I’ve lived alone for almost exactly two thirds of my life. I can honestly say that while hard to deal with at first, over the years I’ve grown quite comfortable with my solitude. Admittedly I’ve experienced significantly more time alone this past year than I would have preferred or am used to, and clearly I’m not unique in that regard. It turns out my lifestyle is a great mystery to one of my younger neighbors who remarked as we were talking one day that he couldn’t imagine living as I do. What would probably be just as unsettling to him as my solitude is that the majority of the time it’s quiet in my house. Unlike many people, I don’t keep the radio or television on in the background, or play music as I go about my daily routine. While I admit to watching often mindless television in the evening, the rest of the day when I’m not reading or studying Spanish, I’m content to be alone with my thoughts. After all, as one of my favorite sayings points out, if you don’t like being alone, maybe other people find you boring too. Seriously, though, my monthly Bellringer columns, these sermons, arise from the silence, which is how I understand inspiration. Moreover, that quiet makes it easier to live into the words of the psalmist, Be still, and know that I am God.
As perhaps one or two of you may remember, in my column in the Lenten Bellringer I talked about grace. In that column I expressed my intention to focus on grace during Lent, though I wasn’t sure what form that would take. God answered that question quite beautifully in the form of Bingham’s request that I preach today, because today’s reading from Jeremiah is in my opinion one of the most grace filled portions of scripture one could hope to encounter. I have been thinking about it, meditating on it for those who prefer that language, throughout this season.
The reading opens with God’s promise to make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. While some Christians have been quick to interpret this as a prophetic reference to the coming of Jesus, that’s really not the case. Rather God is saying that Israel simply didn’t live into the earlier covenant, made when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, so it’s time for a new arrangement. This time, rather than simply telling them what laws to follow, God promises to put the law within them, to write it on their hearts. Then God makes one of the most beautiful promises in the entire Hebrew Bible: and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. This way, God says, they won’t have to teach each other about me anymore because they’ll simply know me. More than once I’ve heard people say that the God of the Old Testament seems like an angry, vengeful God while the God of the New Testament is more often described as a loving and merciful deity. However, this deeply personal commitment on God’s part conveyed by Jeremiah first appears in Exodus, the earliest of all the books in the Bible. It reappears multiple times in the writings of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah. Clearly God has loved humanity from the beginning, and has forgiven us again and again, in spite of how often, or how badly, we’ve managed to stray. Put simply no matter how often we humans may have angered God, God has never given up on us. That is grace.
Of course, as Christians we believe that roughly six hundred years after Jeremiah walked the earth, God took the most drastic step possible in trying to hold wayward humanity close by taking human form and living among us. 2000 years later we Christians, at our best, try to use Jesus’ teaching and behavior as a model for our own. At the moment we are deep into the season of Lent, when we use the story of Jesus’ time alone in the desert as a call to enter our own spiritual desert, living a stripped down version of our normal lives as a way to grow closer to God. The only problem, as you’ve heard others say repeatedly, is that it feels a whole lot like Lent 2020 never ended. We’ve been living a skeletal version of our normal lives for an entire year, not by choice but out of necessity. And now that it appears we’re approaching the edge of the desert, we’re beginning to see signs of green, what do we see on the horizon but Jerusalem, and the emotional rollercoaster of Holy Week. Do we even have the energy to enter the city? And what if the green we think we see is only a mirage, and this desert we’re in is simply going to go on forever? We are so tired, and even those of us comfortable with solitude are by now simply feeling lonely. Like the Greeks in today’s Gospel, we would so love to be able to turn to Philip and say, Sir, we wish to see Jesus. But Jesus himself is caught up in the terror of what he knows lies ahead, the agony of forcing himself to continue on when it would be so much easier to just head back to Galilee and be a carpenter. What are we to do?
Perhaps, as is so often the case, the issue isn’t about doing but about being. Now rest assured I am not about to stand here and suggest we just need to be patient. I think for the vast majority of us patience is in short supply at this point, and with good reason. So, rather than trying to force ourselves to be patient, perhaps we would do better to focus on being present. I had a wonderful friend for over forty years who was hit in the back of the neck by a widow maker when he was in his mid-fifties, who then spent the remaining seventeen years of his life as a quadriplegic. He became one of the most attentive listeners I’ve ever known. When you were talking with him you felt like there was no one in the world more important to him in that moment than you were. We can make an effort to be similarly present with the people we encounter, be it family members or neighbors we see all the time, or the checker at the grocery store, or a lost stranger needing directions. Given our eyes are the only part of our faces that have been visible in public for a year now, making eye contact has become more important than I’ve ever known it to be. Simple as it is to do, looking people in the eye, offering a moment of connection, can be a real gift.
Speaking of our eyes, we can make a point of being aware of the extraordinary beauty of the world around us. The blue of the Oregon sky after several days of rain is breathtaking, as are the cottony cumulus clouds that we so often see floating above us on sunny days. For that matter, the rainbows that grace the heavens during a sunny rain shower are at once beautiful and a vivid reminder of God’s love for creation and for all of us. The most memorable rainbow I've ever seen was one I spotted out the window of an airplane. Seen from that vantage point it formed a complete circle, with the shadow of the plane in the center of it. What a remarkable representation of being surrounded by God’s love. But coming back to earth, there’s more to notice around us than just what we can see. The sounds, the smell in the air that says spring is here, even if many of our days are still rather chilly and gray. I walk a lot, rain or shine, and I have to say that while it’s sometimes hard to get myself out there on a really rainy day, there’s something strangely peaceful about walking in the rain. Maybe having the hood of my jacket up muffles the traffic sounds around me, maybe it’s just the feel of the rain on my face, but except on the very coldest and most miserable days, walking in the rain provides its own kind of pleasure.
Just like choosing to find beauty in a rainy day, we can choose to be joyful. Is there anything more heartwarming than the full belly laugh of a toddler? My youngest neighbor, who is twenty months old at this point, has been one of the brightest lights in my world this past year. I walk his family’s dog nearly every day, so I see him often. He and his family being part of my COVID bubble, I’ve even had the privilege of taking care of him from time to time when both his parents needed to be gone for a short while. Only recently has he learned to give hugs, and I have to say when he rushes over to me and grabs me around the knees it’s almost overwhelming. On top of the rush of memories that always brings back, the fact that he is the only person on earth who has hugged me in over a year makes those moments more special than words can express. I have said before that I truly believe to look into the eyes of a child is to see the face of God. There have definitely been moments this past year when my little friend has done that for me.
Which brings me to one of my overriding themes, being grateful. Gratitude is very much an attitude. It involves a conscious decision every day, many times a day, to remind ourselves of all the ways God’s love for us is made manifest. From the well-being of the people we love, to having made it through this past year healthy ourselves, to the amazing degree to which our church family has held together through months at a time of not seeing each other except on a screen, to the kindness of neighbors….. the list is different for each of us, and can be as long as we’re willing to take the time to make it. It is truly worthwhile to make mental lists like that. It’s a way of reminding ourselves how very real God’s presence is in our daily lives. As frayed as my patience has been at times lately, I can honestly say this has been a truly grace filled Lent. In the midst of tracking down vaccine doses for myself and others to simply dealing with the day to day minutia of life, I’ve been very much aware lately of all the ways this past year has allowed me to pay attention to facets of my life too often ignored. I’ve even found myself able to slow down enough to repeat to myself several times a day:
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.
Amen.
