Epiphany 3A Matthew 4:12-23, The Call of the Fisherman, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, January 22, 2023, Joanna Seibert

Epiphany 3A Matthew 4:12-23, The call of the fishermen

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, January 22, 2023

God calls us, you and me, to St. Mark’s today to hear a fishing story.1 Four men leave their family fishing business to become disciples of a new traveling rabbi/with no credentials. It is 5:30 pm, and all national news stations have this as their human interest story: Today, four well-known fishermen in Capernaum on the northwest coast of the Sea of Galilee drop their nets and follow an unknown preacher. Lester Holt with NBC Nightly News introduces Richard Engel, Chief Foreign Correspondent, sitting on the shore with a distraught Zebedee, the father of James and John. “Well, we are still adjusting to the shock. I was standing in one of our boats/ with my two sons/ and our hired hands mending our nets from last night’s fishing, and suddenly/ this man called Jesus walks by and says, ‘Follow me.’ My hired hands and I shrug our shoulders and roll our eyes,/ but my two sons look right into those big dark brown eyes and literally drop their nets and follow him. I was furious. I yelled as they took off after him. I said a few things I cannot repeat. You know, fishermen are known for our colorful language./ Later in the afternoon, James and John do send a message that they will return/ soon.”

On PBS evening news, Judy Woodruff, on special assignment,  is at the modest home of the wife of Simon Peter, another man who walked away from his fishing boat today.2 “Yes, I am Simon’s wife. I only have a few minutes to talk. My husband not only left all these fish in his boat,/ but this man called Jesus changed my husband’s name to Peter. And to add to my distress, my mother is sick with a high fever./ But later Simon, or Peter as he now calls himself, sends back word, /‘get the fish,/ don’t “salt” them down,/ clean and prepare them,/ call in the neighbors/ and we will have a big fish fry at our house tonight,/ and Jesus will cure your mother, and she can help serve.’” /////

This morning, as we hear the stories about these four fishermen, we must ponder what all this means for us.

So, first, let’s first think about how we got here this morning? I don’t mean did we come in a Chevy pickup or an SUV! What brought us here? Do you realize that Matthew’s gospel today is telling our story?/ Do you hear it?/ Jesus is walking along the Sea of Galilee and calls four disciples,/ but whether we realize it or not, Jesus also calls us here, at this place, this morning. Perhaps you think we are here because your roots or your family or friends are here,/ or you like the sermons,/ or you like the mystical feeling when you enter this beautiful building,/ or maybe you are transformed by the liturgy,/ the music,/ the candles,/ or you want your children to experience something you vaguely remember from your childhood that you cannot explain. That is how my husband and I were called back to church almost fifty years ago. We wanted our children exposed to what we experienced growing up in a Christian community, even though we doubted we still needed it/. Do not ever be embarrassed by your motives. God will use every possible means, even and probably especially our children, to call us back to him, for God loves us and them so dearly./

Jesus begins his ministry by calling extremely ordinary people. They are un/com/pre/hen/ding of Jesus and his mission, but for some reason, Jesus chooses not to do his ministry without them. Time and again, they will disappoint him. Yet he will stick with them like glue, give them all he has, and lead them into the kingdom.

William Willimon3 says, “if you are a God, why do you need a bunch of amateurs to work with you?”

But Jesus does not work alone, but joins hands with ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Jesus recruits people who have made awful life choices. Jesus invades the most hapless lives and fills them with light. He sneaks up on people who are thinking not about God but lunch,/ smacks them upside the head/ with love, and says, “I’m going to change the world,/ transform the future,/ radically rearrange the present,/ and guess who is going to help me?” It’s a strange way to run a railroad, but this is the way God gets the job done. “Follow me!”

