The Simple Truth

Based on Luke 18:9-14
First delivered Oct. 27, 2019
Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr


            The Christian life in many ways is a paradox. It is in losing your life that you find it. If anyone wants to be the greatest, they must be the servant of all. Some of those greats, the saints of our ancestors in the faith, have talked about how the more they find themselves growing in their relationship with God the more they realize how sinful they are. The closer you come to God, the more you become aware of your need for God and God’s forgiveness.

            That may not make much sense. We are supposed to become less sinful as we grow in our relationship with God. And we do. I suspect if you think back over your life, and you have been working on your Christian discipleship, that you a more mature Christian than when you were younger. You don’t sin like you used to. There are probably less sinners than you but there are a lot of people who sin more than you do. It makes more sense that the deeper you grow in your Christian discipleship the more you live like Jesus.

            Still, some of the great saints of the past have written how they have felt more sinful the closer they have drawn toward God. I think the reason is because as they have drawn closer to the light of God’s glory they are better able to see their flaws. It’s like if you are in a dusty room but you don’t realize how much dust is floating around in the air until a ray of sunlight bursts through the window and then you realize how much dust there is. In the same way, the more we live in to our Christian discipleship the more the Spirit reveals aspects of our lives that need mending. We didn’t realize how far short we are in living a Christ centered life until we start taking our life more seriously.

            Every year, high school graduates head for college. Many of them experience some shock that first year of college. Before they went to college, they had been very successful in school. They had good grades. Maybe they didn’t have to study that hard. They had lots of friends and lots of support from their teachers and parents. But now they find themselves in a lecture hall with 300 other students, none of whom they know. The professor is talking about stuff that is over their heads. Tests are no longer multiple guess or fill in the blanks. Suddenly it takes a lot of effort to get those good grades. Hours and hours of homework. And there are a lot of fellow students who are a lot smarter than they are. All this confidence they had when they arrived at college starts to fade when they realize they aren’t as smart as they thought they were. But they are still smart. They still belong in college. They still have the ability to achieve their goals and do well. But that first year of college can be a reality check. It can be a bit humbling. It also is an example of what we often find ourselves doing: comparing ourselves with others.

            That’s what this parable is about which we heard this morning. Jesus is addressing a common temptation of Christians: the temptation to compare ourselves with others in order to justify ourselves. In this parable it seems obvious that the lesson is we should not be self-righteous. We shouldn’t be like the Pharisee who reminds God of all the good things we do that makes us more religious than others. Instead, we should be like the tax collector who doesn’t even try to justify himself but only begs for God’s mercy.

            One way to respond to this parable is to say to yourself, “I hope I’m like that tax collector and not like the Pharisee.” Or maybe you are thinking, “I’m off the hook for this sermon because I know I’m like the tax collector. I know I’m a sinner and have to depend on God’s mercy. I know I’m not like that Pharisee. If there is one thing I’m not it is self-righteous.”

            But is it possible to become prideful of one’s lack of self-righteousness? I have heard a lot of people give their testimonies over the years. I sometimes wonder if some of them try to outdo others in the level of their sinfulness. They have to talk about how bad was their drug problem, how much sex they had, how they used to be devil worshippers, etc. Think about the worst possible sinner and I was worse than that, they say. I think the point of almost bragging about how sinful you used to be is to make the point that if God can love me and save me, God can surely love you because there’s no way you are as bad as I used to be. It almost seemed like the people giving these testimonies were bragging about how sinful they used to be.

            I wonder if it is possible to wear your humility on your sleeve and smugly think to yourself, “I’m glad I’m not like those self-righteous hypocrites. I confess all my sins and know I’m a sinner saved by grace. Yup, I’ve got the right attitude. I am a humble person.” This sounds like comparing yourself to others and considering yourself better than others. I’m more humble than you. Too bad for you.

            But look at how the tax collector prayed. He did not say, “O God, I am worse than that Pharisee over there. Of all the Jews, I am the worst one. I haven’t done this or that. I am a messed up person, the worse kind of sinner.” The tax collector didn’t list all his sins in his prayer. Instead, he gave a simple and direct prayer. All he said was, “God have mercy on me. I am a sinner.” That’s it. He didn’t compare his sinfulness with others. He didn’t list all his sinful deeds to validate his claim to be a sinner. He probably didn’t feel the need. He knew that God was aware of his sinfulness. It was obvious. He knew there was nothing he could say to get out of the judgment that he deserved. His only hope was for God’s mercy, so that’s what he begged for. And we are told that he went home justified because he asked for God’s mercy, not for God’s approval.

            So, what is the lesson of this parable? That we are not to ask for God’s approval. Instead, we are to ask for God’s mercy. When we ask for God’s approval, we are trying to justify ourselves before God. Trying to get God’s approval isn’t only by telling God how great we are in being a Christian. We also try to get God’s approval by trying to convince God we know how bad we are. We say something like “God, I’m thankful that I’m not self-righteous. I know that I’m saved by grace. I know I’m a bad person and mess up all the time. So, since I know all these things, will you forgive me?” It’s like we want God to reward us because we can detail how bad we are. If we can tell God how bad we think about ourselves then maybe God will forgive us, have mercy on us. Maybe what we are hoping for is that God will have pity on us.

            But God doesn’t want us to grovel or obsess about how sinful we are. It’s enough to acknowledge that you and I are sinners. No matter how much our daily life is patterned after the life of Christ, we still fall short and always will. We are and always will need to rely on God’s mercy. That’s simply the truth. It’s not something to dwell on. It’s not something to obsess about. It’s not something we need to brag about. God doesn’t need to be reminded of our faults or of all the good things we do. God knows what we do. God knows our motives. God knows our intentions. We can’t hide from God. So, really, there’s not anything we can say that is going to earn God’s mercy. God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness, God’s grace, is all pure gift. God offers us this simply because God loves us.

            No one likes to be judged. No one likes to be looked down on. The Pharisee was not only bragging about how good he was with his fasting and tithing, but he also was a jerk. It is not our business to compare ourselves with others. Nor do we need to try to justify ourselves. As the old saying goes, we should all mind our own business. By that I don’t mean that we should ignore other people and only focus on ourselves. What I mean is that we should avoid judging other people or looking down on other people. Nor should we judge or look down on ourselves. Instead, we should have the courage to acknowledge that we are not perfect, that we are all works in progress, and that we are all dependent on God’s mercy. And this simple truth can make a way for us to live our lives in freedom, unbound from the chains of guilt and shame. Because the one whose judgment matters the most has already forgiven us. In the name of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. We are free. Thanks be to God!

Preparation for Renewal

Based on Jeremiah 31:27-34
First delivered Oct. 20, 2019
Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr


            Back yard gardens for the most part are starting to look pretty shabby. Nothing’s growing anymore. There’s not much left to pick. Soon, we will have a killing frost and that will be the end of the tomatoes for this season. A little frost won’t hurt pumpkins and winter squash, but  eventually those will be picked, the vines will shrivel up, and the garden will be done for the year. Mine never really got started. I had every good intention. I worked over the sod, added mulch and compost, got some starter plants and put in some tomatoes, bell peppers, and cucumbers. But then I got busy, before long the weeds were soaking up all the nutrients in that rich soil and the garden became overrun. The garden became a mess. No cucumbers, a few tiny peppers, a handful of tomatoes, and that was about it. And now, all the weeds and the other plants are drying up and soon will be breaking down and decaying. In a few months, the backyard gardens will be barren, perhaps under a blanket of snow.

            In the days of Jeremiah, the people of Israel and Judah were going through a time of decay and barrenness. Due to neglect and lack of discipline, the people had rebelled against God. The rebellion had overrun them like weeds in a poorly tended garden. All their resources were sucked up by their sinful living and their failure to follow God’s way. And the garden that was their land, the land that God had given to them, was lost. The cold freeze of God’s wrath blew over them, scattering them into exile. As a people, they were decaying and barren. Their life as a people was slipping away, becoming like a cold, hard, barren backyard garden in the depths of winter.

