!)

Now, back to love!  Danielle Kingstrom speaks about love, saying, “Love is…not an easy phenomenon to engage.  It comes out of nowhere and rams into you like a semi-truck on the freeway.  It smashes all your senses and discombobulates your reason.  Of course, people are afraid of it!  It’s an explosion of accident and attention all at once.  What the heck do we do with energy like that when it surges?”[2]

Here’s a lesson for Jonah, and here’s a lesson for us.  She adds, “Love doesn’t have to decide what to ‘do’ about certain groups of people until love is face to face with the person.”  We can be face to face with people in a way that exudes disgust and disdain and dread.  So Jonah, where is the love?  (The Black-Eyed Peas asked that same question.)

“Love is like a mirror…  It shows you where you need to grow…  The thistles and thorns will stick us—it’s challenging to see a reflection of ourselves that we hadn’t expected.  But love is unexpected like that.”  It’s so easy to simply dismiss someone as lacking comprehension or lacking character.

And here’s a crazy thought: even if we hang on to those attitudes, even if we still look on them as enemies—even if we’re still not yet ready to make that step toward freedom—we come right back around to Jesus.  Love ‘em anyway!  Let’s take the actions, and refrain from the actions, that make life harder for them.  We don’t have to wait until bad stuff happens to us.  We can help each other walk a silver, if not a golden, path on this planet.

It’s like the question God poses to Jonah at the very end of the book.  “And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” (4:11).  I like the way the natural order is included in God’s concern.

Jonah doesn’t answer the question.  At least, we’re not told the answer.  What is our answer?

As we enter a new political landscape (and they do come and go), let’s learn a lesson from Jonah—and from Jesus.  When we love our enemies, we must first deal with the enemy within.  (I need to learn this as much as anyone else.)  To the extent we have division and fear inside ourselves, we project division and fear outside into the world.

We need to realize that we are worth loving.  We need to realize that we are loved.  We are loved by our Lord, but to really experience it at the flesh and blood level, we need love face to face.  There are those who never see that.

Let’s love our neighbor and love our enemy.  Who knows?  We might find they’re one and the same!

[1] www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a35268337/amanda-gorman-the-hill-we-climb-poem-biden-inauguration/

[2] www.patheos.com/blogs/daniellekingstrom/2021/01/no-love-let-us-remember-that-we-know-love/

As we learn more about the frightening arsenal that was present at the Capitol building, in and around it, we realize what a “bullet” we dodged.  As horrendous as the loss of life was—and even one is a deplorable tragedy—it could have been much worse.  Many of the rioters were carrying firearms.  Someone even had several Molotov cocktails on hand!

The fact that the attack occurred on the day of the Epiphany of the Lord has not been lost on many.  Epiphany, meaning “manifestation” or “revelation,” is usually illustrated by the visit of the Magi to the Christ child.  It speaks of the light of Christ shown to the Gentiles, to all the nations.

I have developed a new appreciation for Epiphany and the season of Epiphany.  I’m not speaking of magic, but the reality and power of that light, with the prayers of the people, had to have some salutary effect.

Is there a lesson to be learned?  Without a doubt, justice must be done, but if we stop there, we cheat ourselves.  Laying aside the violence at the Capitol (and the threats that continue), our country still suffers deep divisions.  Like it or not, we have to live with each other.

Does compassion have anything to say to us?  “Hold on now,” some might say, “how dare you suggest that?  These are enemies, despicable enemies.  And we know we’re right!”

Now look into a mirror.  What do you see?

Compassion is not weakness.  It is not surrender.  It does not ignore crimes.  It takes a great deal of strength.

(On a side note, here’s a question.  Does compassion correlate to anything physical?  Can it be measured?  There is an episode of Cosmos: Possible Worlds, “The Cosmic Connectome,” hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson that might touch on that.  At the 3:30 mark in the trailer there’s a hint of what the episode says about such things.)

One of my favorite poems on light was written by Brian Turner in his book, Here, Bullet.  He is a US veteran who served in Bosnia and Iraq.  Turner speaks of Ibn al-Haytham.  (His name was Latinized as Alhazen.)  One thousand years ago in present-day Iraq, he developed what would be called the scientific method.  His specialty?  The study of light.  The poem is titled “Alhazen of Basra.”

“If I could travel a thousand years back
to August 1004, to a small tent
where Alhazen has fallen asleep among books
about sunsets, shadows, and light itself,
I wouldn’t ask whether light travels in a straight line,
or what governs the laws of refraction, or how
he discovered the bridgework of analytical geometry;
I would ask about the light within us,
what shines in the mind’s great repository
of dream, and whether he’s studied the deep shadows
daylight brings, how light defines us.”

