Comments for Jim

Sunday, October 11, 1998
Rev. James A.Todhunter

"BELIEVERS IN EXILE"

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-72 Timothy 2:8-15Luke 17:11-19

This morning we need to talk about grief. Grief is the experience of loss. A loss is an event, something that happens to us. It is a fact. Grief is what we experience when a loss takes place. The more significant the loss, the deeper the grief. Grief is, properly understood, how the soul deals with loss. We live in a society in which, unfortunately, we try to manage everything. The goal is to stay on top and maintain control. We are inclined to regard loss as something we can manage along with everything else. But when we talk about the soul, we need to reject that kind of language. The soul doesn’t manage anything. What the soul does is suffer. What the soul does is experience pain, sorrow and death. What the soul does is die and experience transformation and receive new life. The soul is where the drama of hopelessness and hope, death and life, is played out.

The Old Testament scripture lesson this morning quotes a remarkable letter. The situation was this. In the sixth century BCE the Babylonians took a generation of leaders from the royal family and the priestly classes of Judah back to Babylon in exile. Judah was, for all intents and purposes, a conquered land under Babylonian control. Like Palestine under the Romans in the time of Jesus, the country still had some small measure of independence, provided tribute kept coming in. The Prophet Jeremiah remained behind in Jerusalem, preaching his message that all that was happening was God’s judgment upon the people of Judah.

Jeremiah receives word from Babylon that among the exiles, there are prophets offering words of hope. They are telling the discouraged Jews to just hang on, don’t give up, and soon God will restore them to their native land.

In response to this Jeremiah writes a letter saying this:

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce...multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

It is important that we fully appreciate the radical nature of this letter. The Hebrews believed themselves to be a special people chosen by God. They had been freed from bondage, led through the wilderness and given the land of Canaan as their own. The Kingdom of Israel, under David and Solomon, was seen as a holy kingdom for God’s elect. For the Jews exile was not simply a painful displacement to a foreign land, as terrible as that was. It was a wrenching dislocation from what nourished them - the land of Israel, the Holy City of Jerusalem, and the Temple of Solomon. The only thought that could possibly sustain them was the hope that soon, in their own lifetime, they could come home. No wonder they sought out words of hope and comfort to keep them going. But it is this message of hope that Jeremiah dashes. He says "This will take time. Your suffering will not disappear overnight. Get used to living as strangers in a strange land. Pray for the welfare of the new place in which you find yourselves."

What a hard, hard message! For now they were being told not to hope, but to grieve. So by the waters of Babylon they could only sit and sing sad, sad songs of Zion. It seems to me that exile is a powerful metaphor for grief. To grieve is to face exile. To grieve is to live feeling disconnected from someone or something that regard as a source of life, joy, meaning and hope. To be in exile is to be surrounded by a strange environment; one that, as far as we can see, cannot nourish us, cannot sustain us. That is grief. When I came over to the church on Saturday morning, having just received word of Joey’s death from David, this church felt strange to me. It felt different. When I walked by Joey’s office door, I cannot begin to describe the feeling. This morning, I feel like a stranger in a strange place. Lois said to me last night, "I can’t believe she is dead. This must be what it means to be in denial. I keep thinking that someone will call and say that it was a mistake." All during Joey’s cancer journey, a part of me kept saying, "They will find a cure. It will be all right." Or, "She will spring back. She always has." We experience denial when the pain seems too great to bear. We long for words of comfort, words of hope, words of promise. We even search them out.

The grief of exile, and the exile of grief. Those lonely Hebrews in Babylon also yearned for comfort and hope. And the voices of hope came, saying "That’s all right. It will be over soon. God has not forgotten you. Soon you will be back home and all will be well again, just like before." How sweet those voices must have sounded. But Jeremiah was having none of this. He wrote "Your loss is real. Your pain is profound. It is lasting. You must live with it."

