Beyond Power and Privilege (Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7)

A story told by Will Willimon about an event from his adolescence sets the stage for our encounter with God’s Word this morning.

Confessing that “it may sound trivial,” Willimon is tempted to believe that a world changing seismic shift happened in his town one Sunday evening in 1963.

He writes,

Then, in Greenville, South Carolina, in defiance of the state’s time-honored blue laws, the Fox Theater opened on Sunday. Seven of us–regular attenders of the Methodist Youth Fellowship at Buncombe Street Church–made a pact to enter the front door of the church, be seen, then quietly slip out the back door and join John Wayne at the Fox. (Resident Aliens, p. 15)

Some of you may be familiar with the kind of blue-law Sunday restrictions Willimon describes, but you can be forgiven if you’re not. Apart from Chick-fil-a’s closed on Sunday policy and some restrictions in some places on when you can buy alcohol, they’ve largely disappeared from the culture. It’s worth noting, though, that even until the not so distant past, businesses and all manner of cultural and civic groups treated Sunday differently, or were required to treat Sunday differently, by imposing sometimes draconian limits on what people could do on the first day of the week.

Here are some classic examples.

In colonial Boston, Captain John Kemble was arrested and put in stocks for two hours for kissing his wife on the Sunday that he returned home from three years at sea.

In 1789, President George Washington was on his way from Connecticut to attend church in New York when he was charged with a blue law violation for unnecessarily walking or riding on Sunday.

[And in 1917, after the “New York Giants and Cincinnati Reds played the first Sunday major league baseball game at the Polo Grounds, [the managers of both teams were arrested for violating the blue laws.] (Gotham Gazette)

A little closer to home, I grew up playing youth baseball in southern Indiana when it was inconceivable that any game would ever start before noon on Sunday, and, while I don’t remember legal restrictions being in place in my hometown, I do remember the astonishing moment when my grandmother decided that it was ok to stop by the grocery after church and pick up something for the family’s Sunday dinner, breaking her own, long-standing practice of not buying anything or doing any business on the Lord’s Day.

Now of course there’s a big difference between an individual or even a private business choosing to forgo certain activities on Sundays and having those same limitations imposed on them under penalty of law.

The Bible calls for the faithful to “honor the sabbath and keep it holy,” but bringing the coercive force of the law and fear of punishment into the situation really does change the relationship, doesn’t it?

For a very long time, many religious leaders and institutions in this country understood themselves as benefitting from this set up. Simply stated, it was thought that creating an environment in which there was nothing else for people to do on Sunday morning was good for the Church. But the reason I started with Willimon’s story this morning is his willingness to point out what might’ve been good for attendance was ultimately bad for discipleship.

Far from pining for the return of aggressively regressive blue laws, Willimon describes these pressures as something like a crutch whose removal after years–even centuries–of depending upon for support, left the Church with atrophied muscles and a halting gait.

Again, he writes,

On that night, Greenville, South Carolina…served notice that it would no longer be a prop for the church. There would be no more free passes for the church, no more free rides. (p. 15-16)

In other words, with its crutches and props removed, the Church would have to learn to stand and walk on its own.

Unfortunately, old habits die hard and the legacy of the Church’s once privileged position still shapes so much of what does and doesn’t happen in our congregations and denominations.

Evangelism strategies that once filled church pews, are no longer intelligible, much less effective.

The notion that we can count on people to learn the basic Bible stories almost by osmosis just by existing in this culture is folly.

The assumption that births, and deaths, and weddings will bring families back to “their church” for an opportunity to renew connections as the community grieves or celebrates together is quickly fading away, if not already gone.

This is how Brad Brisco, a church mission strategist, describes the contemporary situation,

At the same time, the church is less and less effective at reaching a changing world, many in the church continue to believe the church maintains a central role in the life of culture. So instead of leaning toward the missionary vision of the church…we default to church as a “place where certain things happen,” and we wrongly assume that those outside the church will be interested. But…that simply isn’t the case.

We need to admit that it’s been really hard and kind of scary for the Church to get used to walking, or marching, or even getting on our knees and praying without our old crutch.

That’s the reality into which the prophet Jeremiah speaks a word of truth to us this morning.

We’ve reached the point in Jeremiah’s ministry when even the Kingdom of Judah’s most optimistic–even sycophantic–supporters had to admit defeat. The armies of Babylon had swept over the land and carried thousands of Judeans away.

