Blooming where you are planted

                        

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.  But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. Jeremiah 29:5-7

We think of Jeremiah as an angry, or at least pretty intense, prophet. The word "Jeremiad," meaning, you know, more or less, an intense rant, is even named after him. And then we get this:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Take wives and have sons and daughters...

Jeremiah! Is this really you? What happened? Did you write this, like, right after you just fell in love with your wife or something?  You seem so--serene, I guess is the word I want here.

I mean, don't get me wrong--this seems like the right advice at the right time. And you do preface it by saying it is coming straight from the Lord, so I guess the Lord is pretty multi-faceted. 

I guess I should explain what this is about. It is pretty good general advice about how to have a contented life, but the actual context is the Babylonian exile, specifically the third Babylonian exile, during which people from Jerusalem have been displaced to Babylonia (which is mostly modern-day Iraq) after the total destruction of the city. God advises the people to,

...seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

This does seem kind of weird coming from you, Jeremiah, if it is true, as legend has it, that you also wrote Psalm 137, which has this to say about the same Babylonian exile:

O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!  Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

I guess you and God are having different emotional reactions to the whole destruction of Jerusalem and subsequent exile from it. At least it isn't affecting your working relationship at all. Or maybe being so spiritual and so close to God for so many years is enabling you to be a less angry prophet. 

But this is good advice--let go of the hurt and anger and desire for revenge. It's kind of a spooky coincidence that this is the reading that comes up this week, the week that Elizabeth Smart's biography is released. Elizabeth Smart knows a thing or two about suffering. She was kidnapped by a crazy guy and his wife for nine months, and tortured every day. She even almost starved to death at one point. In spite of all that she went through, today Elizabeth is fine, thanks to advice her mother gave her.

 "Elizabeth, what this man has done to you is terrible. He has stolen nine months of your life that you will never get back.  But the best punishment you could ever give him is to be happy.”

This may be the motivation behind the advice that Jeremiah gives to the displaced in Babylon. It is possible to heal and move on, but it isn't easy. Sometimes the healing takes more than just one generation. Whatever it takes, healing is a worthy goal, and it can't be accomplished by sabotaging the place where you make your home. Wherever you are, God seems to be saying, and no matter how you came to be there, seek to bring something good and useful to that situation. That's just good old-fashioned solid advice. It was good advice almost three thousand years ago, and it's good advice today.

Stone Soup of Sin

So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. ⁴He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”  Exodus 32:3-4 (read the rest of the story here)

One of the first stories I remember from childhood is "Stone Soup." It's a folk tale about a traveler coming through a town and tricking the townspeople into providing him with food. At first he knocks on doors and asks for food, but the townspeople refuse to give him food and ridicule them. After a few rejections he builds a fire in the center of town and places a large pot of water on it. Then he adds a stone. He stirs the pot of water and periodically tastes it. The townspeople are intrigued by this behavior and ask him what in the world he is doing, and he tells them he is making stone soup. He then suggests that while plain stone soup is delicious, they can make it even better by adding other ingredients. The townspeople proceed to bring out the food that they had previously refused to share with the stranger, he adds it to the pot, and presto-- soon they all have soup to share.

The story of Aaron, Moses' brother, making a golden calf for the Israelites to worship is kind of a messed-up prototype for the stone soup story. The Israelites are none to happy with God for dragging them out into the desert and leaving them there with seemingly no end in sight. Often they have no idea where their next meal or drink of water will come from. In Egypt they were slaves, but at least they had the proverbial three hots and a cot. It seems as though they have gone from the frying pan to the fire. They are understandably mad at this God, and at his messenger, Moses, so when Moses goes up to the mountaintop to have a long heart-to-heart with God, his brother Aaron decides to take advantage of the Israelites in their weakened state and attempts to seize control by creating a false god for which he, not his brother Moses, will be the messenger. He takes the Israelite's jewelry, which is valuable but pretty much useless there in the desert, and uses it not to create delicious soup but false hope. 

People today sometimes fall into the trap that the Israelites fell into.  It is true that we don't pool our resources and intellect to create golden statues to worship, but too often when people work together it is not to do good but to do harm. This week is the week that most of the children in my state start school, so this passage of scripture makes me think of bullying. Being in school makes most kids feel vulnerable, so some of them try to get on top of the situation by participating in bullying. It is a way to fit in and belong and feel the safety and comfort of being part of a group working together, but wouldn't it be better if schools figured out how to harbor that desire of people to belong to a group and work together to create something rather than to tear down other kids?

This kind of working together to do something destructive doesn't just happen in schools and among children. It happens in families and in churches and in workplaces and in just about every human institution there is. Rooting it out can be difficult. A few verses after this, God suggests that the only way to truly stop it is to destroy the perpetrators. Moses refuses to participate in this. These are his people and he loves them. God loves them as well, but it is a tough love kind of love, and God knows that it will take a couple of generations to get them back on track spiritually and morally, and so because of this incident God forces the Israelites to continue to live in the wilderness for forty years, or two full generations. It is the grandchildren of the people who escaped Egypt who will get to experience the fullness of God's grace and love and mercy by moving into the so-called Promised Land, a land "flowing with milk and honey." 

