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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