Community Church Sermons
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 19,
2004
Dr. Robert M. Puckett
Americans
have lived through an unsettled time since the terrible events of 9/11. It has been an uncertain time for most of us
as we wondered what will happen next.
But then,
most of life is lived in the meantime.
Great peak experiences are few in the normal course of life, and most of
life is lived in-between the great experiences that have happened in the past
and those expected in the future.
Therefore, a
person who does not learn to live in-between times is not fully alive.
All ages are
restless ages, and all times are critical times. But people do not like to wait.
Few of us wear the badge of patience and maturity easily.
Nevertheless,
people have always had to live waiting for something. Usually, we wait for peace.
We wait for sons to come home from Iraq or Vietnam, or brothers to
return from World War II, or fathers to come back from the front in World War
I. Grandmothers waited for Grandfathers
to come from the Spanish American War; great grandmothers waited for the
release of prisoners from Rock Island, and Richmond and Memphis, while great,
great, great grandmothers waited for the Revolution to grind to an end.
People have
always had to live waiting for something; usually peace, or daylight, or wives
to get well, or children to be born, or for children to grow up and stand on
their own.
We spend our
lives waiting for a break, or payday, or death. We wait for quitting time, or the mortgage to be paid off, or the
doctor to come.
We wait for
prosperity, or independence, or comfort.
We wait for
Republicans or Democrats to get in or out, for the stock market to go up, for
the mailman, or, sometimes, when you are a minister, you wait with someone for
the undertaker to come
Early one
morning some years ago my mother and I left on a short trip leaving Jane by
herself at home. Soon after we left the
hearse pulled up in front of our house and a little man in a black suit rang
our doorbell. When Jane answered it, he said, “M’am, we’ve come for the
body.” Jane replied, “I’m the only
body here and I’m not through with it!”
Most of our
lives are lived in-between times. A person
who does not learn to live in-between times is not fully alive.
What
in-between times? It is waiting for a
letter to come. It is the agonizing
pacing the corridor outside a wing marked “surgery” It is the long journey from an old home to a new home. It is the dusty journey made after all your
friends have gone into the beyond ahead of you.
In-between
times? It is the all night vigil
between the day your child was well and the day she will be well again.
It is
waiting for school to be out, or test grades to be in, or graduation to come.
How we can
live in-between times, when our hearts are somewhere else?
Long before
Christ, Jeremiah found out about
in-between times and how to live in them. All the way from Anathoth, his boyhood village where he became a
prophet with disastrous consequences to himself, down to his eventual stoning
by his fellow countrymen in Egypt, Jeremiah had reason to know about in-between
times. So he wrote a famous letter, and
sent it to Babylon for the exiles to read.
He said it was a letter from God for captives:
”Thus says
the Lord of Host, The God of Israel, to all the exiles
whom I have
sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.”
It was sent
to thousands of Jews, huddled in Babylon 900 miles and a thousand days from the
agonies of Jerusalem’s fall. Their
memories of the dying screaming in their ears and their brains reeling from
their loss. Their spirits overwhelmed
by the might of Babylon’s military which had smashed them. Befuddled by their defeat, desolate of hope
for rescue; hope slipped off into despair!
“Sing us a
song,” their captors said. But how can
you sing the songs of God in a strange land?
How can we forget the dying crushed in the collapse of the two towers of
the World Trade Center? How can anyone
hope when there is no limit set on their hurting?
How can we
live in this in-between time?
Jeremiah
found out how to do it, and he wrote it down.
He sent his letter from God to Babylon.
It began from God, and it said, when you are captive, and cannot see the
way ahead:
Build houses and live in
them; plant gardens and eat their produce.
Take wives and have sons
and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughter’s in marriage.
In the
meantime of your uncertainty - do the everyday jobs around you - do the next
thing! There is healing in the
performance of ordinary things necessary for survival.
When you
turn from a bed where death has slacked a jaw, or from the door where death has
sent a telegram, it is not unusual to find solace in a watering pot or a broom
to use.
Sometimes
the only thing you can do is work - anything - just work.
The next
thing! Sometimes it’s all you can do
because that is all there is - And Jeremiah said there is healing in it. Do the next thing!
Keep relationships
together. Take wives and see to your
sons and daughters in this foreign land!
None of your in-between times must be allowed to cut across fundamental
relationships.
Your grief
over your lost estate must not filter down to soak your children with senseless
tears. Don’t impose your own in-between
times on younger hearts and weaker backs.
Jeremiah saw
that the violation of this principle can destroy a home and wreck the health of
a family.
There is a
fellowship, even in exile -- even in uncertainty -- even in suffering -- that
must be kept strong even in your in-between times.
