Which echoed the words of Henry David Thoreau:
Which echoed the Book of Proverbs:
(Proverbs 3:25)
In such a time as this, when fear may be our greatest enemy, faith may be our greatest ally. Faith is confidence in the final goodness and power of God. It is most needed when we cannot see beyond the next step of our path. Paul says, "We walk by faith, not by sight." Our children are affected, and we need to take special care to listen to them and reassure them. This is an act of faith. Sandra Paulson, a new member, did a wonderful job a couple of weeks ago talking to parents of young children about how to listen and give comfort to them.
I
This war, brought horribly to us on September 11, is a different kind of war than we’ve ever known. It may last longer than we want or expect. Its victories will be less spectacular and visible than in conventional war. It will get on our nerves. We feel vulnerable to counterattacks which may come as unexpected as September 11, as from nowhere, as visible as bombs, as silent as molecules.
It has sent our economy, already in a correction, downward into a sharp downturn. So there is economic uncertainty mixed in.
In such a time the inner resources of faith, confidence, patience and courage may be more important than our military strength. How are we to live in time of war? And what does it mean to live by faith?
Last Sunday night, as I watched the beginning of our military action, I was reminded of Jeremiah’s word from God to Israel during the Babylonian exile. When times are dark, he says in effect, the path of faith is the path of everyday faithfulness and ordinary love. When the big picture grows dim, pay attention to the little picture.
II
For Judah the unimaginable had happened: Jerusalem and the temple had been destroyed, the Hebrew people carried off into captivity in Babylon.
In this crisis false prophets appeared with messages of quick salvation. Hananiah the prophet appeared and declared that they would be home in two years. Some prophets gave a message like the Pentecostal TV evangelist, Oral Roberts: "Something good is going to happen to you." Grady Nutt, Baptist humorist, used to poke fun at the giant praying hands built out front of Oral Roberts University. When a Cadillac came by, he said, one hand went out like this:(palm out for a donation. Other prophets were like fundamentalist zealots who preached rebellion and revolt: Let’s bomb ‘em back to the Stone Age! Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
Jeremiah’s prophecy was more realistic and harder to hear: "Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you . . . and bring you back," says the Lord.
The "seventy years" was probably not meant literally, but symbolically. It stood for a complete period of time, and one that might last longer than their lives would last. It was not what they wanted to hear, but Jeremiah was in touch with the real conditions of his times and in touch with God.
How should we live in exile when everything is uncertain and we may be here a long time? Jeremiah delivered this word from God:
(Jeremiah 29:4-7)
Here is the path of everyday faithfulness and ordinary love. In bad times pay attention to the little things, the people close at hand, tasks you’ve been given to do, people you’ve been given to love. There’s a husband, a wife, a child, a friend, a neighbor, a parent to love. There’s a job to do, a class to teach, a business to run, a living to make. You may not be able to change the world but you can change yourself. You cannot shape the world economy, but you can begin to work on "home economics," which is where all economics begin. The word "economics" comes from the word oikonomos that means household stewardship. It means putting your household in good order.
You perhaps cannot make the world better, or your nation better, but you can make your community better, your church better, and you can make yourself better.
Jeremiah’s call is also to enjoy the pleasures and goodness of life where you are -- even in exile. Plant a garden, make a baby, write a poem, eat a Hershey bar, bake some bread, give a gift, play with a child, play!
It is the path of everyday faithfulness and ordinary love.
III
Walker Percy was one of America’s great writers, a novelist and philosopher. In 1971 he wrote a novel which echoes Jeremiah’s message. It is entitled: Love in the Ruins. The subtitle: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World.1
It pictures America at a time in the future when it is in great trouble as a nation. Vines sprout in Manhattan; wolves have been spotted in downtown Cleveland; malls look like ghost towns. Americans are more polarized than ever, between races and classes and politically between liberals and conservatives. Rage, paranoia, anxiety and despair grip almost everyone. Stomach complaints abound. Physicians have mostly become either psychiatrists or proctologists.
The chief character is a physician named Thomas More, named after the British statesman.
More has been a devout Catholic but has long since dropped away from church; stopped going to Mass; and in general, to use his words, "fallen into a disorderly life":
His spiritual malaise has cast him into a careless and self-destructive existence.
Near the end of the novel Thoms More goes to a priest for help. He makes his confession, and he and the priest talk. The priests hears him out and offers this advice:
Those words seem right out of Jeremiah’s times and Jeremiah’s mouth.
Sometimes difficult and disappointing times can throw us into a devil-may-care, what-difference-does-it-make kind of life. It may come by way of a loss of job, or a marriage, or the radical changing of your business or profession right out from under you. Some great reversal in life. We can grow increasingly passive, dependent, depressed, living our lives as a victim. Exile can cause us to act out, go middle-aged crazy whether we’re middle-aged or not, grow bitter or cynical, lose our calling, our purpose, our passion, give up or drop out. These are dangerous times for our soul, but they can be soul-making times too.
In such a time God calls us to the path of everyday faithfulness and ordinary love, to pay attention to those close at hand, to keep on keeping on, launching prayers, doing justice, loving kindness, building community and taking care of friendships - - and not forgetting to take extra good care of your own dear self.
Jeremiah calls us to seek the welfare of the city where God has placed us, for in its welfare we will find our welfare. Imagine: He was saying this about Babylon!
Can we not at least say it for Charlotte too? God has not placed you in Babylon or Israel, Beijing or San Paulo, San Francisco or New York, but here in Charlotte. How can we live so to make our city better?
In such a time as this we may be tempted to despair, but as Sir Thomas More said: "The times are never so bad but that a good man can live in them." True success, the only one that counts, is being a better person today than yesterday. This is a kind of success you can achieve no matter what the external circumstances are.
The Dalai Lama, winner a few years ago of the Nobel Peace Prize, leader of Tibetan Buddhist people, is an example for us.
Forty some years ago the Chinese communists invaded Tibet. Over the years around 1.4 million Tibetans have been killed and 6,254 Buddhist monasteries have been destroyed. It is a holocaust of which the world has largely been oblivious.
The Dalai Lama has, since, helped build schools and monasteries in exile. He has created democratic institutions to serve the Tibetan people and preserve the seeds of Tibetan civilization. Thereby he gives hope to millions. In face of the monstrous evil done to his people he says:
IV
When the big picture grows dark and confusing, people of faith focus on the little picture, trusting God with the big picture. The exile may last longer than we want but it will not last forever. Pastoral theologian Wayne Oates used to say: Five of the most important words in the Bible are, "And it came to pass." It didn’t come to stay, but to pass!
We trust in the goodness of God who cares for us, and whose goodness will ultimately prevail. There is a verse from our text for today which is etched on a glass vase in our home. It has been a verse of great hope to me and to many through the years:
Learn these words, hide them in your heart, wear them as an amulet around your neck, inscribed as on a piece of jewelry that you wear close to your heart. This is what God is up to in all your lives: your welfare, not your harm, to give you a future and a hope.
People of faith count on it. This is the God in whom we believe. And this is the God whom, if we seek with all our hearts, we will surely find.
1. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971).
2. Ibid. p. 6.
3. Ibid. p. 399
4. The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness (Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Pub. 1911) p. 22,
30, 34.