September 2, 2007
(Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 17)
Where is the Lord?
by The Rev. Joe Behen, Clergy Assistant
Jeremiah 2:4-13 • Psalm
81:1, 10-16 • Hebrews 13:1-8,
15-16 • Luke 14:1, 7-14
(From
The Lectionary Page)
The Christian motivational speaker Tim Hansel once said that, “One of the greatest tragedies of our modern civilization is that you and I can live a trivial life and get away with it.” I think that Jeremiah would take issue with that statement. If by “a trivial life” we mean a lifetime of considering only small things that don’t really matter, then Jeremiah suggests to us today that none of us “get away with it.” Life comes only from God and is sustained only in God. But “they have forsaken me,” says God through Jeremiah. Judah has “forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.” The heavens, he tells us, are appalled, shocked, and utterly desolate as a result. People are clinging only to what cannot bring them life – no one has gotten away with anything.
“They did not say, ‘Where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that no one passes through, where no one lives?” The story of God giving the land is lost. In all likelihood, the people knew the story, but it had ceased to have any bearing on their lives. When choices were made, the things that have real value to them were made evident. And it was not Judah’s identity as God’s people. Rather, it was Judah’s desire for security apart from the God who alone could give that security. Walter Bruegemann has written that, “Where the story of the land is lost, the loss of the land will soon follow.” [Brueggemann, Walter. A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s Publishing, 1998.] The land here, seems to represent the life that God promises, and outside this land is “deep darkness… where no one lives,” where no one has life. While Israel is in one sense living in the land, it is not, we learn from Jeremiah, living in God. The gift has no value apart from the giver.
Now, I would imagine that it is rarely an intentional decision that any of us make to separate our lives from their nature as a gift of God to be lived in God. But rather, as Jeremiah says, I think that we simply “forget.” But how is it that we can forget something so vital? Is it because we simply don’t slow down enough to imagine all aspects of our life as being in God? We all hear often enough from a variety of sources that Americans live too fast and too hard. We have work pressures and social pressures. We may have children’s schedules to balance with our own. We may have family or friends whose needs we try to attend to. We have hobbies that bring us either enjoyment or some kind of fulfillment. We spend time gathering stuff: groceries, clothing, household stuff. And we often become busy simply trying to entertain ourselves. And the list goes on. We are at risk of simply running out of time for God. Eventually, perhaps, we no longer know what relationship with God even looks like, and it scares us. But where do we begin to recover it? Often, I think, we simply begin a process of rationalization, telling ourselves that we’ll get to that soon, but that what we are busying ourselves with at the moment is simply a more immediate concern. But this process can become a lifelong engagement. And as our rationalization skills improve over time, we become increasingly at risk of forgetting to ask about our own life, “Where is the Lord?”
According to Plato, Socrates once said that, “The un-reflected life is a life not worth living.” In a very secular sense, then, reflection is what gives us meaning, a context, or a lens if you will, a lens through which to look at the life we live. What if the most meaningful reflection that Christians can engage in is a part what we call prayer?
There’s an old story in which a woman who finds her life to be random and meaningless is summoned one evening to the cellar of an old stone building near her home by an elderly hermit who lived in the woods just outside the village. He tells her that he wants to explore with her the meaning of her day. Anxious about this very thing already, she obliged him. The man asked her to recall the memory of one of the day’s events. Upon so doing the man at once seemed to understand what had taken place and how she felt about it. The woman became very uncomfortable with the hermit’s view into her mind and her heart, and after some nervous pleasantries, she bid him good night and left for her home. The next evening the woman’s curiosity about the event got the better of her, and she walked to the cellar again, only to find the kindly old hermit offering her a seat and some bread and water. He invited her once again to recall the memory of some thought, feeling, or event that the day had brought. And so she did for several nights running. At the end of each evening the hermit simply smiled sympathetically, thanked her graciously, and bade her good night.
These meetings continued until the woman found herself quite looking forward to the cellar meetings throughout each day. She considered each part of her days for their potential as subject matter for the evening’s meeting. In fact, her days became a sort of “creation” of the evening meeting. She couldn’t wait to see what might make the hermit laugh and what would make him cry, what would make him shout with her for justice and what might cause him to cringe with sympathetic pain. These cellar meetings had become the framework through which she understood each moment of her day. She also found that this anticipation actually changed how she responded to her world. Tired and hungry as she might be, she often found herself giving her mid-day bread to passing orphans simply because she knew what joy it would bring to her meeting with the hermit.
You can see what I’m getting at. Prayer as relationship with God changes us. It changes communities, and it can change the world. But it has to be intentional. It has to happen. I think that this is exactly the point that Jeremiah would have Judah to understand. We always serve some god, and “we take on the character of the god we follow.” [Brueggemann] If we are not actively choosing to serve God the Father who brought us out of Egypt and gave his only Son, then we are without fail serving some other god, a vapor, something that is not going to last and has no power but what we give it [Brueggemann]. These gods are powered by us, but have power over us, and yet, cannot give life.
I wonder if the difference that this makes is perhaps so subtle as to escape our notice. When we are approached in our lives by the choices and the resulting decisions that give our life its direction, what are the most basic assumptions that we make, even unconsciously, that give us a context, a starting point from which we frame the questions at hand? When political choices are made, are we first and foremost either Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative? Do we perhaps take our primary identity from what we do for a living, or from whom we socialize with? The way in which we frame any choice or dilemma limits the response that we are capable of, and this framework is changed when our first question to ask is, “Who is this God that I follow, and how does God’s nature, as far as I can understand it, affect my understanding in this particular situation?” We are asked to understand our primary identity to be that of God’s people, “the God who brought us up out of Egypt” and “led us in the wilderness where no one lives.” After the parable I’ve told it not likely to be a mystery that I think one essential way that this identity remains with us is through prayer.
The story of the woman and the hermit went on to describe how she eventually realized that while she hadn’t actually “seen” the hermit with her in some time, still she knew that he was there. But simultaneously, she noticed that he showed up in various capacities during the regular course of her day, sometimes even as an orphan eating bread with her. Her life had changed according to what she understood to be the nature of the hermit she so adored. And while she joyed in the meaning she now found her life to have, she looked always the hermit’s presence. May we also look for God in our lives, always asking, “Where is the Lord,” and upon finding the Lord in life, clinging to that fountain of living water with all of our life.
