Jeremiah 31:1-3, 10-14
Ephesians 1: 8b-12

January 4, 2009
Rev. Patricia L. Liberty

Gathered Home

Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got. Taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name and they’re always glad you came, you wanna go where you know people are all the same…

Isn’t that a great jingle for the church…think about it…just the everybody knowing your name part would be a miracle…beyond that…you wanna go where you know people are all the same, and they’re always glad you came. 

There’s some thing about being together, gathered in one place…all of us here today is a unique and unrepeatable event in the life of the world.  Even if our attendance next week was exactly the same as today, which would also be a miracle….we would still be a different gathering because we are different from day today.  There is something gracious and unique about being together, gathered in one place.

It’s here in the gathering of people known as church that we sing and pray and hope and struggle and remember and forget and lose our way and find our way and trip over the familiar words and find them flat and trip over them again down the road and have them leap to life and light us from within with utter joy.

And all that, just by showing up; Woody Allen said half of success in life comes from just showing up.  After that I guess we have to offer something.  The same is true of church.  Half of it is just showing up, after that you never know what God is going to do.

Most weeks we show up here not expecting much, a sermon that is not the mustard gas of faith, music that speaks to some part of us we don’t touch too often, a place to be quiet enough to hear ourselves pray for the stuff that matters in our lives and maybe a smile from the people around us, even if we don’t know their name. 

We come out of habit, out of guilt, out of desire, obligation or hunger, joy, need or…fill in the blank with what brought you here today. For what ever reason we are here and God is delighted not because this place is any holier than any other place but because it’s how God is. 

It is God’s way to gather us in.  Perhaps it is here we can hear the word that is God’s word for us, the word of forgiveness, of healing, of renewal, sending out to do and be in the world.  God gathers us in so we can be sent out.  That’s what’s our reading from Jeremiah reminds us of…God’s abundant welcome and grace.  When the worst has happened and all seems lost, that God is still right there beside us with a big welcome sign and an arrow pointing home. 

When making our way in the world takes everything we’ve got, God still knows our name and hangs out the welcome sign.

Christine Pohl writes, “The exiles to whom the words of Jeremiah 31 were addressed were scattered, weary and vulnerable. The specifications of God’s faithfulness, spelled out in images of bountiful food, flourishing gardens, safety, dancing and gladness, provide a picture of overwhelming, over-the-top grace. Straight paths, deep consolation and special care for the most vulnerable suggest a road home shaped by generous welcome and tender care”

It is simply who God is and it is not contingent on what we do or fail to do, it is not a function of our goodness or lack of it, but of God’s unfailing grace and unshakeable love.

It doesn’t mean that what we do doesn’t matter or that we are not accountable for our actions, but rather that the stuff of life doesn’t mediate God’s reaching to us with an invitation home.  Grace is free but it isn’t cheap.  And when we accept God’s invitation we glimpse the joy that comes only from knowing and being known, snippet of the peace that passes understanding, finding our place in community.

This text is also a reminder that God’s grace is no guarantee that life is going to peachy keen.  Remember Jeremiah is speaking to exiles, people whose departure from their life and land was filled with brute force and destruction. 

Barbara Sholis notes, Jeremiah is calling those who remember their relationship of blessing with Yahweh back into the living of it. I am bringing you home, God says. In contrast to their painful departure, the weeping refugees shall return home with prayers in their hearts; the blind and the lame shall know their place in the kingdom. Mothers carrying their babies will walk alongside mothers in labor. It is a time pregnant with promise, and a time for noisy tambourines and merry dancing. All will participate in the spirited homecoming parade. God will lead everyone to new beginnings filled with new life.

On the threshold of a new year, it’s a good reminder.  In the midst of our own exiles, in the face of all that is broken, all that is uncertain, all that we are or fail to be, God is present…loving and welcoming, inviting and hoping. 

Jeremiah reminds us that the simple rhythm of life at its most basic and holy is an invitation to be “radiant over the goodness of the Lord.”  It doesn’t change whatever may be true in the moment, it didn’t end the exile of God’s people and it won’t fix whatever is broken is our lives, rather it makes what is broken tolerable and opens us to see that even in the midst, God is present with love that sustains.

Christine Pohl notes, if ever there were a description of a countercultural demeanor, this might be it. It is so easy to be discontent; we are trained to want more, expect more and deliver more. Contentment seems incongruous with striving for excellence -- a convenient and dangerous cover for laziness or passivity. But always wanting more makes it very likely that we will overlook the gifts we have received. And perpetual dissatisfaction makes gratitude a very awkward and unfamiliar practice.

Because our basic theological understandings of grace include assent to the claim that the most beautiful and precious things in and about our lives are unearned and undeserved, themes of gift and gratitude sometimes seem overworked.

Nevertheless, encounters with an abundance of grace and goodness can still surprise us and remind us of how little we can do except respond with thanksgiving and gratitude.  God gathers us home where our name is known, our lives are treasured and the simple truths of our days elicit deep gratitude in the midst of what ever else may be true.  Thanks be to God.