Any hopes that they were in control of their own destiny, that they were owed a privileged place in society, that a military, or economic, or even a miraculous crutch would appear to save their limping kingdom had been dashed.

They were on their own, exiles–strangers in a strange land.

These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent [to them]...Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

I’m struck by the simplicity of this word to the exiles.

It’s like God is telling them to take baby steps or giving them their first set of exercises post-surgery.

It’s a total reset of life and faith, almost like learning to walk again.

Build houses, and gardens, and families, the prophet writes. In essence, start putting your life and your community back together. Tend to the relationships that matter. Do the things that help you get stronger, more stable, more secure, and remember that it’s ok to find happiness, to be glad that you’re alive.

“Multiply there, and do not decrease.” This is no time to give up, says Jeremiah. It’s time to be reborn.

And then–and this is such an important message to a people who had forsaken justice, who had come to see relationships as self-serving transactions, as opportunities to grift—“seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

This new beginning is going to require a new way of doing things, so set aside the pride and greed that made you believe that it was all about you, that the world should cater to you, that your neighbors, especially the poor, were there to serve you.

Get rid of that and start finding yourself in the ways of service, of elevating a common good rather than personal privilege, of learning to pray for people that you don’t even like.

That was Jeremiah’s message to the exiles, and, when we stop to think about it, it’s not all that different from what Jesus would one day tell his disciples as they struggled to learn how to rebuild their lives in the space beyond power and privilege.

“Whoever wishes to be great among you,” said Jesus, “must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave, just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mt 20:25-28)

I like to think of Jeremiah as a preacher of rock bottom grace because he understood that when you’ve fallen as far as you can fall, your only real choice is to plant your feet, kick up, and start your way back to the surface.

Or, to return to Willimon’s image, maybe it’s time to set aside your crutches and learn to walk again.

That was the substance of Jeremiah’s message to Judah’s exiles, but it still resonates with those who have had their hearts broken, their lives turned upside down, or who hear the news each day and ask, “what is this strange place and how did I get here?”

It’s also a message for limping churches.

This is no time to give up. It’s time to be reborn.

Through the prophet, God told the people to take baby steps and gave them their first set of exercises post-surgery.

It was a total reset of life and faith, like learning to walk again, only this time, they would walk on a path that leads beyond power and privilege.

They would walk on the path God was building to their true selves, to their neighbors, to one another, to a future with hope.

May it be the path to always travel. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Things that Never Were (Lamentations 1:1-6)

Have you ever heard of the Mandela Effect? It’s a term used to describe the phenomenon of a large group of people misremembering a detail about an event or item in popular culture.

For example, do you remember the iconic scene in Stars Wars: The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader said, “Luke, I am your father.”

No, you don’t remember that, because that’s not what he said. The actual line is “No, I am your father.”

What about “Life is like a box of chocolates,” the famous line from Forrest Gump.

Nope. Momma always said, “life was like a box of chocolates.”

Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw had a lot of sex in the city, but her show is called “Sex and the City.”

Jiffy peanut butter doesn’t exist. Skippy peanut butter does, though, and so does Jif.

And what about that classic cartoon starring Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty–is that the Flinstones or Flintstones? It’s Flintstones, with two ts.

Now of course unless you’re really into copyright law or are passionate about intellectual property, none of these are matters of great significance. I mean, maybe they can score your team a few points at your next trivia night, but that’s about it.

And for heaven’s sake, don’t be the guy who corrects the little kid in the Darth Vader costume on Halloween.

Ultimately, the Mandela Effect just places a label on something that we all do and that we’ve all experienced. Capable of taking in an incredible amount of information, our brains also sort that information, assess it, file it away, and from time to time, fill in missing gaps. As a consequence, we sometimes get a detail wrong, or we forget it, or we conflate it with something else, or maybe we just kinda make it up.

It’s a bit like an optical illusion, a trick of the mind.

A misremembered movie line or a forgotten detail about a cartoon character from your childhood is usually the stuff of light-hearted fun. It’s not a big deal.

However, individually and collectively, we’re also capable of weaving misremembered facts and details about our lives into a story that can, indeed, become very important.

Sometimes the way we sort, assess, file away, and fill in information says more about our hearts and souls than our attention to detail and memory recall.

