Home Sermons Cracked Cisterns and other strange places

Cracked Cisterns and other strange places

Sept. 26, 2010 CRACKED CISTERNS and OTHER STRANGE PLACES I visited a foreign land a few years ago. There was nothing familiar about the scenery. People spoke to me in a language I hadn’t heard before. People related to me in a new way. None of that was particularly earth-shattering. Nor was it lovely. Or interesting. I have no desire to go back to that place. But I do want to tell you about it. Because I think some of you have been there too. Or perhaps will go there. Or find someone you love, there. I felt as though I was standing on my head in that foreign place, with the x-ray technician trying to get a “picture” of my brain. The lab technician was trying unsuccessfully to get a “sample” of my blood. I was trying without any success at all to be polite, to cooperate. I was, to put it politely, behaving like a Tazmanian devil with a sore paw, empty stomach, abcessed tooth, and rotten disposition. When I got home I treated the love of my life with hostility. I was rude and unreasonable. I lashed out at him, everyone, and everything. I couldn’t make decisions. I felt useless. Angry. Frustrated. “In another world.” But the thing that chilled me most was a new emotion: fear. Have you ever been chilled by fear? Fear that makes no sense? Fear that creeps in, in the middle of the night, or in the middle of the day, to seize, to paralyze and terrify? I had never heard of post traumatic stress. I had never heard of brain injury. I had never paid much attention to people who were afraid. Or who were “not themselves.” I mean, what’s to be afraid of? We Christian folk have a Savior, a Lord, a Redeemer, a Friend. What’s to be afraid of? What’s to be afraid of? Lots. Lots. A few years ago, a pack of wild dogs broke into the Omaha Zoo in the middle of the night. The area they invaded was inhabited by wallabies. And the next morning, when the zoo keepers made their rounds, they found all 23 wallabies were dead. Upon closer inspection the keepers learned that none of the dogs had actually gotten into the wallaby cages. Not one dog had laid a paw or a jaw on a single victim. The wallabies were all dead from internal injuries suffered when their panic at seeing the dogs sent them crashing about wildly, bashing into the fences and one another. Literally scared to death, fifteen adults and eight baby wallabies, died of fear. Fear, anxiety, anger, and doubt play far too large a role in all our lives and sometimes they kill. A young college student had spent his entire semester at play, so as he faced the final exam in history, his mind was not cluttered with any facts. The exam was a single essay question: “Discuss in detail the Anglo-American conflict over Newfoundland fishing rights in the early 19th century.” The young man took pen in hand and responded bravely: “Too much has already been written about this conflict from the viewpoint of the English, and likewise too much has been written from the viewpoint of the Americans. Therefore I shall discuss it from the viewpoint of the fish . . . “ The ultimate escape – a familiar one to us all – flight from reality to a place where no one can “nail” us with the facts – is to look at things, look at life, from a subjective view that means absolutely nothing to anyone at all. But real life has nothing to do with pontificating or theorizing or even theologizing. Life has to do with right here. Right now. Within our reach. And attending fully to what is here. No one ever did that better than Jesus. No one ever paid closer attention to the present. No one ever used his gifts more completely. No one ever invested himself more fully in the people right in front of him than Jesus did. As we bid farewell to summer and enter upon a new cycle of life, it is time to ask once again, how are we doing with the gifts that have been lent to us? How are we doing in the here and now? How are we doing with the things that haunt us and make us sick? How are we doing with anxiety and uncertainty? How are we doing with fear? The fear that gripped my body and my spirit came from the reality that I really could be out of control, beyond myself, "possessed" in a sense ... a very real sense ... and the reality that I was defenseless against whatever beast (physical, mental or emotional) whatever beast it was that had invaded my mind and threatened my life. Research describes “post concussion syndrome” this way: “It impairs the ability to think, do, and know. Memory, mood, and attention are the top three complaints. Intellectual dullness and mental rigidity are apparent signs of brain injury. Personality changes are common, and rapid mood swings alternate with waxing and waning energy levels.” “Taken individually, such impairments might not amount to much. However, such impairments usually appear in groups or clusters. In many cases the impairments are widespread and disrupt many brain systems.” So …………. That’s all sort of interesting. And very cold. And scary. I guess it’s no wonder we’d rather talk about “fish” or something else that’s meaningless and “factual.” But … Life does have to do with right here. Right now. And attending fully to what is going on right here, right now. In