Tuesday, December 15, 2015

"Histories and Futures" - a sermon for the community of Zion Lutheran Church

Hello friends -

I hope this post finds you well! Life has been full in Pelican Rapids as of late - duties as usual in the parish, continually baking bread, cooking up a storm in my free time, etc. I wanted to share with you my sermon from this past Sunday, where I talked about God's hope and grace found in times of transplant and transition.

Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the One who is to come, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

            At Holden, I worked in the kitchen with one of the most ambitious, talented, and down-to-earth 74-year-old women I’d ever met. Her name is Nancy Raymond, and throughout our winter and spring sojourn together as kitchen staff in town, we got to know each other well. As the days got shorter and the mountains cast their shadows deeper through the valley, we talked about life in Grand Rapids, her family, and her story. She shared new beginnings – about how she moved to Grand Rapids for a job at age fifty-five, came alone and dared to find her way in a new community. She shared her love of traveling, hoping to see as much of this world as possible – trips to Italy, South America, and Scandinavia. She shared her thoughts on her spiritual practices, and what worship meant to her.

We talked bread and bakeries and dreams for ministry as we chopped five gallons of carrots, and she gave her quiet smile as I declared hands down that her garlic breadsticks were “world famous” as we served them up alongside lasagna. We shared together that year, very much so, an idea of what transformation was – coming from one place, home – Grand Rapids for her and Cannon Falls for me – to finding new community together in this remote mountain village. How we were being transplanted, and finding sorrows and joys within that. We talked about how God found us, came to us, and dwelled with us as we gathered for Vespers worship every evening. We missed what we knew, but loved in equal measure what we were finding in turn – chances for new relationships with new people and opportunities to learn their stories, histories, and futures.

            This tension between exile and promise, of casting-out and finding a future, of remembering what is forgotten and left behind and finding something new, is exactly what our text today from the book of Ezra pronounces. The book of Ezra talks about a promise fulfilled by God through the prophecy of Jeremiah in the words of King Cyrus of Persia: “Any of those among you who are of his people—may their God be with them!—are now permitted to go up to Jerusalem in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem.” This is one of God’s promises held up and against many judgments in the Old Testament. The people of God in this text were exiled because of sin, a definite judgment, and they are brought back to the land because of God’s promise – they can return to Jerusalem in Judah and build a temple. Like Nancy and I – we found new community out in the mountains as the people of God did in Jerusalem.

            This doesn’t mean that everything is going to be smooth sailing, however. The Israelites return and there are people there who have since inhabited the land. The text writes of “being in dread of neighboring peoples” – the Israelites can indeed worship, but the landscape has changed – there are new people there. A festival is put on as the builder’s lay the foundation for their space – priests wear their vestments and there are cymbals and praising but there is also lament. Specifically, there is lament from the people who remember the first temple. There is lament for what used to be, for what home and worship once was. The text says, “old people who had seen the first house on its foundations wept with a loud voice when they saw this house, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people shouted so loudly that the sound was heard far away.”

            One of the takeaways here is that the community of people in Jerusalem allowed for that – they welcomed weeping alongside praise, to the point that they could not distinguish joyful shout from distressed cries – from those who had remembered the temple as it once was. This text ultimately proves the point that God’s people are attempting to live into what God has in store for them – returning to Jerusalem, building the foundations for a new temple, setting the stage for a life renewed out of exile, living into God’s promises – but all of that is proving to be messy and showing only mixed results so far.

            Just like our community here. Just like Nancy at Holden. We find ourselves in new situations, living out God’s intentions for our beings, but at the same time we remember how things once were – we remember where we come from, what we left behind, the brokenness and sin we have been delivered from. We feel both joy and sadness, grief and praise, but we know that God is always faithful. When we get things wrong, God points us towards new life and resurrection and brings us out of exile and our old ways.

            How applicable to today – we see fear and hatred in political spheres, we read and watch about concern and demands placed over people because of their religion. We as human beings like to divide and separate ourselves according to what makes us different from each other. We constantly exile ourselves from one another on the basis of our differences, not wondering what the world might be like if we worked for new life. This text shows us that, yes, striving to do that is messy – there is wailing and weeping over what was, but God always brings new life out of death. There is hope for resurrection in our world today, and it is here and it is now. Let us praise God for that. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Grace and peace, friends - 
Dean

             

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