A Little Book Of Comfort
Sermon
LIGHT IN THE LAND OF SHADOWS
Sermons For Advent, Christmas And Epiphany, Cycle B
The lectionary text for today is part of a larger unit that has sometimes been called "The Little Book of Comfort." Old Testament scholars view Jeremiah 30-31 as a collection of independent oracles inserted into the book of Jeremiah to introduce the hopeful chapter 32 where the prophet of doom evidences his faith in the ultimate redemption of God by purchasing a field at Anathoth.1
Certainly all of us need our little books of comfort. Life deals us its downs with its ups, its discomforts with its comforts. We practice certain idiosyncrasies of comfort which can be summoned to assist us in situations where despair and anguish seem to be our only options. Many a child will sit in a worship service and make it through particularly boring sermons by counting the number of pipes on the organ or the number of light bulbs in the chandeliers. It provides something to focus on through the perceived difficult ordeal of the moment.
Our society has witnessed a proliferation of "Little Books of Comfort." Many individuals find it helpful to read daily meditations that speak with compassion and offer solace and guidance on such issues as intimacy and relationships. Most widely used are perhaps those which give a measure of support for individuals in a Twelve-Step program. People seeking hope for lasting recovery from sex addiction, alcohol addiction, and other forms of negative addictions would not be caught without their book of daily meditations. That little book of comfort is a day-by-day reminder of their belief in a Higher Power. When we enter many general bookstores today, we find that some books which would formerly have been cataloged as "Religion" are shelved under such headings as "Inspiration," "Spirituality," or "Wellness and Recovery." Little books of comfort serve like a crucifix or rosary in providing people daily wisdom and hope in situations of potential defeat. Today's lectionary text may well have been read as part of a larger "little book of comfort" by the exilic community of Israel. It deserves its place in the shelves of "wellness and recovery."
In a genuine way the second Sunday after Christmas is a time for us to open a little book of comfort as we seek some wellness and recovery. Many of the Christmas gifts have been returned or broken. Family members have returned to their place of residence. The Christmas bills are beginning to arrive in the mail. Perhaps the invitation to Israel in exile, uttered by Jeremiah, can bring us some glad imperatives.
The text responds to a people who live in resignation. It chronicles the possibility of newness. It calls forth a hopeful imagination out of a memory of deadliness. It asserts that the promise of God, sealed in covenant, has been saved. Israel is called to notice something new. A great pilgrimage of people is headed home. These are people who never thought they would have a home. Included in their ranks are the blind, the lame, and the pregnant women. These vulnerable and dependent people are always at risk. After speaking to these pilgrims in the first person, God addresses the nations, putting them on notice as to the coming wellness and recovery of God's vulnerable people. The speech is one that breaks the gridlock of resignation:
1. The other nations can do little to prevent God from faithfully leading his sheep.
2. Creation will be redeemed. Death will be beaten back and reliable "brooks of water" will transform the arid environment.
3. Older people and younger people will engage together in celebrative parties.
4. Priests and people will live together in a restored community, anchored in God's creative joy, life, and gladness.
In short, the people with horrible memories of exile, defeat, desperation, and despair are called to embrace the fact that God will deliver on God's promise/covenant with them. God's outrageous generosity will be on display for the nations to witness. The darkness of exile, despite its best efforts, has not been able to defeat the promise of God.
The people who have believed only in a promise, when there was no tangible evidence to support it, have a new creation. They only have to trust God's generosity.
Christmas itself is an act against the darkness that threatens life. Jesus' ministry reiterates the power of God to push back the darkness of life, and his resurrection attests to the fact that even death cannot overturn God's new creation.
All of us need a little book of comfort as we try to live our lives believing in this promise of new life.
Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., built the General Motors Corporation. His wife, whom he idolized, died and Mr. Sloan was inconsolable. He sat like a granite cliff, strong and rugged. This man who had put together one of the giant industries in our country and possessed one of the most brilliant organizational and scientific minds in history, called a minister friend to his Fifth Avenue apartment. He opened the conversation by saying, "I want to ask you a question. I want a straight answer. I don't want any equivocation. And I want the answer to be yes or no, based on facts. My wife has died. She meant everything to me. What I want you to tell me is this: Will I see her again?"
His friend looked at him and said, "The answer is yes."
All of us want some straight answers about the Promised Land. What's it like there? It's obviously a difficult question to answer without equivocation because none of us has ever been there. Jeremiah lived centuries ago and the connection between our society and his may not offer the same tribute to wellness and recovery.