our Old Testament Lesson, Jeremiah chooses a “cracked cistern” as a metaphor for the people’s faith. Literally, it won’t “hold water anymore.” Jeremiah himself was later thrown into a cistern to get rid of him. It too must have been cracked, or he would have drowned. As it was, he merely sank into the mud at the bottom. Both metaphors could have described my brain, I suppose. But there is more to this sermon than me discussing with you the symptoms of concussion and brain trauma. “Cracked cisterns” become “home” to the thought processes of all people who experience strokes, hardening of the arteries, dementia, depression, Alzheimers, or mental illness of all and any form. And fear is the common denominator binding these “demons” as one threat against our humanity, our wholeness, our holiness. All through the Gospels, we read of Jesus curing the sick and healing those who were possessed by demons. Now when the Jews used that term, “possessed by demons,” they weren’t talking about people being stuck by little red fellows with horns and pitchforks. They were talking about people whose spirits were troubled, people who were out of control on the inside and perhaps out of control on the outside. Jesus was healing people whose bodies were sick and whose spirits were sick. Jesus was healing those who were depressed or suicidal. And Jesus was healing those who were afraid. There’s a very practical question here: What do we have to do for our spirits to get healed? And the answer is pretty simple: we have to admit our need for healing. We have to admit we’re not whole, not finished, and that there are missing and broken parts in us. Well, that seems easy enough. Don’t we admit that all the time? “I’m only human,” we say. "But I fell," I said. But that’s a cheap admission, because it really has no content and thus no real value, except as an escape hatch. What we have to admit to are the ugly specifics of our woundedness. Our own special jealousy, or hatred, or cruelty, or resentment, or anger, or whatever. Our wounds are not pretty, but they must be named, by us, if they are to be healed. And they can only be named by us ... you, and me. But even that isn’t enough, for there’s yet another admission we have to make: Try as I may, I cannot heal myself. I need God. I need God’s gifts to me: my husband, my family, my grand-kids, my friends. I can’t do it alone. If I doubt that, I need only take a look at my track record. So is that it? Are we stuck where we are? Wounded and unfinished? Our faith offers an answer, and it’s a resounding “no.” There is no wound too vast or too deep to be healed by our God, if we ask. And there’s the rub, for as often as not our asking isn’t asking at all. Remember the prayer of St. Augustine in his wild, wild youth: “Lord, make me chaste and pure, but not yet.” Our asking has to be confident, but more than that, it has to be honest, single-minded, and without ambivalence. It has to be committed and determined to receive and take inside the healing grace the Lord will surely send. How often is our asking like that? There’s a fascinating tale written by H. G. Wells about a bishop, a prosperous, elegant, white-maned old gentleman who could always be counted on for a pious platitude. The bishop had a favorite answer that always served him well when troubled or angry people cam to his door. He’d assume his most pious pose, and speak in his best stained-glass voice, and ask, “Have you prayed about it, my child?” If spoken in just the right way, it silenced his questioner, and he was home free! Now the bishop didn’t pray much. After all, his life was quiet and uneventful, and he felt himself quite in charge of things. But one day the roof fell in, and he found himself, for the first time he could remember, quite overwhelmed. It occurred to the bishop that perhaps he ought to take his own advice and pray. So late on Saturday evening, he entered the cathedral, walked down the center aisle, genuflected and knelt in the first pew. He folded his hands, and couldn’t help thinking to himself how wonderfully childlike and prayerful he must look. Then he began to pray, “O God, look down upon thy humble servant, bring me healing in this hour of my need . . . “ Suddenly there was a voice, strong and firm, “Yes, my son, what do you wish?’ When the cathedral parishioners arrived for early mass the next morning, they found their bishop still in that first pew, with an incredible look of surprise on his face, stone cold dead of shock! The bishop had said the words – prayed for healing – all his life, but he’d never really expected or even wanted an answer. Every time we say “Our Father …”, every time we pray, do we really want an answer to our prayer? Or are we like that pious old bishop who’d grown comfortable in his holy self-centered role of righteousness? If we do want an answer, if we do want healing, our course is clear. We need to 1 admit to our wounds, particularly our fears, and name them, 2 acknowledge that we are helpless on our own, 3 ask for help with confidence, and 4 show that our asking is true asking, by preparing to receive the grasp that will heal us and raise us up. Admitting to our fear and naming it can be a bit of a problem. Like the student, it is easy to