1.
Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation
of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our
Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word today is taken
from Psalm 137.1-6 & Jeremiah 29:4-13 (READ TEXT). The message is entitled, “Sing Us One of
the Songs of Zion,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
Disaster, destruction,
deportation—Judah suffered all of these at the hands of the Babylonians. The
Babylonian captivity was a terrible time in the history of God’s people. In
Babylon the captives sat, far from home, wondering how to sing the Lord’s
song in a strange land. You and I are also strangers and pilgrims in this
world. We can learn from this sermon’s two texts, written at the time of the
Babylonian captivity, how to sing the Lord’s song in our strange land. The
key lies in the old and true saying that the Lord wants his people to be in the
world, yet not of it. This is especially
important for us today as we reflect on Christian Education Sunday.
3.
There’s no question that we’re in
the world, just as there was no question that the exiles were in Babylon. The
familiar sights of home were hundreds of miles away. Still worse, so was the
temple—until the Babylonians destroyed it. How could the exiles continue to
worship? Their Babylonian captors didn’t make things any easier, either. Mocking,
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.” They were suggesting that
these songs were oldies, but no longer goodies. The Babylonian taunts
amounted to saying that the Lord had proven either unable or unwilling to help
his people. It’s always easier to believe something when everyone else around
seems to believe it, or at least when they don’t fight against it. Belief
becomes much harder when you have to stand alone, and when those around you are
trying to tug you away from those beliefs.
4.
This remains so for us today, just
as Judah’s captives in Babylon discovered it to be true. For centuries, the
Church enjoyed a cushy place in Western culture, dating back to the time when
Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. That
relationship had its flaws and problems, but it’s been breaking up for a while
now. Maybe a few of us have only recently been waking up to realize that it’s
all but gone. Now instead of the “Charlie Brown” Christmas TV special,
with the reading of Luke 2 and “Hark, the Herald Angels” at the end, we
have the “Arthur” Christmas special—it’s called the “holiday”
special—which makes room to acknowledge several different religious traditions.
5.
First, we’re learning how much
harder it seems to believe when the people around us don’t reinforce our
beliefs. These days, there seems to be more reason than ever to echo the hymn
writer who wrote of having an unsteady heart that is, “Prone to wander,
Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love” (LSB 686:3). We can complain about our circumstances or
get frustrated about them, but we aren’t always able to change them. The Lord
has given us a difficult situation in which to live as his people. While we may
be irritated at this state of affairs, did we really think we sinners had a
right to an easy time? The days in which we live increasingly resemble those of
Judah’s captivity in Babylon, or maybe those through which the Church lived
during the first couple of centuries after Jesus died and rose. No question
about it, we are here.
6.
And here we can be constructive, for
the Lord is here too. The exiles in Babylon didn’t have to go without the
presence of the Lord. To be sure, he had vowed to be present at the temple,
where the sacrifices proclaimed to people the forgiveness of their sins in the
promised Messiah. But, the Lord didn’t need the temple in order to be present
with his people. He had been with the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and
Joseph, even before the temple was built, or the tabernacle before it. Wherever
they went, the Lord went with them to bless. So it was for the exiles. The Lord
God remained present with them, present to bless, through his Word. See David L. Adams, “The Present God: A Framework for
Biblical Theology,” Concordia Journal 22 (July 1996): 279–94.
7.
In the fullness of time, God’s
presence at a particular place and his presence accompanying his people came
together, in the Person of our Lord Jesus. He’s the Word made flesh, Immanuel,
God with us. He challenged people to destroy this temple and he would raise it
up in three days, meaning the temple of his body, God present among men. He
promised that he would be with his Church always, to the end of the age. This
Lord, crucified and risen, is the One who paid for our sins. Christ brings us the presence of God to
forgive and to save. He brings it through his Word. That was all the captives
in Babylon had, but it proved more than enough. It was all the prophets and
patriarchs had, too—God, his Word, and his promise not to let that Word return
to him empty. Ultimately, it’s all we have. But you weren’t planning to live on
bread alone, were you?
8.
God does things through his Word.
You might say he’s constructive. He certainly wants his people to be
constructive where they are. Therefore Jeremiah, still in Judah, wrote to the
exiles in Babylon. He told them to build homes, have children, and seek the
welfare of the place where they were. God’s people have done much the same
thing at other times. In the days of the Early Church, Christians were noted
for their discipline and self-control. One pagan Roman emperor noted that
Christians not only cared for their own poor, but took in other poor people and
cared for them too. Christian slave girls remained with their Christian
mistresses who were imprisoned or tortured.2 All of that and much more amounted
to being constructive in this world. See
William C. Weinrich, “Evangelism in the Early Church,” Concordia Theological
Quarterly 45 (Jan.–Apr. 1981): 61–75, especially 71–73.