All we can do is live our lives believing in that same promise of a new creation. The image of a promised land after this earthly life is over is hardly a Christian phenomenon. Some religions have been quite specific about the nature and location of this future home. Geronimo, the great American Indian, wrote of a home in the American West that the god Usen had created for each Apache. The religion of Islam depicts heaven as a marvelous garden filled with wonderful food, drink, and companions. The heavenly home is so graphically described in the Quran and in other Muslim literature that many Muslims are quite eager to die in order to achieve this paradise. Life after death is one of the most ancient and persistent hopes of the human race, yet it is such an uncharted experience that some believe it may be a testimony to the power of wishful thinking.
One of the obvious powers available to us when we believe in a place beyond our earthly time is the power to stand up to the things we fear most. If you have to see something to believe in it, then your life will not accomplish much. A man by the name of William Lloyd Garrison got it into his mind that slavery was against the will of God. Yet everywhere he looked the survival of the economic system depended on slavery. He lived by the promise that an economic system lay in the future that could be prosperous without slavery. He lived by what he could not immediately see.
A woman named Susan B. Anthony lived by a promise. She, in 1857, stood up in a teachers' meeting and introduced a resolution that women should be educated on a parity with men. The mob became so furious she had to slip out a back door. The presiding officer said women getting an education would be a sin and the beginning of the end of marriage. They threw rotten eggs at Susan B. Anthony in Syracuse and waved knives and pistols at her. Finally, in Albany, New York, policemen had to be placed all around the building where she spoke and the mayor sat on the podium with a loaded revolver to protect her. The public argued that if you educate women on an equality with men -- listen to this -- you'll destroy their biological urges and they will not want to be the mothers of the human race. Susan B. Anthony lived by the promise that women could go to college and still have biological urges. She got that right.
In like manner, Jeremiah's little book of comfort flings a strident speech of God into a society trying to understand its own cultural situation of despair, defeat, and dehumanization -- God promises to act against exile. Whenever people live in resignation, believing no newness is possible, God invades the world and overturns exile. God replaces mourning with joy and darkness with light.
Christmas is an act against exile. Jesus' teachings are acts against exile. Jesus' miracles are acts against exile. Jesus' resurrection is an act against exile. And Jesus' promise of heaven is the ultimate promise for us against exile.
The people in Jeremiah's world are told that God is against exile. Israel is invited to believe in that promise and sing along. God saves the promise. The deathly grip of the past is broken.
We, too, are a great pilgrimage of people headed home. We are in a season which proclaims that God has once again invaded the world and created newness of life.
The God who gives us Jesus of Nazareth is a God who keeps a promise.
____________
1. See Elizabeth Achtemeier, Jeremiah (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987), p. 86. This work is part of the Knox Preaching Guides, edited by John H. Hayes.
Certainly all of us need our little books of comfort. Life deals us its downs with its ups, its discomforts with its comforts. We practice certain idiosyncrasies of comfort which can be summoned to assist us in situations where despair and anguish seem to be our only options. Many a child will sit in a worship service and make it through particularly boring sermons by counting the number of pipes on the organ or the number of light bulbs in the chandeliers. It provides something to focus on through the perceived difficult ordeal of the moment.
Our society has witnessed a proliferation of "Little Books of Comfort." Many individuals find it helpful to read daily meditations that speak with compassion and offer solace and guidance on such issues as intimacy and relationships. Most widely used are perhaps those which give a measure of support for individuals in a Twelve-Step program. People seeking hope for lasting recovery from sex addiction, alcohol addiction, and other forms of negative addictions would not be caught without their book of daily meditations. That little book of comfort is a day-by-day reminder of their belief in a Higher Power. When we enter many general bookstores today, we find that some books which would formerly have been cataloged as "Religion" are shelved under such headings as "Inspiration," "Spirituality," or "Wellness and Recovery." Little books of comfort serve like a crucifix or rosary in providing people daily wisdom and hope in situations of potential defeat. Today's lectionary text may well have been read as part of a larger "little book of comfort" by the exilic community of Israel. It deserves its place in the shelves of "wellness and recovery."
In a genuine way the second Sunday after Christmas is a time for us to open a little book of comfort as we seek some wellness and recovery. Many of the Christmas gifts have been returned or broken. Family members have returned to their place of residence. The Christmas bills are beginning to arrive in the mail. Perhaps the invitation to Israel in exile, uttered by Jeremiah, can bring us some glad imperatives.
The text responds to a people who live in resignation. It chronicles the possibility of newness. It calls forth a hopeful imagination out of a memory of deadliness. It asserts that the promise of God, sealed in covenant, has been saved. Israel is called to notice something new. A great pilgrimage of people is headed home. These are people who never thought they would have a home. Included in their ranks are the blind, the lame, and the pregnant women. These vulnerable and dependent people are always at risk. After speaking to these pilgrims in the first person, God addresses the nations, putting them on notice as to the coming wellness and recovery of God's vulnerable people. The speech is one that breaks the gridlock of resignation:
1. The other nations can do little to prevent God from faithfully leading his sheep.
2. Creation will be redeemed. Death will be beaten back and reliable "brooks of water" will transform the arid environment.