            They say the best time to plant trees are in the late fall or early winter. That might seem odd. You probably notice that once spring comes around, at the local greenhouse or the nearby Kroger you will find baby fruit trees for you to purchase and bring home to plant. But actually spring is not the ideal time. The best time is in late fall. The reason is that trees need a rich root structure. The roots need to grow, develop, dig down deep and spread out to soak up the nutrients in the soil. And a tree, like any plant, only has so much energy. So, if you plant a tree in late fall, the tree will go dormant. No buds. No leaves. No fruit. Instead, all the energy of the plant can be focused on the roots. During the cold of winter, when everything aboveground seems barren, those roots of that baby tree are growing, developing, digging down deep so that the tree can be well established in the ground. Then, as we move into spring, the energy of the plant can now be directed toward the production of buds, leaves and fruit, the root system having had a head start over the winter.

            I will always remember this experience from about ten years ago. We were living near Groveport at the time. Jadon and I spent an hour or so one fall afternoon planting crocus, tulip and daffodil bulbs. Jadon would dig the small holes in the ground. Then I would carefully put the bulb in just right. And then Jadon would get to cover it up and pat the dirt down. And I told Jadon, “Just you wait; in a few months, when it’s spring, all these bulbs we are planting will turn into beautiful flowers. We just have to get through winter first.” I told him that in spite of the coming cold, the frozen ground and the bitter temperatures, underneath there is the promise of glorious flowers. Things won’t always appear dead and barren. New life will spring forth in time.

In the cold winter of exile for Israel and Judah, Jeremiah experienced the bitterness with them. He cries out, grieving over the barrenness, the destruction, the loss as a consequence of Israel’s ongoing rebellion against God’s ways. They deserved their fate. But it hurt so. It broke Jeremiah’s heart just as he knew it broke God’s heart as well.

            But even then, during the winter chill of exile, God was at work planting seeds. Jeremiah says God is planting in the house of Israel and the house of Judah the seed of humans and the seed of animals. Before the exile was over, God was at work, preparing for renewal. There is reason to hope that the winter of exile will come to an end. New life will spring forth. There will be restoration. Everything will be made new.

            That’s what God says through Jeremiah. The time will come when God will make a new covenant with Israel and Judah, a new covenant that will be written on their hearts. This covenant will not have any new content. It is the same covenant that God established with Israel and Judah since the days of Moses. It’s just that the new thing that God is doing is that the covenant won’t be engraved on stones or recorded in law books. No, the covenant will be written on the hearts of the people. They won’t have to carry the commandments of God around in scrolls or stone tablets. The law will always be with them because it will be inscribed on their hearts. And by heart, Jeremiah isn’t talking about the organ that pumps blood. He is talking about the center of the will, the conscience, the place where we feel in our gut what is right and wrong. It is there that God will write God’s commandments for Israel and Judah. That day will come when everyone will know the Lord. They won’t have to be taught about God’s ways. They will know it already in their gut. That’s the new covenant that God has in store for Israel when the exile comes to an end.

            What else? In that day, people will suffer for their own sins. No longer will the children suffer from the sins of their parents. Those who eat sour grapes will have their own teeth set on edge rather than their children. It is simple fairness. Those who do wrong are to suffer the consequences of their actions and not future generations.

            This is how it had been. It was the older generation that had rebelled against God so much that God stepped back and allowed them to be swept into exile. And a whole generation grew up in exile. They had not done wrong. They had not even been born. The younger generation grew up in exile, suffering all the indignity and grief because they happened to be born in the time of exile. It wasn’t fair to them. So, God says that in the new day coming, these long exiles, where multiple generations suffer from the sins of their ancestors, will come to an end.

            What else? There will be a time when God will forgive them of their sins and remember them no more. Whose sins? The sins of the ancestors that triggered the exile. God is saying that the time will come that the exile will end, and the reason for the exile will be forgiven and no longer remembered. The past will no longer weigh on the people. It will be a fresh start, a new beginning for Israel and Judah in their relationship with God, who has always loved them and always will, even when they break God’s heart. These are all the words of comfort God speaks through Jeremiah to the people while they groaned through the bitterness of their exile. The time will come when the exile will end. There will be restoration.

What is revealed in this prophecy from Jeremiah is that for God exile, destruction and desolation does not have the final word. God does not leave God’s people to suffer. God does not abandon them or give up on them. Jeremiah says that God plucks up and destroys and God sows and plants, restores and forgives. God makes things new. The God of winter is also the God of spring. With God, there is always a future. Paul says in Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” There is hope for the future with God.

            Have you ever seen aerial photos of cities that were decimated during World War II? My dad once showed me some photos of a city in England that had been bombed repeatedly by the Germans. You see block upon block of buildings that have been bombed out. There are piles of rubble everywhere. The pictures don’t do justice to the total destruction you would find closer to the ground: walls pocketed with bullet holes, blast craters that have torn up the streets, burned out cars and trucks, broken glass and splintered furniture. Devastation, similar to what we would find in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and too many other places around the world. And I imagine the residents of these cities in England, France, Russia, Germany, Japan and elsewhere looked around at the visible consequences of war and despaired if they would ever in their lifetimes see their beloved cities rebuilt and restored. But over time, with a lot of hard work, a lot of financing, and with determination, all those cities that were destroyed by the war have been rebuilt and are flourishing. The destruction of World War II did not have the final word. There was a great restoration, not only the rebuilding of cities but a new covenant if you will with the creation of the United Nations, an institution intended to bring the nations of the world together in one place to build relationships, work through differences, and tackle global challenges that will hopefully prevent another global war. And everyone was invited to the table, even Germany and Japan. War and strife were not the final word. Peace was achieved and remains to this day, seventy years after the madness of Hitler’s third reich was obliterated. Surely, in the harsh winter of war, God was already at work planting the seeds that would in time produce the fruits of peace and restoration. Surely it is God, inspiring and working through the efforts, small and great, of people that led to the fruition of the great global restoration after World War II. During the winter, God was making preparations for the spring, when the brutality of war would cease and everything would be made new. If only that spring time of peace could have been permanent. But that is a subject for another sermon. The point is that with God, even in the middle of the harsh winter of war, there is hope for a better future because God will make it so.

            What is true for nations and peoples is true for us as individuals. Each of us go through seasons in our lives. Just as fall is a time where everything is drying up and life is failing so we go through times where we feel spent, our vitality is waning, and our spirits are grey like a cloudy and chilly November day. And then there are times where our lives are like the bitter cold of winter. Our hearts are like frozen clay. We feel barren and exposed like the leafless trees whose branches are buffeted by the howling cold wind from the north. Our lives are shrouded in darkness and there is no warmth, no escape from the harsh realities of the problems and stresses of life.

            But in those harsh and bitter times, surely God is at work planting seeds in the hard places of our lives. The God who renews is already at work preparing the ground of our cold and barren hearts so that in due time new life will spring forth and our lives will blossom again. Fall and winter will pass. Spring will come again. And even if the bitter cold of winter takes our lives, we have the promise of an eternal spring, the life of resurrection, when death will be finally vanquished and there will be nothing but the bursting forth of new life. This is our future hope. As we hear in the prophecy of Jeremiah, as we have seen after the evil of war, as we have experienced in our own lives and seen in the lives of others, death gives way to life, destruction is replaced with reconstruction, barrenness is replaced with fruitfulness because that is what God is always about. With God there is always hope for the future. The restoration doesn’t happen overnight. It does not happen on our time table. It doesn’t magically appear. The restoration that God makes possible requires a lot of hard work and sacrifice, cooperation, and perhaps most of all, forgiveness and letting go of the past. And perhaps, depending on what needs restored, none of us will live to see it to completion. For us, in our God empowered efforts at restoration, it will be for us a promise that will be fulfilled for our grandchildren. But that time will come. God has promised to make all things new.

            So do not despair about the future. In the years to come we may, as a church, as a nation, experience a harsh winter. In our own lives, due to illness or tragedy, we will go through a harsh winter that leaves us feeling bereft of any life at all. And the cold reality of death will eventually take each of us. But with God, the source of life, the One who makes all things new, there is hope. Be encouraged and trust in God. The work we do to forgive, to rebuild and restore, to make peace and to reconcile, is not in vain because this is the way of God.

