Streams and Letting Go

Letting Go

Every once in awhile we’ll come across a power cord with a curious connecting tip to it or a remote control that appears in the couch cushions… where in either case we have no idea what they go to.

We actually have a place for wayward cords and remote control like those… they live in the cabinet beneath the TV. It’s a good practice. Except… except I know for certain that we have cords and remotes in there that haven’t seen the light of day now in years but I can’t quite bring myself to get rid of them because… well… you just never know if you might need it again.

It’s hard to let go.

I once heard someone talk about their plans for retirement. As they were chatting with a financial consultant, they asked how much they should save. The consultant replied that they should save however much they think they will need depending on how long they hope to live after they retire.

Well, the individual was planning on having a very long life and came to the conclusion that they needed to save every penny they could. Year after year they worked without allowing themselves to go on any adventures or do anything that might seem either frivolous or generous for that matter… they worked well beyond the age that they could have retired and then… suddenly had a heart attack and died.

In their fear of running out of funds in retirement… they spent their lifetime in pursuit of having “enough.”

It’s hard to let go.

I remember a time when I was going through my chaplain training at Genesis Hospital in Davenport, Iowa. I was paged to go to the emergency room. A baby was struggling to be born. The moment of expected joy turned to a moment of unexpected fear as the babe got tangled up in the umbilical cord.

The doctors successfully delivered the baby… but she had grown too weak in her struggle to be born. She died right there in the room that she was born into.

It was heart wrenching. The father was broken and angry. And the mom… well… she didn’t talk much at all. But she held her little one. For nine hours, she held her little one before finally releasing her body to the tender care of a wizened nurse who helped her say goodbye.

It’s hard to let go.

Roots

Whether its a wayward remote control, funds for retirement, or someone we love… it can be hard to let go.

I think that’s why I appreciate our reading from Jeremiah today.

Jeremiah Context

The book of Jeremiah is written in a tumultuous time for Israel. The book ends around the year 587 when an assassination forced many leaders of Judah including Jeremiah and Baruch to flee BACK to Egypt… the land that Moses had led their people out of. Imagine, being forced to leave the promised land and return to the place that had enslaved your ancestors.

Leading up to that moment, around the year 604, Babylon’s armies are on the move. They’re sacking one city after the next. Jerusalem itself, the capitol of the Kingdom of Judah, will be laid siege to not once but twice in Jeremiah’s lifetime.

In the midst of sieges and assassinations with the Kingdom of Judah always seemingly on the edge of annihilation… there is additionally a drought… a significant drought. Fresh water becomes a precious resource as land that had once been prosperous begins to crack. What little food is still able to be grown comes from the fertile grounds near rivers. It is a challenging time as people are literally uprooted that they might follow the food.

In this tumultuous period, God speaks to the people of Judah through the prophet Jeremiah.

Cursed

This is a two-fold message. And before I go any further, these verses do not need to be understood from a point of offering judgement against someone, but rather to speak to the reality of our situations.

Verse 5:

“Thus says the LORD, Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord.”

Notice, if you will, that God doesn’t say “I curse those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength” but rather… they are cursed.

It’s not a point of judgement. It’s a point of reality that we know humans fail and fall short. Relying on people to meet all of our needs will always end up in disappointment.

Verse 6 gives us the imagery to help us understand what life is like for us as we find the things we rely on disappointing us over and over.

“They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.”

They are like a shrub in the desert, God says. While we can appreciate the resiliency of such a shrub whose roots are stretching out grasping for drops of water… we also hear what a challenge this shrub has in its fight for survival. This image, again, is not judgement against the plant but it points to the struggle that the plant is in. It lives a cursed existence.

For the people of Judah who found themselves under siege by Babylon and in the midst of a literal drought, they could identify with life as a shrub in the desert. It’s entire existence is focused around its own survival.

We can probably all relate to that plant at some point in our lives well. Times where it was challenging to see the rest of the world because the problems in your own life seemed so overwhelming.

“They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes.”

I appreciate the second part of this so much… because we do not hear a message of abandonment for when we are stuck in that survival mode. Relief still comes. But again, we hear the additional challenge that even when relief comes our way as were fighting for survival… sometimes we just continue to fight and don’t see the hope placed right in front of us.

I think of the people that God places around us in moments of strife that we might feel God’s compassion through. And yet, we can close ourselves off to the rest of the world. And indeed, we are, as Jeremiah writes, like that shrub living in a parched, uninhabited salt land.

