18th Sunday after Pentecost
October 13, 2019
Jeremiah 29:1-7; Luke 17:11-19
The week before last, I went on two back-to-back trips.
Back-to-back trips are tough, I tell you what. The second one was a surprise
one planned by my husband to celebrate my 40th birthday. The first
one was for you all. We were invited last spring to participate in a program
called the Financial Leadership Academy, or FLA for short. We debated at Ad
Board whether or not to do it. Then, when we approved our new mission and
vision statements, we realized that the FLA would help us achieve the goal we
had just set for ourselves of financial stability. The FLA is a two year
program; during the first year I go up to Lancaster four times for the
clergy-only sessions. During year two, you all get involved and they will meet
with us on four Saturdays at a location closer to us. The FLA is intense; when
I arrived, there were six books waiting for me at my table. We had homework to
do before the session, and I have even more reading to do before the next
session, next month. The good news is I love to read and I already had two of
those six books, although I hadn’t read them cover to cover.
The
reading we had to do before the first session was from a book by Gil Rendle
called “Quietly Courageous: Leading the Church in a Changing World.” It was on
my Amazon wish list but I hadn’t ordered it yet. The opening paragraph in our
reading began, “There is no going back. This may be the most difficult lesson
for the aging leaders of established organizations and institutions, including
congregations and denominations. Nonetheless, the first task of leadership is
to paint an honest picture of the current reality. The current reality is so
deeply changed that it challenges old ways of leadership and asks for quiet,
purposeful courage.”[1]
That was a theme throughout the reading. There is no going back to the time
when “everyone” went to church. There is no going back to the time when all you
had to do was open the church doors and people would show up. Yes, “the wish to
recapture the old days remains strong. For many, not being able to recapture
old memories produces confusion and guilt. However, there is no going back…
[And] until leaders can accept that ours is not a turnaround situation, it
cannot be addressed as a move-ahead situation. It takes courage to face a
reality that is difficult and can’t be turned around to reclaim an earlier day
that is remembered as strong and was certainly easier from a leadership
perspective.”[2]
Times
have changed. You all know that. Society is vastly different now than it was 50
years ago. It’s different even from 10 years ago. And there’s no going back.
There’s only going forward. It reminds me of the phrase “you can’t step in the
same river twice.” That quote is attributed to Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher
born in 544 BC. The full sentence is, “No man ever steps in the same river
twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” The world around
us changes, and we change. And even while there are times when we wish we could
do the things we could do when we were younger, even though there are places we
wish we could return to, we know that we can’t. Not in our personal lives. Not
in the church, either. There is no going back, however much we might wish it.
There is only going forward.
This is the hard truth Jeremiah speaks to the exiles in
our scripture this morning. They have been carried off by King Nebuchadnezzar
from Jerusalem to Babylon, and Jeremiah sends them a letter from Jerusalem, where
he is still in captivity. What kind of news would you want from someone back
home after you’ve been forced to leave? Good news? News that you’ll get to go
back soon? News that your exile is temporary, maybe? “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel,
says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses
and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons
and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so
that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not
decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have
carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you
too will prosper.”[3] In
other words, settle down. Put down roots. Bloom where you are planted,
regardless of your feelings about where you’re planted. If we were to keep
reading in Jeremiah, we’d learn that the Lord says to expect to be in Babylon
about 70 years. 70 years! Do you expect to be around in 70 years? I don’t
expect to be around in 70 years. My kids, yes; me, no. This means there is no
going back for these adults. Their children can look forward to it, but the
adult exiles need to adjust to and accept their new circumstances. There is no
going back, so they’d better make the most of it. After all, God tells them, “your
wellbeing is tied up in the wellbeing of this strange land.”
While most of us do not live in physical exile today, we
do sometimes find ourselves in a strange land. Instead of Babylon, it may be
called widowhood or divorced or chronic disease or an accident or some way that
life has irrevocably changed in a way that was not your choice. When you find
yourself in that strange land, there is no going back but only forward. Seek
the wellbeing of your new situation. You can’t alter your new circumstances to
become like the old ones. So, where you find yourself now, look around. See
who’s around you. Get to know your new circumstances. And then bloom in the
place where you find yourself now planted. Seek the wellbeing of this new
place.