The Gratitude of Inclusion

Based on Luke 17:11-19
First delivered Oct. 13, 2019
Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr


            It came just in time. Last year, it seemed that the entire marching band season for Westerville North, both the football games and the contests, it was raining. Last October was so wet. And it was cold. The weather was consistently awful every weekend of October and early November. And for the past several years, North did not have band raincoats. They used to. But they were ruined when they were stored in a closet while they were still wet. When the closet was opened the next season to pull them out, they were all moldy. They were ruined. So, it was cheap ponchos, because marching band raincoats are expensive. It would take a number of years, and lots of fundraising, until finally there was enough money to buy the marching band raincoats. This summer, there was enough. The raincoats were ordered. And we waited for two months, hoping the coats would arrive before we would need them.

            Amazingly, the weather this year has been great. A little hot sometimes, but no rain. Until this past Friday. Rain was in the forecast. And raincoats arrived at the high school. Just in time. Under a gentle rain, the marching band made their way to the football field wearing their new raincoats, put immediately to use. That the raincoats arrived mere hours before they were needed filled us all with wonder and a good deal of gratitude. A few people thought it was divine intervention. After the absolutely miserable weather last year, it’s as if God held off the rain until the raincoats arrived. It was so wonderful. We couldn’t help but be grateful. And there were a few of us who gave thanks to God. The kids won’t be shivering underneath a thin sheet of cheap plastic, but now will be dry and warm in their lined raincoats so they can focus on playing their best and making great memories. Praise God.

            When things like this happen: what you need arrives just in time, something you have been working hard for finally gets done, something you worried about is now taken care of, the natural response is to be grateful. Gratitude, appreciation for what you have or what you have been given, it sometimes bursts out with a shout. You throw your hands up and shout “Yes!” Or maybe it’s a more intimate and peace-filled sigh of relief that everything is going to be ok. We can express our gratitude in a number of ways. But gratitude has to be expressed somehow. It is a spontaneous feeling that needs to come out.

            This morning we heard the story of a man, a Samaritan, who was healed by Jesus of his leprosy. As he and the other nine were making their way to Jerusalem to show themselves to the priests, as Jesus had told them, they noticed that all of a sudden their leprosy was gone. They were clean. While the others, I’m sure with gratitude and full of joy, rushed to Jerusalem so they could be declared clean and finally be able to worship in the Temple again, the Samaritan expressed his gratitude another way. He turned around and went back up the road to where Jesus was, shouting his praise to God all the way until he got to Jesus, fell at his feet, and gave thanks.

            Why did this Samaritan leave the rest and go back to Jesus to say thanks? Jesus wanted to know. He asked, rhetorically, “Were not ten made clean? Where are the other nine?” I can’t imagine the others weren’t grateful for their healing. But only this Samaritan went back, even before getting to the priests, to first give thanks to Jesus. Was there a special reason why he turned back? I wonder if he really thought he would be healed. I wonder if he really thought the priests would even see him. Maybe, for the Samaritan, showing himself to the priests was unnecessary. They wouldn’t have let him in the Temple anyway.

            Let me give you some backstory. You all have probably heard that in those days Samaritans and Jews did not get along. There was some history between these two ethnic groups that left behind a good deal of bad blood. They tried to stay away from each other and that was mutual. If a Jew was in Galilee and wanted to go to Jerusalem, instead of cutting through Samaria, they would take a longer route just to avoid walking through Samaritan territory. Obviously, you wouldn’t find a lot of Samaritans in Jerusalem. They stayed away from each other. It was mutual disdain.

            Considering their mutual hostility, it may be surprising that this Samaritan leper was hanging out with these Jewish lepers. We assume they were Jews. After all, that’s what Jews were supposed to do. In order to become ritually clean so they could go worship in the Temple after getting leprosy, they had to show themselves to the priests. That’s not something Samaritans needed to do. They wouldn’t be allowed in the Temple anyway. Nor would they want to go there. They believed they had their own way of worshipping God without need for the Temple in Jerusalem. For example, Samaritans only considered the first five books of the Old Testament as scripture. And they had built their own temple on Mt. Gerizim and claimed that spot as the dwelling place of God. That was part of the hostility between the two groups. They both worshipped God but they had different ways of doing it. So, these religious differences split them apart.

            But in this case, the Samaritan was living with all those Jews. The division between the Samaritans and Jews became a bit fuzzy because of a much larger commonality: they were all lepers. And leprosy was a disease that drove all of them out into the wilderness, cut off from the larger community, so they wouldn’t contaminate anyone else. They were together in their mutual isolation from the larger society. In their current state, none of them could worship in the Temple in Jerusalem: all of them because they were lepers and the Samaritan because of his ethnicity. They were all in the same boat. The Samaritan/Jew division was swallowed up by their mutual experience of being pushed out of society because of their common illness. They were all outcasts.

            So, here’s the thing: once they were all healed of their leprosy, now all of a sudden the common denominator of being outcasts was removed. The old animosity between Jews and Samaritans could raise its ugly head again. They no longer shared the identity of leper. Now they were Jews or Samaritans again. I wonder how long it took for the old animosity to rise up. I wonder if while the Jews saw that they were healed, they anticipated getting to Jerusalem while the Samaritan began to slow up a little bit.

            As the Jews headed to Jerusalem to show themselves to the priests and be declared clean, perhaps the Samaritan wondered if the priests would even look at him. Maybe, for the Samaritan, there was no reason for him to keep going to Jerusalem. What difference would it make if the priests declared him clean anyway. He wouldn’t be allowed in the Temple because he was a Samaritan. And he really wasn’t interested in worshipping at that Temple. So, perhaps he thought he might as well turn back and show himself to the one who made it possible for God to cleanse him. He would go back to Jesus, the Jew, who included him in the healing.

            And that makes me wonder if the Samaritan, in his heart, didn’t think he would be healed. After all, Jesus was a Jew. Of course he would cure his brothers in the faith of their leprosy so they could worship at the Temple in Jerusalem again. But why would Jesus bother healing a Samaritan? Why would a Samaritan even matter to Jesus? Amazingly, he got healed too. Jesus the Jew included him, a Samaritan, in the healing. To this Samaritan, to be included in the healing must have felt like truly a gift of mercy. The lepers had cried out to Jesus, “Have mercy on us!” I’m sure the Jews felt like Jesus had shown mercy to them. But the Samaritan…even more so. Jesus didn’t have to do it. The Samaritan did not for one second take this healing for granted. Even though he was a despised Samaritan he was healed too. His gratitude toward Jesus was overwhelming. Whether he ever went to Jerusalem or not may be beside the point. He had to go to Jesus, the Jew who included him, to humbly throw himself at Jesus’ feet and express his deep gratitude. Do you think when Jesus asked where the other nine were, that he was indirectly poking at the ancient Jew/Samaritan divide?

            It really feels good to be included for a change. Gratitude naturally springs forth when you receive something good that you expected others to receive but not yourself. Can you think of a time when you were included when you didn’t expect to be? Maybe it was when you got picked in the schoolyard to play on someone’s team. Or it was you who got called on to share your opinion. Someone asked you for advice for a change. You got moved up to first class to fill an empty seat. More tables and chairs were brought in so that the group you were in could come in from outside and join everyone else for the dinner and program. It does feel good to be included, especially when you feel like you are always being excluded or overlooked.  I can imagine that, for this Samaritan, being included in the healing was a big part of why he came running to Jesus full of praise for God so that he could tell Jesus thank you. To receive something good when you don’t expect it is a cause for gratitude.

            So, I have a challenge for us this week. During the week, I want each of us to be aware of what opportunities might come up where you can include someone who is being left out, or give somebody something good they didn’t expect. Do something for somebody that would cause them to need to express gratitude. Whether they end up saying thank you to you, or to God, or both, it doesn’t matter. What can you do this week that will cause another to be grateful? And while you’re at it, try to notice the little things that come your way, the small blessings that you didn’t expect: a parking space up front, never having to stop at a red light, having just enough change, hearing that favorite song on the radio that you haven’t heard in years. Notice what you receive this week for which you can be grateful. Express your gratitude to God and, if it’s applicable, let that person know you are grateful. Let us all seek to generate more gratitude in the world this week. That in itself can provide some healing in these times of divisiveness. Generating gratitude might help bring people together instead of push people apart. Gratitude can help make us whole. Gratitude is healing medicine.

The Grace of Lament

Based on Lamentations 1:1-6
First delivered October 6, 2019
Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr


            When was the last time you heard a sermon based on a passage from Lamentations? I bet it’s been awhile. And I doubt you have heard many of them in your whole life. Lamentations is not exactly a common book of the Bible for sermons or, really, for anything. It is one of those books where you may have to use the table of contents to find. We just aren’t familiar with this book.

