A New Normal
By Rev Steven R Mitchell
First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 10/10/10
Based on Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 and Luck 17:11-19
These last couple of weeks has been exceptionally moving, spiritually for me. One of these events was spending a few days in the Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. During this time I took long walks in the woods, stopped and took long periods of time to gaze at the mired of Fall colors on the hillsides, I was able to observe big game as they grazed in the meadows, and see the raw power of the great falls and dramatic majesty of the deep canyons that had been carved out by that river – it was just taking time to commune with a piece of God’s creation.
Another spiritual high came yesterday in Fort Collins, Co. as Jonathan Firme and I attended a workshop on Church Vitality, Worship and Stewardship, lead by Kate Huey, who works at the national office heading up the Stewardship ministries program as well as writing sermon seeds and bible study materials. During yesterday’s workshop, several questions and a realization came to my mind as a result of group discussions and from pieces of her presentation. One of the questions that came up for me is from a story about a little girl who was very intent in drawing a picture. When her Sunday school teacher asked her what she was drawing, the little girls response was God’s face. The teacher thoughtfully responded with, “Sweet heart, no body knows what God look’s like.” The budding artist replied, “They will in five minutes!”
So I want to find out from some of you, “What does God look like to you?” The reason behind asking this question is this: how can we open ourselves up to someone without having some image about what that person looks like? This is an exercise in developing a part of our Spirituality. It’s like dating, we tend to be pretty anxious when we have agreed to go out on a blind date compared to if you have seen the person who is asking you out. When we have some sort of mental imagery of an individual, we are better able to relate to that person.
Another piece that was brought out in our discussions was the realization that “being spiritually hungry opens us to being vulnerable.” Again it is a relational thing. When one becomes married, one has opened themselves to become vulnerable to their life partner. The depth of any relationship is directly in proportion to how vulnerable one is willing to be with their partner. If one keeps defenses up and doesn’t trust their partner enough to be open to them, then the relationship never deepens. If we do not allow ourselves to open up to God’s spirit, we will never develop a deep trust in God and will always operate in a mode of scarcity instead of through an awareness of abundance.
This leads me into my next question, when we come to this place on Sunday mornings, “Do we come to Worship or do we come to Church?” If we say we come to “worship”, and yet not have an image of what God looks like, wouldn’t that make it harder to “worship” God? If we are afraid of being vulnerable before God, doesn’t it hinder our desire to be spiritually hungry? If we are not spiritually hungry, what then, gives us the motivation to put our trust and our faith in God?
This morning’s stories are directed at making “a new normal.” Here we find Jeremiah speaking to a people who were carried off from their home land, to a land far, far, a way. It is a story of the Southern Kingdom, Israel, being carried off to the land of their captures, off to Babylonian, a land where a different language was spoken, a land with many different ways of doing things and looking at life, a land with unfamiliar gods. How does one survive when life is totally disrupted? As last weeks Psalm 137 stated, “How can we sing the songs of Zion”, being carried off into a foreign land, where every aspect of life is so totally different than what one grows up learning and understanding? Within this particular reading, Jeremiah tries to address these questions as a way of giving comfort to those in exile, and also as a way of giving them hope toward a better future.
A week or so ago, I was having dinner at the home of Ed and Liesel Shineberg. As most of you know, liesel is a refuge from German, who because of her being a Jewess, had to flee her homeland as anti-Semitism was developing to new heights in Europe. At one point in the evening Liesel wanted to show off a quilt that had been made by a friend, from pillow slips that Liesel’s mother had packed in her suite case and carried with her flight to Holland. These particular pillow cases had been a part of her mother’s trousseau. Liesel’s story of her family coming to America is a story that closely reflects the writings in Jeremiah. Their first home was in New York City, in Harlem. Not only were they foreigners in a new land, not understanding the language very well, they were one of the few white families in the neighborhood and they were Jews. They were very much like their ancestors, finding themselves having to cope in a land that was totally foreign to them. At one point, Liesel’s mother made the comment to her husband, “and for this we left Germany?” Then there is Helmut Anderson. We often don’t hear stories about Germans who also fled their homeland in order to find safety, but Helmut has his own story about being a refugee and the challenges of moving to a new country.
Jeremiah speaks to those who physically had been carried off to a foreign land, but there are truly differing empires, those Babylon’s within our life’s that make today’s lectionary reading personal to us. Empires with names like fear, or materialism, or militarism, consumerism, violence in the home, mental illness, and even loneliness. There are times in our lives when circumstances seem to dictate our having to leave what is familiar to us and plunges us into a land that is unknown to us.
The new territory or exile can be a geographical area, or it can be a change in careers, or in personal relationships, with a death of a spouse, or a serious health issue, or even changing circumstance in our spirituality. There are all sorts of events in our lives that demand a change in what we are use to experiencing. In times like these, questions arise, such as: how long will we have to put up with not having a job; how will we be able to survive this disease; where are we going to live now that we have lost the house; how are we going to “do church” in 2010 when we really want it to remain 1950? Or even more personal, “how do I keep my faith in God, when my world is going down the toilet?”
Jesus healed ten men of leprosy, men who had lived in exile from their homes. He told them to go and present themselves before the priest so that they may once again come back home to their community. They lived in exile as lepers. Yet only one of those, who had been cured of his affliction, came back to Jesus to thank him. He was not just in exile from his disease but was a social out case because of his being a Samaritan and not a Jew. The other nine men who were Jews, did as Jesus had told them to do. They did what they were required by the religious practices of their day, yet by not going back to Jesus, they missed out on receiving the true gift that was available. Their picture of God was found in the temple. But the Samaritan, through his vulnerability, was able to see the image of God in Jesus’ act of healing him, opening up the way for this man to go back to praise God and receive a deeper blessing.
This is what the church is suppose to be about, a place where as a family of faith, we are able to provide a safe and loving environment, where as people who live in exile can find nurture and grow into the individuals that God wishes for us. A place where we trust each other enough to be vulnerable to the moving of the Holy Spirit, a place where we can come to God and worship out of the abundance in our lives. Jeremiah encouraged the Israelites to take root and flourish in a hostile land, to develop their spiritual growth and deepen their trust in God. Through worship us find God and a sanctuary in times of calamity. It is through our vulnerability that we truly receive and recognize God’s love and care. Amen
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