These are some clear and very important news headlines: Russia invades part of Ukraine, a movie has been released that is very controversial, Vancouver plays Ottawa in a major hockey game, the Federal Trade Commission has a very busy day, and a ship sinks and many lives are lost. Now, you could probably be excused for thinking that these are headlines that are happening today, when in fact these are headlines from a hundred years ago, in 1915! In 1915, the Russians invaded part of the western Ukraine in the region of Bukovina. In Hollywood, there was a silent movie released entitled Birth of a Nation, and many people felt that these new silent movies were the beginning of the end of our civilization. The Vancouver Millionaires – which is interesting – beat the Ottawa Senators to win the Stanley Cup in 1915. How those two teams would love that this year! There was a sinking of a ship, and we all know what that was, don’t we – The Lusitania. And as for the Federal Trade Commission, well when have they not been busy since they were founded a hundred years ago?
It is amazing, is it not, that those headlines from a hundred years ago could resonate as if they were happening today, and we would hardly bat an eye! For all our talk about the world changing and the dynamism of history and how we have progressed as a human race, the fact of the matter is, there are certain things that seem to repeat themselves and that change is maybe not as rapid and not as great as we sometimes imagine. Indeed, at times we are confronted by what some philosophers have called “the tyranny of the present” the belief that only now really matters. As Edmund Burke, the philosopher said, “It seems to me that the role of government, and indeed the roll of all society, is not only to be concerned with the present, but also with the past and with the future.”
It is not just where we are now and the situation in which we find ourselves at present that is all important; in fact there are things in the past and things in the present that have a great influence on us. I agree wholeheartedly with Robert Kennedy, who when talking in Warsaw in 1964 said the following: “Great change dominates the world, and unless we move with the change we will become its victims.” For Kennedy, there is the sense in which change is an inevitable thing that carries us on a tide and that we hurt ourselves and we damage ourselves if we are not willing to move with change. While he is correct that change is an inevitable thing and that nothing stays the same, there are nevertheless things in the past that help us with the most important way of dealing with transitions in life, for change is about movement from one thing into another, and that process of transition and how we handle it is what will determine our future.
How we handle the changes that come our way are an important statement about how we move into the future. And I think on this, the first Sunday of a New Year, to talk about those transitions and to discover ways that we can find meaning in them would be a very powerful thing for us. Today’s passage from the Book of Jeremiah is, if anything, one of the great books of change in the Bible. It is about how God, in the midst of this change, is at work and comforts the people. Jeremiah was writing in a catastrophic time, a time of turmoil the likes of which we have hardly seen since. If we think that people are currently refugees and being displaced in large number, as they are, we need only look back to the time of Jeremiah to see that the exile of people and the refugees and the movement of people was even greater, and it was 2,700 years ago, this massive period of time when there was this ferment and this change.
For a period of time before Jeremiah came on the scene, the Assyrians had ruled from 745 to 627, from Tiglath-Pileser III to Ashurbanipal. For all those years, the Assyrian Empire had taken people from their lands and had moved them out, they had invaded countries, and they had stripped cities. One of their great kings, a rather evil character called Sargon, had come into Samaria and to Ashdod in the northern part of Israel and had removed people. It is estimated by historians that three million people were displaced during the Assyrian Empire. That is incredible!
During this time, Jeremiah arrives – right at the end of it. Rather than prophesying to the northern kingdom of Israel, he was prophesying to the southern kingdom, which was Judah. Judah had not been as influenced as the northern kingdom by the Assyrians as they were further south. Jeremiah sees that there are two new empires emerging: one of them from Babylon and the other from Egypt. He sees the Egyptians and the Babylonians as rising powers, and he sees the Assyrians in the north as a declining power.