            A colleague asked me a few days ago what I was going to preach on this Sunday. We are both lectionary preachers. He serves in the Lutheran church. He asked if I was going to preach on the parable of the mustard seed. I said no, that I was going to preach on the Lamentations passage. He looked at me and said, “Whoa!” I said, “Yeah, I’m going dark.” When given the choice between the parable of the mustard seed and Lamentations, most preachers would choose the mustard seed parable.

            Why do preachers tend to avoid preaching from Lamentations? It’s not like the book is hard to understand, like Revelation or Ezekiel or the Song of Solomon. It doesn’t read like Leviticus, a collection of religious laws that don’t apply to us. If you read through Lamentations, it is pretty clear what is going on. It is essentially one long funeral dirge. It is a poetic expression of deep grief and utter despair with a dash of hope. And maybe that’s why preachers tend to steer clear from this book. It’s too depressing. It’s too dark and gloomy. Who wants to hear a sermon about gloom and doom on a Sunday morning? Not many.

            Let’s be honest; we generally don’t do lamenting very well. Even if we have to fake it, we have this idea that in church we have to be happy and have it all together. Many folks come to church fresh and clean, wearing their church clothes, a smile on their face and a more or less cheery attitude. Even if it’s a forced smile.

            Earlier this week I was at a two day seminar at the VA, learning about how deployments affect our warriors, the hidden wounds of war they bring home with them, and how that affects their families. We learned some ways that churches can be supportive of warriors and their families. In one of the PowerPoint presentations there was a picture of this young man who was clean cut, dressed sharp, a big, toothy grin on his face and a sparkle in his eye. The presenter said that this is the face of the Sunday morning guy. It’s the face you present on Sunday morning. Everything is fine, you are filled with the joy of the Lord, you are blessed. The next slide was a picture of the same person. This one was in black and white. You see his side profile with his head bowed down. His toothy grin is gone. He looks burdened and sad. The presenter suggested that this picture captured how this man really felt. Things weren’t fine. He was filled with anxiety and guilt. It was hard for him to see any blessings in his life. And the tragedy is that when he was in church, he didn’t think he could show his true self to others. To do so would have been to make himself vulnerable. People would be uncomfortable around him. He doesn’t want to be pitied. He doesn’t want to come across as a failure or not having it all together. He wants to give the impression that he’s handling his business, he’s confident and competent. When the truth is that he is wounded and lost. And for him, like so many, church is the one place where we can’t be honest about our feelings and the true state of things. It is in church where we slap on a smile, pat everyone on the back, say everything is fine and fake our happiness until we get back in our cars. Then the smile can be put away for another time when we need to pull it out again to assure people that we’re fine when we aren’t fine.

            If there is any place where there needs to be authenticity, it should be the church. The church is supposed to be a hospital for sinners. It is supposed to be a community where one beggar points to another beggar where to find bread. It is supposed to be a community where we believe in grace, where we acknowledge that we are saved by grace and not by our own goodness, where we acknowledge that we are broken, that we are in need of healing, that we are not living our best lives, that we are not living heaven on earth. The church is where we are to value mercy, compassion, empathy, support, understanding. The church is where we are to value honesty, truthfulness, and vulnerability.

            And yet…we can sometimes do a good job of faking it. There is something about coming together on Sunday morning for worship that we want to, as I heard someone say once, “get our Jesus on.” We choose to leave our mess at the door and come in to church with a smile on our face, with no cares in the world, and a song in our heart. For an hour or so, we can pretend that everything’s fine. And if we can’t fake it, well, maybe we can skip church until we can get ourselves together.

            I will never forget this woman who had been a faithful member of the church that I was pastoring. She was there every Sunday. She did the children’s moment. She was a delightful person. But her husband never came with her to church. He wasn’t the church going kind. Well, one Sunday she didn’t come to church. And then another. I reached out to her. She said she and her husband got a divorce. She was going through a lot of strain in her personal life. And she told me that once she felt like she had her life together and was in a better place emotionally then she would come back to church. I told her the door was always open for her. But in the back of my mind I wanted to tell her this is when you need the church the most, when your life is falling apart, when there is no joy, when you are going through loss and grief and sorrow, when all you feel like doing is to lament. But she was like so many others. If they can’t fake happiness and having their life together, then they can’t come to church.

            Why do we feel the need to fake it and not allow ourselves as a community to lament? Why do we not make space in our life together to grieve? Maybe because it’s too painful. It’s too emotional. We want the sanctuary to be a place set apart from all the grief and loss and mess. We want this space and this time to be full of happiness and have-it-all-togetherness. Maybe we don’t want lament in our worship because it would make us vulnerable. We would have to make it plain that we don’t have it all together, that we aren’t happy about how our lives are going, that the current reality of our church is a shadow of how it used to be, it hurts, and we don’t know how to fix it. Rather than acknowledge the grief, we would rather sweep it all under the rug, put on a happy face, and pretend everything’s fine when we know it isn’t.

            Jeremiah, the one believed to be the source of Lamentations, had no problem lamenting the state of Jerusalem and of Israel in their current reality of exile. “How deserted lies the city, once so full of people.” Once upon a time, Jerusalem was a cosmopolitan city. It was full of wealth. All the important people lived there. Foreign dignitaries would travel to Jerusalem to meet with the king of Israel. People from across the land would travel to Jerusalem to do business, to buy and sell, and to worship at the Temple on festival days. The city gates were busy with business dealings, the settling of disputes among the elders of the city, and good old-fashioned gossip and the sharing of news from the hinterlands. But now…Jerusalem is barren. The streets are nearly empty. The hubbub of the crowds is long gone. The gates are rusty. The few remaining elders could sit at the city gates all day long and hardly anyone would pass by. The priests are left to groan because hardly anyone goes to the Temple anymore. The surrounding nations are doing just fine, but Israel suffers, the people dispersed across the world, the former glory days far in the rear-view mirror. Jeremiah is not afraid to name the current reality of Jerusalem and of Israel, of how things used to be and how they are now. Jerusalem weeps at night and there is no one to comfort her. Her friends have betrayed her. Jerusalem is in bitter anguish. All the splendor has departed.

            Reflecting on this passage, we may find our thoughts directed toward how much loss we have endured as a church and as a denomination since the 1960s. For as long as I have been alive the United Methodist Church has been in decline. It is obvious to all of us that our church is not thriving like it once did. Now, it isn’t as dire as how Jeremiah describes Jerusalem and Israel. But there is much less activity in our churches. Fewer people go to church these days. Yes, there are exceptions. Some churches experience impressive growth. There are churches that are thriving. But for most of us, things aren’t so good. More and more churches close every year. And it’s not just our denomination that is going through an extended period of so much loss. People haven’t given up on God necessarily. But an increasing number of people have given up on the church, especially young people. If we allow ourselves, we can resonate with the lamentation of Jeremiah. We can allow ourselves to grieve, to weep, to lament.

            A few years ago, I was pastoring a church that, when I arrived, had an average attendance of six. It was never a large congregation. But in their hey day they had over 100 in regular attendance. But, for a number of reasons, the congregation had dwindled to a mere handful. So much loss. It was All Saints Sunday, and during my sermon, I invited everyone to look around and remember those who used to sit at that pew, and to affirm that those beloveds who were now in heaven were still with us, worshiping with us, and that one day we will see them again.

            At that church, we had joys and concerns and the pastoral prayer after the sermon. During the sharing time, Walt stood up. He and his wife Mary were the pillars of this church. Walt gave the names of a few of the people that were no longer at Bethel but had made their way to the church triumphant. He choked up. It wasn’t a full-on lament, but you could hear in his voice the sorrow of loss. When you are in a sanctuary that can comfortably hold 100 and there is only 6, the loss can’t be avoided. Of course, we didn’t spend all our time together lamenting the loss and knowing that the survival of the church was on life support. There was lots of laughter. We did life together. And every now and again we allowed ourselves to grieve our current reality.

