January 3, 2010 Des Moines

Jeremiah 31:7-14

Merry Dancing & Joy

We mark time. I’m not sure exactly what all this idiosyncrasy signifies, but things like birthdays and anniversaries and “New Years” are big deals to us. We buy cards, pop champagne, blow out candles, throw parties and, at least in the case of this special day, count down the seconds with the drop of a Waterford crystal ball over Time Square, declare a holiday and schedule a bowl game – or two…dozen. Perhaps we simply value their designated opportunities to look reflectively around and within, and to call attention to the fact that time is not simply an ever-flowing stream; it also ponds here and there…and splashes. Not every day is exactly like the one before or after it. There are births and deaths and life-changing promises; there are dawnings that change the nature of who one understands herself to be, and there are announcements that change the course of time.

That, I suggest, is sort of what’s happening in the reading we shared together – though what's going on in the passage isn’t so much the announcement, itself, of something that portends the change in virtually everything, as it is the call to celebrate that coming change. But never sell short the precious flavor of celebration, itself.

I made a recipe this week from Julia Child’s now-classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In preparation for my time in the kitchen I re-watched Julia, herself, preparing it in what was the very first episode of her iconic Public Television series, The French Chef. “Boeuf Bourguignon.” She, of course, made it look easy. It took a bit more, though, than a 30-minute episode for me to recreate it in my kitchen. Nonetheless, it turned out fabulously, if I do say so myself – meat tender enough to cut with a spoon, to the extent that “cutting” was required at all; vegetables interesting and tasty. But the sauce! Oh my. Heaven in liquid form! Admittedly, the meat was the main event. That’s ultimately why you prepare the dish, and if you were going to look for nourishment – chewy substance – you would want to stick your fork there. There, in the hefty chunks that had been braised for hours, was the protein one could use to survive. But the flavor was in the sauce. If a person were simply looking to turn his mouth into a sanctuary, grab a spoon. Or maybe a straw. Ummm.

That’s sort of the way I suggest reading this morning’s poetry from the prophet Jeremiah. There are meatier passages in scripture than this one. If you are looking for insight to reflect on or meaty wisdom to chew on, you’ll want to flip over to other pages and passages where you’ll read important counsel about things like forgiveness and patience and prayer and community. But if you are looking for rich and delectable flavor, read on – or should I say “read over, again and again.”

Jeremiah, to put it into other terms, is here declaring an “exclamation mark” moment.

Now, editorially speaking, I think the exclamation mark has come to be numbingly overused. Have you noticed that all of a sudden everything seems to be emphatic? Yesterday's quadra-fingered “quotation marks” around every interjection have become today's profligate exclamations. Perhaps it has to do with our increasingly textual form of communicating – emails, text messages, tweets and the like – that whatever their relative benefits, otherwise have limited tools for conveying color and nuance and, well, flavor, short of all-caps and bold print and smiley-face emoticons. But let's face it, not everything warrants that much intensity. Not every “hello” is a “HELLO!!”

But here you have it: no sooner have I sprayed foam on this rhetorical fire than we turn to this morning's celebratory passage and discover a veritable dearth of punctuational punch. Look at the reading once again. How can you say phrases like “Sing aloud,” “Raise Shouts,” “Proclaim,” and “Give praise” without an exclamation mark? Come on! Show a little enthusiasm! Make us think you really feel it as well as really believe it.

More seriously, I should point out that punctuation is a translational problem. The original language actually had no punctuation marks at all; all those elements were simply inferred and added by later interpreters and scribes. And in his defense, Jeremiah the prophet could never be accused of being lukewarm. He felt, and felt deeply – some might more pointedly say he felt “hotly” since his emotion tended toward the angry and aggrieved. Those may not be the most comfortable colors on our palette of emotion, but they are important ones – which gets close to the point I want to make as we start out this New Year together.

