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.