The Grace of Restoration

Jeremiah 30:18-19

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“Thus says the Lord: I am going to restore the fortunes of the tents of Jacob and have compassion on his dwellings; the city shall be rebuilt upon its mound and the citadel set on its rightful site. Out of them shall come Thanksgiving and the sound of merrymakers. I will make them many, and they shall not be disdained.”

As we continue our discussion of Thanksgiving and Gratitude, I thought this passage might be an interesting segway into idea of restoration. Our passage today makes it sound as though the restoration comes first and then the thanksgiving comes as a byproduct of the restoration. I’m not so sure this is really how it works.

While it is true that we find thanks and gratitude when that which was lost to us has been restored, what I find most in my own life is that gratitude and thanksgiving come first. Let me explain.

In the book of Jeremiah, we encounter the story of the Israelite people being whisked away to Babylon in captivity. In the previous chapter – chapter 29 – we read, “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.”

It was God who sent the people of Israel into exile. But he doesn’t tell them to weep or be depressed. Instead, God tells them to find gratitude and thanksgiving: build houses; take wives; have children; plant and grow food; and seek the welfare of the city. These are not things that you do when you are ungrateful or unthankful. No, these are tasks that people engage in when they are trying to make a way where it appears there is no way.

Chapter 29 is also the chapter where God says to the people, “10 For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11 For surely, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. 12 Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. 13 When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, 14 I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.”

What we learn from this text is that God is requiring the people to adopt a particular kind of attitude, one where they are grateful for the circumstances of their lives regardless. This is not easy, but it makes sense that when we lack gratitude and thanksgiving, what we are really doing is taking our situations in life for granted. God is often absent in these moments.

God is trying to get the attention of the people in a dramatic way. All other attempts have appeared to fail. We can ask, “What ways has God tried to get our attention?” and likewise, “Has God failed?”

This entire story reminds me of how stubborn we can be as a people. We think we know what is best and we fall prey to the age-old adage that we can conduct our lives any way we want with few if any consequences. We see evidence of this all around us. And yet, we are called to be accountable for our behavior. We are called to take seriously how we show up in the world. What God is asking the people to do in the diaspora is to reevaluate their lives. Take stock and make changes. To ultimately find a way to be grateful for where they are and what they have been given, even though they are not in their homeland.

When we have been stripped of all that we know and love, it is difficult to find gratitude. None of us wants to look at difficult circumstances as if we deserve them. In fact, the idea of deserving hardship is not really what God is about. I do think, though, that God wants to equip us for these difficult moments and that having an attitude of gratitude and being thankful for what we do have provides us with some necessary tools to weather any storm.

The idea of restoration coming on the heels of some dark moments fills me with hope. I like the idea of being restored. Whatever malady I am facing, God can work through the noise and help me find wholeness again. But God can’t do it alone. Well, I suppose God could if God wanted to, but I think God chooses, quite intentionally, to not treat us like puppets with God as our puppet master. We are not toys for God to play with, we are part of the created order. And while it may seem strange to us, I believe that God desires for us to be active participants in the work. God can’t make us be or do anything that we aren’t willing. This means that we have choices and with those choices are consequences.

The act of restoration comes over time; it is a gradual healing and making whole of that which is broken. Sometimes we veer so far off course that it can take a while for us to find our footing again. The beauty of working with God in tandem is that God meets us where we are. Not only does God show up, but God walks us through the difficult moments of finding ourselves again. It really is a partnership.

In this moment with the Israelites, I imagine that the writers of this text felt that God was the one who had shipped them off to captivity. While it is difficult for me to imagine a God that would do such a thing, even to teach someone a lesson, this is where we find ourselves. What the people were told, though, is to thrive where they were planted. And they were reminded that God wasn’t forsaking them but was expanding their understanding of what it means to be a community.

In some ways, the text in Chapter 29 is not really good news. But by the time we get to Chapter 30 and beyond, there is an understanding of God’s power of restoration. Does it make their current situation any better? Probably not. And yet, the people did thrive, and they did return, and the temple was rebuilt. And all of these things happened because the people figured out how to find some gratitude and thanksgiving even in the midst of discomfort and grief. What are we being called to overcome in our own lives by actively seeking gratitude and thanksgiving? How can these positive things reshape our understanding of what God is trying to do in our lives?

Gratitude and Thanksgiving: Our Forms of Praise

2 Chronicles 5:13-14

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“It was the duty of the trumpeters and singers together to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord, and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the Lord, ‘For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever,’ the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.”

Beginning this Sunday, we are starting a new series on Thanksgiving and Praise. We have much to be thankful for, not only as individuals, but as a church. As we dive into this series, I want to take you on a journey from the earliest days of the Israelite people all the way through to the New Testament Church. Each had to find ways to be thankful in their own time and as a result of their own situations. God, however, was always there and always faithful.

There is something about “praise” or acknowledging something of importance that also embodies thanksgiving. I imagine that all of us can think of earthly folks who are important enough to us that when we acknowledge them, we really are offering a deep prayer of thanksgiving for all they have done in our lives. Beyond the people in our lives, though, there are certain acts that also seem to coincide with the feeling of thanksgiving—certainly that of celebration. In our passage today, we can see the use of trumpets, cymbals, and other musical instruments as one such way to offer praise to God.