I am convinced that life is one loss after another. And we survive and lead meaningful lives when our souls learn how to grieve our losses. Not deal with our losses, not manage our losses, but grieve our losses. Soul grief. When we emerge from the comfort and security of the womb into the harsh and dangerous world. Loss. Grief. When we leave the playful bliss and security of childhood for the adult world. Loss. Grief. When, sooner or later, we lose those two people who loom large in our lives forever, Mom and Dad. Loss. Grief. And on it goes.

We can try and manage loss by denying it, or minimizing it, intellectualizing about it, or even theologizing about it. We can say "There is no death, really." We can say "She is here. She is still with us." I say no. Death is real. She is gone. She is not here. Such cheap religious comfort amounts to fancy tactics for trying to make the pain go away. There is only one way for the soul to deal with loss, and that is to recognize that a part of one’s own soul dies with the beloved. The pain of the death of someone or something that is cherished is the pain of recognizing that our lives will never ever be the same again. They just won’t. The world, from that day forth, that we inhabit will be a strange world of exile. We never "get over" profound loss really. What really happens is that eventually, by the grace of God - that is the only way, we become new and different people in a new and different world. As Jeremiah says, himself a prophet of hope as well as grief, God will give us each new hearts to replace the old. In this we manage nothing. We simply say "God is God."

I believe that it is impossible to grieve for another without grieving also for ourselves. Speaking for myself, when Joey died, in that moment, I ceased to be the minister that I was for our eleven years together. For my ministry was profoundly shaped and adapted to a partnership that was dynamic, challenging and fruitful. Like a good marriage that survives and thrives, I believe that Joey and I were a great team, both because of, and in spite of, our differences in style and temperament (I always saw us as a bit like Gilbert and Sullivan). And it really worked. But now my partner in ministry is gone. And a part of me is gone, too. So now who am I? What am I to do? How am I to minister? I feel like I am in exile, in this place and within myself.

Our congregation is made up of many souls. And together I really believe there is one collective soul to our church. And there is plenty of evidence that that soul is very strong. I don’t worry about that at all. But with Joey’s death, part of our soul has died, and we are now going into exile. We must not minimize this. We must not deny it or run away from it. Yes, Joey’s suffering is over. And that is a profound relief, thank God, for her and for each of us who loved her. And I am glad she is with God and I believe that. But I am still angry. I am still angry with this god to whom we all prayed that she might be healed. Yes, I am proud of her for her courage and steadfast determination. She indeed lived and worked and ministered, true to herself. Like you, I marveled at her stubbornness. But, like you, I hated the pain she lived with. I want to know why, even when we all prayed and laid our hands upon her, her suffering got worse, not better. I hated that during these last few months, to simply look at her broke my heart. So I have issues. I have questions. Is my faith strong? Yes, it is. Are we strong and healthy? Yes, we are. But we must recognize that now we must allow ourselves to feel what it means to die, what it means to enter the exile of grief.

Speaking for myself, I know that something in me has to start over. Something in me has to let go of the world I knew and must now learn to live in the strange world of exile in which I find myself. I know life goes on, things have to be taken care of, and certain responsibilities don’t go away. I know all that, believe me. But I don’t want to hear about that right now. For now all I can do is feel the pain of this strangeness. This exile.

Where does our congregation go from here? I don’t know. I am not worried about it; I just don’t know yet. It trust our future will become clear. What I believe is that, for a time, a season, we need to devote ourselves to grief. We need to mourn together. Like Jeremiah said, we must live with the reality of what we are feeling. Some things we will need to take care of on a day to day basis. Some things can wait; some can’t. But we need to grieve together for as long as it takes. And it will take as long as it takes. And at some point we will say to one another, it is now time to move on.

Jeremiah, though his words sound harsh, was still, amazingly, a prophet of hope. For he said that if you can trust God in the exile, then you will be fit to celebrate God in the homecoming. The exile will be over, not when we finally get to go home. The exile will be over when we discover God in the midst of our exile. The exile will be over when we discover that the strange land has become home. When we discover that God was there with us all along. And then we will say with all our hearts, indeed, all will be well. Amen.

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