We don't like the idea that our sins and shortcomings might reverberate through our lives into the future the way the Israelite's poor choices do, but once we accept this, we can begin to make better choices for ourselves and our own lives.

The implication of thinking through the impact of our choices, good and bad, on future generations is pretty profound and far-reaching. For example, there is a wide scientific consensus that we are going through many natural resources in a way that will deplete them. One little-known but widespread example of this is overfishing. Our appetite for certain fish could make them unavailable within a generation or two or even sooner in some cases. The solution is to fish more carefully, but that would require some international cooperation, and thus far that cooperation has just not happened. 

The bottom line is this: no person is an island. Our choices, for good or ill, impact other people, whether we want them to or not. 

Who Do You Think You Are?

What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?...Therefore once more I accuse you, says the Lord, and I accuse your children’s children.- from Jeremiah, Chapter 2.

TV shows that feature celebrities tracing their ancestry (such as TLC's Who Do You Think You Are and PBS's Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) finally tempted me to adopt a habit that (almost) grew into an addiction: tracing my own roots. It's fascinating. My great-great-great-great grandfather fought in the Revolutionary war. This is supposed to be a badge of honor, and to be perfectly honest, I am proud of this, though I'm not sure why. Other ancestors owned slaves, and of that I am ashamed, though again, it happened long before I was born, so I am not sure why this embarrasses me. 

God takes the long view about human values and human behavior. Real change in a culture can take a long time. Big changes can be generations in the making. We don't tend to think this is the case so much anymore, because we have seen revolutionary changes in our lifetime. For example, I learned to type on a typewriter. My kids learned that same skill on a computer. Their children may not even need to learn how to type--modern technology may enable a new way of communicating that will render the skill of typing completely obsolete. Even now, there is voice recognition software that can type for people as they speak. However, in spite of the rate of change, human nature remains the same. Twitter changes the way revolutionaries communicate with one another, but the underlying conditions that lead to revolutions have not changed much since Jeremiah's time. 

It doesn't seem fair that my grandchildren may be held accountable for some mistake I made, but that's not what Jeremiah is talking about. He is talking about the need for Israel to make big changes in ways that the changes can be sustained for generations. My 4-times great grandfather's wartime service might have been for nothing had the new nation not carefully hammered out a Constitution to help succeeding generations continue to build on the great deeds of their ancestors. That's what God is talking about--the importance of changing for the better and instilling these improved values in our children so they will pass them onto their children.

What does that mean for us today? What changes is God calling our generation to make and pass on to our children's children? In America it seems that there isn't much consensus on "what ails us," but I also think that a growing number of individuals are putting increasing pressure on leaders in the government to work toward consensus when possible. In the meantime, what changes is God calling us to make as individuals and as the church? In the past year or two I have heard more and more voices talking about this, and I think that is a good thing. I have my own ideas, of course, but the point of this blog post is not to push for my own agenda, but rather to stimulate thinking and conversation about where you think God is calling the people of God to be in a couple of generations.

Who do you think you are? Who do you think God wants you to become? What do you think God wants you to pass on to your children and grandchildren, or if you are not a parent, to the next two generations to come?

catfish: THE PROPHETS

"I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name..." from Jeremiah, Chapter 23, verse 25

I'm obsessed with the MTV show Catfish. The premise is pretty simple: co-hosts Max and Nev agree to help some poor person who has fallen in love with a stranger they have met online. In every case the object of their affection has refused to meet in person or to even participate in face-to-face video encounters. In spite of all the red flags, these poor victims of obvious romantic deception hope against hope for a real-life love connection to come out of this. It almost never happens, of course, but like all good narratives, catfish: THE TV SHOW is about the journey more than the destination. Every episode asks, and answers, the question, "How could they be so stupid?"

The answer is always complicated, but it boils down to the fact that as humans we are prone to wishful thinking, romantic idealization, and hope against hope. This human trait works in our favor when we are fighting a virulent form of cancer or avoiding shark attack while awaiting rescue from a boating accident, but it also makes us prone to becoming a victim of fraud from time to time. 

This is the issue that Jeremiah seeks to address head-on. Because he understands human nature the way the producers of Catfish do, Jeremiah knows that he is not likely to make much headway trying to convince the victims of false prophets that they have been victims. Instead, he tries to put the fear of God into the ones who are perpetrating the fraud: "Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the LORD. Do I not fill heaven and earth?"

Sooner or later, fraudsters can expect to be found out. That is a truth that false prophets in Jeremiah's day had to face, and it is the same truth that modern-day liars and fraudsters face. It is best for liars to change their ways before they find themselves facing an angry victim with a broken heart, empty pockets and and a weapon in hand.  On catfish: THE TV SHOW, the hosts make like Jeremiah and attempt to persuade the romantic deceivers to give up their lying ways. Sometimes they are gentle, but sometimes they pour on the guilt and condemnation. Usually they succeed, in part because they understand that the lies tend to start out for an understandable (if usually somewhat selfish) reason. They appeal to the fraudster's sense of justice and fairness. 