In the midst of all this turmoil, in all this catastrophic change, Jeremiah is a prophet of God. He speaks to the kings who are leading the people, and he implores them to remain faithful to God, and not to start an insurrection for the sake of an insurrection, but rather to focus on the things that will make the people strong in their faith. He wants them to turn away from their apostesy, for he sees that there are things that they are doing contrary to God’s will. He wants them to turn away from their sexual immorality, because he says this will weaken and destroy the nation. He looks at their business practices and their injustices and the growth of the rich at the expense of the poor, and he condemns this, and he speaks about their idolatry, and how they are starting to worship gods that are coming in from Babylonia and from Egypt. Jeremiah says to the people, “I want you to remain faithful, because if you will remain faithful to the Lord God, then you will be saved!”
Then, in an incredible passage, the one that we read today, known as the Book of Comfort, he talks about the people eventually returning to the Promised Land, the northern and the southern kingdoms being united. He talks about people being fat and having a lot to eat, particularly the priests. (I find that offensive, by the way!) But, he says, “The priests will get fat. The women will not doubt. The children will have freedom. Wine will be free. Food will be plentiful. Rain will be pouring down.” It is an idyllic picture of the world. In it there is this incredible line: “I will turn their mourning into joy.” The Lord God is basically saying “All this might be happening around you. You may have the chaos of Assyria and the emergence of Babylon and Egypt, but if you remain faithful to me I will not disappoint you. I will turn your mourning into joy. Just make sure that no matter what changes are taking place, you remain faithful to me.”
Jeremiah had a vision that suggested that it would not only be Israel and Judah that would be faithful to God, but all the nations of the earth. All the nations of the earth would turn from their wicked ways and turn to God. This great moral and righteous and just prophet has the belief that all the nations someday will be able to worship the living God. Later on, he talks about this being a new covenant, like a new exodus in a sense, of the people coming to a place of safety and a new hope that will be in hearts of people. It is fascinating that 600 or so years later there is another change that takes place. The change that takes place is not in the form of a book or a prophet, but in a person, and his name is Jesus of Nazareth.
Of all the prophets that Jesus speaks about in his life and in his ministry, it is Hosea and Jeremiah that are the most frequently referred to. Jesus realized that his ministry and his calling and his very presence was to be the incarnation, the living presence of this living God. John, in the beginning of his Gospel talks about this: that the Word has become flesh, the Word has now dwelt amongst us, not in prophets but actually in a person, and that it is there in the midst of darkness, in this case the Roman Empire, and in this darkness a great light has shone, and this darkness will not be put out.
I heard this week someone was saying “Surely this Sunday you are going to have the trees down and you are going to have the lights removed and we are going to turn back to normal. I love that word – normal! I made the point that no, this is still Christmas by the way, and the reason that it is still Christmas is that this is the Sunday before Epiphany, where we celebrate the very central candle that is here, the Christ Candle. The reason that we have these lights here, and the reason that we have this lighting, is a reminder that the light shines in the darkness.
Of all the transition points in all the history of the entire world, it is the coming of that Christ Child that was the most climactic, that was the most powerful. This was God coming in person; not as an idea, but in person. In this very person, the whole nature of human transition takes place, the whole way in which as humanity we see ourselves changing. It is Jesus who comes, and he makes us into something new. That is why it is fitting that next Sunday, when we celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Communion we will use words right out of Jeremiah. Jesus said, “Take, eat” This is my body.” And who in the same way took the cup saying, “This is my blood of the new covenant.” For Jesus, his ministry was what Jeremiah had hoped for. That all the nations, Jew and Gentile alike, would be able to worship and celebrate the living God.
Isn’t it fitting that it is that very reality that is manifested in this card today? Is that not something that we can see with open and joyful eyes? Is this not the God that we worship and that we celebrate? Here we are, as Gentiles, praising and lifting up the very Yahweh that Jeremiah glorified. Why? It is because this God came in a person in Jesus of Nazareth, and all Jesus of Nazareth asks of us is all Jeremiah asked of the nation of Israel, that in the midst of all the transitions of life, we remain faithful to the living God.