God has plans for us. God has a ministry for us./ Realize this is good news,/ for the saddest of all sad things is an uncalled, unclaimed life./

Listen again to this morning’s story. “Follow me, and I will make you fish for PEOPLE.” We start to worry about having the “right stuff” even to consider being a disciple. Would Jesus ever choose us? And if by chance he does, will he make us leave home, our job, and go to Africa or South America?/ The answer is in the rest of Matthew. Read on. Note that the disciples stay near their homes for quite some time. They remain in Galilee for the next eighteen chapters of Matthew, and then they return there after the resurrection./

Do you have other concerns about this call?

Barbara Brown Taylor believes the most powerful part of Jesus’ call to his disciples is not that the disciples decide something on their own. Something happens to them, something almost beyond their control. To stress the decision-making of the disciples is putting the accent on the wrong syllable. In that God-drenched moment of their turning to follow,/ the miracle occurs: their lives flow in the same direction as God’s. There is an openness to a connection present since birth, /since conception. /

This story of the call is not a hero story, but a miracle story, as miraculous as the feeding of the five thousand or the raising of the dead.4 This is not a story about the power of human beings to change their lives. This is a story about the power of God to walk right up to a quartet of fishermen.. and to us… and work a miracle, creating disciples where there were none, just moments before./

Remember, this is our story of being open,/ and swept into the flow and passionate vision of God’s will as we turn ourselves over to God’s call.

It will be a different story for each of us at our particular stage of life. This call comes not just once, but constantly, as Jesus seeks us out to go farther and deeper,/ open to new possibilities.5 / Sometimes, following Jesus may mean staying home.4 At other times, it may mean letting the hired servants go and taking care of Zebedee when he gets too old to fish. Sometimes following may mean casting the same old nets in a new way, or for new reasons. Sometimes the call is doing something different with the fish we catch, or spending the money we bring at market in a different way. It may mean reorganizing the whole fishing business so that the jobless down at the pier have work to do, and everyone receives a decent wage./ It may mean doing less every day, not more,/ so there is time to watch the sunlight changing on the water, and how the fish leap out of the water at dusk, celebrating outsmarting us one more time.//

Are you old enough to remember a nature program, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, which aired on Sunday night television?6 One memorable program focuses on a mother elephant seal in Argentina and her newborn pup. The mother, now famished, leaves her pup on the shore to find food. She returns to a different part of the beach and calls for her baby. Other mothers return, also calling their pups, producing a wild cacophony. The camera stays with this single mother as she calls her pup and listens for the response. Following each other’s voices and scents, the mother and pup are reunited. The host, Marlin Perkins, explains that from birth, the sound and scent of the pup are imprinted in the mother’s memory, and the sound and the scent of the mother are imprinted in the pup’s memory. A friend watching with us turns around and says,/ “we are imprinted with the memory of God,/ and God is imprinted with a memory of us,/// and even if it takes a lifetime,/ when we hear God’s call/ smell God’s scent,/ we acknowledge and honor God’s imprint deep inside of us,///and God slowly walks toward us,/ makes direct eye contact/ and once again calls out,/ “Follow me.”

1Kenneth Gibble, “Discipleship, a Fishing Story, Matthew 4:12-23,” Preaching.com/sermons/11563998.

2Iona Community, “The Calling of Peter,” Present on Earth, p. 114-116.

3 William Willimon, “Revolution,” Pulpit Resource, vol. 34, #1, 2006, pp.9-12.

4Barbara Brown Taylor, “Miracle on the Beach,” Home By Another Way, pp. 37-41.  

5 Herbert O’Driscoll, The Word Today, year B, vol. 1, pp. 78-79.

6Rodger Nishioka, Feasting on the Word, year A, Vol 1, pp. 284-285.

 Joanna Seibert  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Christ the King 29C St. Mark's November 20, 2022, Little Rock AR

Christ the King 29C

St. Mark’s November 20, 2022

Jesus on the cross with thieves Luke 23: 33-43

In the name of our God who forgives, remembers, and offers us paradise. Amen

“Jesus, remember me..”