9.
We can be constructive, too, for the
Lord remains with us. He cares about this world, which he created and sent
Christ to redeem, and he uses us to spread his love and care. We should care
for children, help the poor, pray for governing officials, vote responsibly,
value the good and the noble. All of these things, and many more, can amount to
being constructive in this world.
10.
Yet while we’re being constructive,
let us not grow too comfortable. For although we’re in this world, we’re just
as certainly not of it. We’re not here for the long run. Therefore, let us look
beyond this world, to the future that Christ himself has opened up by his
resurrection from the dead. Our stay
here is temporary. By way of the letter Jeremiah wrote the exiles in Babylon,
they found out that their captivity would last for a definite period of time— 70
years. Light shone at the end of the tunnel, as it were. That made all the
difference in the world for the exiles, not only at the end of the 70 years but
also at the very time when Jeremiah wrote. They had hope.
11.
An old catechism pictures God
sending Christians to an “island colony,” the world, and saying: “The
greatest danger is that you may fall in love with this island so that you will
not care to return to the home-kingdom. Love the island because it is My
possession, but do not love it because it is your home. It is not your home!
Your home is here in the palace with Me.
Someday I will call you back. How soon, I shall not tell you. But one
day I will usher you up to a doorway called death. Be not afraid of it, because
on the other side of the threshold is Life. I will take you by the hand and
lead you across. Then you shall see Me, face to face. Meanwhile, My peace I give you.” 3 Alvin N. Rogness, On the Way (Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1942), n.p.
12.
The analogy in this old catechism
breaks down in several places. For instance, God doesn’t really “brief”
Christians before we are born. But, the point comes through all the same, that
we won’t remain here. Christ shed his blood to buy and pay for us, but not so
we would continue to live in this fallen, sinful world. He prepares for us an
eternity that’s so much better, and we will have the privilege of spending it
with the Lord who bought us. Often people
ask the question, “Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?” Maybe
the world dares to ask about 5 years into the future, but it doesn’t bring up
eternity very often. The world’s eternal prospect is too scary. But, by faith
in Christ, ours shines bright. As surely as we’re in this world now, we’re not
staying. For we are not of this world.
13.
Therefore, let us look beyond. That’s
what the psalmist did. Maybe he seems only to be looking back, if anything, in
saying, “If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill!”
In fact, he was remembering all the promises of redemption and rescue the Lord
had given. He was remembering them in God-given faith. We do exactly that in
church. That reminds of something I read
recently from a Lutheran theologian Chad Bird, he writes, “When the elderly
struggle with memory, they can often still sing along with the liturgy or a
beloved hymn. Put yourself at that advanced
age. What do you want to remember when
you’ve forgetting virtually everything else? Sing that.” When you find yourself in troubled waters,
all you can do is lash yourself tightly to the mast. We need to lash ourselves
tightly to God’s Word and to the Church that’s created by this Word. In Church,
the Lord puts his truth into us by his Word and Sacraments. With the truth in
us, we can see beyond this world. We can look at the evil around us, refuse to
believe its lies, and give people something better. We can tell the Good News about Jesus.
14.
For our time in this world is short.
In 2012, earlier in my ministry down in Southern Illinois near the St. Louis,
MO metro area, I remember baptizing a man named Rudolph Sommer, who was in his
80s. He was on his death bed. Rudolph died a couple of days later. He knew
that his days in this world were numbered, though he had no idea what that
number was. He had problems with his health, and a number of other problems
compounding the health issues. Rudolph’s body was failing him, and in many ways
the world wasn’t looking like a nice place. But, during the last few days of his
life, this man, who had been unchurched for years, was singing the Lord’s
song in a foreign land. He heard Christ’s forgiving word and took comfort
in his baptism. This man, Rudolph, had become a saint in Christ. He knew that
he was in the world, but not of it, so he was looking forward to being with his
Lord.
15.
Your days and mine are numbered too.
We just don’t know what the number is. We, too, are in the world, not of it. So
long as we find ourselves in the world, let us be constructive as the Lord
wants us to be. Since we’re not staying here, though, let us look beyond in
faith and hope. Then we, too, will break forth in singing the Lord’s song, even
in a strange land. Now the peace of
God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus
until life everlasting Amen.
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