            To lament, to have the courage and honesty to acknowledge that the current reality is one of loss, this opens the door for hope. And with hope comes the capacity to move forward rather than be stuck in despair or frozen in denial. How does hope show up? Hope is what you have when there’s nothing else. Hope is the belief that this isn’t all there is, that God is still with us, that regardless of our current reality of loss and grief that God has not abandoned us, that we are still loved, and that God’s grace is sufficient. Hope is what you have when everything else fails. Hope is the final line of defense against the abyss of despair. Hope is to have confidence in resurrection. It is in times of grief, of loss, of being confronted with death, that hope can really shine. And with that hope we can keep going. It is hope that gets us out of bed in the morning. It is hope that keeps us coming to church every Sunday. It is hope that prompts us to keep giving of our resources, our time and energy to support the church. It is hope that keeps us believing that God isn’t finished with us yet. Hope gives us the capacity to move forward with faith in God.

            There is something powerful and even sacred, to have a good cry while someone else sits with you and shares your sorrow. Mom Nora was the dorm mom for my residence hall in college. She had worked on military airplanes in WW II. She was big and no non-sense. And whenever she introduced herself to all the new residents at Smith Hall, she would say in her gruff voice, “I’m Mom Nora, and I’m a hugger.” And she was. She was the best dorm mom for a bunch of college boys. And on that night, when I was in the living room of her suite, sobbing until I ran out of tears after telling her my mom had just passed, Mom Nora sat in her Lazy Boy, offered an occasional word of comfort, but mostly sat quietly while I allowed the grief to flow out of me while I sat on her couch. A couple other people came in to say a few words of comfort but mostly Mom Nora kept everyone else out so I could have all the time I needed. To have that space to grieve was precious. It was cathartic. It was healing. Lament can do that.

            Mom Nora was there for me as an act of love. I don’t know if she cried also because I was lost in my grief. But surely she shared my sorrow to some degree. And this points to God, the One who loves us with a perfect love. When we allow ourselves to lament, surely God laments right with us. When our hearts are broken, so is God’s. When we mourn our loss, God surely mourns with us. Even in the situation of Jerusalem and Israel, who were desolate, exiled, scattered across the world as a consequence of their unfaithfulness to God, God surely shared their pain. If God is love, then God does not gloat or look down with a scolding eye even when people suffer as a consequence of their sinfulness. There is comfort in knowing that in our grief God grieves with us. God is there to hold us in our times of sorrow.

            We also find strength in times of lament by remembering we are not alone. Not only is God always with us, we have brothers and sisters in Christ all around us. Many of them share in our grief over so much loss over the decades. We are not alone in the loss of membership and resources. But also, with those congregations that are doing well, they are part of our family too. We belong to each other. And World Communion Sunday is an opportunity to remember that we are a part of a community that is much larger than our own little church. We are just one manifestation of a global body of believers, rich in diversity and resources. I don’t know about you but just by remembering how large the Church is as a whole, with a billion members spread all across the world, it gives me encouragement and confidence that not all is lost. We are part of something so much bigger than ourselves. And this eases the pain of acknowledging the losses we have experienced as a church. The more we do things together as a community of churches, the more encouraged we can be to keep moving forward into what God desires for us.

            And that brings me to this challenge laid before you. In your bulletin you find a breakthrough prayer. This prayer was written collaboratively by the Bible study class. The purpose of this prayer is to collectively ask God to reveal to us what God’s hopes and dreams are for us as a church. We all want to see our church be revitalized. The first step is to pray together and seek God’s direction so that once we have a clearer picture we can then creatively put to work the resources we have toward that dream. We don’t want to put our energies going in a direction that does not align with what God’s preferred direction is for us. And so, we pray. I am asking you to pray this prayer every day for forty days. Remember, prayer is a conversation. So, don’t just read the prayer and then move on. Let this prayer be the opening of a conversation with God. Pray the prayer and then sit still for a few minutes and pay attention to what comes to your mind. What images or visions do you see? What kind of people come to mind? It could be that God is placing those images in your mind as a response to this prayer. If you do receive some kind of answer, please share it with me. My hope is that several of you will receive a response from God that, collectively, will give us a rich vision of where God wants us to go in the next chapter of our life together.

Who Do We Not See?

“Who Do We Not See?”
Based on Luke 16:19-31
First delivered Sept. 29, 2019
Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr


            For several months, due to road construction…seems like there’s always road construction somewhere, doesn’t it…I had to make a detour to get home. I took a road behind the convention center and then hopped on the onramp to I-670 Eastbound. As the fall turned to winter, and the falling leaves revealed what was hidden among the trees, I noticed that in the grove of trees along the onramp there were several small tents tucked between the onramp and some train tracks. It was a homeless camp. I had driven past that encampment for months and had no idea it was there. Every now and then I see someone walking around out there. If I really wanted to, there is a little parking area just before that grove where I could pull in, get out of the car and walk over to that small encampment. I could introduce myself, strike up some conversation, build some relationships, offer my help. But I never have. And I don’t think I ever will. I just keep on driving. The people who live in that homeless camp might as well be behind a wall. People who drive by might see them but there will be no engagement, no relationship building, no offers for help. The people in the cars go flying by while the people that live in the camp are left behind.

            The story of the rich man and Lazarus, only found in Luke, is a powerful story. Luke making the point earlier that the Pharisees were lovers of money, he places here in his gospel this story Jesus told of an incredibly wealthy man who feasted every day while wearing purple silk robes and an incredibly poor man named Lazarus, which, in Hebrew, means “God helps,” who lies at the rich man’s gate clothed with open sores. All Lazarus wants is some crumbs from the rich man’s table, but he gets nothing. Lazarus dies and is carried up by angels to heaven to sit at the banquet table with Abraham. The rich man dies and is buried. All he wants is a drop of water to cool his tongue as he is tormented by the raging flames in Hades, but gets nothing. The rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his brothers, but Abraham says that if his brothers won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t listen to anyone else even if that person comes back from the dead.

            This story triggers all kinds of questions and can take us down many roads of reflection. It is amazing that the rich man, with all his excess, did not even give a few scraps to Lazarus. Did he not even see him? How else to explain his not giving Lazarus anything? Surely the rich man was not so hard hearted that he couldn’t even have one of his servants occasionally fix a small plate and carry it out to Lazarus. He didn’t even have to invite Lazarus inside. He didn’t even have to physically waddle over to Lazarus. Maybe he didn’t even know Lazarus was there. But that seems hard to believe. Still, maybe the rich man was so much in his little world that he was completely oblivious to a desperately needy person literally lying at his doorstep.

            I just can’t get that gate out of my mind. It was just a hunk of metal taking up a sliver of space. Yet, it may as well have been a twenty foot wall or a wide gaping canyon. It was just a gate that separated Lazarus from just a little bit of food. And that gate was sufficient to keep Lazarus out and to contribute to his dying of starvation.

            Why couldn’t Lazarus just get over the gate on his own? I wonder how tall that gate actually was. You would think if a person gets desperate enough, they would eventually take the initiative to just come in and get the rich man’s attention and beg for some bread. But probably Lazarus laid at the rich man’s gate because he had been dumped there by someone. He was unable to walk or even to crawl. He was stuck there in his misery. Unable to bathe. Unable to get a drink of water. Unable to take shelter from the rain. Unable to go anywhere private to relieve himself. He was abandoned right there. How is it that no one walking by gave him a hand? Couldn’t anyone open the gate for him and help him inside the rich man’s house? Couldn’t anyone have brought Lazarus some food or taken him somewhere to get treated and cared for? Someone could have done something to relieve this man of his suffering. It wasn’t just the rich man with the hard heart oblivious to Lazarus’ need. No one saw him. Everyone neglected him. I wonder if Lazarus sometimes wondered if he was invisible. I have read stories written by homeless people who beg on the streets who watch so many people walk past them without even looking at them, as if they were invisible. Lazarus seemed to be invisible to everyone. No one really saw him.

            I wonder what kinds of gates we have in our community that keep people out; gates that people won’t or can’t open; boundaries that people don’t cross; places that people won’t go.

