A Future With Hope

Scriptures:       Jeremiah 28:10-17, 29:1-11, Psalm 66:1-12

                        2 Timothy 2:8-15, Luke 17:11-19        

Roughly 20 years ago, in business consultant circles, there was a popular book called “Who Moved My Cheese”.  It’s a sort of allegory about a pair of mice and a pair of mouse-sized people who live in a maze, and go out every day in search of cheese, which is provided for them in cheese stations along the route of the maze.  The mice and the mini-people are used to going each day to a certain cheese station and finding it stocked with enough cheese that they can eat to their hearts’ content.  But eventually, no more cheese is stocked at that particular station.  The mice, using their superior sense of smell and their instincts, quickly start bounding down the maze in search of another cheese station.  The miniature people, however, become irate, using the phrase from the title of the book:  “Who moved my cheese?”  At first, they keep coming back to the cheese station, thinking that if they wait long enough, the cheese will come back.  Eventually, after many cheeseless days (and after losing some weight from hunger) one of the miniature people realizes the cheese isn’t coming back, and goes out in search of new cheese, leaving messages of encouragement along the way so that the other miniature person will eventually follow.  Of course, the point of the book, which is addressed to business types, is that market conditions and financial trends change, and that businesses need either to adapt or go out of business.

In our reading from Jeremiah, for the Jews exiled in Babylon, their cheese has been moved in a big way.  In fact, both the cheese and they themselves have been moved.  Truth to tell, their lives in Babylon weren’t that terrible.  Babylon allowed them to live together as families and practice their faith – though without the Temple in Jerusalem as the focal point of their worship, they had to make adjustments.  But they didn’t want to be in Babylon.  They desperately wanted to be home in Judah.  And they were willing to listen to anyone who could give them hope of returning home soon.

And so, in our reading, we have a contest between a false prophet, Hananiah, and a true prophet, Jeremiah.  Jeremiah had been preparing the people for the reality that they were going to be in Babylon for a long, long time, in bondage to Babylon.  To illustrate this, Jeremiah wore a wooden yoke, such as would be used to keep cattle in harness.  By contrast, Hananiah falsely states that God had spoken to him, and said that the exiles would be liberated to return to Judah in two years.  And he dramatically broke the yoke that Jeremiah wore.

And Jeremiah walked away from Hananiah with some uncertainty.  Maybe Hananiah was right.  Maybe God had spoken to Hananiah.  Maybe God was going to give the Jews a reprieve.

But no.  God spoke to Jeremiah, telling him to say to Hananiah, “You have broken a wooden yoke, but it will be replaced by an iron yoke.  The Lord has not sent you, and you made the people trust in a lie. And for that, you will be punished” – and we’re told Hananiah was dead within a year.

Then Jeremiah sent a letter to the exiles in Babylon:  “Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat from them.  Have children and grandchildren in Babylon.  But seek the welfare of Babylon where you have been exiled, and pray to God on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.  Only when 70 years have been completed will you be brought back to Judah.  But I will bring you back, because I will fulfill my promise.  My plans are for your good and not for your harm, so that you may have a future with hope.”  Even in a strange land, God had not abandoned them.

I began my sermon with a summary of the book “Who Moved My Cheese”, which describes change in a fairly unemotional way.  Of course businesses have to adapt to changing conditions if they are to survive.  End one line of business and start another; close one store and open another.  It’s a process driven by rational self-interest, without room for sentiment.  But from a pastoral perspective, adapting to change is not just like going in search of new cheese, but more like the grieving process described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, which comes in five stages:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.  These stages of grief play out not only on an individual level, but on a group level, even a national level.  In our Old Testament readings from last week and this week, we see the Jewish exiles in different stages of grief over the destruction of Jerusalem and their temple, which for them was quite literally the end of the world as they’d known it.  In the prophet Hananiah, we see denial and bargaining:  “No, we don’t want to be here, but we won’t be here long.  In two years we’ll be back in Judah. We can hold out that long, right? It’ll be over before we know it.”  In Psalm 137 from last week, which ended with a wish that the children of Babylon be dashed against rocks, we see anger, fury, rage.  The book of Lamentations, found in the Bible immediately after the book of Jeremiah, begins with the words, “How lonely sits the city that was once full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal….Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude; she lives now among the nations and finds no resting place.”  The whole book is a heart-rending expression of incredible sadness and depression at what has happened to Judah.  And in Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles, we see the final stage of grief, acceptance:  “You exiles are going to be in Babylon for 70 years.   You will live in Babylon long enough to see your children and grandchildren.  Make the best of it: build houses and plant gardens.  More than that, pray for Babylon, because your prosperity is tied to Babylon’s prosperity.”  What a contrast to the rage expressed in last week’s reading from Psalm 137, where the writer wanted to attack the Babylonians – here, Jeremiah is telling the people to pray for the good of Babylon, to pray for the enemies who had enslaved them.  And then Jeremiah reminded them that at the end of the 70 years in Babylon they – or their grandchildren anyway - would return to Judah.  In the end, there was, as Jeremiah said, “a future with hope”.