We have much to learn from Epiphany light.

On Interstate 71, as you travel through Ohio between Columbus and Cincinnati, you encounter an interesting billboard.  You see signs like this in other parts of the country, as well.  I remember when we lived in Corning.  Approaching from the east on I-86, there was another interesting sign.  (I presume it’s still there.)  Perched on a hill, it proclaimed, “Jesus is the answer.”  Banu and I once wondered, “I guess that would depend on the question.”

If you haven’t already figured this out, the sign on I-71 involves religion.  On one side, we’re asked, “If you died today, where would you spend eternity?”  Not to put too fine a point on it, I hope that no one, pondering that question to the point of distraction, crashed their car and wound up meeting their Maker!  The other side of the billboard has a list of the Ten Commandments.

Besides appearing on billboards around the country, we also see the Ten Commandments posted on all manner of things.  But I wonder about that.  Why do we see the Ten Commandments so frequently in public places, but not the Beatitudes of Jesus?  At least, I’ve never seen them.  If I’m correct, why would it be we so rarely see them posted in public?

Is it possible that we’re more comfortable with rules to follow?  That is, with “do”s and “don’t”s?  It should be pointed out, there are levels of meaning in the Ten Commandments.  We do an injustice to them when we reduce to them to a “how to” manual.  They truly present another vision of reality, one that actually is freedom.

Still, it seems like we can more easily get our head around instructions.  Too often it’s, “Please, just tell me what to do!”  I’ve often heard people speak of the entire Bible as rules to live by.

With the Beatitudes of Jesus, we have something very different.  They aren’t instructions; Jesus isn’t telling us what to do.  They aren’t commands; they’re descriptions.  He’s giving us a series of people with qualities who have a blessed life.  (“Blessed” is what the word “beatitude” means.)

If Jesus isn’t laying down the law with the Beatitudes, but rather describing who is blessed, what do we make of them?  Let’s take a look.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (v. 5).  Really?  The meek will inherit the earth?  That’s not what the action movies tell us.  Is Batman meek?  Is James Bond meek?  What does our economy say?  Here’s the next shiny, pretty thing.  Grab it before somebody else does!  Yeah, inherit the earth.  It’s more likely that the meek will inherit jack squat!

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (v. 9).  Well that sounds very nice and good, but when the times get tough, we tend to put our trust in bombs and bullets.

And don’t get me started on “those who are persecuted” (v. 10).  Let’s be honest: isn’t it better to be the one calling the shots?

It’s been pointed out that we might prefer some other beatitudes:[1]

“Blessed are the well-educated, for they will get the good jobs.

“Blessed are the well-connected, for their aspirations will not go unnoticed.

“Blessed are you when you know what you want, and go after it with everything you’ve got, for God helps those who help themselves.”

So as we move through the Beatitudes of Jesus, they pretty much go against what we ordinarily would consider to be blessed.

There are nine of these “blessed”s.  I’ll just focus on two: numbers 5 and 6, that is, verses 7 and 8.  “Blessed are the merciful,” and “blessed are the pure in heart.”

Someone whose reflections I have found helpful and enlightening is Cynthia Bourgeault.  She calls herself “a modern-day mystic, Episcopal priest, writer, and internationally known retreat leader.”[2]

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”  She says Jesus is speaking “to the idea of flow.”[3]  She notes “there’s an exchange going on here: we give mercy and we receive mercy.  And this is not coincidental, for the root of the word ‘mercy’ comes from the old Etruscan merc, which also gives us ‘commerce’ and ‘merchant.’  It’s all about exchange.”

We often think of mercy in the context of something we do not do.  We “have mercy” on someone if we don’t punish them.  We are merciful if we refrain from bringing down the hammer on their heads.  And we usually think of God in the same terms.  We pray, “Lord have mercy,” and “have mercy upon us.”

Sometimes it’s an expression of surprise, even a pleasant surprise.  “Lawd, have mercy!”

Still, as we’ve been told, “there’s an exchange going on here: we give mercy and we receive mercy.”  There are acts of mercy.  In this idea of flow, “mercy is not something God has so much as it’s something that God is.”  Mercy is part of God’s very being.  And by extension, when we participate in God’s mercy, it becomes part of who we are.

Bourgeault continues, “Exchange is the very nature of divine life—of consciousness itself, according to modern neurological science—and all things share in the divine life through participation in this dance of giving and receiving.”  We are connected; we are connected by mercy.  When we refuse mercy, we become separated.  We build a wall.  We cut off the flow of life.  We become hardened.  Jesus would have us melt the ice.