Again, all of this is not to speak of God’s judgement for how someone deals with something… but rather it speaks to the pain of what it is like to live in that state of constant struggle for survival.

And we have a lot of people in our communities and, yes, in our congregations who find themselves struggling for survival. And it’s not necessarily an issue that they don’t have enough faith or whatever else some of my more evangelical preacher friends might say… but it is a reality that there are people among us who feel like shrubs in the desert. There are those who struggle for each drop of water and when they see another plant in the desert they are fearful that the other plant will try to take their water.

It is a sense of scarcity. It’s a sense that we don’t have enough time in this life. Or we don’t have enough money to both plan for the future and care for our neighbor. Or even that we don’t dare get rid of a cord that hasn’t been plugged in for 10 years because… you know… we might just find what it was supposed to go to.

Blessed

And that brings us to part two of this message from God through Jeremiah.

The New Revised Standard Version Judah’s Sin and Punishment

7 Blessed are those who trust in the LORD,

whose trust is the LORD.

8 They shall be like a tree planted by water,

sending out its roots by the stream.

It shall not fear when heat comes,

and its leaves shall stay green;

in the year of drought it is not anxious,

and it does not cease to bear fruit.

And again, just as with the last section… this is not a passage that suggests judgement negative OR positive. This is not to say God blesses these people because they’re not anxious or because they don’t have fear of the heat. Also, I don’t think it’s trying to say that people are either blessed or cursed… that there is an on/off switch for folks and that we get to choose whether or not we are in survival mode or living without anxiousness.

I think we can go back and forth in our struggles with how we relate to God and the challenges we face in life. I think we can, at times, be the tree planted by water… and at other times feel like the shrub in the desert. These are places that we experience in our lives.

Now all of that said, what do we hear from verses 7 and 8?

Verse 7:

“Blessed are those who trust in the lord Lord, whose trust is the Lord.”

Again, I don’t believe this to be a point of judgement… but a point of reality. When we are able to fully trust that God is taking care of whatever situation we are dealing with… it is a blessing to be able to have that trust.

In the Gospel of Mark there is a father that seeks Jesus out to heal his son if he can. Jesus says, “If I can? Everything is possible for one who believes.” The man responds beautifully… “I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief!”

In some of those long nights when my mind gets to thinking too much in directions that are not always helpful… I sometimes pray that prayer that I do believe and I ask God to help me with my unbelief.

Verse 8

They shall be like a tree planted by water

Now I’m going to pause here briefly… because our translations don’t do this verse justice. The word translated here as “planted” has a deeper meaning than what our translations tend to offer us. With the word planted, it almost gives the suggestion that the tree happened to be lucky enough to be planted by the water rather than over in the desert. We could have an interesting sermon on privilege here if that were the case… but it’s not the case.

The Hebrew word here more literally means “transplanted.” It suggests, then, that the plant… the tree had come from another place where its rooted had indeed been stretching and straining for water and then it was brought to a place where moisture was abundant.

This is something that happens to the plant… not something that the plant can do itself. The image here is not of a deer searching for water in a dry place and then making the choice to go over to the stream… instead Jeremiah speaks of a plant that is transplanted.

Too often we blame people who are in survival mode for being in that mindset. We point the finger at them and say its their fault. And yet, Jeremiah speaks of the shrub that is so embedded in its fight for survival that it can’t see relief when it comes… and Jeremiah speaks of the tree that bears fruit and has green leaves not because it made a good choice in where it grew but because it was loving transplanted to that location.

This is the work of God that we might be transplanted from places of doubt to places of trust. This is the work of God that we might find ourselves uprooted from that which we knew but is no longer life giving… into something new that offers abundance.

The reality is that both places exist… and sometimes we can exist in both at once. In certain areas of our lives we operate with a sense of scarcity… we find ourselves anxious about letting go because letting go is hard.

And yet, we might pray for that trust in the Lord to help us in our struggle… not to take away the heat or to take away the drought… because in both examples in our text today the heat and the drought persist.

But instead that we might be placed where we can experience the flowing source of life that comes from God. That we might experience the stream that persists that we might continue to bear fruit for the world even in challenging times… not because of our own strength… but because we know that we can rely on the persistence of God’s grace flowing around us even in dry places.

If you find yourself being fed… then bear that fruit for the world. If you find yourself fighting in survival mode… know that the work of God, even when you can’t see it, is to bring you relief and to transplant you from that dry place to a place with life giving waters. Know that wherever you are, God is with you. And know that whatever is going in your life, God is actively working to bring relief.

Peace be with you.

Amen.