Rev. Teri Peterson
Gourock St. John’s
Skin to Skin
Jeremiah 31.1-25
16 December 2018, Advent 3
At that time, declares the Lord,
I will be the God of all the families of Israel,
and they will be my people.
The Lord proclaims:
The people who survived the sword
found grace in the wilderness.
As Israel searched for a place of rest,
the Lord appeared to them from a distance:
I have loved you with a love that lasts forever.
And so with unfailing love,
I have drawn you to myself.
Again, I will build you up,
and you will be rebuilt, virgin Israel.
Again, you will play your tambourines
and dance with joy.
Again, you will plant vineyards
on the hills of Samaria;
farmers will plant and then enjoy the harvests.
The time will come when
the watchmen shout from
the highlands of Ephraim:
“Get ready! We’re going up to Zion
to the Lord our God!”
The Lord proclaims:
Sing joyfully for the people of Jacob;
shout for the leading nation.
Raise your voices with praise and call out:
“The Lord has saved his people,
the remaining few in Israel!”
I’m going to bring them back from the north;
I will gather them from the ends of the earth.
Among them will be the blind and the disabled,
expectant mothers and those in labour;
a great throng will return here.
With tears of joy they will come;
while they pray, I will bring them back.
I will lead them by quiet streams
and on smooth paths so they don’t stumble.
I will be Israel’s father,
Ephraim will be my oldest child.
Listen to the Lord’s word, you nations,
and announce it to the distant islands:
The one who scattered Israel will gather them
and keep them safe, as a shepherd his flock.
The Lord will rescue the people of Jacob
and deliver them from the power of those stronger than they are.
They will come shouting for joy on the hills of Zion,
jubilant over the Lord’s gifts:
grain, wine, oil, flocks, and herds.
Their lives will be like a lush garden;
they will grieve no more.
Then the young women will dance for joy;
the young and old men will join in.
I will turn their mourning into laughter
and their sadness into joy;
I will comfort them.
I will lavish the priests with abundance
and shower my people with my gifts,
declares the Lord.
The Lord proclaims:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and wailing.
It’s Rachel crying for her children;
she refuses to be consoled,
because her children are no more.
The Lord proclaims:
Keep your voice from crying
and your eyes from weeping,
because your endurance will be rewarded,
declares the Lord.
They will return from the land of their enemy!
There’s hope for your future,
declares the Lord.
Your children will return home!
I hear, yes, I hear Ephraim lamenting:
“You disciplined me,
and I learned my lesson,
even though I was as stubborn as a mule.
Bring me back, let me return,
because you are the Lord my God.
After I turned away from you,
I regretted it;
I realised what I had done,
and I have hit myself—
I was humiliated and disgraced,
and I have carried this disgrace
since I was young.”
Isn’t Ephraim my much-loved child?
Don’t I utterly adore him?
Even when I scold him,
I still hold him dear.
I yearn for him and love him deeply,
declares the Lord.
Set up markers,
put up signs;
think about the road you have traveled,
the path you have taken.
Return, virgin Israel;
return to these towns of yours.
How long will you hem and haw,
my rebellious daughter?
The Lord has created something new on earth:
Virgin Israel will once again embrace her God!
The Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims: When I bring my people back from captivity, they will once again utter these words in the land and towns of Judah:
The Lord bless you,
righteous dwelling place,
holy mountain.
Those who live in Judah and its towns will dwell together with farmers and shepherds. I will strengthen the weary and renew those who are weak.
~~~~~~~
A few months ago, I gave the elders some homework. Each of them was given a slip of paper with a book of the Bible on it, and they were to read that and then come back to the next Kirk Session meeting to discuss what God might be saying to us here at St. John’s in 2018. Some people were assigned to read the first half of Exodus, others were assigned to read the first half of Acts, some were given half of the gospel according to Luke, and some the other half. Some were assigned to read Esther, which caused some consternation as it wasn’t a well known story, and some were to read Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Some read sections of Isaiah, and some read sections of Jeremiah. When we then came together last month to discuss what we thought God was saying to us today in his word, among the things that came out was the bit of Isaiah we heard last week about even those people who have been outcast for so long that they believe themselves inferior will be gathered in, because God’s house is for all people, not just for some, and this bit of Jeremiah, from the section called “the scroll of comfort.”
Remember the prophets we have read during Advent originally spoke to people for whom the world was all changed, and the familiar and comforting seemed far off. Their longing for the way things used to be was matched only by the anxiety of their present circumstances. They were waiting for something they weren’t actually certain of, but cautiously hoped for nonetheless—that God, who had abandoned them, might remember them again and bring them home.
What we find in Jeremiah’s scroll of comfort—right in the middle of his book that is often hard to read, maybe even verging on depressing—is even more than the people could have hoped for, actually.
