Jeremiah and the Monkeys

Jeremiah and the Monkeys                    

20131013 Pr23C HolyNativityEpiscopalChurch, PC, FL  The Rev Tom Weller

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 (NRSV) Jeremiah’s Letter to the Exiles in Babylon

1 These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. ... 4 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

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Life is what it is, and God’s word from Jeremiah is to play the game where life drops you. I shall speak of it, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

From the colonial empire of the British Raj comes a golf story. After the English colonized and subjugated India and established their reign, they wanted recreation, so built a golf course in Calcutta. But they found a problem with golf in India. Monkeys came swinging down from the trees, scurried across the golf course, picked up golf balls, tossed them around and played with them, eventually dropping them wherever. Frustrated golfers tried many things. Chasing monkeys away, building high fences to keep monkeys out, capturing monkeys and releasing them far off. Nothing worked, and for every monkey captured and hauled away three more monkeys appeared. Finally they surrendered to reality and adopted a ground rule for the course: Play the ball where the monkey drops it. (1)

   

Sunday mornings, we’ve heard prophets of God angrily shouting “Thus says the Lord,” speaking God’s displeasure, and worse: God’s damnation of his people for offenses against God and neighbor, doomsday, death of the nation, the end of civilization as they knew it. For sin against God and neighbor, God would bring down upon them deadly irresistible force, Assyria crushing the northern kingdom Israel. And to conquer Judah, Nebuchadnezzar’s mighty forces of the Babylonian Empire -- a terrible story of when God turns against, the awful horror when God becomes the enemy, and you cannot win, and you cannot escape, and all seems lost.

Assyrians dispersed the northern tribes of Israel to the four corners of the earth, importing foreigners - filthy, unclean Gentile foreigners - to populate and defile Samaria.

In the southern kingdom, Judah was overrun and conquered, and Jerusalem -- city, walls -- and the Temple -- destroyed, pulled down stone by stone by stone, reduced to rubble the height of the sea. The nobility and upper classes of Judah and Jerusalem, the priests, the wealthy and learned, carried away into captivity in Babylon, where thirty years later Ezekiel the prophet was with them on the banks of the River Chebar, pining away for Jerusalem. “How can we be happy? How can we ever be happy again? How can we sing the songs of Zion in a strange land?”

It is not only a cry from Exile in Babylon twenty-six hundred years ago: if the Bible is true, if the Bible is helpful to us, God means us to find ourselves, to find ourselves in every story, every song of praise, every lament, every laugh and every tear, every rejoicing and every suffering, every victory and every cross. The cry of God’s people from Babylon is the cry of God’s people in every age, every time and place where, as on that golf course in India, life is not as it should be, has not turned out as expected, as anticipated, as hoped and planned. Life is real, life changes the rules, life goes to Babylon, life brings the monkeys, where every place, every life, every confidence and joy is turned upside down and inside out. Someone here this very morning is anguishing in that personal nightmare.

Theodicy: where is God, and why? As a catastrophic cyclone with terrible winds and a mountainous storm surge rushes in with incredible fury on human beings who inhabit the shores of the Bay of Bengal in India, many will wonder what God is up to, why God’s creation brings such misery -- and what right have we on the other side of the planet to agonize over our comparatively minuscule troubles of life; but we are human too, anguishing failed hopes and dreams where the game is not as it was supposed to be, and the Babylonians have come down upon us, and the monkeys, and the Word of the Lord from Jeremiah this morning is not only for those who are threatened and doomed by evil in the nature of things -- but for us also, with our troubles and heartaches and pain and sorrows. From Jeremiah this morning, God speaks to us -- the faithful -- a word between us and God, a compassionate word of forgiveness, absolution, encouragement and new promise as God reinstates his hopes and dreams for us. Yes, the unspeakable unimaginable happens, but Sunday comes and God shows up again, calling us to go on.

Over and over, life is the Holy Triduum -- Good Friday agony, the silence of the tomb on Holy Saturday, and then Easter dawns bright, clear and victorious with the Resurrection. Do you really know what the Resurrection is? The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is God’s love for us. However far down life may take you, sickness, financial disaster, poverty, betrayal of a friend or loved one, even death around you, the Word of the Lord through Jeremiah this morning is that you are to play life’s game where you are. God’s will for you is happiness, health, wholeness, holiness -- but life is what it is, to be played where the monkey drops it. You are not to despair. Empowered with God’s love, you are to pick up and go on. Start anew, begin again. You will smile again, even laugh, and sing God’s praise, the songs of Zion in a land where you never wanted to be.

If the Bible is any use to us, God means us to find our selves, our guidance, our message in every passage of Holy Scripture. The message in Jeremiah this morning is love, hope, encouragement, resurrection. The message is the Word of the Lord to you personally.

I proclaim this gospel to you, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

(1) Gregory K. Jones, Play the Ball Where the Monkey Drops It: Why We Suffer and How We Can Hope. HarperOne 2001