Mercy is closely related to forgiveness.  They both have a sense of self-effacement.  They both have a sense of deference.  They both have a sense of respect.

I’ll revisit something I mentioned a couple of weeks ago: political campaigns.  Election Day is upon us.  Can you believe that political differences have brought friendships to ruin?  Imagine.  “I thought we were friends!”  And it’s especially fun when faith enters the arena.  “How can you call yourself a Christian and support that guy?”  (Or support that gal!)  Remember, when the election is over, we still have to live with each other.

Karen Chamis, our Resource Presbyter, has written about this.[4]  Here’s how a discussion might go: “You can’t vote for A and say you love me.”  “I can vote for A and love you because I’m capable of doing both.”  “No, you can’t vote for A, because what A stands for threatens my existence.”

“One party walks away from the friendship shaking their head at how narrow-minded the other is, and the other walks away wondering if they were ever actually seen by this person in the first place…

“Regardless of what the [election] result is, we’ve changed as a nation and there are things we can’t unsee.  We have work to do as the church, not in pretending the divisions don’t exist and worshipping (again) at the idol of niceness, but in building the kin-dom.”

We will all need to engage in a program of forgiving.  We will all need a refresher course in showing mercy.  With God’s help, we can be mercy.  Since this is All Saints’ Day, we’re reminded of that great cloud of witnesses cheering us on—not to mention the saints alive here and now.

Showing mercy, being mercy, flows right into the next beatitude.  “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”  That’s a blessing like none other: they will see God.

What is purity of heart?  Too often, it has been limited to discussions of being virtuous, of being moral—especially sexually moral.  There is another place in which this purity is addressed.  James 4 says, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.  Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (v. 8).  You can see the focus here.  A pure heart, a clean heart, is not divided.  It is single.

The New Jerusalem Bible puts it in this light: “The nearer you go to God, the nearer God will come to you.  Clean your hands, you sinners, and clear your minds, you waverers.”  More so than any other epistle, St. James’ has the theme of teaching wisdom.  Clearing one’s mind, avoiding wavering, is a sign of wisdom.  There is a flow that can be detected.

Maybe you will notice how “heart” and “mind” are used interchangeably.  The heart is not simply emotion, and the mind is not simply intellect.  There is a unity of wisdom.

When a heart is purified, there is a burning away of chaff, of debris, of residue.  There is a focus on what is clear, what is lucid, what is holy.  Too often, our minds, our hearts—at least, it’s true with mine—run to and fro in a helter-skelter fashion.  There is a sense of being torn.  Sometimes, it can be paralyzing.

Again, here’s Cynthia Bourgeault.  “This Beatitude is not about sexual abstinence; it’s about cleansing the lens of perception.”[5]  I’m reminded of a line from the poet William Blake: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”[6]

Perhaps that is what it means to see God.  Can we see God in others?  Can we see God in those folks with whom we disagree, indeed, even strongly disagree?  I remember someone I knew years ago when I attended the Assemblies of God college in Florida.  He reflected on his approach when dealing with somebody who didn’t like him.  He brought to mind that “Jesus Christ died for him.”  That might be helpful.

Showing mercy, being mercy, frees the way for clearing our minds, for purifying our hearts.  We need that among us, more than we know.

Have mercy, I’m purifying.

[1] www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2203

[2] cynthiabourgeault.org

[3] cac.org/be-merciful-2017-04-19

[4] karenchamis.blog/2020/10/28/scruples

[5] cac.org/be-whole-hearted-2017-04-20

[6] from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”

Stories have come down through the ages about the deaths of heroes and champions.  It is the stuff of legends and sagas.  Tales would be told, and songs would be sung, of their courageous exploits, their daring deeds.  Everyone in the land would be in a state of mourning.  As the time of burial approached, a detachment of servants or soldiers would be selected.  They would be instructed to travel a great distance into the wilderness and bury their departed leader.

Upon their return, they would immediately be slain!  No one was to know the place of burial!

Nothing could be allowed to desecrate the grave, and even more, the memory of the Great One.  It would be solemnly intoned that his like (or on occasion, her like) would never be seen again.

In Deuteronomy 34, Moses climbs the mountain, where he sees the Promised Land.  The Lord tells him, “I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there” (v. 4).  There is a reason why Moses is forbidden to enter the land; we’ll look at that in a moment.

Continuing the idea of the great leader, we’re told in verses 5 and 6: “Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command.  He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day.”  There’s no word on who actually dug the grave.  Maybe it was arranged by an earthquake!

No one is allowed to turn his final resting place into a shrine; it is not to be a place of worship.  After all, that would be out of character for Moses.  In another place, the scripture says, “the man Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth” (Nu 12:3).  You can’t claim to be humble; that has to be said about you.

