A Reflection for XXI Pentecost (proper 23) All Saints’ Episcopal, Southern
Shores, NC October 9, 2016 Thomas
E Wilson, Rector
Meeting
Past Lepers
In the Hebrew Testament lesson for today, Jeremiah
is writing a letter to the exiles in Babylon. In the coming seven weeks leading
up to the beginning of the season of Advent, the Hebrew Testament lessons fill
finish the survey of the prophetic voices in the later prophets of Jeremiah,
Haggai, Habakkuk, Joel and 3rd Isaiah. Jeremiah is dealing with the
situation that the exiles are living in the world over which they have no
control. Did you ever live in a place where you missed the past so much? In a 1959 novel, Peter De Vries had a couple
lines: “No. Nostalgia, as his Uncle Joshua had said, ain’t what it used to be. Which
made it pretty complete. Nothing was what it used to be — not even nostalgia.”
There was a play that ran forever off-Broadway
called “The Fantasticks”. The first half of the play is a romance where a
couple fall in love, and the second act is reflects the time when the thrill of
yesterday’s romance is gone and a new reality is in a struggle with the
nostalgia of the past versus the need to change to find new ways of living into
the changed relationship. Instead of complaining that it ain’t what it used to
me in the past; the task of any relationship is find the riches of change. The
act begins with a song of complaining, “This Plum is Too Ripe”, which ends with
the lines:
So take it away and
paint it up right!
So take it away and decorate it!
So take it away; that sun is too bright!
I say that it really is a pity.
It used to be so pretty.
By today,
Much too soon.
By and by.
This plum is too ripe!
So take it away and decorate it!
So take it away; that sun is too bright!
I say that it really is a pity.
It used to be so pretty.
By today,
Much too soon.
By and by.
This plum is too ripe!
I remember when I was finally forced to graduate
from Chapel Hill and, when I was 21, got married, went to work full time, and got
a mortgage. And how I longed for the
days when I was care-free and had only myself to worry about. Even then I always knew I could go home and
my mother could take care of me. It was 1968, and I seemed to be trapped in the
1965 McCartney Beatles song “Yesterday”,
“Love seemed such an easy game to play/How I long for yesterday.” My world had
changed, and in my fear of the untried present and the unknown future, longing
for the past, I made it my problem when I did not want to fully accept it. It took me years to stop living in nostalgia
and to live into present and work for the future. Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist
monk, reminds us “that the past is already gone, the future is not yet here;
there is only one moment for you to live: that is the present moment”
Let me try to fill in the history of Jeremiah’s
letter. Jeremiah has looked at the political situation of the time. The rulers
of his nation and their friends got richer and the poor get poorer and the
prophets keeps calling for a change to honest government without corruption and
with a care for the poor. But the rulers were complacent and they spent their
energies trying to keep change from happening, because they figured that God
was on their side and therefore they could go back to doing whatever they wanted,
as long as they did the religious ceremonies to placate God. So they kept on
exploiting the poor and perverting justice in the land, putting their faith in
their own cleverness and in tame religious institutions.
In the meantime as the rulers tried to avoid any
change, everything in the world was changing as Egypt and the Neo-Babylonian
Empire struggled for dominance in the region, forcing smaller powers to become
satellites drawn into the orbit of the larger powers. The rulers of Judah tried
to cozy up to Egypt, but the prophet Jeremiah warned them not to trust what he
called “that weak reed” of Egypt, but to change their lives so that justice and
compassion for the poor would become the norm no matter who was in power. They
refused to listen and they were outflanked in 597 BC as the Neo-Babylonian
armies forced a surrender of Jerusalem. In order to better control the country,
Nebuchadnezzar had many of the leading people of Jerusalem taken into exile in
Babylon along with many of the riches of the country and many of the treasures
of the Temple. Zedekiah, was set up as a puppet to the Babylonians. There was
no one with any sense to lead the country into a new path, and they were obsessed
with plots and bombastic strutting and nostalgic empty plans to rebel and kept
saying that they would be able to throw off the Babylonian rule and make
Jerusalem great again the way it used to be for the affluent in the past.
Jeremiah has a whole series of debates with the tame
temple prophets who are so wedded to bombast and nostalgia. Jeremiah tries to
speak reality to the leaders and people, but they refuse to listen. In August
of 594 BC, Jeremiah writes a letter to the exiles to tell them not to make
trouble in exile but to use this an opportunity to change, to settle into
living faithfully where they are and trust in God to finally bring them back as
God had brought back the Hebrew children to the Promised Land out from slavery
in Egypt hundreds of years before. That is what the letter is about - to live
where they were and work with God to live into being God’s people, to bloom
where they were planted; to be faithful to God’s vision in the middle of change.
It would be nice to say that the letter worked, but
soon after the letter was sent there was a revolt in another part of the
Babylonian Empire and the bombast went into full gear. The Egyptians made a
move to Philistia and Zedekiah, who had been kept in check by Jeremiah’s
advice, gave into the drumbeat to war and placed full trust in the “weak reed”
of Egypt. Jeremiah was tossed into a pit. In 587 BC the Neo-Babylonians came
back, destroying Jerusalem and the Temple and took even more people into exile.
Before the final fall of the city, Jeremiah was kidnapped by his enemies and
taken to Egypt where he disappears from history.
This letter from Jeremiah has a place in history,
August 594 BC, but it is also timeless and is meant for all of us who are
tempted to avoid the history we cannot control. The reality is that most of us
live in a world that we cannot fully control and just staying put doesn’t hack
it; if the world is changing we have to change.
In the Gospel story from Luke for today, Jesus is on
his way to Jerusalem to meet a future he cannot comprehend and meets 10 lepers
who call to him to cure them from their disease. He does this, and he sends
them to show themselves healed to the High Priest as is the law and be declared
clean. They all do so, and nine of them nostalgically try to go back to the way
they used to live as if nothing has ever happened. But there is one, the
Samaritan, who realizes that the journey to the past cannot be made for
everything has changed. And as it has
changed, so has he changed. He gives thanks to God for all the changes. He no
longer lives in fear of the present. The Samaritan leper has taught Jesus to
give thanks for this day, and it is that faith that makes the leper whole and
gives Jesus the strength to go to Jerusalem. Nostalgia is usually caused by
fear, and if we can be open about that fear instead of bluster our way around
it, then we can live fully. Again, as Thich Nhat Hanh reflects, “Fear keeps us focused on the past or
worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that
right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are
working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can
still hear the voices of our loved ones.”
Trich Nhat
Hanh is a good Buddhist boy but he echoes what is known over all faiths in the
one God that today, whatever day it is, is a good day to live and to change
Meeting Past Lepers
Prayers
are difficult for me right now
I
want to sing a favorite song I know,
songs
that I lived once so long ago
when
considering myself a lucky thou
rather
than an empty and rootless I,
unsure
of steps of the present dance
while
feel deprived of a future glance
when
I might not have a trusted ally
by
my side to hold except the past
longingly
to which I want to cling
and
squeeze every nuance I can wring
happily
playing the same roles typecast.
Yet,
tis time old theatre show is closing
as management new play’s proposing.
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