A Fourth Church Sermon by Joseph L. Morrow

Sunday, September 8, 2019 | 4:00 p.m.

Joseph L. Morrow
Minister for Evangelism, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 139:1–6; 13–18
Jeremiah 18:1–11

Richard Blanco is quickly becoming one of my favorite American poets. He is the child of Cuban immigrants who fled their homeland and, after spending several months in the Spanish city of Madrid, began a new life in the United States. His mother, Geysa, left Cuba while pregnant with Richard. Speaking about the move years later, she revealed just how deeply painful it was to leave. She said, “I left my mother and brothers behind and came here virtually alone and with nothing.” In his most recent collection, How to Love a Country, Blanco’s poem “Imaginary Exile” is the poet’s attempt to enter the psyche of emigres like his parents. Reading it I was struck by this passage:

Dawn breaks my window and dares me to write a poem . . .

that finds a word for the emptiness of suddenly becoming a stranger in my own kitchen, as I sip my last cup of coffee, linger with the aroma of my last meal, my hands trembling as I toss leftovers, wash dishes, eat one last piece of bread I’ll never break again, and cork a half-empty bottle of wine I’ll never finish, a vintage I’ll keep safe memories through my mind’s palate. A poem that lists which parts of me to part with, or take . . .

“Which parts of me to part with, or take?” This is the perennial question before the person in exile, forced to take leave from the place they called home. It is question born of the trauma of being torn from all you have known and treasured, from the places that formed you and the stories, habits, and beliefs that shape your very being. The dilemma of the exile is they simply cannot take it all. Sights, smells, and even familiar words must be left behind or reduced to memories stowed away in the mind, if they are to make the journey to the next home, the next adventure, the next season of life.

“Which part of me to part with, or take?” That’s the question asked by so many of us in seasons of transition, when the comfort and familiarity we have known so well gives way to new uncertainty. It’s not unlike what my daughter experienced and the millions like her who are heading back to the school this month. The little ones must let go of the coziness of a mother’s arms or father’s embrace—they must find new friends whose hands to hold as together they endure the uncertain rhythms of a new day. Summer’s ease cannot be recalled. As the academic year turns, all the rules, expectations, seating charts, texts, and relationships mastered from last year must be relearned or unlearned. Every student must decide what lessons to take from the past year and what requires letting go.

“Which part of me to part with, or take?” This is also the prophet’s question. And Jeremiah asked it in the context of a familiar world that was falling to pieces around him. Jeremiah was a prophet born from a family of priests, and you might say that because of that connection he had a deep appreciation for the stories, history, and ideals that made Israel’s twelve tribes and their beleaguered nation a covenant people before God. Jeremiah honored the relationship between his people and God from their humble origins to their promised destiny. In his vocation as prophet, he sought the integrity and viability of that relationship. But Jeremiah is also called the weeping prophet, because so many around him, those who shared that same heritage, did not share his same concerns. Or if they did, they sought to protect their earthly kingdom by ruthless earthly means.

Jeremiah lived through a time of political turmoil and social upheaval for the people of Judah, the last independent outpost of the ancient Israelites. The period began in hopefulness. King Josiah having found an old scroll of the Torah—God’s commandments—in the temple institutionally rededicated Judah to its precepts and practices. But as the regional military superpowers, Egypt and Babylon, battled for supremacy through the region, Josiah’s path gave way to realpolitik. Subsequent kings sought to stave off disaster with deal making, offering their adversaries tributes or complying with their social norms.

Egyptian and then Babylonian armies marched on Jerusalem, threw one ruler off the throne and promoted another family member that promised to do its bidding. In this environment, the covenantal relationship with Israel’s God could not hold as the religious, ethical, and cultural ideals at the very center of Judean life gave way to corruption. The unwinding of Judean life appeared irreversible. And as Zedekiah, the last ruler of an independent Judah, was led in chains to exile in Babylon, it seemed their fate was sealed. There would be no dialing back of the clock or going back to the way things were. And so the exile’s question comes to Jeremiah: When all appears lost, what part of ourselves do we part with and what part do we get to take with us on the other side?

In the US, so entranced by notions of progress and turnarounds and second chances and second acts, it is hard for us to get our minds around the tragic, the past that will not come back, that will not be resuscitated as much as we might try to charge it up with electrodes.

