21st
Sunday after Pentecost
October 13, 2013
Regarding Lemonade
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7;
Psalm 66:1-12
I’d
like to begin with a brief survey. Raise
your hand if you are from North Carolina, if you were raised here, if you’ve
lived the majority of your life here.
Keep your hands up for a second.
How many more can say the same for the South? Born in the South, raised in the South, lived
most of your life here? Okay. And how many then are transplants, like myself?[1] My family moved to North Carolina in 1993,
just as I was starting my freshman year in high school. I had lived in three other states and one
other country by then, I was used to moving and I was used to getting used to
living in a new place. However, that
move to North Carolina was the worst culture shock of my life. Not only was it the first time living in the
South, the town we moved to was also the smallest place I’d ever lived. I was used to big cities, and a small town in
North Carolina was very different. Now,
after two years, my family moved to the Triangle, and that was better, but by
that point North Carolina had left such a bad taste in my mouth that I went to
college 800 miles away with no intention of ever returning. [pause]
God’s sense of humor is funny sometimes, huh?
Not
as much in the Triangle, but certainly in that small town I felt a bit like I
was in exile. The local newspaper was
only issued one day a week. There were
no professional sports in North Carolina at the time, the Panthers were only
just approved that same year as an expansion team and the Hurricanes moved here
in 1997. There was a local mall, but to
do serious shopping you drove half an hour to the closest city. When the marching band met in the Old Belk’s parking
lot, my parents were the only ones to ask where it was. I’m not knocking small towns or the South,
I’m just saying this life was very different from what I was used to and it was
very hard to adjust to it. And what does
God say to those he sent into exile?
Build houses. Settle down. Plant gardens. Plan to be there for a while. Get married and have kids.[2] Make friends.
Invest in this new place in which you now find yourself. You’re going to
be there for a while, so learn to like it.
Make the best of it. Seek the
welfare of the place where I have sent you.
Figure out where the Old Belk’s parking lot is. You may not like where you are, you may wish
you were somewhere else, however, this is where God has put you. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
Now,
to make a good lemonade, you need exactly three ingredients. The first one, obviously, is lemons. I don’t know what about your life you don’t
like, whether you don’t like living in the Chapel Hill area, whether you don’t
like your job, whether you wish you were married, or not married, or had kids,
or didn’t have kids. There is probably
some area in your life that is lemony.
You’re in a place where you don’t want to be. Exile means being stuck where you don’t want
to be. The Jews that the prophet Jeremiah wrote to were stuck in Babylon, where
their conquerors forced them to live. I
don’t know whether you were literally forced to leave your home to go live in a
foreign country, but there are some among us who were. Exile means you can’t go home again. And God says to make your place of exile your
new home. Build houses. Or, in 2013, buy a house. Plant a garden. Find your local grocery store. Make friends.
Learn the local customs. Learn
how to cook okra. And grits. And just about everything served at Harvest
Festival yesterday. You have to keep in
mind that learning to navigate a new culture, a new place, does not mean giving
up your old customs and your old identity.
I am still a city girl. But I had
to learn to appreciate a small town and appreciate the South. Even if you don’t like where you are,
whatever lemons you’ve been handed, a disease, a divorce, a breakdown in a
relationship, a dead-end job, God says to seek the welfare, seek the shalom, seek the peace of the place where you are.
Notice God doesn’t say, “Throw
yourself a pity party”; he says “work towards peace.”
The
second ingredient in lemonade is water.
Lemons by themselves are pretty sour and there’s not much juice. To make it go further than a swallow or two,
you add water. From a biological
standpoint, water is the essence of life.
Literally, you cannot have life without water. That is why it was such a big deal to
discover water on Mars. From a Christian
standpoint, water means baptism. It
means new life. It means washing away
the old and being made clean. And the
other thing that happens in baptism is that you get a new name: beloved child
of God. In the waters of baptism Christ
claims you and names you his own. Your
primary identity is no longer southern or male or wife or anything else; it is
child of God. Christian. And that doesn’t change no matter where you
go, no matter what place you find yourself, whether stuck or happy, at home or
in exile. Your circumstances never make you give up this identity. You stay who you are, even if you have a new
haircut or learn a different language, y’all,
or find yourself eating different food.