We generally think of grief as something that happens when a loved one dies, but life brings many occasions for grief.  In fact, Kubler-Ross’s description of the stages of grief also describes how we adapt to any kind of unwanted change – the loss of a job, the loss of a home, the end of a relationship.   We may begin with denial – insisting that our employment or home is secure, that our relationship is strong, even though in fact the boss may have given us 2 weeks’ notice, our landlord may have handed us an eviction notice, or we come home from work to find our spouse or partner packing their things into a moving van.  We may move to anger: how dare the company fire me after all the hard work I’ve done?  How dare the bank foreclose on me or the landlord evict me? How dare my spouse or partner desert me?  How could they be so unreasonable, after all I’ve done for them?  We may move to bargaining: asking the boss/the bank/the partner “I’ll do better next time. I’ll change.  Really. Please give me another chance”.  And then reality sets in – that the situation has changed and there’s no going back – and we’re depressed, because the new situation stinks.  But eventually the sadness lifts and we take steps to move forward, looking for another job or living space or companion.  We can’t go back to the way things were, but we can live with a new version of normal.  Of course, the process isn’t as neat and tidy as that; sometimes we move forward only to circle back to an earlier stage of grief, and sometimes we may become stuck in our grief and never come out on the other side without some sort of intervention from others.

I think that in our troubled times, we as a country are going through a similar grieving process.  We recognize that our country faces a lot of problems – and rightly so.  But then we want to return to the way things were, when the streets were safe, when neighbors looked out for each other, when the factories were humming and there were plenty of jobs and a high school graduate could get a well-paying union job for life, when public officials and the police were respected, when the churches were full every Sunday, and I could go on.  Recalling the lyrics from the theme from the old TV show “All In The Family” “Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again…..Didn’t need no welfare state/everybody pulled his weight/ gee our old LaSalle ran great / those were the days……”

It’s understandable.  We remember what the past was – even though we may be a little selective in our memory, hanging on to the good parts and editing out the bad parts.  (For example, if I get sick, I surely don’t want to go to a hospital with 1950’s medical technology.)  We don’t know what the future holds.  And the present is deeply unsettling.  In a sense, we may feel like we’re in exile in our own country, cut off from a world that was familiar and thrown into a world with different priorities from ours, a world that at times seems to have gone mad.  And certainly, here in the church, we may feel in exile.  Many of a certain age remember when everybody went to church on Sunday – it was just the thing to do, and all the stores were closed on Sunday anyway - and when the teachings of the church carried weight in the broader society.  Once, when the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury or other prominent clergy spoke, people listened.  Now, most ignore, and quite a few laugh. As it’s been said, once upon a time, the churches were on the main line.  Now we’re on the sidelines.

Our reading from Jeremiah gives us contrasting pictures of a false prophet and a true prophet, of false hope and true hope, both offering visions of the future.  Remember Hananiah, the false prophet, told the people that they’d be back home in two years.  And we have many Hananiahs, many false prophets, in our country, offering false hope connected to easy answers, and often connected to scapegoating.  “Our problems are caused by those people over there.  If we get rid of them, our problems will go away. If we just round up this group and deport them or round up that group and lock them up – and if we don’t let anyone else in – our worries are over.”  

Jeremiah shows us a different way forward.  Jeremiah told his readers – and tells us – to beware of false prophets offering easy solutions.  He tells us that rather than holding out hope for a return to the past, we should live in the present:  build houses, plant gardens, have children and grandchildren - in a word, live our lives.  Not only that, but we are called to seek the good of our society and pray for our society.  So we should pray for those in authority, and work for stronger schools and safer neighborhoods, for a healthy environment and for peace - not to return to the past, but to make things better in the present – and not just for a few, but for all.

At the same time, Jeremiah reminds us that we should hold out hope for better days – God also holds out for us a future with hope - but on God’s time, not our own.  Jeremiah told the exiles that they would not be in Babylon forever, and that after 70 years their grandchildren would return home.  Similarly, we as Christians hold the vision of the coming of the reign of God – holding that vision and living into that vision is the mission of the church -  but the reign of God in its fullness will come on God’s schedule, not our own.   In the meantime, as Christians, we are to live in the world without getting caught up in the world’s priorities. We are to live in Babylon without becoming Babylonians.  We may recall that along the same lines, Jesus called his followers to be in the world but not of the world.  And just as Jeremiah told the exiles to pray for Babylon, Jesus told his followers to pray for their enemies.

Jeremiah, speaking for God, told his readers – and tells us, “My plans are for your good and not for your harm, so that you may have a future with hope.”  In our unsettling days, may we recall these words from Paul’s letter to Timothy:

If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
   if we endure, we will also reign with him;
   if we deny him, he will also deny us;
   if we are faithless, he remains faithful--
   for he cannot deny himself.

God remains faithful.  May we be faithful as well. Amen.