For a couple years now, I’ve been engaged in interfaith dialogue with Jewish neighbors here in Chicago. One time when we were discussing some very heavy topics concerning Middle East peace, a rabbi colleague made the comment that in order to obtain peace in the region, he thought both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples had to come to terms with both past losses and those that would be required for a mutually agreeable resolution. While Americans are fond of win-win scenarios, the rabbi was saying that a “win” for both sides in this case would only come after a lose-lose, and he recognized that with the American fondness for win-win scenarios, this might be a difficult outcome for the American Christians in the room to process. After reflecting on it, I too came to realize how underdeveloped our country’s sense of the tragic truly is. Unlike the biblical prophets, we are deeply uncomfortable with the reality of outcomes that cannot be changed and histories that cannot be unwritten. But there are times when we realize what must be faced.

Recently the New York Times launched an important venture called the 1619 Project. In this special series, the newspaper began chronicling the tragic history of slavery within the US and its implications for so many aspects of the country we have become. It was in 1619, exactly 400 years ago this year, that the first enslaved Africans were brought to the British North American colonies in what is now Virginia. And from that early date, the nascent United States began to veer off from its emerging ideals of liberty and fresh opportunity.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, in a riveting essay that inaugurated the series, repeats those memorable words from the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” And she asks us to recall that for the last 243 years, these words and the ways they have been embodied in our rhetoric, stories, and political rituals have “defined our global reputation as a land of liberty.”

Yet as she points out, the same founder, Thomas Jefferson, who so elegantly articulated that ideal, willfully denied those rights to kindred human beings who were black, and he helped ensconce a political and social system that would perpetuate the denial of those rights. Hannah-Jones goes on to say that “with independence, the founding fathers could no longer blame slavery on Britain. The sin became this nation’s own, and so, too, the need to cleanse it.” Now, whenever the word sin is evoked in the language of public life, my theological antennae are raised, and I hope that’s the case for you also.

The 1619 Project is doing the theological work of public confession, admitting how far we have diverged from our original ideals. As the prophets of ancient Israel traced their waywardness to problems in those early days of the wilderness (remember the Golden Calf?), so too are the cracks in our own country’s foundation observable for those who have eyes to see. The weeping prophet Jeremiah asks us as people of faith whether we are comfortable enough to plumb the depths of our own wrongdoing and study our collective failures enough to learn from them. In the field of social innovation and entrepreneurship, this might be called failing fast and forward. But for the prophet, the benefit of such a difficult exercise is in the power of confession to effect our true repentance and increase the likelihood that while the past cannot be change, it may be redeemed. Somethings cannot be undone but must be faced with honesty, contrition, and self-surrender.

Which brings us to Jeremiah’s visit to the potter’s house. When all is lost, we find ourselves as vulnerable as clay in a potter’s hands.

“Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord.”

For Jeremiah, it must have been a trepidatious matter to be malleable clay in the hands of God. Aware of our innermost thoughts, our mistakes, and also historic wrongs, it’s a fearsome prospect to consider how God might deal with us. In light of all that had gone wrong in his country during his lifetime, Jeremiah had to wonder would the Holy One offer some kind of vindication or pardon through political rescue? Or would God plot the nation’s ruin? Will the vessel be reformed or will it simply collapse into a lump of unused clay?

But what propels prophets like Jeremiah to have hope in the midst of such uncertainty is an underlying trust in the character and intentions of the God of heaven and earth. For it is this God who has an eventual and longstanding goal to redeem and renew all of creation. The author of all things intends to bring forth a coming time of justice, peace, and abundance for all. From the prophet’s reading, the destination then is assured, even if the path to arrival is so narrow it can hardly been seen. The potter will indeed continue to do work upon us as fragile human vessels until God’s image in us is fully realized. As the author of 1 John reminds us, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.” The how of our redemption is unknown, its final form behind the curtain of time. But we know there is no returning to the past in both its ignoble and nostalgic forms.

While God’s intention for good is assured from the prophet’s standpoint, the only question remains whether we will let ourselves be clay in the holy hands of God. Jeremiah believed Judah needed to forgo its own spoiled plans, even at risk to its sovereignty, in order to live for God’s future and be renewed as a covenant people. So, are we as people of faith in the US in the twenty-first century capable of acting likewise? Can we set aside our own distorted dreams and selective nostalgia to better account for the past and live more fully into God’s own vision for the future? And can we witness to that sense of humility and self-surrender not only in our individual lives but also the lives of our communities and nations?

At Fourth Presbyterian Church that desire to be open to God’s work in us is evident in our congregation’s mission statement. It says that we strive to be “a light in the city reflecting the inclusive love of God.” Later it declares that “inspired by our heritage, we confront our future with hope and confidence in God’s purpose.” We discern our heritage, the treasured ideals that animate our congregation, from the failures and challenges that pockmark our past as they do every community of faith striving to be our best as fragile and flawed people. In other words, we lay our plans before God’s power to correct, reform, and redeem them, trusting that as clay in holy hands, God will do new and beautiful things in and through us. Amen.