All of this speaks as to why Moses isn’t allowed to enter the land.  Soon after leaving Egypt, the people complain of thirst in the wilderness (Ex 17:1-7).  The Lord tells Moses to strike the rock with a stick, and water will flow out.  Later on, the same thing happens; there’s no water, but there is grumbling (Nu 20:2-13).  This time he’s supposed to speak to the rock, but he again whacks it with a club, releasing the water.

This act of disobedience might not seem like a big deal to us, but it does point to a greater concern.  One writer says, “Nobody is irreplaceable…  The message to the community…is that there will be no freelancing in positions of authority.  Leaders are to work within their prescribed roles and not beyond.”[1]  That’s some sage advice for all of us.

To be clear, it’s not like God is smacking Moses down.  God isn’t saying, “You blew it!  Hit the road, Jack!”  After all, verse 10 says, “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.”  That’s some very high praise indeed!

I want to focus on Moses and his role when it comes to transition.  Timothy Simpson says, “Before the end, God takes Moses up for a panoramic view, not of where he had been and of what he had accomplished, but where the people were going and where he would not follow.”[2]

As intentional interim pastors, the Presbyterian Church requires at least two weeks of specialized training.  Our first week was in Montreat, North Carolina.  Our second week was in Pittsburgh.  One of the themes at the training was the BFP—beloved former pastor.  This would be someone who had a long tenure.  His or her pastorate would often be considered one of the highlights in the history of the congregation.

Before I go any farther, I should say, as you know, memories of the past are not always good ones!  Sometimes they go the other way.

At the training, a story was told of a pastor who, after leaving a church, moved to the other side of the country.  However, there was a husband and wife determined to track him down.  To put it bluntly, they decided to stalk him.  Upon discovering his new address, they came up with a plan.  They took a frozen fish, allowed it to thaw, put it in a package, and mailed it to him.

What in the world could have been their motivation?  Maybe they felt like he didn’t pass the smell test?  Or perhaps there’s another explanation.  Could it be the couple had a reputation for always carping about something?

Whatever the case, having a rotten fish delivered to someone’s doorstep is hardly a fresh approach to a dispute!

Moses could be thought of as a BFP, a beloved former pastor.  Just as we see in today’s scripture, it is important to do three things: to eulogize, to mourn, and to move on.

A quick word about eulogizing: the word “eulogy” comes from two Greek words which mean “good words.”  To eulogize someone is to “speak well” of them, to praise them.  It is possible to eulogize someone who is still alive; we just don’t often use the word that way.

When remembering a beloved leader, it is entirely appropriate and necessary to eulogize, to celebrate the wonderful things he or she has done.

Look at the way Moses is eulogized.  “Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated” (v. 7).  Now that’s what I call aging well!  At the time of death, Moses apparently has the sight and stamina of a young man.  He was ripped.

But that’s not all.  “He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt…”  And if that’s not enough, “for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel” (vv. 11-12).  The memory of Moses inspires more praise, even legendary praise.

If it is important to eulogize, it is also important to mourn.  Mourning is not simply a feeling or an emotion associated with loss.  It is an action; it’s something we actually do.  As you see in the scripture, the people mourned for Moses for thirty days.  That doesn’t mean they were crying 24/7, but that they had certain rituals.

We also have rituals of mourning.  Something we do at the national or state level is fly the flag at half-mast.  And of course, a very familiar ritual is the funeral service.

Rituals of mourning can be very personal: going to a certain place with special meaning, listening to a particular piece of music, preparing a certain dish—the possibilities are endless!

Jesuit writer Stefan Kiechle speaks about mourning in the context of making decisions.  That is, mourn the possibilities and opportunities you did not choose.  They’re gone; you can’t turn back the clock.  It’s what Robert Frost says in his poem, “The Road not Taken.”  While walking in the forest, he comes upon a fork in the road.  He makes his choice, but wonders where the other road would have taken him.  Still, he says, “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.”

But this also applies when someone beloved has left.  “People frequently overlook this need for mourning.  In the absence of mourning, there will be a tendency to cling for too long” to the departed one.[3]  Failing that, one will likely feel “dissatisfied, indeed restless, without any kind of inner peace.”[4]

We must be able to say goodbye.

Mourning, even if it’s for someone still alive, implies we ourselves have suffered a kind of death.  We have to acknowledge we have suffered a death in order for life to go on—and for a life that, in some mysterious way, can lead to joy.  And perhaps, it can be a joy we have never known.

In John 12, Jesus says “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (v. 24).  It is necessary, so to speak, for the grain to suffer a kind of death in order to keep living.  And it is a life that is fruitful, “it bears much fruit.”