Some people
seem to want to leave before the show is over.
They want to throw up their hands and quit before the last curtain
falls.
That’s what
happened to Charlie. He had been an
engineer at Norris Dam, an active gardener, an avid fisherman. But when he retired, he sat down and did
nothing. Then one day, his wife called
me and said that he had a gun and was going to shoot himself. I ran off up to his house and demanded that
he give me the gun. The next day I
said, “Charlie I need someone to teach me how to catch fish in Norris
Lake. I want us to go fishing tomorrow. It was in the middle of winter but we went
anyway. It was snowing so hard you
could hardly see the shoreline, and the wind was blowing so hard that every
time we threw out a line it would blow back in our face. Charlie kept saying, “I think we ought to go
in.” “Oh no, Charlie, we need to catch
fish.” Actually all we caught was a
cold. But after three hours on the lake
Charlie forgot about shooting himself.
All he was thinking about was survival.
Did any of
you go to the Tennessee-Florida football game last night? How many of you left before the final six
seconds of the game thinking that UT had lost?
If you did, you missed that Wilhoit fifty yard game winning field
goal! Proving that old adage, “It ain’t
over ‘till it’s over!”
Jeremiah
said there is a future from anywhere you stand! There is always a future to prepare for. Do not despair of anything until God gets
through with you!
What else
can be done in the in-between times?
This is
where Jeremiah made his most shocking statement to the Jerusalem loving Jews,
heartsick for their native home. It
sounded like heresy, like treason. But
Jeremiah said, while you are kept from Jerusalem:
Seek the welfare of
the city where I have sent you into exile, and
pray to the Lord on it’s
behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
This was
hard to take. Loving Jerusalem, aching
to return, held captive in Babylon, they were to learn to love the scene of
their captivity...and pray for it!
Was that
what Jesus meant when he said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you? “ (Matthew 5:44)
Alfred North
Whitehead once said, “It is a mistake to cling to a region through which one
has already passed.”
While on a
diplomatic trip to Africa, President Bill Clinton met with Nelson Mandela who
took him to visit Robbin Island where Mandela was a prisoner. Clinton said, I know you invited your
jailers to your inauguration, but didn’t you really hate those who imprisoned
you?” Mandela replied, “Of course I did
for many years. They took the best
years of my life. They abused me
physically and mentally. I didn’t get
to see my children grow up. I hated
them. Then one day when I was working
in the quarry, hammering rocks, I realized that they had already taken
everything from me except my mind and my heart. Those they could not take without my permission, I decided not to
give them away.”
Clinton then
asked, “When you were walking out of prison for the last time, didn’t you feel
the hatred rise up in you again?”
“Yes,” Mandela said, “for a moment I did. Then I thought to myself, “They have had me for twenty-seven
years. If I keep hating them, they will
still have me.” I wanted to be free, so
I let it go.”
Put down
roots where you are. There is a need in
Babylon, seek the peace of the city where you are. Your welfare is tied with the place you are. Any time a person moves to a new place and
seeks not the peace of that place, but dwells on the glory of the place or
places he came from, the in-between time he spends there will be a lost cause.
Put down
roots in your in-between times. This is
the key to Jeremiah’s letter. Without
this you have no hope.
This was
hard for Jews in Babylon. It is also
hard for us in our in-between times.
But there is healing in it.
Jeremiah’s
letter said: Do the next thing, there is healing in it; keep your fellowships
strong , and put down roots where you are.
Seek the peace of the place you are and pray for it. There is healing in all of this.
What if the
only peace is Babylon’s kind of peace?
What if the uncertain peace of the present is all you get?
Jeremiah
said, “Take it!”
”For in its
welfare, you will find your welfare.”
The peace of
Babylon is your peace!
Your
recovery from in-between times rests in
making Babylon peaceful.
The
in-between times are to be lived through for their own sake in the light of God’s
purpose for them and for us.
Do the next
thing.
Be aware of
the need where you are.
Put down
roots, seek the peace of the place where you are.
The place to
seek and to find God is the in-between times.
For God himself has inhabited our captivity, and it is there He speaks his good word.
Jeremiah’s
message encourages us to:
Pray for
enemies rather than demonize them.
Speak softly
instead of in the belligerent tones of a school yard bully.
Be genuinely
concerned about the welfare of all humankind rather than pursue a greedy desire
to acquire more for ourselves at the expense of those less fortunate.
Make peace
not war.
It is the
paradox of biblical history that God is doing his work in our in-between times. The Lord God invades and breaks through our
in-between times.
And then?
Then shall
you call upon me, and you shall go and
pray unto me, and I will hear you. And
you shall seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart.
And so may
it BE!! Amen!