Many of you all know that the most obvious example for me
is my rheumatoid arthritis. Would I like to go back to being 26 again, before
the RA? Yes! It would be great to do whatever I wanted and not have to worry
about how my physical actions affected my body. Instead, the rheumatoid
arthritis affected pretty much everything in my life, from the shoes I wore,
making sure they had enough support, to the car I drive, an SUV because on bad
days it’s hard to get up out of a sedan. I’ve been exercising since the
beginning of summer, but every exercise I have to evaluate to see how it
affects my joints and I do a lot of modifications. But it’s better than not
exercising at all! God says, work for the good of whatever situation where you
find yourself. Pray to God for the good of that situation, because in its
welfare, you will find your welfare. Or, to use a different word than welfare
or good, seek the wellbeing, seek the health, seek the happiness of the
situation you’re in, because in its wellbeing, in its health, in its happiness,
you will find yours. This is how we move forward when there’s no going back.
And
remember that when you find that health, or, rather, when you are made whole,
remember to find Jesus and thank him. There was a sign on a bulletin board at
my sending church to promote the wellness ministry and it said, “Wellness
happens.” The sign drove my mom nuts, and she would try to hide it every time
she saw it. My mom’s a nurse. She knows that health doesn’t just happen, like
magic, or out of thin air. You have to work at health. You have to rehabilitate
your knee. You have to take medicine. You have to go to therapy. You have to
keep your relationship with God right. You have to work to stay healthy. It’s much easier to get or stay sick. You
have to work to get healthy, you have to work to stay healthy. So, after you’ve
been sick for a while, or after you’ve been hurting for a while, as you might
if you find yourself somewhere you don’t want to be, be sure to thank Jesus
when you’re restored to health.
Today’s Gospel lesson is about the
ten lepers who ask Jesus to have mercy on them. Jesus does, and he heals them.
Except to be fully healed from leprosy, you have to be restored to your
community again. Lepers were thought to be so contagious they were kicked out
of town in order not to get others sick. That’s why Jesus tells them to show
themselves to the priests to show that they are no longer leprous, that they
are physically healed and are ready to be socially healed as well. The ten
lepers do that, and then only one returns to Jesus to thank him. And Jesus
says, “Get up and go. Your faith has healed you.” In other words, don’t turn
back. Keep going forward. Your faith has healed you.
Faith
puts trust in God alone. Faith works for the well-being of wherever you are.
And faith remembers where healing and wholeness come from. Salvation does not
come from anywhere else but from God alone. Healing and wholeness comes from
God alone. It may be mediated through others, such as a doctor or a pastor or a
friend or even a stranger. God can work through anyone. So make sure you give
God thanks!
I
remember a story that Corrie ten Boom tells in her memoir, “The Hiding Place.”
Anyone familiar with Corrie’s story? Corrie and her family are Dutch and were
in the Netherlands when the Nazis invaded in 1940. They felt compelled by their
Christian faith to help their Jewish friends and they hid many in a secret room
in their house. After a time, they were discovered and Corrie and her sister were
sent to a concentration camp. In the camp the sisters used a hidden Bible to
teach their fellow prisoners about Jesus. They were always in fear of being
discovered, yet never were and eventually found out why. Their camp had a
horrible rat infestation, and Corrie’s sister was always thanking God for the
rats. Corrie had a strong faith, but never understood why her sister would
thank God even for the rats in their camp. It turned out that the high rat
population kept away the soldiers from inspecting their camp too closely, which
is why their hidden Bible was never discovered. Corrie’s sister died in the
camp; Corrie went back home to the Netherlands at the end of the war. Of
course, “home” was not the same as it had been before the war, and instead of
continuing her family’s 100 year history of watchmaking, she opened a
rehabilitation center for survivors and went on to become an author and public
speaker. There was no going back to life before the war.
There’s a song you may know; it’s in the small, black
“The Faith We Sing.” It’s called “I have decided to follow Jesus.” The refrain
repeats, “no turning back, no turning back.”
It’s hard. It may not be what you want. But together, with quiet
courage, like the title of that book, we can move forward. I invite you to sing
with me, if you’d like. It’s #2129.
I have decided to follow
Jesus,
I have decided to follow
Jesus,
I have decided to follow
Jesus -
no turning back, no turning
back.
The world behind me, the
cross before me,
the world behind me, the
cross before me,
the world behind me, the
cross before me -
no turning back, no turning
back.
Though none go with me, I
still will follow,
though none go with me, I
still will follow,
though none go with me, I
still will follow -
no turning back, no turning
back.
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