            Since I started this new appointment, I decided to take the bus during the week when I’m coming in to Westgate or Parkview. I do that partly to save gas and wear and tear on my car. Don’t have to deal with traffic either. I can check my emails and get some reading done while someone else is doing the driving. And it’s one less car on the road, one small effort to reduce pollution. When you take the bus, you see parts of the city you miss when you usually drive around on the interstates. Most of the time the bus isn’t on the interstate but sticks to surface streets. Instead of I-270 and I-670 and I-70 you are on Cleveland, High, and Broad. It’s on the surface streets, at a much slower speed, that you can see people and you see the businesses they go to and the houses and apartments they live in. You often see people that struggle every day to get through the day. You see people walking down the sidewalk who probably don’t own cars or for whatever reason are unable to secure a driver’s license or auto insurance. You don’t see these people, where they shop and where they live, when you are flying down the interstate. It’s almost as if those interstates that weave their way through the city are like gates that block drivers from seeing the people that live in poverty all around us. We just drive over and around those areas as we hurry from one place to another…unless we are stuck in traffic. Then all we get to look at are the cars and trucks that are surrounding us. We won’t be able to see the people that live just a short way from the interstate.

            Through the summer, the last Saturday of the month, Grandview hosts the Grandview Hop. In the evening, Grandview Avenue is shut down so people can walk down the street visiting food trucks and booths, hang out with friends and just do some people watching. And dog watching. But as I think about the people I saw walking up and down Grandview during the Grandview Hop, you would be hard pressed to see some of the people that walk up and down Broad Street. And it’s not like folks who live along Broad Street couldn’t get to Grandview. The 31 and the 5 will take you there. But for whatever reason, there are some folks you won’t see at the Grandview Hop; people who are living in poverty, struggling day by day to make ends meet. There’s no gate that keeps folks like that away. You just don’t see them at the Hop. Why?

            George Buttrick, a well-known preacher, commented on the story of the rich man and Lazarus, saying that the rich man’s biggest sin was his failure to be a good neighbor.  Neighbors have a responsibility to look out for one another and to lend a hand. Good neighbors know each other. They recognize who belongs and when things don’t look right. Neighbors take care of each other. Lazarus was the rich man’s neighbor. Not only does he fail to care for Lazarus, we wonder if the rich man even noticed he was there. The rich man was the worst neighbor possible. You can’t be a good neighbor if you don’t even see your neighbor.

            We don’t know anyone who fits the role of the rich man. I am pretty sure none of us have ever seen anyone who wears fine linen clothes and has a huge dinner party at their house every single night of the week, year in and year out. Heck, even kings and queens don’t have dinner parties every night of the week, day by day, all year long. We don’t know anyone as poor and diseased as Lazarus. We see some pretty poor people from time to time, but no one who is crippled, covered with open sores, and left to rot in front of the gate of a rich man’s house. Trust me, in our society no one will be allowed to just lay down in front of a mansion in an upscale neighborhood for long. Someone will jog by or cruise by in their BMW and call in the cops to check it out. Poor and sick people spending the night in front of a rich person’s house just doesn’t happen. I’ve never seen it.

            We haven’t seen rich people like this rich man, and we haven’t seen poor people like Lazarus. The question this story leaves us is, who else do we not see? That’s a hard question to answer. How do we know if there are people we don’t see? Just like driving past a homeless camp tucked away in a grove of trees along a busy highway, people may be there, but you can’t see them when they are tucked among trees while you are flying down the road at 70 miles per hour. We may see people on Broad Street that appear to be struggling to make ends meet, but we don’t see homebound folks who live down Burgess or Yale. What are the gates, the fences, the barriers that block us from seeing certain people? Who knows, maybe there are people who are Lazarus-like right around us and, for whatever reason, we don’t even see them. Because there is a gate, a fence, a barrier, a highway, that keeps us apart from each other. I wonder what barriers there are around us that need removed, or barriers that we need to cross over, so we can better see our neighbors, so we can have the opportunity to be good neighbors.

No Matter What

Based on Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
First delivered Sept. 22, 2019
Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr


            Jeremiah has traditionally been called the “weeping prophet.” This common nickname is inspired by some of the scripture we heard read this morning. Jeremiah cried out, “Oh, that my head was a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears!” Jeremiah was not a cool and stone- faced man. He was not hardened, detached or aloof. No, Jeremiah wore his heart on his sleeve. He really cares about his people. He has skin in the game. He is invested. And as he watches the suffering that his people endure, he is right there suffering with them.

            Why is Jeremiah so emotional? What has triggered his tears to flow so freely, yet wished his tears were like a water gushing fountain? Even for someone who cries easily, this is pretty extreme. There must be something that Jeremiah is seeing that is prompting him to cry like he has never cried before. Not just a shed tear. Not even a good cry. He wants the kind of cry that makes you bend over, put your head in your hands, and heave and tremble and wail. It’s a cry that most of us only experience a handful of times in our lives, a cry that you will never forget. Whatever Jeremiah was seeing must have been absolutely heartbreaking. What was it?

            A few weeks back, I talked about what Israel was doing that prompted God’s anger and the threat of punishment. At the time, Israel was under foreign occupation. We may also speculate that the people were struggling a little to make ends meet. The crop yields weren’t keeping up with demand. We can guess this because the leaders of Israel, who were not happy about the state of affairs, began discussing among themselves what could be done to make things better. They came up with the idea of learning about and then worshipping the gods native to the land they were inhabiting. They weren’t going to give up on God. They just thought that if they also worshipped the local gods, maybe that would help assure a prosperous harvest. After all, the local deities had authority over the land. Why not appease them? In the minds of Israel’s leaders, it was worth a shot. Worshipping God was fine. But something more was needed just to make sure the crops would be good. And, who knows? Maybe the gods will do something about the foreign power that was oppressing everyone.

            Well, look what happened. We hear in the scriptures that it was the end of summer, the harvest had passed, and the people are not saved. Sure, this language may be metaphorical. It may only be saying that the people had been waiting for God to deliver them from their oppressor, but God has not saved them. Another way to say it is that the people have had all year to return to God and be saved but have chosen not to repent and now the year is up, (Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, falls around Sept. 29-Oct. 1) it’s still status quo, and God does not deliver them. Or maybe this was the literal truth. The summer is over, the harvest time has come, and there is nothing to harvest. God has not saved them. It will be months until the next crops can be planted, and there will be little to nothing for the people to eat. Winter is coming. Hunger, and even starvation, awaits them. It will be a long and painful winter. And Jeremiah, who will share in the suffering and hunger, breaks down and cries. This didn’t have to happen. But the people were stubborn. Status quo was too powerful. And the consequences for their inability to repent will be brutal. Jeremiah imagines the children groaning and whining for something to eat, while their mothers and fathers sit listless, their cold eyes lost in their gnawing hunger. The prophet weeps.

            Whether the people are suffering massive crop failure or it is some other kind of suffering, Israel was grieving and fearful for their future. They are desperate. Their plan to include worship of the local gods backfired. Things had only gotten worse. In their angst they cry out, “Is the Lord not in Zion?” They were actually wondering if God had abandoned them. How else is it that the people are suffering so? It must be because God has given up on them. What about the local gods they were worshipping? The people aren’t wondering about that. They think God has abandoned them. Unbelievable.

            This was part of their problem. Like I said, they didn’t stop worshipping God. They still read the scriptures. They still participated in the rituals. They still kept the festivals. But for a little insurance, they decided they could also worship the local gods, just to make sure that everything would be fine, or maybe with the idea that things would get better. They were covering all their bases. But when things went south, they question God’s faithfulness.

            I mean, did they think that somehow God would overlook their lack of faithfulness?  They already had a God, the great I Am, who chose them to be God’s people. They were the chosen ones. The God who created the heavens and the earth could have chosen any people to be their God and God had chosen them. All God asked was that they be faithful only to God and follow God’s commandments. They just had to stay loyal to God alone. But instead the people decided not to be faithful to God alone. They decided to worship the local gods as well. And they are surprised that it seems God has abandoned them. Amazing.

