Jeremiah 29:4-14; Matthew 5:13-16, 6:25-34
Laura Collins
September 26, 2004
You are the salt of the earth!
You are the light of the world!
You are a city set on a hill that cannot be hid.
Takoma Park Presbyterian, you are a city set on a hill.
You are the light of the world.
Hide it under a bushel - no!
Beautiful people, good-hearted people, salt of the earth people – let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
What can I say to you on this, my last Sunday in this pulpit? I’d like to remind you of some of my favorite thoughts about Christian living, but as I started to assemble those thoughts I was haunted by the words of one of my college mentors. I was a senior in college when God whacked me upside the head with the idea of becoming a minister – an idea which would never have entered my mind willingly, believe you me. (And most of my college friends were bewildered. Not my high school friends, mind you, who had seen me in my days of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and preaching in my father’s church. They weren’t surprised. But my college friends ... well, let’s just say they really hadn’t pictured me going this route.)
So I told this man I worked with in the development office who had become a friend, that I had heard the call and I was off to seminary to become a minister. Kermit, who was from Charleston, SC, sighed and said, “Oh, Laura, honey, don’t go and do that! You’ve got so much passion and in the church all they really want you to preach is ‘helpful hints for happy living!’”
So, in honor of Kermit and his concern for my spiritual well-being, I will forgo my Top Ten Ways to be a Good Christian list.
My next idea was to share with you my favorite Scriptures. But that would keep us here for days and I know that this congregation is tolerant about the length of our worship services, but I didn’t want to push it too far.
So I just picked a couple. First, Jeremiah’s assurance, “I know the plans that I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”
Now Jeremiah is not generally known for his words of comfort. He was one of the harsher of the prophets of Israel and that’s saying something, because none of them were really known for holding back on the judgement and woe. Jeremiah is preaching to the Babylonian exiles, which is to say, people whose political and religious situation had crumbled underneath them. They had believed that as God’s chosen, they would overcome all enemies, live in prosperity and generally be free of struggle and hardship. (Sound like any nations you know?) But, instead, they had been conquered, their temple destroyed, their people scattered.
And for most of the 52 chapters in Jeremiah, he is not especially comforting. Basically, he tells them they’ve gotten what they deserved. They were more interested in their own bellies than in the justice of God. They had forgotten how to speak the truth. Their leaders cried, “peace, peace,” when there was no peace. They had been given a plentiful land, which they defiled. They spent their energy seeking after worthless things, and had grown lustful and greedy for unjust gain.
So, for most of the 52 chapters, Jeremiah spells out what went wrong. But every now and then, a moment of hope emerges. In chapter 29, Jeremiah sends a letter to the exiles and says – “I know that everything is topsy-turvy. I know that it seems the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. But here’s what you need to do: settle down, build houses, plant gardens, start families – and seek the welfare of the city where you are in exile. ... because I know your future – the plans God has in mind for you. And it is a good future, full of hope. You aren’t going to get there today or tomorrow or even next year, but you need to have faith that you will get there. So go ahead and start building, start planting, start loving, because it is coming. It really is.”
So when your world is upside-down, when the political situation seems helter skelter, when your religious underpinnings are crumbling, when you feel like an exile living in a land where nobody speaks your language, have a little faith. Now, if I was one of those techno-centric pastors, this would be the moment when John Hiatt would come through the sound system, but since I’m such a Luddite, maybe we can have another little 1980s sing-along, like we’ve done before. I know everyone between 30 and 50 knows the song I’m talking about – “When your road gets dark and you can no longer see, just let my love throw a spark and have a little faith in me. When the tears you cry are all you can believe, just give these loving arms a try, baby, and have a little faith in me. Have a little faith in me, have a little faith in me and have a little faith in me.”
See, there’s a good reason not to give up completely on the maleness of God: I think God might sound a little bit like John Hiatt.
So, plant, build, love, work ... with faith in a future that is brighter because God has promised it. “Then,” God says, “when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you.” Notice, the first task is to build and plant and love and work ... then when we call on God, God will hear us. We’re not to wait around and wring our hands, waiting for divine intervention. Then, God says, “When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, say the Lord.”
Which really isn’t very different than what Jesus says in the sermon on the mount, is it? “Don’t be worried about tomorrow. Tomorrow will have its own troubles and today’s troubles are plenty for today. But seek the kingdom – the kin-dom where we’re family – seek that first and the rest will fall into place.”
It’s so simple and obvious, isn’t it? So simple and so hard – I have to hear it over and over and over again. Seek the righteous way and all these other things will be yours. But if you get busy worrying about the other stuff – you know, minor stuff like food and clothes – then you’ll never find the time to seek the kingdom. All that other stuff will eat up every day and days will turn into weeks which will turn into months which will turn into years and suddenly, there went your life. Focus on the important stuff first. The God stuff. The stuff that lasts – like love and justice. The eternal stuff.
So much of the time we fall under the tyranny of the urgent. All those things that seem like they have to be attended to right now, instead of listening for those things that are timeless. But the truth is, we really don’t know what is urgent. We’re not all that great at triage. How do we know how to choose between the Sudan and Haiti? Between a dying parent and a lonely child? Between caring for the homeless and caring for the earth? Because once we start worrying about the urgent, everything starts feeling urgent. So we get busy analyzing the past to see what has worked or what has gone wrong in the hopes that we might be able to predict and control the future ... and suddenly the now is lost. And the now, folks, is where God meets us.
Here. Now. It is hard to meet God when we’re reliving the past or preparing for the future or marching anxiously forward with a fistful of tasks that need to be done yesterday. Which is why so often in Scripture we hear the message: Wait. Stop. Slow down. Listen.
Be ye not anxious ... “Do not worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:6)
I know all these texts about anxiety by heart ... why do you think that is?
We do worry, don’t we? We can’t help ourselves. And yet, I’m here to give testimony today that there is a way of living that considers the lilies of the field, how they neither toil nor spin. There is a way of living that looks at the birds of the air, who neither reap nor harvest. There is a way of living that allows the eternal to break into the now and infuse every task, every decision, with a trust and a peace that is not something we can ever manufacture. Sitting in the right posture won’t guarantee it, hearing a good sermon won’t make it happen, going out and giving yourself for the good of the world won’t secure it for you. It is pure gift.
But the Giver wants you to have it. A past that is forgiven. A present without anxiety. A future with hope. A life awash in the glory of eternity, instead of adrift on a sea of urgency.
Have a little faith in me ... have a little faith in me.
And here’s another thing. Not only does the Giver want you to have the Gift. She knows that you already do. If you could only see it for yourself. You are already imbued with a touch of glory, of eternity, not of your own making, nothing that you have anxiously striven to acquire. But you got it anyway. As a gift. So open it and see for yourself!
You are the salt of the earth.
Already.
You are the light of the world.
Shining.
You are a city set on a hill.
You can’t be hid. Here you are, church, right smack in the middle of Takoma Park, shining, shining. You can’t hide. So don’t.
Don’t hide! Shine!
Hide it under a bushel? No! You’re going to let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. And who knows where those rays of light might fall? God knows.
Have a little faith.
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