When the thief being crucified, traditionally called Dismas, asks Jesus “to remember him when Jesus comes into his kingdom,” Jesus responds, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” That is not necessarily later after they both died, but right now. Jesus’ kingdom and his reign of peace are not simply in the future. It is right here, right now, if we only look for it, if we are willing to remember./  Remembering is not just recovering data from our memory banks. Re-/membering has a richer meaning for Christians. It means re-connecting, re/turning to a relationship. When Jesus gathers around a table for the last time with his friends, he says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” ”Reconnect to me.”  When we hear this in the middle of the Eucharist, we not only bring to mind Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection,/ but we also bring together, re-member, the various parts of Christ’s body, Christ’s church, Christ’s world, as Christ stands there waiting for us. We remember and reconnect our lives with Christ as well as reconnect to those from whom we have been estranged./

We are offered paradise, Christ’s peaceable kingdom, when we gather around this communion table, even and especially with people who challenge us, disappoint us, frustrate us, or have wronged us. This table is a sign that communion with God is possible for thieves and criminals, for people who are significant pains in the neck, and for each one of us. The table represents the concrete possibility of communion with God and those with whom connection seemed impossible./ /

In Jesus’ last words from the cross, Christ the King teaches us how we accomplish reconnection.

“Father, forgive them.”

Think about the table we will gather around this Thursday, the Thanksgiving table. Our table traditions say volumes about how we gather and re/-member. Close your eyes./ Remember who has been and still may be at your table this week. Aunt Fanny, the drama queen; Martha, the family matriarch who knows terrific and tragic stories about everyone, living and dead; Robin, the lost child; Tom, the eternal child; Suzie, the family gossip; Marcella, who has a plan for everyone’s life; Uncle Billy who drinks too much and no doubt will become obnoxious before the day is over; Carol, who sees the good in all people and all things; James, the eternal pessimist;/ the brothers and sisters who differ about every political issue;/ and especially those wonderfully wild, energetic children running underfoot. That’s not a bad image for the church.. and for the kingdom of God, the scratchy proximity of near enemies coming together because deep down, under all those facades, they do love each other and know their only way of survival is to follow Jesus’ example from the cross, to forgive each other their humanness, ask for forgiveness, and remember that everyone also has a cross to bear. /

As we gather around the Thanksgiving table, we also remember those who are not there: loved ones who have died, those who have joined the communion of saints, those absent because they are in the military or government around the globe. We remember those absent because their relationship with the rest of the body is torn or fractured. Sometimes we remember those who have no access to a table./ If we keep re-membering, re-connecting we will soon have a vision of God’s kingdom and an image of how to make it a real place.///

An iconic movie for this relationship is “Places in the Heart.” A young widow, Sally Fields, survives the depression, planting and selling cotton with the help of an itinerant black man and a bitter blind man. In the powerful closing scene in a country church during communion, as the grape juice and bread are passed,  the characters exchange the peace of God with each other, those dead and alive: the young black boy who killed Sally’s husband and then was brutally murdered, the banker who showed her no mercy, people alienated from each other, people who have harmed each other, her sister and her unfaithful husband, as well as those who love each other, Sally, her murdered husband, and her two children. It is an image of paradise, realizing connections, forgiving, and re/-membering./

“Forgive them, Father……, Mother, sister, brother.”//

Archbishop Desmond Tutu chaired the truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa after apartheid. Surviving that holocaust meant staying connected, re/membering, hearing people’s stories, and hearing, “yes, I did that; forgive me, I see how we are connected, and I do not want to lose that relationship again.”/

 Hopefully, that is also what is happening in this city, in this church, as our disastrous pandemic moves toward becoming endemic.///

“Today, you will be with me in paradise.”