3. Older people and younger people will engage together in celebrative parties.
4. Priests and people will live together in a restored community, anchored in God's creative joy, life, and gladness.
In short, the people with horrible memories of exile, defeat, desperation, and despair are called to embrace the fact that God will deliver on God's promise/covenant with them. God's outrageous generosity will be on display for the nations to witness. The darkness of exile, despite its best efforts, has not been able to defeat the promise of God.
The people who have believed only in a promise, when there was no tangible evidence to support it, have a new creation. They only have to trust God's generosity.
Christmas itself is an act against the darkness that threatens life. Jesus' ministry reiterates the power of God to push back the darkness of life, and his resurrection attests to the fact that even death cannot overturn God's new creation.
All of us need a little book of comfort as we try to live our lives believing in this promise of new life.
Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., built the General Motors Corporation. His wife, whom he idolized, died and Mr. Sloan was inconsolable. He sat like a granite cliff, strong and rugged. This man who had put together one of the giant industries in our country and possessed one of the most brilliant organizational and scientific minds in history, called a minister friend to his Fifth Avenue apartment. He opened the conversation by saying, "I want to ask you a question. I want a straight answer. I don't want any equivocation. And I want the answer to be yes or no, based on facts. My wife has died. She meant everything to me. What I want you to tell me is this: Will I see her again?"
His friend looked at him and said, "The answer is yes."
All of us want some straight answers about the Promised Land. What's it like there? It's obviously a difficult question to answer without equivocation because none of us has ever been there. Jeremiah lived centuries ago and the connection between our society and his may not offer the same tribute to wellness and recovery.
All we can do is live our lives believing in that same promise of a new creation. The image of a promised land after this earthly life is over is hardly a Christian phenomenon. Some religions have been quite specific about the nature and location of this future home. Geronimo, the great American Indian, wrote of a home in the American West that the god Usen had created for each Apache. The religion of Islam depicts heaven as a marvelous garden filled with wonderful food, drink, and companions. The heavenly home is so graphically described in the Quran and in other Muslim literature that many Muslims are quite eager to die in order to achieve this paradise. Life after death is one of the most ancient and persistent hopes of the human race, yet it is such an uncharted experience that some believe it may be a testimony to the power of wishful thinking.
One of the obvious powers available to us when we believe in a place beyond our earthly time is the power to stand up to the things we fear most. If you have to see something to believe in it, then your life will not accomplish much. A man by the name of William Lloyd Garrison got it into his mind that slavery was against the will of God. Yet everywhere he looked the survival of the economic system depended on slavery. He lived by the promise that an economic system lay in the future that could be prosperous without slavery. He lived by what he could not immediately see.
A woman named Susan B. Anthony lived by a promise. She, in 1857, stood up in a teachers' meeting and introduced a resolution that women should be educated on a parity with men. The mob became so furious she had to slip out a back door. The presiding officer said women getting an education would be a sin and the beginning of the end of marriage. They threw rotten eggs at Susan B. Anthony in Syracuse and waved knives and pistols at her. Finally, in Albany, New York, policemen had to be placed all around the building where she spoke and the mayor sat on the podium with a loaded revolver to protect her. The public argued that if you educate women on an equality with men -- listen to this -- you'll destroy their biological urges and they will not want to be the mothers of the human race. Susan B. Anthony lived by the promise that women could go to college and still have biological urges. She got that right.
In like manner, Jeremiah's little book of comfort flings a strident speech of God into a society trying to understand its own cultural situation of despair, defeat, and dehumanization -- God promises to act against exile. Whenever people live in resignation, believing no newness is possible, God invades the world and overturns exile. God replaces mourning with joy and darkness with light.
Christmas is an act against exile. Jesus' teachings are acts against exile. Jesus' miracles are acts against exile. Jesus' resurrection is an act against exile. And Jesus' promise of heaven is the ultimate promise for us against exile.
The people in Jeremiah's world are told that God is against exile. Israel is invited to believe in that promise and sing along. God saves the promise. The deathly grip of the past is broken.
We, too, are a great pilgrimage of people headed home. We are in a season which proclaims that God has once again invaded the world and created newness of life.
The God who gives us Jesus of Nazareth is a God who keeps a promise.
____________
1. See Elizabeth Achtemeier, Jeremiah (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987), p. 86. This work is part of the Knox Preaching Guides, edited by John H. Hayes.