Change might occur in time, change might occur in history, Jeremiah and Jesus might just be milestones in a religious history, and they are easily dismissed by those who believe in “the tyranny of the now.” But for those who really have eyes to see and faith, they are not just milestones, they are living examples of how we deal with change and transition, for there is in the midst of all this change, a changelessness, and the changelessness is in God. None other than the great Mahatma Gandhi said this about God, and I have read this many times over in my life.
“I do dimly perceive that while everything around me is ever changing, ever dying there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, and recreates. That informing power of the spirit is God, and since nothing else that I see merely through the senses can or will persist, he alone is.”
The writer of Hebrews put it this way: “God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” In other words, transitions, times of change in our lives are still overseen by, undergirded by, supported by, and loved by a living God, a living God whose love and justice and righteousness does not just change with the times, and while the times they change, the Lord remains the constant, and the love and the faithfulness of God is the constant.
Here we are in the beginning of a new year. Neither you nor I know what the headline in our life or in the world is going to be at the end of 2015. We don’t know what natural changes are going to occur in our lives, and whether they are going to be changes that help. We don’t know what changes in relationships are going to take place, whether new ones are formed or old ones are ended. We do not know what the state of the world will be, how nations will ebb and flow and empires start to emerge and others slowly diminish. We do not know what ruthless leaders, like Sargon, raise their heads above the mud and try to seek out the innocent. We do not know how many more refugees there will be, or if there will be any. We do not know if our work places are secure, or if there are new opportunities waiting for us. We do not know if our schooling will lead to something great and productive, or whether in fact we will find ourselves struggling. None of us know what tomorrow will bring!
This past year, I was privileged to attend a retirement party for a very well known sports star. When I went to the party, it was one that recounted all the great successes, all the great victories, all the things that had been accomplished. There were tears, memories, anecdotes, and stories from the past, but there was also at the end of it a profound sadness. This person had come to the end of the career that had made him great, and now it was wondered if he would be great any more. There was a melancholy about it. A celebration, great libations, lots of food, fabulous memories, but now uncertainty. I thought about that as I was leaving, because I sensed that this person was dejected in the midst of all this honour and all this glory, I said to him as I left, “You know, I am sure that God has something great in store for you in the years ahead.”
He looked shocked, and gave a wry smile, and said, “I hope you are right.”
He reached the end of a path that he had been treading on, but he was unsure what this next step would be. None of us know what that next step will be. Whether it is the end or the beginning of something, there is a sense in which we have learned from the transitions of history that there is a changeless God who nevertheless keeps God’s word. And what is fascinating about the Assyrian Empire is that it came to an end. What was fascinating about the Babylonians is that they came to an end. What was amazing about the Egyptians was that they never really rose to great power again. Yet, at that time, it appeared to Jeremiah that all was lost. It seemed in the time of Jesus that Rome was all there was, that death was the final end of human life and Jesus came and turned it all on its end! It seemed as though only one nation amongst all the nations would be faithful to God, when in fact God was still being faithful to all the nations through his Son.
Carol Berman, who writes in a blog in The Huffington Post every month and is a Professor of Psychiatry at NYU Medical Center – I like reading Carol Berman – said:
“You know, when you are dealing with transitions, there are three things that you should always keep in mind. The first is that you have to recognize that change is inevitable, and that you mustn’t waste too much energy trying to fight it. Don’t dig in your heels and pretend the tide will not continue to flow – just stick with it. But, in the midst of this, the second thing you need to do is acknowledge how the past has provided you with an anchor to help you deal with the future, and not to forget the good things that have happened to you. Finally, you need to reinforce the positive things as you move forward, because the negative things will ultimately drag you down and paralyze you, but the positive things will move you forward.”
This might sound like pop-psychology, but it is true.
When I go back and I look at Jeremiah, he is saying exactly the same thing. You have to recognize Israel, that things are changing, that you have to have your reforms, you have to keep up with what God is doing, you have to realize that the world around you is changing, you have to acknowledge that God has been there in the past, to remember the Exodus, to remember God’s faithfulness, but you want to remain positive, because God is the one who is leading you into the future. That is why God always says, no matter how dark the transition might appear, “I will turn your morning into joy.” Amen.