So, we begin to live in this paradise when we re-member, stay connected to God and our neighbor and learn how to forgive ourselves and our neighbor. The word paradise has often been used as another word for heaven. Paradise comes from the Middle Eastern word for a walled garden. It is a place of safety, an oasis in the desert, a church like this one, where relationships are protected and flourishing. It echoes the Garden of Eden, surrounded and walled in by four rivers of plenty. When the image becomes more extensive, it can mean “this fragile earth, our island home,” as Eucharistic prayer C describes us. There is a clear implication that paradise, this walled garden, includes all of us, even that other criminal hanging next to Jesus, whose response is not repentance but mockery. The difference between these two thieves, and those living in paradise and those who do not, is whether they are awakened to the possibility of forgiving and re/membering. It is not a matter of just putting on a different pair of rose-colored glasses. At times it can be cross-bearing hard work.

The re-membering that brings us into paradise is realizing our connection to each other, asking forgiveness for the harm we have done, forgiving others for the damage done to us, and holding on to a dream for the future for what is possible in God’s good creation./

We are all in the same walled garden, Americans, Ukrainians, Democrats, Republicans, Russians, North Koreans, Iranians, Muslems, Chinese, and Anglicans. Whether or not it is paradise depends on what and whom we re-member, what and whom we forgive, and with whom we stay connected.//

Who will you remember, reconnect with, and forgive around this family table today/ and later this week at Thanksgiving?

This morning, this week, we have the opportunity to forgive,/ remember,/ reconnect, and be in paradise.

Katharine Jefferts Schori, “Collective Memory,” A Wing and a Prayer (Morehouse Publishing  2007), pp. 15-18.

Feast day of st. Luke

St. Luke Day Service, Luke 4:14-21  October 18, 2022 St. Mark’s

We celebrate St. Luke’s day as we remember Luke as a physician. But once Luke, like us, is baptized into the body of Christ, he assumes a new identity. Of course, he continues to practice medicine, but chances are when he fills out a form with the line, occupation, that he puts down physician but adds disciple. That is why we know Luke at all, not because he is a good physician, but because he is a disciple and gospel writer. Without Luke, we would not hear Mary sing the Magnificat or know about John the Baptist’s birth, the manger, or the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night. We would know nothing about the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son. Luke includes six miracles and eighteen parables not recorded in the other gospels. Luke’s book of Acts is also our principal source for the history of the early church, Peter’s and Paul’s ministries, and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Of the four evangelists, Frederick Buechner believes that Luke writes the best Greek and, unlike the other three, is almost certainly a Greek-speaking Gentile himself. Luke puts his Gospel together for a Gentile audience (that’s us!), translating Jewish names and explaining Jewish customs when he thinks we won’t understand them./

In his Letter to the Colossians, Paul refers to somebody as “Luke, the beloved physician.” Without stretching things too far, there are three themes in Luke’s Gospel, omitted from the others, that suggest gospeler Luke is this same man.

First of all, there are the three stories only in Luke, the parable of the Prodigal Son, the story of the woman of the street who washes Jesus’ feet and dries them with her hair, and that healing conversation between Jesus and the thief crucified with him.

Smelling of pig and cheap gin, the Prodigal comes home bleary-eyed, and dead broke, but his father is so glad to see him that he almost falls on his face. Jesus next tells Simon, the blue-nosed Pharisee, that the prostitute’s sins are forgiven because, even painted up like a china doll and smelling like the perfume counter at the dollar store, she’s closer to the gospel of love than the whole Ladies’ Missionary Society. Finally, the thief Jesus talks to on the cross may have been a purse snatcher or even a murderer, but when he asks Jesus to remember him when he makes it to where he is going, Jesus tells him they have rooms reserved on the same floor. We can see that all three stories make the same general point: Jesus has a soft spot in his heart for the underprivileged of this earth. We might almost think he considers them the salt of the earth.

Second, Luke is the one who goes out of his way to make it clear that Jesus is strong on prayer. He prays when he is baptized, after he heals the leper, the night before he calls the twelve disciples, and before his arrest. Luke is the only one telling us that Jesus’s last words are a prayer, “Father, into thy hand I commend my spirit.”

Thanks to Luke, there’s a record of the jokes Jesus tells about the man who keeps knocking at his friend’s door until he finally gets out of bed to open it, and the widow who keeps bugging the crooked judge until he finally hears her case, just to get a little peace. Luke wants us to remember that if we don’t think God hears us the first time, don’t give up till we’re hoarse.