discuss a problem “from the viewpoint of the fish” and ignore the source of our fear entirely. We can talk about “stressors” and “traumas” and “symptoms” and “faith” and never deal with our fears at all! That’s where Jeremiah comes in. Jeremiah and the exiles so long ago. You and I are afraid. And like those people, we are afraid of what the future will bring! You and I fear what will happen that’s beyond our control. This “control” business is a problem shared with victims of cancer and many other illnesses. Dr. Phyllis Smyth, Chaplain of Mount Sinai Hospital in Montreal, led Bob and I and other clergy Folk through a workshop many years ago at Portage la Prairie. I’ve never forgotten much of what she taught us. She was a very wise person. For most people in the throes of serious illness, particularly cancer or ALS (Lou Gerig’s disease) Because these diseases affect how our bodies function, there is a loss of control. It is more than loss of physical control. There is no longer control over “our own bodies.” But as well, there is the deep feeling: “I not in control!” “God’s not in control!” “The doctors are not in control!” “Nobody’s in control!” Total lack of control, in theological terms, is chaos. And chaos, in theological terms, is hell. There is panic. Despair. And debilitating fear.. We fear what may happen that’s beyond our control. Perhaps even more, we fear how we will respond to the challenges that may be ahead that will be beyond our control. Fear is more a part of our lives than most of us would like to admit. The first way to deal with our fears is to name them. I was afraid because I had been taken to a place where I was not in control, nor did I know how to respond to what was happening to me or what might happen to me. The exiles in Babylon who looked to Jeremiah for leadership knew exactly what they were afraid of. They were afraid that their future as a people was gone. As professor Andrew Lester writes, they had lost their future story. They had been ripped from their homes and families and were in the grip of a hostile power, feeling helpless, scared, not knowing what the enemy would do to them next. Very often, of course, you and I just don’t want to talk about our fears. We think if we don’t talk about them, if we ignore them long enough, they will somehow go away. It is true that something like 90 percent of the things you and I are afraid of never happen. But ignoring our fears is not the way to deal with them. The remarkable thing about Jeremiah’s letter is that through Jeremiah the Lord spoke directly to the exiles, his words going straight to the heart of the problem. Those words speak to us today. 1. The first thing some of us need to do today is admit that it is the future that we’re afraid of. Some of us are afraid for the future of our church; you just know it might be hard to raise the extra dollars we need to meet our budget, particularly this year – with too much rain and so little sunshine. Some of us are afraid of growing old or ill. Some fear being alone. Some of us are afraid for our jobs or our farms. Some of us are afraid of being poor. So Jeremiah says, when you are afraid of the future, first know what it is you’re afraid of. Then … 2. Do the next thing. Jeremiah writes: “Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat what they produce. Make love.” Work on your relationships where you are. The exile’s world was shattered, remember. As far as any of them could tell, their future was gone. And Jeremiah knew that the real danger was that they would sit down there in the desert and give up, either die, or focus on the past, or assimilate with the Babylonians and lose their identity as a people; that they would let the loss of their future destroy them. So he brought them back to what they could do right now. “Build a house … dig a garden …” The trouble with many of us, you see, and the problem I had to deal with and still have to deal with, is that we get so bogged down worrying about some possible problem out there in the distance that we forget to pay attention to what’s next! The way not to be afraid of the future is to concentrate on what you can do in the present. The best recommendation anybody ever gave a terrified student at the beginning of a semester – whether it is grade 1 or a doctorate – was to do the first assignment first and then do the second and then the third. Start at the beginning and work your way through until you get to the end. 3. Jeremiah continued with the word of the Lord, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you.” As if those words would make him one popular prophet!! Think with me for a moment about what this Word must have meant to his people. Here they were, in a foreign capital, hundreds of miles from home, brought here by force, angry, bitter, surrounded by their enemies. Psalm 137 tells us of the mood of the people when Jeremiah wrote his letter. It says, “By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion,” and it ends, “O Babylon, happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us. Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock.” Anger at what you’ve lost is a natural part of the grief process. These were not happy Thanksgiving pilgrims in the school play in Babylon, my friends. The last thing they wanted to do was start a newcomer’s Babylon booster club. You and I may not control every aspect of our future, you see, anymore than we can control every aspect of our present. But there is one thing you and I can control. We can control our attitude toward our present. We can do more than that: we can build our future one positive act at a time in our present. 4. Fourth, Jeremiah says, seek the Lord of tomorrow. “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord: plans for welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” Insert Jeremiah 31:10, 16, 17 You can’t read the history of Israel without learning that their crises came because again and again they turned away from God and tried to build their future without him. And the results of their failures were always the same. Again and again they ended up in exile of their own making. Sometimes you and I end up in exile of our own making, you see. It’s simply the exile you and I choose whenever we go our own way, whenever we look to our own solutions. The answer to my fear and yours is simply this: Even if we feel ourselves in exile, even if we got there on our own, even if we don’t know where we are, even if we can’t begin to see our way ahead, Jesus will lead us around the next turn, and the next, until almost before we know it we will be safe again. “For I have plans for you,” writes the Lord, “plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” It is when we are afraid that faith is so important. Faith doesn’t answer why, but faith allows us to continue in the face of unanswered questions. It allows us to go on living in the loneliness that comes with fear, until life begins to take on meaning again. Faith leads us to lean on the everlasting arms of God, who walks with us to strengthen us and lead us into the future. Your fear may be a nagging illness, or job security, or a shaky relationship, or financial matters, or death itself. Even then, have faith … even a little … in the Christ who saves, in the Christ who cares, and the Christ who loves us. The Christ who has been there. As he sat at the table with his friends and talked of the future, they were so sure of the stability and security of their relationship. They had just told Jesus they believe in him. “We’ll always be there for you Jesus. We’ll always be there,” they said. And Jesus replied: “Really?! Will you really? Well, let me tell you just how it’s going to be. Very soon now every one of you will desert me utterly and scurry off to your homes to hide. You will leave me alone.” So he said. And then he walked down the most difficult road any person has ever walked. He walked it alone. And he felt abandoned. And he was afraid. Tears of blood … ? Terrified. But God was there every step of the way. And in doing that, Jesus proved that God is with us – you and me – even in the most frightening moments of our lives. God doesn’t give up on us when we are in the wilderness of fear or loneliness, death or grief. Rather, God through Christ makes us a promise: “I will be with you always.” “Always.” Fear, particularly fear of the future, reminds us today just how precious and fragile is the fabric of our lives. Fear reminds us that life cannot be taken for granted. We may not have tomorrow to enjoy. We may not have next week to get around to those things we have been putting off in hope of a better time. The past trails behind us like a shadow, the future is but a light over the horizon. All we really have is today. All we really have is now. We never know when we will draw our last breath. We do not know how long our parents, our children, our friends, our loved ones will be with us. We don’t know if there will be another chance to settle an argument, to give a hug, to say “I love you.” Fear teaches us to treasure the present moment, to use our gifts completely, to invest ourselves fully in the people who are right in front of us, to embrace this day! And perhaps, to change the way we look at fear ….. We may not be able to change the way we feel. But we can change our approach to the way we feel. When Columbus sailed across the Atlantic, the sailors on his three ships were afraid of what lay ahead. They were sailing into unknown waters on a rickety old boat. When Magellan sailed around the world, his crew was scared stiff. When Lindberg flew The Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic to Paris, he was afraid. He was doing something that had never been done before. Here is the point: Fear can lead to new experiences! New discoveries! New relationships! New ways of seeing ourselves … our future … our lives! A new way of seeing today. This is the message for us in this church today. You and I have to find a way to move into the “dark worlds” where some of our friends, relatives, and brothers and sisters in Christ live, and convince them that we will stay there with them until the Son rises on a new day. That’s all we have to do. That’s all we can do. And if you and I are in that place today, we need to know that there are people right here to help us, and that no matter where we are, or what demons nip at our heals, Jesus does make us that promise: “I will be with you. Always. Always.” Thanks be to God.