Do Over! (Sermon)

“Do Over!”

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/21/16

         Jeremiah is distraught. God has called him to speak bold truth to wayward Israel. He’s doing it, but it’s killing him.

Just prior to today’s reading, Jeremiah cries out, “My anguish! My anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the walls of my heart!” The prophet’s lament over Jerusalem recalls King David discovering his beloved but treacherous son Absalom hanging dead in a tree by his hair: “O my son Absalom,” he wails, “my son, my son Absalom! Would that I had died instead of you!”

         Out of that same tortured love, Jeremiah dares to name the people’s failings: foolishness, stupidity, willful denseness of heart and mind, and their conspicuous preference for evil over good.

         What if I sidestepped pastoral sensitivity and began to connect specific names with specific acts of selfishness, greed, pride, and idolatry right here at Jonesborough Presbyterian? For reasons that reveal my own selfishness, greed, pride, and idolatry, I won’t do that. After spewing such judgment, instead of crying for you, “My anguish! My anguish,” my lament would be, “My paycheck! My benefits!”

Besides, to go all Jeremiah on you would only allow you to protest about the “hot wind” coming from up here, “out of the bare heights.”

         Jeremiah’s ancient words hold relevance for contemporary speakers and listeners alike. He does not intend to anger or terrify people out of self-righteous indignation. As God’s servant, he preaches out of love for God’s people. That’s the heart of the matter: Love. God uses Jeremiah and his words like steel wool. The prophet’s job is to reveal the forgotten holiness beneath the tarnish. When Israel lives only for itself, the people sink deeper and deeper into suffering. And they drag the creation down with them. 

         Four times Jeremiah says, “I looked . . . and lo . . .” And each time his vision is one of the creation rolling backward, from order, and light, and abundance to a desert – a place of utter desolation.

         Spiritually speaking, we slog through deserts all the time. When we dis-order our priorities, we participate in foolishness, stupidity, lack of understanding, and preference for evil over good. When choosing such things over love, gratitude, and generosity, we, who are created in God’s image, begin to dry up and wither away. This is when God tends to step in with prophets like Jeremiah.

         Have you ever watched children sorting through the rules to some game? As they decide what they will require of each other, the game moves forward a little. But when a participant questions some rule or relationship, he or she will utter the traditional playground call for renewal: “Do over!”

         “I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking. And all the hills moved to and fro. I looked…and lo,” says God, ‘things are not as they should be.’

         “Do over!” says God.

         When things we know and are comfortable with come to an end, it may well be God’s judgment. But when God is behind the changes, an “ending” signals God’s new beginning.

         Relationships are almost always that way. As children begin to move into greater autonomy, the relationships they had with their parents do come to an end – and those endings can be terribly painful. But Wise Design also allows parents and children to enter new territory together. At first, that new territory feels dry and desolate. In time, though – if the parents are aware, humble, and patient enough – the whole family may begin to see the shape and beauty of the always new, and often frightening territory unfolding before them.

Tomorrow is a frontier, and each generation has no choice but to entrust it to those who come after us. Last week I heard someone say that we can’t turn “21^st century youth into 20^th century adults.” Part of our calling as the Church is to participate in the practical, nuts-and-bolts work of preparing each new generation for accepting their responsibility for preparing the next generation. The other part of our calling is to practice, to live the hope of a community who entrusts itself and the creation to a Do-Over God, a God who never ceases to be at work bringing to an end both our mistakes and all of our best efforts, anything that no longer reflects the grace of God and no longer effectively communicates the Love of Christ.

This may not serve as an apropos example, but it’s what’s on my mind right now. My Dad “retired” some 10-15 years ago, but he kept a number of patients with whom he had enjoyed close relationships for decades. About two years ago he had to call this remnant and release them to other endocrinologists. Ending those relationships was excruciating for him, and, I imagine, for some of the patients who had entrusted themselves to Dad.

By the painful necessity of a neurological condition that is not ALS but which acts like it, Dad’s medical career completely ended. And when it did, a whole new relationship opened up between him and me. A self-taught philosopher, Dad is particularly interested in, and has a very keen understanding of Aristotle. “I think Jesus read Aristotle,” he says.

Over the last couple of years, he and I have found common ground we never knew we had. Much of what he studies has implications for what I do. And our conversations have significantly influenced how I speak to and interact with you as pastor.

If there were any foolishness or lack of understanding in all of this, it would simply be that it took us so long to find this relationship. Even though the conversations are slow – these days, Dad’s participation happens one letter at a time on an iPad or computer keyboard – we have discovered a kind of oasis, a rich, fresh new beginning.

I know that at this point some will say, “Well see there, it happened for a reason. Everything does.” And I understand what they are trying to say, but I could not disagree more. In my opinion, that affirmation dismisses and trivializes not only Dad’s situation but all human suffering. And never will I trust or preach a god who causes human suffering. Purpose is the gift of the Holy One who shares our anguish, and who constantly reveals and exercises the power of Resurrection in and for a broken, hurting, and ever-changing world.

The judgment Jeremiah announces is painful for Israel, but not because God inflicts damage, but because God makes us aware of the damage we are doing. The desolation is our doing. And “yet,” says God, “I will not make a full end,” because you are capable of so much more.

God says the same thing through Isaiah: “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly.” (Isaiah 35:1-2a)