In your baptism God already claimed you as his, and that never changes, although
you may decide to ignore it.
You may
or may not know that I spent a semester in college studying abroad in
Spain. There were a handful of American
students who had gone to college in Spain; not a semester abroad but the whole
four years, or however long. One of them
sticks out in my memory, Julie, because she had “gone native.” Julie was fluent in Castilian Spanish. She dressed in a European style and looked
down on those of us who were just visiting for a semester. Julie had, in effect, lost her identity as an
American. Sometimes that happens when
you find yourself in a new place. My
sister has a southern accent.[3] But whenever you find yourself in a new
place, make sure you don’t lose your identity as Christian. Make sure you remember your baptism, your
identity as a child of God, and be thankful that nothing can take that identity
away. That’s part of why we don’t
re-baptize. You may lose your way, you
may reject God, but God doesn’t reject you.
He knows that you are still his beloved child. In the Christian world water means baptism,
and baptism means becoming part of God’s family, regardless of where you are.
So,
you have lemons and water; the last ingredient you need is sugar. You have enough lemony water to go around,
but it’s going to be awfully sour unless you add some sugar. What makes life sweeter? God’s grace.
God’s freely given unconditional love that loves you no matter what you
do. God’s love that chases you down when
you run away, sometimes tapping you on the shoulder, sometimes hitting you over
the head with a 2x4, saying, “Hey, you, I love you. You are my beloved child.”
As
United Methodists we talk specifically about three kinds of grace. Prevenient grace is the grace that comes
before we even know God. It’s why we
baptize infants, because we recognize that God’s grace is already at work in their lives, that God already loves them. Justifying grace is the grace that saves
us. It’s the love that made Jesus
willing to die for us on the cross. It’s
being made right with God through the atoning work of Jesus Christ. Being justified, like the words on a paper,
all lined up with God. But God isn’t
done with us there. Accepting the love
of Jesus Christ already at work in you through prevenient grace isn’t the end
of the story, because then there is sanctifying grace, becoming more like
Jesus. And sometimes this is done
through trials, through being in exile.
Did you catch the last couple verses of the psalm? “For you, O God, have tested us; you have
tried us as silver is tried.” Do you
know how silver is purified? It’s put in
heat somewhere around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Silver is a heavier element and the heat makes it sink to the bottom and
separate itself out from the impurities.
That’s how silver is refined, and there are lots of references in the
Bible to God refining us in a similar fashion.
One of those ways may be exile.
So, hold on, if you’re in a season of being purified. You’re being made more like Christ, you’re
being sanctified, by the grace of God.
And you may be thinking, like Mother Teresa, “I know God won't give me
anything I can't handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much.” But listen to how that psalm ends: “You
brought us into the net; you laid burdens on our backs; you let people ride
over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.” God sweetens the deal.
Some of
you know that I returned from serving in Nicaragua earlier than I was supposed
to, partly because of the rheumatoid arthritis I developed. To say I was disappointed would be an
understatement; I went through a period of grieving the loss of a dream and the
loss of normal health. However, I
returned to North Carolina at the perfect time to re-meet my husband. A year earlier, he wouldn’t have been
available, and who knows what would’ve happened by two years later.
Romans
8:28 says “We know that all things
work together for good, for those who love God, who are called according to his
purpose.” All things include exile.
It’s not fun, no. It’s not what
we would have planned for our lives. But
God says, “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they
produce.” Make a life for yourself where you are. Seek the peace of the city where God sent you
into exile and pray to God for it. Make
lemonade. Take the sour lemons and your
baptismal identity and God’s grace, and work with God and let God make
something good come out of it.
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