I have just come back from Upstate New York
and thoughts of harvest and fishing. The crops are ready to take from the fields. The corn is gone. And people are getting the last of the vacation fishing done which started in Oswego with the salmon runs in March. My last church
was at the Caughdenoy Dam on the Black River.
I knew I was back in Upstate the other night. I met a guy and he asked me where I used to live. He didn’t really know Caughdenoy until I said it was near the dam. Then he said, ‘I was fishing there two nights ago.’
Sometimes the cycle of harvest is interrupted. I was reading that 20% of the orange crop in Florida has been destroyed by the hurricanes. Farmers in Upstate typically invest all their money in the spring planting and wait for the money to be returned and food grown for the table by late summer. This is the moment of harvest. And then there are those times in life when the harvest doesn’t come.
That is true in our own lives as well. We make our plans for life assuming a harvest of health and money and happiness. We hope for those moments when we can get far enough ahead to ignore our daily duties occasionally and put out a sign, ‘Gone Fishing.’ But our Bible reading today is about people who missed the harvest. Listen for this verse of lament. The harvest is past, and the summer is ended and we are not saved.
What can we do when we lack the harvest? The service today is a service of hope and comfort. We have a chance to hear God’s thoughts and emotions as the Lord sees the pitiful condition of the people of Israel. And this is a passage of comfort for your own struggle and it is also one more message of hope for our lost nation struggling in a time of war. I hope that you will join me in silent prayer of confession now that we each ask the Lord to open our hearts that we may receive the peace that passes understanding now, this morning as we have come to worship God.
The Jeremiah reading is at a time of war. The larger nations were fighting each other and Israel foolishly got involved, The king was killed in battle and the nation was taken over first by Egypt, and then Assyria. The people are stunned because they believed that God would always rally to their defense.
God knows and cares for you. God is anguished when you are in distress. God is at your bedside when you suffer, God is at your table when you struggle to pay the bills, God is in your class when you are trying to understand the readings. The Bible says of God, I mourn for them and dismay has overtaken me. Jeremiah echoes the feelings of God when he writes, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. God knows and cares.
God knows and cares for the nations. One of the problems of Israel was adultery. Now the fundamentalists have changed the Biblical meaning of the term. Adultery is a breaking of the marriage covenant and it is wrong. But in the Bible, God uses the strong human urge of sex to talk about God’s relationship with people. For example, in Ephesians 5 it says that in marriage, the two become one flesh. And then Paul adds that in this mystery he is talking about Christ and the church.
So adultery for Israel is not just people breaking marital bonds. It is people failing to love justice and peace, the nature and character of God. God is in mourning because the people of God have betrayed their commitment to follow God and be people of justice and peace. Jerusalem was no longer a city set upon a hill that would call the world to follow the people of Salem, the people of peace.
As we approach the coming election, we seem blessed with two candidates who have not betrayed their marital vows. But the issue for the nation is not just who has Hollywood values, it is spiritual adultery and who is more committed and qualified to lead the nation to be people of justice and peace.
God delivers. In Jeremiah, God asks whether there is any physician powerful enough to cure. Is there any sweet grass in Gilead that can provide relief? But the answer comes in the Timothy passage. The readings today are from the lectionary. The Lectionary brings together passages from the Old and New Testaments and Psalms, passages that work together on a single theme. Paul says to Timothy, our confidence for healing and even world peace is through the fact that Jesus is our mediator.
Death is reversed through the work of Jesus Christ and that is the enemy that is the base of all trouble. Jesus was our ransom to rescue us from spiritual death. We can know that we are connected to God at all times because the Holy Spirit keeps reassuring our own Spirit. But we also have access to prayer, to miracles and the final solution of heaven itself. No matter what you are facing, there is no way to lose. There is no way to lose.
When we get in trouble, there is often a great sense of loneliness. We are following a road that even those we love cannot walk. But Jesus uniquely can join us on those paths because Jesus cares and has the power to deliver us from evil.
And Jesus is searching us out even before we know that trouble awaits. Jesus says to the disciples in Mark, come let us go fishing, but for people. The harvest is not over. There is still a day of grace. Jesus says to the disciples in Luke, let down your nets one more time after you have fished all night and they do and the loaded nets sink two boats. Ask God now for help and help for our nation and world.