Third and last, Luke makes sure nobody misses the point that Jesus is always stewing about the terrible plight of the poor. Luke tells us that when Jesus preaches at Nazareth, he chooses this text from Isaiah, “he has appointed me to preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18). In contrast, Matthew says the first Beatitude is “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” According to Luke, it is just plain “Blessed are the poor,” period (Luke 6:20). Luke also records parables, like the one about the rich man and the beggar, that come right out and say that if the haves don’t do their share to help the have-nots, they better watch out. Only Luke quotes the song Mary sings that includes the words, “he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich has sent empty away” (Luke 1:53).

Putting all these things together, Luke tells us Jesus believes that especially those in prison must always be treated like human beings. Second, if we pray hard enough, there’s no telling what might happen. And finally, if we think we’ve got heaven made but aren’t bothered that there are children across the tracks who are half starving to death,/ then we’re kidding ourselves. These characteristics may not prove that Luke is a physician, like the Luke in Paul’s Letter, but if he isn’t, it is a serious loss to our medical profession./

Barbara Brown Taylor writes that Luke never resigns from his job as a healer. He simply adds new medicines. Instead of only prescribing herbs and spices and bed rest, now he tells stories with the power to mend broken lives and revive faint hearts. In addition to carrying pills and potions in his black bag, he also carries words like, “Do not be afraid, I will remember you, you are blessed, your sins are forgiven, stand up and walk, weep no more.” Luke’s medicine is gospel medicine, medicine that works through words.

Luke knows the power of God’s word because he heard about Jesus, and knows there is a whole world waiting to hear the gospel good news. So, Luke starts writing down stories so parents can tell their children, and teachers to their students, and friends can tell strangers the good news. As crazy as the scheme sounds, isn’t it true that each of us arrives at faith because someone tells someone who tells someone who tells us? Maybe all they say is, “Come to church with me, or God bless you, or May I remember you in my prayers?”

This, of course, is called evangelism, and every time we renew the baptismal covenant, we promise we will be evangelists.

 “Will you proclaim by word and example the Good news of God in Christ”? When we answer, “I will, with God’s help,” we join ranks with Luke, the Evangelist, Oral Roberts, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Billy Graham, Johann Sebastian Bach, Madeleine L’Engle, as well as the housekeeper who tells Bible stories to children in her care while she does the ironing.

There are a million ways we in the medical profession can proclaim the good news. But, most often, our evangelism will be the quiet kind: reminding a sick friend about a psalm, telling the truth in love to someone who asks for it, ending a quarrel with words of forgiveness, writing a note that restores hope, listening attentively to each patient we meet, especially the young and elderly, laughing at a young girl’s joke, extending hospitality to a stranger.

The wonderful thing about gospel medicine is that it works right away. The gospel words dry tears, quench fears, forgive sins, heal souls every time we speak, “do not be afraid, you are not alone, you are blessed, your sins are forgiven, weep no more.” Every time we practice gospel medicine, we take our places in an ancient relay, passing on the good news we heard from our predecessors. We are never alone as evangelists. A whole host of people before us are with us, as well as Christ beside us, above us, and in us.

Luke tells us that we, like Jesus, “have been anointed to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captive, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

This is the gospel/ medicine/ of the Lord that we practice.

Barbara Brown Taylor, “Gospel Medicine,” Gospel Medicine, pp. 3-8.

Frederick Buechner, “Luke,” Beyond Words, p. 233-235.

Joanna Seibert   joannaseibert.com

Homily for Rusty Barham, Friday September 16, 2022, St. Mark's Episcopal Church

 Homily for Rusty Barham. Friday September 16, 2022

We gather this morning to celebrate the life of Rusty Barham, a friend who died much too soon. As you have heard, he lived an amazing life, loved and cherished by his family and friends. I have only known Rusty and Jeanne since his illness, but I have never seen a man, a family, a couple fight so hard at every turn to keep Rusty alive and well, going to MD Anderson for experimental protocols. And Jeanne was right there with him at every step of the way. I was amazed by the many friends and family who came to visit Rusty. Their love, his love, was so evident. And we are here today to remind each other of that love, the love that never dies.