We have become a culture that seems to accept only a narrow range of emotion. We can smile, but we’d better not grin. We can frown, but God forbid anyone raise her voice or let drop a tear. Before you know you it people will start calling for therapy or recommending pharmaceuticals. Think about the way Tom Cruise was ridiculed a couple of years back when his love-smitten joy got the better of him and he leapt onto Oprah’s couch. Let a politician tear up and get a catch in her voice and immediately she is unbalanced or not up to the tough work of guiding a government. Well, from where I stand there is an awful lot going on that ought to be making more than just politicians cry, though too few seem to notice. And given all that, I wouldn’t begrudge Tom Cruise – or anyone else, for that matter – any of life’s exuberant little joys.

We were, after all, made to feel. Feelings are a part of our fabric – happy ones, sad ones, angry ones, giddy ones , and all the gradient shades in-between – and when we medicate them into numbness or straight-jacket them into stillness it is like going through life with an arm and a leg tied behind our back. There is a reason why emotions have, since time immemorial, been associated with the heart – that most fundamental organ that fuels our continued existence. Our feelings are as essential as the blood pulsing through our veins. So when did tears become taboo? And how did stoicism come to be synonymous with strength? Why is it that when someone experiencing a terrible grief is described as “holding up pretty well,” all we really mean is that he is bottling up his grief – as though that were somehow noble, or healthy? Strength of character and intensity of emotion are not mutually exclusive.

Jeremiah, for one, seems to get this. He virtually embodies the essential ability to feel. As I suggested earlier, he is best known for his anger and his sadness – sadness over the looming end of his people for whom he cared so deeply, his grief over the fact that nobody else seemed to “get it.” Everyone around him kept insisting “peace, peace” when he seemed to be the only one to recognize that there was none.

It could well be that among Jeremiah’s biggest contributions was performing this ministry of grieving. As Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann puts it, “Seeing what he saw among his people, it was the only appropriate response. The [others around him] had for so long lived in a protective, fake world that their perceptual field was skewed and with their best looking they could not see what was there to see.” (Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pp. 46-48, 56-57).

Jeremiah seemed intuitively to recognize what Jesus would later make plain: that it is those who mourn who will be comforted; that it isn’t the emotionally numb but rather the grievers who “can experience their experiences and move on” (Brueggemann). Being able to mourn, in other words, exercises the same muscle that makes it possible to dance with joy.

Thinking about it from another, almost whimsical angle, Brueggemann goes on to write: “I used to think it curious that, when having to quote scripture on demand, someone would inevitably say, 'Jesus wept.' It is usually done as a gimmick to avoid having to quote a longer passage. But now I understand the depth of that verse. Jesus knew what we numb ones must always learn again: (a) that weeping must be real because endings are real; and (b) that weeping permits newness. His weeping permits the kingdom to come. Such weeping is a radical criticism, a fearful dismantling because it means the end of all machismo; weeping is something kings rarely do without losing their thrones. Yet the loss of thrones is precisely what is called for in radical criticism” (Brueggemann).

I’m not a prophet, and I’m certainly no great cultural analyst, but my sense is that 2010 looks to be a year when quite a lot of “thrones” will need to be lost – prized patterns and established orders that may well have served us for a time, but have now become counter-productive. I'm thinking about the way we view and manage our environment; the way we earn and spend and save our money; the way we understand and defend borders and boundaries; the shape of being church; the nature of prudence and the character of patriotism; the prejudices and biases we have held on to about this group or that. In that latter regard, I take some encouragement from Jeremiah’s vision that when God brings people home, God brings all people home – the weak and the vulnerable, the blind and the lame and the obligated – not just those who fit neatly inside the socially accepted labels of “fit” and worthy and popular and pretty.

Jeremiah’s refrains offer us a word picture for the joy of “new beginnings,” and if there is yet need to sink our teeth more deeply into the meaty details of it, let us not, in the midst of the hard work of it, neglect any opportunity to pick up our spoon and sip up the taste of it. Feeling, with merry dancing, the joy of all the new beginnings that God is bringing into view, however unfamiliar they may seem.