The Bottom Line
Wesley United Church
September 19, 2010
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
What a day we have today. It is chocked full of good news.
The Sunday School has begun, and the children are gathered in
once more to continue to learn about their faith and grow in it.
If that is not enough we have our baptism and the pledge of
faith and support that we have all made to Maggie Grace and the
hope she represents for her parents, for her family and for the
church. We have all of this, plus the promise of wonderful
fellowship that comes with our potluck lunch that follows our
service, not to mention the bonus of all the food!
With all of this bounty; of faith and good things and then we
are asked to turn to our readings from scripture and it is almost as
if someone wants to burst our balloon. There is no joy evident
here; the readings seem to be a real downer.
The gospel speaks of dishonestly and greed. In the Psalm
we hear the voices of the people begging for God to punish those
foreigners who have invaded Jerusalem. And then, we have
Jeremiah’s lament for the people of Israel who were suffering
from their own sinfulness.
Not much joy in these readings for a day where our worship
is filled with joy and celebration. So how do we look at readings
that offer us no joy and understand them as anything but a
downer on our worship time? How do we understand our sacred
scripture in a way that can lift us spiritually the way what we have
already done lifts us and provides us with hope?
The answer to this question lies in relationship. In all of our
readings, the key that turns the bad to good is the relationships
that are built to express God’s love.
Let’s look at Jeremiah first. The people of Israel are hurting;
they have experienced all kinds of pain from being occupied, from
being mistreated by their captors and by feeling deserted by God.
The prophet Jeremiah is also hurting. He feels the pain of the
people, he is living in the same circumstances and it cannot be
easy. But he is also feeling the pain of God that comes from the
way in which the people have lost faith in God’s love and promise
of hope. Jeremiah is caught in the middle and he must work to
restore the broken relationship between the people of Israel and
God.
So he asks the people, “Is there no balm in Gilead?” In his
question, he is reminding them of the place in Israel where people
go for the famous healing mud; the mud that when applied to
physical sores, was known to bring great relief and healing.
Jeremiah is pointing the people towards their spiritual balm,
in the direction of renewed relationship with God, that they might
rediscover healing for their spiritual ills. This reading is not an
obvious joyous one, but it is one in which, after a bit of digging,
we find the bottom line of our faith: the compassion of God who
calls the people, in the midst of their difficulty and pain, back into
a relationship of love and hope that provides the salve to comfort
their wounds.
Likewise, the Psalm gives us a glimpse of the relationship
the ancient faithful had with their God and the hope it provided for
them. The people of Israel are desperate in their plea to God.
They are living in occupation. The invaders do not share their
faith and have desecrated the Temple, they have ravaged and
killed many people and there seems to be no hope for the
survivors.
In their despair, the people of Israel call upon the rage of
God to destroy and punish their captors. They are seeking
revenge and restitution; it is an “eye for an eye” mentality.
But then there is a shift; the people change their plea. They
come to see that it is not the foreigners who are causing the
problems, but their own lack of relationship with God. They
recognize their own sinfulness and repent of that sin. It is when
the people remember their relationship with God and the
responsibilities that come with it, that their hope is reborn. Once
again it is the bottom line of God’s love and forgiveness that calls
the people into the relationship that turns their suffering into hope.
And what of the gospel, where is the hope here. It too lies in
the building of relationship. The story tells us that the dishonest
and disgraced manager goes out to seemingly save his own skin.
He approaches each of his master’s debtors and reduces their
debt. At first, it would seem, just to pad his own pockets, to build
up a possible IOU in his favour. But in the end, when the master
discovers his behaviour, he commends the way in which he has
forged new relationships with people.
This story is not about money, unemployment or dishonesty.
It is a story about restoring relationships, about building
community and wholeness through relationships. This is a story
of hope. It is a story that shows, yet a third time, of the bottom
line of God’s love and care that comes through the building of
relationships.
All of our readings today show us the power of our
relationship with God. They show us the bottom line of God’s
love that comes from the building of relationships, new and
renewed, and they call us to keep building our relationship with
God and with one another.
Our worship today has been all about new and renewed
relationships. With the start up of Sunday school and in the
baptism we celebrated, we have demonstrated how we build and
renew our relationship with God. And we will continue to building
relationships, new and renewed in our fellowship over lunch.
The bottom line for God is the relationship of love. It is a
relationship that we are all called to build; with God, with one
another and with the world. May it be so.