            There is an excellent documentary on PBS that started this past week produced by the great Ken Burns on the subject of country music. If you didn’t get a chance to catch it, you can go to pbs.org and find the page where you can watch the previous episodes to catch up. In one of the episodes we learn about Kitty Wells who sang a song that spoke to a lot of married women who had to put up with their cheating husbands. The song was called “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” This was a song that came out in 1952 in response to a Hank Thompson tune called “The Wild Side of Life” which was wildly popular that year. It was like Kitty Wells had had enough of all these songs about women who are floozies and flirts that tempt men to be unfaithful while their wives are supposed to always be there at home waiting for their husbands to stumble home from the honky tonk. The wives were supposed to stand by their men while their men went carousing. So, Kitty sang:



            As I sit here tonight the jukebox's playing a song about the wild side of life
As I listen to the words you are saying it brings mem'ries when I was a trusting wife
It was't God who made honky tonk angels as you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they're still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong
Well it's a shame that all the blame is on us women
It's not true that only you men feel the same
From the start most every heart that's ever broken
Was because there always was a man to blame



            As I thought about Israel’s relationship with God this song seems to resonate. It’s like Israel thought they could have a relationship with the local gods but, when things go bad, that God would still be there for them at the end of the day, to comfort and, frankly, to bail them out in their time of need.

            If you were God, the jilted lover, in the relationship with Israel, how would you respond? One way would be bitter rage. You may aim to inflict maximum punishment on your cheating spouse or partner. Another response may be “the silent treatment.” You move out or make them move out. And it goes radio silent: won’t return calls, unfriend on Facebook, incommunicado.

            But how does God respond to the unfaithfulness of the people? Jeremiah’s response may be a clue. See, the prophet is the voice of God. God speaks through the prophet. There’s other ways to communicate than words. Could it be that the way Jeremiah responds to Israel’s ongoing unfaithfulness reflects God’s heart? I wonder if Jeremiah’s tears and crushing sorrow reflects God’s tears and sorrow. I wonder if Israel’s unfaithfulness, and the suffering they experience as a consequence, breaks God’s heart? As God sees the broken relationship God has with Israel, God wants to cry a river.

            When we go through heartache and betrayal, what we need is healing. We need something to soothe the pain. One way we get that relief is through drugs and alcohol so that we don’t feel anything. I came across this video interview this man had with a homeless woman in Detroit named Amber. She had been back out on the streets for about eight months, feeding her addiction to heroin and crack. She had been clean for five years. But then she broke up with her girlfriend and it threw her into a manic depression. She turned to alcohol to self-medicate. She lost her apartment, lost her job, and lost her brother to an overdose. She fought with her mom all the time. And it broke her. She left her daughter with her mom and dad and went back to the hood to get high. And eight months had passed since then. She said it, she couldn’t take the pain anymore, the heartache, so she chose to try to numb her pain with heroin and crack. All alcohol did to her was make her sick. So that was Amber’s response, which a lot of people choose in the experience of loss and heartache…to numb the pain so they won’t feel anything.

            Others choose to turn to friends and family who are there for us when the pain is too much. There is a musical being performed right now at the Ohio Theater called Dear Evan Hansen. Without getting into all the details of the story, Evan is carrying a lot of pain and anxiety. He copes with his pain by telling lies upon lies. He even lies to his mother. But the lies come crashing down all around him. He has nowhere to turn. He has broken everyone’s trust. So, he goes home. And there is his mom. His dad left when he was seven, when his parents divorced. Evan knows he is messed up and that he is broken. He knows he has hurt his mother and treated her badly. But he has no one to turn to. In a touching scene near the end of the musical, his mom tells the story of when the U-Haul truck pulled up in their driveway on the day Evan’s dad moved away. That night, as his mom came to tuck him into bed, he asked her if tomorrow another U-Haul truck would come to move her out. And she told him there would be no U-Haul truck. She would stay with him, no matter what. She would always be there for him. And she kept her promise. When there was no one else Evan could turn to, he had his mother and her love.

            And, of course, we can always turn to God in our times of heartache. God is as close as a prayer, or the cry of the heart. The psalms are full of laments, where the psalmist cries out about the suffering, rejection and heartaches of life. But the psalmist testifies that God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in time of need. God is there to renew our strength. We can fly on wings like eagles. The psalmist says, “I will yet praise God, and worship Him; for God’s love endures forever.” In that dark night of the soul, when nothing is going right and the future looks grim, we can rest in the presence of God, trust in God’s grace, and assure ourselves of God’s everlasting love. This can bring relief to the pain in our hearts.

            But what if it is God that you have betrayed? What if it is this betrayal that is the source of your heartache? Jeremiah wants to know, on behalf of his unfaithful people, is there a balm in Gilead? Maybe there isn’t. Maybe God refuses to comfort and heal the people in their suffering and pain. And who would blame God? The people deserve maximum punishment for their continued infidelity and their apparent inability to acknowledge their unfaithfulness. So, God will just let the people lie in the bed they made for themselves. It is hard for us not to blame God for not coming to comfort and heal the Israelites who had treated God so badly. I wonder if we would want a different response from God when we are in Israel’s shoes?

            Or maybe there is a balm in Gilead. God is ready to comfort and heal the sin sick souls of the people if they would at this late hour turn back to God in humility, confess their sin, acknowledge the error of their ways, and recommit anew their singular faithfulness to God alone. But they haven’t done this so far. They don’t even realize they are doing anything wrong. I wonder if we are ever like that?

            Regardless of how the people respond, or fail to respond, in their time of suffering and heartache, if it is so that God weeps over the people, this suggests how God will respond if the people choose to turn back to God and forsake the other gods. God’s relationship with the people really matters to God. Their continual lack of faithfulness breaks God’s heart. God longs for the relationship to be restored. I am convinced, as I think Jeremiah would be, that if the people would finally wake up and realize what they are doing, and make the turn back to God, that God will rush to them, embrace them, and bless them.

            It makes me think of the father who runs to his prodigal son. How often, I wonder, that the father sat on his porch, looking out toward the horizon where his younger son had gone when he took his half of the inheritance and abandoned his family to strike out on his own. Until that late afternoon, as he rose from his chair to go inside for supper, he noticed someone walking down the road. And as the traveler got closer, it became clearer to the father that that was his son. And he leaped down the porch and ran to his son, embracing him, kissing him, and with tears running down his cheeks whispering into his son’s ears, “Oh son, it is so good to have you back.”

            That’s what God is like when we turn back to God in our times of unfaithfulness. There is a balm in Gilead for us. When it comes to making things right with God, we only have to turn back and God will close the gap. God is always ready to love on us, to claim us as one of God’s own. God will never choose to load up the U-Haul and move out. God will always be there for us.

            Now, that doesn’t mean our heartaches are suddenly healed and our problems go away. Israel could have turned back to God in humility and asked for forgiveness, recommitted themselves to God alone and God would have welcomed them back. But they still had no food laid up for winter. They would still be hungry and have to contend with a long winter. The consequences of unfaithfulness and rebellion toward God don’t magically disappear when we repent. The price still has to be paid.

            But as we suffer the consequences of our actions and work to make things right, we can count on God to be with us through it all. It takes time to repair relationships, whether that be with other people or with God. Repentance is hard work. Healing and restoration take time. But if we turn back to God in the midst of our hurt and heartache, we can trust that God will always love us, no matter what and that God will never give up on us. God is always at home waiting for us. God will tell us the truth of the matter. God will hold us accountable. There is no cheap grace with God. But God has promised that God will be with us always, even to the end of the age. God will never leave us or forsake us. No matter what.

Finding What Was Lost

Based on Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Luke 15:1-10
First delivered Sept. 15, 2019
Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr


            I have a friend who posted something on Facebook that made me chuckle. She wrote about how when she was young, she was afraid of bees. But now when she sees a bee, she wants to make sure they are comfortable and offer them a drink if they are thirsty. She has come to understand how critical bees are in the process of pollination, and how if bees are decimated it will significantly harm our capacity to feed ourselves. There have been some scares about the collapse of bee colonies that has come to the attention of lots of people. It even inspired an animated film back in 2007 called The Bee Movie. It was a cute film that dealt with the serious topic of the importance of bees in agriculture. Whether it’s the use of certain pesticides or some other factor, bees need protected because if we lose bees that would make a catastrophic impact on agriculture. I have heard that the collapse of bee colonies lately has not been as bad as it was a few years ago, so that’s good news. Still, it is concerning if bees are not thriving.

            When we were kids, we spent a lot of time outside playing. And we caught all kinds of critters: fire flies, crickets, lizards, frogs, toads, garter snakes, turtles, grass hoppers, crawdads, tadpoles. Where I grew up the biggest catch was a horny toad. They are technically called horned lizards that live in the western U.S. and down into Mexico. They look like toads and they have little horns all over their bodies. They are the coolest. They look like tiny Stegosaurs. We would catch all these creatures we found in our back yards and put them in shoe boxes with a piece of carrot or something for food and see how long we could keep them alive, or until mom or dad told us to let them free, or they got loose on their own when we weren’t looking. And the rolly polly’s. We had so many at our house.