Remember this verse from 1 Corinthians, “Love never dies.” (1 Corinthians 13:8). Repeat. Rusty’s body has died to this world, but his love is still here with each of you. Love is the only thing we leave behind when we die, and it is the only thing we take with us into eternal life.

We don’t understand it. It is a mystery./ I look at pictures of my own loved ones who have died, my brother and my grandparents. I can feel their love as I send my love back to them. Frederick Buechner and Henri Nouwen tell us that our bodies die, but our mutual love somehow returns to God and is kept for all eternity.

Listen again to what St. Paul, Buechner, and Nouwen are saying. Love is kept for all eternity. That means love is what we leave on this earth, and love is also what we take with us to meet the God of love. So Rusty left his love to you, which is also now part of/ and is enlarging the love of our God/ in this greater life. If you are a mystic, you have no difficulty understanding all this. However, this may be a difficult concept if you are a person who comprehends mainly by rational thinking.

This belief is also in a closing sentence from Thornton Wilder’s fictional book, The Bridge of San Luis Rey( Sand Louise ray), where five people die on a bridge in South American. British Prime Minister Tony Blair read this passage at the memorial service in New York/ for British victims of the attack on the World Trade Center.//“There is a land of the living/ and a land of the dead/ and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” (Repeat)1

I know in my heart that the love Rusty had for each of you will always endure. You will never be lonely. His Love is always there inside of you./ Rusty’s love stays with each of us as we carry it forward to transform ourselves, transform others we meet, //and transform the universe./  My heart tells me this mystery is true, and I think you know it as well, because this is what Rusty taught us, and what you gave to him./

Unfortunately, the Bible does not answer most of our questions about resurrection. It refuses to approach resurrection as something rational for us to understand in our lifetime.2

However, in this mysterious universe, what we do know is that those who mean most to us// mean EVEN MORE to God. In God’s way, God will keep them, and because God keeps them, we are never separated from them, or they from us.3/

This morning as we carry the ashes of our dear friend, Rusty, in and out of this sacred space, we are sac/ra/men/tally carrying him back to God.4 We know he already is with God, but this funeral lit/ur/gy allows us, in effect, to shout out a prayerful petition to God, “God, get ready! Here comes Rusty! A sinner of your own redeeming/ and a lamb of your own flock. You have given him to us, and now with gratitude for the gift of his life, we are returning him to you.” Our prayers are like the prayers at the offertory, “We give thee, but thine own,”/ except today, the offering is not money but the life of a loved one.

It is an early Christian tradition4 to tell stories about the one who has died as the body is on its pilgrimage to its final burial place. You are a family of storytellers, so keep telling all of us/ and all you meet,  stories about Rusty/ as I know you will do at the reception and on the way to New Orleans. This is how we will continue to share his love. We tell stories because Christians believe that death changes but does not destroy. Death5 is not a period at the end of a sentence, but more like a comma/ where we die but go on to a new relationship with God AND with those we love. Our experience is that our God of love does not give us a loving relationship and then let it stop abruptly, as with Rusty’s death. This loving relationship is still there but in some different form of love. We tell stories of Rusty, especially at his death, to continue our relationship with him, to know Rusty’s never-ending love for you, to remember Rusty’s love for the God of love, as  seen through the prism of his life,/ as refractions of the grace and love of God/ in glad and sorrowful memories.////

“O God of grace and glory, we remember before you this day our brother, Rusty. We thank you for giving him to us, to know and to love as a companion on our earthly pilgrimage.