While they wanted to be taken back to the way things used to be, God offers something even better: a good, joyful, loving relationship between God and humanity. Even from the distance we have put between us, God says across the wilderness “I have loved you with a love that lasts forever”...and then the crucial words: “I have drawn you to myself.” All that feeling of being alone, uncertain, far away, is taken care of by the God who closes the gap and brings us together. From the ends of the earth, different types of people, different abilities and stages of life, different experiences in the land—all will be gathered in from the ends of the earth, and God will lead us on smooth paths by quiet streams. God will be like a parent, caring for us so closely, giving gifts of life and abundance beyond our imagining.
It’s a beautiful promise. “Their lives will be like a lush garden, and they will grieve no more. I will turn their sadness into joy, and I will comfort them. I will shower my people with my gifts.” On and on God speaks, describing the good relationship between us. This is the relationship God longs to have with us, and that God is insistent will happen. And notice that all the action here is on God’s side. God will initiate this new closer relationship. God will cross the wilderness to show us grace. God draws us to himself. God comes close to us, like a parent to their first born child—imagine what that looks like, a parent and a baby. The mother picks them up, holds them close, skin to skin, looks in their eyes while feeding them, takes care of every need. That’s how close God promises to be with us. Even when we don’t hold up our end of the bargain, God still says “isn’t Ephraim my much-loved child? Don’t I utterly adore him? I yearn for him and love him deeply.” There is nothing we can do to lose God’s love...and God has decided to do something new, something no god has ever done before: to come so close that we are skin-to-skin.
What is it, then, about this scroll of comfort that speaks to us today? What is God’s word to us, in this place, in this time?
It’s easy to say that we still need the reminder of God’s unfailing love. We do, of course. In a world scarred by hate, living in constant war, and embroiled in more than enough uncertainty, God’s love is a constant, whether we see it or not. It is the good news that people need when they are leaving everything in search of safety, when having crossed the desert or the ocean they are then faced with fear and anger and hostile policies. It is our relationship with God that will sustain us as we finally deal with the reality of decades of church decline. It is God’s relationship with us that brings us hope, and calls us to responsibility, in the midst of a changing climate and all that means for those who live on this planet with us. It is God’s relationship with us that challenges us in a world where creating an us-and-them, deserving and undeserving, insider and outsider, is a strategy that wins elections by causing worry about scarcity and difference.
But what, specifically, is God saying to us, here and now?
In these 25 verses, the most common words are God saying “I will” do something. But then the next most common words all have the same root. Ten times in 25 verses, one particular word appears. God does something, and then this word is used to characterise the response, the type of relationship that we will have with God.
So often I think we have thought of a relationship with God as being something solemn, requiring great commitment to silence and particular types of prayer, and a set form of worship that we take very seriously. The stereotype of a very spiritual person is someone who seems to have a great well of inner peace. The church has been a place for recognising our sinfulness and hearing about all the ways we need to do better, and our worship has been orderly and careful and often somber and restrained.
Yet the word most used to describe this new, good relationship between God and humanity is....joy. It is all over this passage of Jeremiah! Joy, jubilant, rejoice, laughter, voices raised in praise!
What if this is God’s word to us today? God says, I have loved you with a love that lasts forever, and drawn you to myself, skin-to-skin. And we respond with jubilation! Can you imagine a relationship with God that is marked by rejoicing? A church that is known to be joyful? A way of life that could be described with joy-words more than any other words?
Near the end of today’s reading God says “think about the road you have traveled, the path you have taken...and then follows that up with “I have created something new on earth.”
Think about the road we have travelled...a road of hope and despair, of success and failure, of love and loss and anxiety and wonder. Our paths may have meandered a bit, or sometimes gone straight by places where we ought to have turned aside to see, or even occasionally led us exactly where we wanted to go. But whatever the path, wherever we have been and whatever we have done, God is still right there, our closest relationship, taking us on a new road. And that road will take us from mourning to dancing, from tears to laughter, from scarcity to abundance. Jeremiah says there will be tambourines, singing and dancing! He was obviously not a Presbyterian. And yet perhaps that is indeed the word for us today: that it’s okay to let some of those things from our past path stay there, as we walk God’s new path into good relationship. And that relationship with God brings us great joy...and our joy should be contagious. Not just for us to feel happy, but to share with all those whom God is gathering in.
The Lord has created something new on earth—a good relationship that can never be destroyed, for it is based on God’s unfailing love for us, God’s constant presence with us, skin-to-skin, God’s refusal to allow separation between us, Immanuel, God-with-us...and for our part, we get to be joyful, jubilant, dancing and laughing, raising our voices in praise. Rejoice! Scripture says to us. Let your heart be glad, and let your joy bubble over for the world to see and join in.
May it be so! Amen.
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