Almost all of us are guilty of overdoing the charm and exaggerating or distorting the truth in some situation or other. Usually we are acting out of temporary feelings of desperation. It doesn't necessarily make us evil people, but it's not okay, and we need to heed Jeremiah and just cut it out.

Is Jesus Datsun?

"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!" Jesus, speaking in Luke, chapter 12, verse 49

Back in the old days, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, the company now called Nissan Motors was known as Datsun, and they had a catchy jingle that went, "Nobody demands more from a Datsun than Datsun! We are driven!" 

Jesus is like that demanding teacher you had that maybe drove you crazy, but who when you look back on your life, seems instrumental to any success you have had as a person. 

Most church people have either never met this Jesus, or at least have avoided getting to know the guy all that well.  Why? Well, not without a good reason--zeal is often associated with obsession, and being obsessed involves being nutty. Many of the truly vocal people who have embraced the fire that Jesus came to bring to the earth seem to think that Jesus wants us to set the religious equivalent of forest fires. I can see why they might think that, given that according this same passage of scripture, Jesus goes on to say, "Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!  From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."

Okaaaay...

Yeah, I know, this needs to be put in context, but first I would like to point out to any good Christian people who quote scary-sounding stuff that Allah said from the Quran as a way to trash Islam that we need to take a good hard look at how a lot of stuff in the Bible sounds before we go pointing fingers at other religions.

So, back to my point: Jesus is kind of a pain in the posterior to his followers. He doesn't like to be pinned down and stereotyped as "gentle Jesus, nice guy from Palestine who just wants us all to get along."  Yeah, Jesus is the Prince of Peace and all that, but he doesn't just want everyone to make nice. He has standards. He wants people to work hard and fight the good fight, to refuse to compromise our ideals just to avoid making waves. 

Churches with full pews are doing something right.  I strongly believe that churches succeed across denominations and regardless of politics, when they standards for themselves and their members, and push their clergy and their members to make goals and achieve them. Now, I might not always agree on the standards  churches set and the goals they are trying to achieve, but I do agree that Jesus advocates this same type of passion and zeal for his followers.

Tell Us How You Really Feel, God

When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more...Isaiah 1:12

The book of Isaiah starts out with God dissing the people of Israel. Hearing this, the people of Israel must have thought, "God...are you breaking up with us?" According to the prophet Isaiah, God is disgusted by Israel's expressions of devotion, because they are not being true to the aspects of faith that really matter to God. It's like, sure, Israel keeps bringing God flowers, but then Israel constantly talks smack about God behind God's back. 

We all know people like Israel in the time of Isaiah. Maybe we've been that way ourselves, a time or two (or three or a hundred.) True devotion is hard. Putting on a show of true love is just easier, sometimes. 

I was once in a relationship in which my partner complained, "You're always wanting stuff." That's how God is--always wanting stuff from people. God is willing to give, but any relationship is a two-way street, and God wants what God wants, not just token empty gestures.

Suppose what we are giving God is not what God wants? What if a modern day Isaiah were to come into our midst and say, on behalf of God, "Look, people, you can take your white frame buildings filled with straight-backed pews and your Sunday-morning snoozefests with hundred-year-old hymns and stick them where the sun doesn't shine." How would we react? I'm guessing that would make us pretty angry and defensive. 

The fact is, not all churches are empty on Sunday mornings. Sure, some of them are filled because they are willing to do anything to please the people, but what if--what if--some of them are filled because they are doing a better job of giving God what God wants from us? Is that a thought we are willing to think? Are we willing to devote ourselves to sincerely and prayerfully considering what God wants from us, in the time and place that we find ourselves? Because anything less isn't actually worship.

Gratitude: For When Life Isn't Fair (which is most of the time)

...sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. (From Ecclesiastes 2:12)

Last summer, inspired by an idea I found on Pinterest, I started making yard ornaments out of old dishes and glassware pieces. My yard is right next to a busy pedestrian sidewalk, and before long someone stole my favorite one. So unfair! Stealing an idea is one thing, but trespassing on my yard and swiping my unique piece of folk art burned me up! At first I couldn't even bring myself to take refuge in my usual comforting thought--that the person who stole needed it more than I do. But upon further reflection I decided that maybe they needed that little bit of beauty in their lives more than I needed it.

The book of Ecclesiastes is the most cynical book in the Bible. Koheleth, the author, points out that you don't always get to enjoy the fruits of your own labor. This is an important lesson.  Life isn't fair, and if we teach our children that it is always fair, and we link that to our Christian faith, they will become cynical in the same way Koheleth is cynical.

While life is not fair, that doesn't always work to our disadvantage. If we learn to count our blessings instead of nursing our grudges, we experience life as a blessing.