And now O God,6 who loves us/ with a greater love than we can neither know nor understand:/ We give you most high praise and hearty thanks for the excellent example of your servant, Rusty, who now is in the larger life of your heavenly Presence;/ who here on this earth was a tower of strength for all of us, who stood by us and helped us;/ who cheered us by his sympathy and encouraged us by his example;/ who looked not disdainfully on the outward appearance, but lovingly into the hearts of men and women and children; who rejoiced to serve all people;/ whose loyalty was steadfast,/ and his friendship unselfish and secure; whose joy it was to know more about You and be of service. Grant that Rusty may continue to find abiding peace and wisdom in your heavenly kingdom, and that we may carry forward his unfinished work for you on this earth;/ through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

1Thornton Wilder in The Bridge of San Luis Rey (HarperCollins, 1927), p. 107.

2Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo (Seabury Books, 2007).

3 Theodore Farris,  Death and Transfiguration. (Forward Movement 1998).

4Thomas Long, “O Sing to Me of Heaven: Preaching at Funerals” in Journal for Preachers, vol. 29, No. 3, Easter 2006, pp.21-26.

5Edward Gleason, Dying we Live (Cowley 1990).

6 J. B. Bernardin Burial Services (Morehouse Publishing 1980) p. 117

21C Jeremiah St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, September 25, 2022

21 C Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15 September 25, 2022

Despair.com is an actual website. They sell posters, decals, hats, T-shirts with quotations to motivate people to new levels of despair. Here’s one: “It’s always darkest before it goes pitch black.”

The prophet Jeremiah would have loved despair.com. He probably had a mug that said, “It’s always darkest before it goes pitch black.” The word jer/e/mi/ad means a “speech expressing a bitter lament or a righteous prophecy of doom, a thunderous denunciation.” Jeremiah is the origin of the word. Jeremiah criticizes everything needing accusations. He denounces the king/ the clergy. He curses the rich for exploiting the poor. At the entrance to the temple, Jeremiah tells the leaders if they think God is impressed by all the mumbo-jumbo that goes on in worship, they should have their heads examined. Jeremiah takes a clay pot and smashes it into smithereens to show what God plans to do as soon as God gets around to it. He tells the people if they are so crazy about circumcision, then get their minds above their navels and try circumcising the foreskins of their hearts (4:4). Jeremiah writes pleasant devotions like, “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick, I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.” Jeremiah tells the king to “take a lowly seat, because your beautiful crown won’t be on your head for long” (13:18).

The prophet has been on a constant tirade, preaching despair for forty years.

Now, the nation of Judah is breathing its last. The Babylonians have returned to punish King Ze/de/ki/ah for his ill-advised rebellion and consequent siege of the city. Within weeks or even days, the siege will result in the total destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple, and the entire nation.

In this dire national crisis, Jeremiah’s message is, “We’re doomed. The Babylonians are going to destroy us, and God is not going to stop it.” Jeremiah not only predicts the invasion, but also tells the people to accept it. He looks them in the eye and tells them they have already lost.//

We are not surprised that no one welcomes Jeremiah’s message. The leaders decide that Jeremiah is a threat to national security. This may sound strange to hear that a preacher is considered unpatriotic because of what he preaches. But we can still remember the government keeping tabs on certain ministers during the civil rights days or the Vietnam War. Even today, churches have been warned of losing their tax-exempt status if political ideas come from the pulpit.// King Ze/de/ki/ah throws Jeremiah in prison so he won’t have to listen to him anymore.///

C.S. Lewis says, “Despair is a greater sin than any of the sins provoking it,”/but it can be difficult not to go there.//

 Countless nameless children die daily from hunger and disease. An Episcopal kindergarten teacher jogs down a major street in Memphis in the early morning and is kidnapped and killed. A thirty-year-old architect wakes up without the strength to get out of bed. An accountant receives a call not to come to work because he has been laid off. At. A fourth grader fails a spelling test. He hasn’t studied. His parents have been fighting. A senior drops out of school because his family needs him to get a job. A brokenhearted mother cannot sleep. A Sunday school teacher decides he doesn’t believe in God’s love anymore. A preacher working on her sermons thinks about giving up. A mother dies too soon, and her husband has no idea how to care for their children. Nineteen children and two adults die in a shooting in Uvalde, Texas at Robb Elementary School.//

We do have moments when the light seems to have gone out completely. So Jeremiah’s despair seems reasonable when we look honestly at the brokenness we can’t fix.