What I mean specifically is that we’re all capable of creating a story or even a myth about ourselves that can become an impediment to personal growth and faithful discipleship.

Perhaps we misremember the truth about ourselves and who God created us to be and come to believe instead that we can do no wrong, or that we can never be right.

Instead of finding purpose and meaning in the Good News that we are made in God’s Image, created for community, and, by God’s grace, forgiven, loved, and free, we become convinced that we’ve wandered too far away from God to ever be welcomed home again, that we’ll always be unlovable, or that grace is for losers and we’re doing just fine on our own, thank you very much.

It’s like the Mandela Effect, except all information is filtered through either a self-serving or self-sabotaging lens, and we fill in the gaps accordingly.

There’s the person who was born on third base and thinks they hit a triple, the one who believes that the circumstances of their birth sets them apart from others as being morally superior, destined to lead, a master of the universe.

There’s somebody else who hears so many degrading things said about them and is surrounded by so much negativity that they take it for granted that they’ll always be second class, inferior, a nobody.

“The mind is a wonderful thing,” writes Leo Babauta at the website Zen Habits. “It’s also a complete liar that constantly tries to convince us not to take actions we know are good for us, and stops many great changes in our lives.”

And when more and more people believe the same lie, the lie spreads and gains power.

White supremacy and its progeny are the most obvious and impactful of these mass misremembering in our nation’s history, but there are others. Misogyny, homophobia, Christian hegemony, the notion that might-makes-right, that wealth imbues one with wisdom or virtue, the list goes on.

Any combination of arrogance and power that stifles dissenting voices and refuses to admit, much less, repent of and correct its wrongs–these are the destructive stories, myths, and lies that faithful hearts must leave behind.

The ministry of Jeremiah the prophet helped God’s people leave behind what they could no longer carry.

His was a clear-eyed reality check that invited the people to grieve their losses and, when they began to see the light again, to walk into a new day as a changed people.

We’ve read several passages from the Book of Jeremiah recently, that despite being twenty-five hundred years old, are as contemporary as our most recent text messages. These are passages filled with worry, grief, and disillusionment.

Jeremiah lamented personal losses, losses in his community, losses that fundamentally challenged everything he thought he knew.

Homes, dreams, freedoms, loved ones, even God’s own Temple–all gone.

But today, a reading from Lamentations, the Book of Jeremiah’s companion volume, shows us how Jeremiah also helped the people to let go of what never was, to leave behind the misremembered stories they believed about themselves that could block their path to a future with God.

In fact, one section from our passage speaks directly to this challenge.

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!

She that was a princess among the provinces

has become subject to forced labor.

Now here’s the line that caught my attention.

She weeps bitterly in the night,

with tears on her cheeks;

among all her lovers,

she has no one to comfort her;

all her friends have dealt treacherously with her;

they have become her enemies.

From Jeremiah’s perspective, the abandoned lover was the Kingdom of Judah who, despite compromising its covenant with God and sacrificing its understanding of justice in order to pursue alliances with other nations, still found itself all alone when hard times came.

Again, according to the prophet, this was the fallout of a people who changed who they were and what they valued in order to gain the affections and protections of neighbors who were happy to take what they wanted, but couldn’t be counted on to give anything of substance to the relationship.

Jeremiah wanted the people to know that trying to secure a future by compromising themselves and casting aside their God-given distinctiveness would always be a fool’s errand. It was an empty promise, a lie, a myth, and now they needed to consciously walk away from it.

Only acknowledge your guilt,

that you have rebelled against the Lord your God

and scattered your favors among strangers under every green tree

and have not obeyed my voice,

says the Lord.

Return, O faithless children…(Jeremiah 3)

Today God’s Word invites us to an essential task–to commit ourselves to recognizing and leaving behind the lies about ourselves and others that we’ve accepted as true–lies that hold us back, or puff us up, lies that convince us we’re unlovable, or that we’re just so great why would be need anything like grace or mercy anyway?

God invites us to leave behind all of this, the things that never were, and to come home.

After all, we’re all capable of creating a story or even a myth that can become an impediment to personal growth and faithful discipleship, but God says come back to what is true, come back to the Good News that you are made in God’s Image, created for community, and, by God’s grace, you are forgiven, loved, and free.

Thanks be to God for this Good News. Amen.