Giving the gift of a good goodbye is a key part of moving on.  That’s the third part of my sermon title: eulogize, mourn, and move on.

It may seem heartless to say to someone who’s been mourning, “Okay, it’s time to move on.  Life goes on.”  And it’s possible that somebody who offers that advice might not want to deal with a person in mourning.  Everyone mourns in their own way and at their own pace.

Having said that, we do indeed move on.  Again, think of Moses as a transitional figure.  Look at what verse 9 says.  After the time of mourning for Moses ended, we read “Joshua…was full of the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands on him; and the Israelites obeyed him, doing as the Lord had commanded Moses.”  The Israelites know it is time to move on.

Moving on doesn’t only apply to the people, to the community.  I mentioned a few moments ago about “giving the gift of a good goodbye.”  This involves the leader, especially a beloved leader.  Failing to give the gift of a good goodbye indicates a refusal to let go.  This can apply to anyone in a position of leadership: pastors, politicians, even parents.

In our scripture, it is time for Moses to move on.  (Please understand, moving on doesn’t always mean somebody has to die!)  But Moses moves on, and now it’s time for Joshua.  The people have new challenges; a new chapter is being written.  This transition means Joshua steps onto the stage.

This play has a divine director, and in Joshua 3, we again hear the instructions regarding Moses’ understudy.  The Lord said to Joshua, “This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that I will be with you as I was with Moses” (v. 7).

What is Joshua’s first message after he takes the oath of office, so to speak?  (I want to get this out of the way!)  He tells the people their God “is the living God who without fail will drive out from before you” all the nations (v. 10).  If you read the rest of the book, you’ll see what that means is genocide, or at least, attempted genocide.  If you’re wondering how a loving God—no, a God who is love—could require such a thing, you’re not alone.

The truth is, that was not an uncommon form of warfare then, and sadly, it’s still with us.  A call of the Hebrew prophets was to no longer mimic the other nations, indeed, to be a light to them (Is 42:6, 49:6, 51:14).  It’s hard to be a light to someone you’re slaughtering.  We are capable of even the most heinous activity, and the most trivial activity, if we believe we’re serving God.

Moving on!  The Israelites face a bit of a hindrance in their journey: the Jordan River, which we’re told is at its yearly flood stage.  What are they to do?  Simple.  Now there are twelve priests bearing the ark of the covenant, which was built to hold the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments.  As soon as they set foot in the river, the water will stop, and there will be dry land for everyone to cross over.  Easy-peasy.

We have echoes of Moses leading the people through the Red Sea, and here is Joshua following in his footsteps.  The nation faces a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.

Put yourself in their shoes.  What are you thinking?  What are you feeling?  Are you overjoyed?  Are you supremely confident?  Or is there something else?  Are you anxious?  Are you terrified?  Do you feel abandoned?  Do you feel betrayed?  Do you feel rage?  Can we see ourselves as facing our own Jordan River, and with the river overflowing its banks?  This time of pandemic can seem uncrossable.

Banu and I have had those thoughts, those emotions.  It can feel like suffocation, or more appropriately, it can feel like drowning.  Seriously, what sane person can believe the river is going to make way for us, just so we can stroll to the other side?

I wonder, when will we be able to have people over for dinner?  What about Thanksgiving and Christmas?  What about Super Bowl parties?  (We like to have those; we even invite people who couldn’t care less about the game!  It’s just fun!)

We might find ourselves eulogizing.  We praise the way things were before.  Sure, they weren’t great, but they were better than this!  We mourn.  As I said earlier, it is important to mourn and to acknowledge that we are mourning, otherwise, it will be impossible to move on.  And so, are we ready to move on?

It would be easy to just to settle down next to the river.  I think we could get used to life there.  Despite everything that’s happened, it could be worse.  As just noted, we all have our Jordan River; we have it as a congregation.  We have it as a nation, just like those ancient Israelites.  However, if we don’t plunge ahead, if we don’t take that first step into the racing river, if we don’t trust where God is leading, we become complacent.  We lose our joy.  The colors are not so vivid.  They become a gray wash.

There is the promise of God given by the prophet, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you” (Is 43:2).  We eulogize.  We mourn.  And by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, we move on.

[1] www.politicaltheology.com/blog/the-politics-of-being-replaced-deuteronomy-341-12

[2] www.politicaltheology.com/blog/the-politics-of-being-replaced-deuteronomy-341-12

[3] Stefan Kiechle, The Art of Discernment (Notre Dame, IN:  Ave Maria Press, 2005), 76.

[4] Kiechle, 77.