The prophet has more than enough reasons to give up, and YET,/ in the middle of the siege,/ God changes Jeremiah’s sermon/1 after forty years and thirty chapters of gloom.

His cousin Han/a/mel, like everyone else in Judah, would love to sell his land and buy a bus ticket out of town. Han/a/mel’s property is now for sale in an extremely depressed real estate market. The land will soon be utterly worthless. So Jeremiah does the most hopeful thing imaginable in the midst of his nation’s destruction. He buys the land and invests in the FUTURE. Someday, the ancestors of Jeremiah will claim his land with the deed he passes on to his family. There will be a new day. “Houses and fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.” Jeremiah carries out the transaction with meticulous detail. He dots every legal i  /and crosses every t, /two copies of the deed, appropriate witnesses, and an earthen jar for a safety deposit box. Jeremiah sees a future rising from the ashes of a crumbling present. With the Babylonian armies camped outside Jerusalem’s walls, he talks about God bringing their world back to life./ With Atlanta about to go up in flames, he buys Tara.

At the very moment that people are finally starting to believe Jeremiah’s message of doom, he preaches about building,/ planting/ and a better life./

Jeremiah always takes the unrealistic position and is always at odds with popular opinion. That’s how it works with God’s prophets, offering challenges to people who think they are on top/ and hope to people who have no hope. Abraham Heschel describes prophets as “singing one octave too high.”

Jeremiah is not accustomed to preaching hope,/ so he makes it clear this is not his idea. His hope is in the faithfulness of God. It is because Jeremiah is honest about the darkness/ that he sees the light. If we look from God’s perspective, we will understand what looks big really isn’t. What seems small and unknown, often forgotten, is a sign of hope. We learn to look for the God moments in our lives that we never realized. The word visionary becomes part of our vocabulary. // At McNair Elementary School in Decatur, Georgia, Antoinette Tuff, the African American school bookkeeper, convinces a man armed with an AK-47 with 500 rounds of ammunition to lay down his gun.

An architect suffering from depression finds the strength to get help. An accountant receives a call from an old friend inviting him to lunch. A cab driver picks up a fare in a wheelchair takes her to the grocery store for no charge.

A preschooler learns to tie his shoes. A ten-year-old gets an A on a history test because her father helps her study. A boy in love points out a bright star in the eastern sky to the girl, who finally agrees to go to the football game with him. A college sophomore falls in love with Flannery O’Connor.

A visitor to the Crystal Bridges Museum looks at “ Kindred Spirits” by Durand and is grateful2. A composer sits at his piano and finds the right note. It is C sharp. A four-year-old hears the story of the Good Shepherd for the first time. A minister preparing her sermon remembers that her mother would never have been allowed to preach. A church has a vestry meeting, and no one gets angry./

An older woman in a nursing home gets a visit from some teenagers. A retired teacher laughs out loud for the first time since his wife’s death. A realtor reads Henri Nouwen and decides to be a Christian.

A gay couple of 25 years is allowed to marry.

And finally, we read from the letters of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,3 another prisoner of the state, who writes before his death about the great hope in this very passage from Jeremiah: “There remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as if it were our last,/ and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a GREAT future. It is not easy to be brave and keep that spirit alive, /but it is imperative.”

1Brett Younger, “Living Towards Hope,” Lectionary Homiletics, vol. 21, no. 5,  pp. 79-80

2 Depicts the painter Thomas Cole who died in 1848, and his friend, the painter William Cullen Bryant, in the Catskills Mountains.

3Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (Enlarged Edition; London: SCM Press, 1971), 14-15