            But what about now? I’ll admit, I’m not outside as much as I used to. But I don’t remember the last time I saw a snake. There just doesn’t seem to be as many critters in the back yard anymore. Maybe they are there and I’m just not seeing them. In fact, it’s a little unsettling sometimes to be outside, even in a park, and not see any animals. What’s the cause of it? Why does it seem there is less wildlife these days?

            Back in 1962 came out a book by Rachel Carson called Silent Spring. It was inspired by a friend of hers who wrote a letter to the editor about how she had dead birds in her yard which she traced back to the use of the indiscriminate spraying of DDT to kill mosquitos. Carson presented her argument that the use of  synthetic pesticides was having adverse effects on the environment. She invited her readers to imagine the coming of spring, as everything is supposed to come back to life, but instead all the fish were dead. There were no birds singing. It was a silent spring. Of course, the chemical companies put up fierce resistance to her scientific findings. But her book helped kick off the environmental movement that eventually led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Nixon. DDT was banned throughout the nation for agricultural use. Her vision of what it would be like without living things, and the scientific basis of her research, was enough to trigger people to action. The argument can be made that since the 60s we have cleaner air and water and more responsible use of pesticides and herbicides. But still, it seems like spring is quieter than it used to be. And we didn’t have so many people with nut allergies and lactose intolerance and gluten intolerance like we do now. Some blame the increase of gluten sensitivity and even celiac disease with the use of Roundup. It makes you wonder if in some ways the environment isn’t as good as it seems.

            We hear in Jeremiah this morning a poetic representation of a silent spring. God is looking over the land that God gave to Israel. And what does God see? It’s a reversal of the creation story. The earth is formless and void. There is no light in the heavens. The mountains and hills are shaky. All the birds have flown away. The fruitful land is now desert. There are no people. All the cities are razed to the ground. What is described is a wasteland, an environment that is on the brink of total collapse. A silent spring to be sure, with the exception of the howling and scorching wind.

            This poetic description of the apocalypse portrays God’s judgment on the people for their inability to do good, their rejection of God and their worship of false gods. God had warned them that they would be destroyed if they did not turn from their wicked ways. And they did not turn back. So, they are destroyed as well as the land they lived on.

            But this destruction was not the consequence of environmental degradation. It was the result of a foreign army invading the land and wiping everyone out, destroying everything in sight. The foreign invasion was the means God used to punish Israel for their ongoing failure to repent and turn back to God. It was a technique used by armies in those days, if the goal was to do maximum damage, to go in and not only destroy the towns and villages and to plunder everything that was valuable but even to pour salt on the fields so that the soil would no longer be able to produce crops. It was the scorched earth policy of those days. And this was the image Jeremiah expressed to Israel, to get them to wake up and turn back toward God or this would be their future.

            This image of apocalyptic destruction may bring to mind the total destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when our country dropped nuclear bombs over those cities. The photos of those wiped out cities can’t do justice to what it must have been like to go there after all the radioactive dust settled. I can only imagine all you would have heard was the wind as you looked all around you and saw nothing but devastation: no buildings, no people, no birds, no nothing. Yes, Japan surrendered days later. World War II came to an end. And the threat of nuclear annihilation was upon us. The mad foolishness of war can now lead to the destruction of the planet.

            In 1945, there was a group of atomic scientists from the University of Chicago who participated in the Manhattan Project, the super-secret program that constructed the atomic bomb. They began to meet and discuss the ramifications of nuclear power as a weapon. And in 1947 they made up a symbolic clock which they call the Doomsday Clock. They set the time based on what they believed were the conditions in the world that could lead to total annihilation. Midnight marks the destruction of the planet. Every year since they put out a bulletin that expresses their concerns, not only about nuclear destruction but now they have added the threat of climate change to human civilization. As of this year, as it has been for the past few years, the clock is set at two minutes to midnight. To these scientists, as the message God spoke through Jeremiah, the threats to our survival is real and the need to change course is critical.

            So, what are we to do with this? We would all agree that God’s message for Jeremiah was for the people to respond, to give up their foolish ways, learn to do good, and be faithful to God alone. The consequences for not repenting and living right were truly perilous. But what about now? I am not going to make the claim that God is speaking through the scientists who warn us about the dire consequences if we don’t end the spread of nuclear weapons or take the steps necessary to adapt to climate change. Whether the warnings come from God through the scientists or not, the threats are there and the threats are real. As Christians, as children of God, as those who are called to bear witness to the love of God made known in Jesus, are we not to respond to these threats to human civilization? Don’t we want to do what we can to turn the world away from the brink of destruction?

            I suppose some would say that as Christians the state of the world is not our concern. All we have to worry about is getting saved so we can go to heaven and avoid hell. This world is passing away. So why should we be concerned about nuclear war or a warming climate that threatens to displace millions and millions of people, bring about widespread famine and perhaps bring about a widespread extinction not seen since the days of the dinosaurs?

            It seems to me that love requires another response. And if you think about it, if we are guided by the Spirit of God, following the teachings of Jesus, and respond with love and creativity to the challenges in front of us, whatever they be, that this will surely move the world away from nuclear annihilation and climate catastrophe, if even by a little bit. It seems to me that, as followers of Jesus, our best response to the challenges that threaten our planet today is to live in ways that are opposite to the precursors of war and environmental destruction. We would want to live our lives that would contribute to peace and to stewardship of this beautiful and life- giving earth that God made.

            The good news is that there is always hope with God. Even in this apocalyptic warning that God speaks through Jeremiah to the people, God says in 4:27, “The whole land will be ruined, though I will not destroy it completely.” Just like God didn’t completely destroy the earth in the Great Flood, so God will not destroy the land when the foreign army comes in to invade Israel. Our hope is that in the face of nuclear war and climate chaos that somehow God will prevent the earth from being destroyed. We can’t join with those who despair of the future of the earth and who instead have their eyes set on the life to come in heaven. God hasn’t given up on us. God has not given up on God’s wonderful creation that we call earth. God is a savior and redeemer, not a destroyer. As God’s children and as stewards of God’s creation, our responsibility is clearly to do everything we can to care for the earth we now call home. And we can live our lives responsibly, doing good and being faithful to God, day by day, one small act at a time, with the confident hope in God’s saving and amazing grace.

            I also can’t help but think of the woman searching her house for the missing silver coin. When she discovered she was missing a coin, she didn’t just shrug her shoulders and think to herself, “What can I do? I still have nine. No big deal.” No, she wanted that missing coin. Was she greedy? No, it seems to me that her motivation was one of stewardship. There was a coin laying around somewhere and it was worth something. It did no good being lost. It had purpose. It needed to be found. So, she set about to find it.

            And when she was looking all through her house for that coin, I can imagine she was busy tidying things up along the way. She probably cleared off her desk. Put the pile of clothes away. Got out the broom and started sweeping under the furniture in hopes of pulling that coin out from underneath the couch. She was restoring order to her house while looking for that coin. She found the coin and, as a bonus, had a nice, tidy and clean house. Easy to invite friends over to celebrate now that the house is all picked up!

            We know what God’s desires are for the world. God desires harmony, beauty, and life. God is the source of all these things. And God longs for the world to reflect back who God is as the creator of the world. So, we know what we need to be about in our lives as children of God. We want to contribute to the grand project of creating harmony and beauty and life. This is what we create when we follow the teachings of Jesus and stay in love with God and one another. This is what discipleship produces.

            And we live in a world that is a mess, with a lot of lost people who need to be found. The mess is daunting. Where to begin? With what is in front of you. What can you do today as a steward of God’s creation? Who do you know to be lost? I am talking about people who don’t know Jesus. But I’m also talking about people who are disconnected from society, who feel like they don’t belong or don’t have a purpose. They are lost too.

            But I wonder if finding what has been lost is not just about finding people. I wonder if we can cooperate with God in the work of restoring harmony, beauty and life in our lives, our communities, our world, that along the way we will find what has been lost: playfulness, adventure, wonder, humility, generosity, compassion, joy, innocence.