Each week, we offer Prayers of Thanksgiving. We are pausing in our service to say thank you for all that God has provided and all that God will provide. Our prayers, according to Gandhi, “is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness…And so, it is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” This perspective pulls us closer to the center of who God is and how God desires for us to live each day.

When we are able to admit where we are weak, we have a direction for what we need to improve upon with the help of God. The longing of our soul is to be whole and authentic people. We continue to worship God in an effort to understand who we are in relation to God and to learn how to live daily in concert with God’s desire for us. It is this deep longing that keeps us coming back for the many connections we have in community and the reminder that God always needs to be present at the center of our lives.

What is so powerful about thanksgiving is it reorients us toward what is, not what will be. When we offer God thanks for all that we have been given, we are no longer seeking that which we do not have. Our hearts and minds begin to shift away from asking for things and instead living in the moment with gratitude. Equally, our gratitude helps us focus on the needs of others. Recognizing our own intangible wealth allows us to give from our abundance. There is never a decrease because that kind of abundance is self-fulfilling; it continually rejuvenates on its own.

The more love we offer, the more love we have to offer.

The more hope we offer, the more hope we have to offer.

The more compassion we offer, the more compassion we have to offer.

The more kindness we offer, the more kindness we have to offer.

Likewise, we can generate division and ill-will in equal measure. What we focus on is what actually grows. If I decide that I want to foster hatred or enmity, that is easy enough to do as well. The question is, though, which would I rather have in the world? Love or hate?

Perhaps we can even say that gratitude and thanksgiving are super-powers. Even those with the most hardened hearts, when convinced of operating from a place of gratitude and thanksgiving, their hearts soften (think about the story A Christmas Carol or The Grinch). While fictional, they do offer insights into how our entire world can be turned upside down through recognizing how blessed we are.

For Ebenezer Scrooge, he had to see the wreck and ruin of all his personal relationships to understand how necessary gratitude and thanksgiving were. Once he came face-to-face with his own “scrooge-ness” he was able to reorient his life toward abundance, which then flowed outward to others. The Grinch had to learn that tangible possessions were not the source of gratitude or thanksgiving. When he realized his mistake, his heart grew and grew. This heart growth filled the Grinch with his own gratitude and thanksgiving—so much so that he returned all the gifts.

What we offer to God should not be reserved for Sunday alone, but every day we should be grateful for how God interacts and intervenes in our lives. While we may not understand it, or even recognize most of what God does in the world, when we do, it should be such a profound experience that we cannot help but bring out the trumpets, the harps, and the cymbals, and praise God. Our attitude of gratitude will release such an outpouring of thanksgiving that it will change us from the inside out.

Mark Nepo writes the following, “This is what the heart knows beyond all words, we can find a way to listen: that beyond our small sense of things a magnificent light surrounds us, more than anyone could ask for. This is what prayer as gratitude can open to us.”

May your prayers be filled with gratitude and thanksgiving, and may you begin to feel God’s outpouring of a generous spirit—a spirit that fills us to overflowing.

10th Commandment: You shall not covet...Love God, Love neighbor, Love self!

Exodus 20:17

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17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female slave, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

Matthew 22:34-40

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34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, an expert in the law, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Romans 13:8-10

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8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

I know this is crazy, but I am tying all three of these passages together this week. So, buckle up for the ride.

As we wrap up our series on the 10 Commandments, it was always my intention to end with Jesus’ words to the Pharisees, “Love God, love neighbor, love self.” When Jesus provides them with a summation of the law, everything falls in place. The first four commandments are all about how we are to live in relation to God. The last six commandments are all about how we are to live in relation to each other and ourselves. As we have seen, the commandments regarding community aren’t just about how we treat others, but also how we treat ourselves. Self-love makes community love possible.

The last commandment instructs us to not covet. There is a laundry list of things that we aren’t supposed to covet – pretty much anything belonging to anyone else – but most importantly, anything that doesn’t belong to us. Covet goes deeper than just wanting, though, it is an intense, wish-filled desire. The word desire strikes me because in both the Buddhist and the Hindu tradition, there is special attention paid to desires of the heart; that is the path to suffering.

God’s admonition to not covet is God’s final attempt to refocus the attention of the people on what is most important in this life. Over and over again, God wants the people to build a foundation where God is at the center of all their activities and that the community becomes the realm where God’s love gets lived out. When we spend our time coveting what others have, our attention is no longer on God or even the necessities of the community, but on our own wish-fulfillment.

In the New Testament, Jesus makes it clear that love is the whole point of the law. It is important to note that without self-love, love of our neighbor is not nearly as likely. Additionally, love, according to Jesus, is not optional. Paul puts it this way, “10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

What we must ask ourselves, though, is how far do we extend this love? It is important to remember that in addition to loving one’s neighbor, Jesus also calls us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. If we take the challenge of loving our neighbors as ourselves seriously, then we must have an equally serious conversation regarding the question, “Who is my neighbor.”

I am personally challenged to apply the concept of neighbor to those who I think are behaving abhorrently in the world. How do we do this? Are there certain behaviors that we can all agree upon that are violations of community? Are we willing to drill down deep enough into our own behavior to discover the ways in which we are violating our communities?

If we know that self-love is a primary component of how we love others, then this is probably one of the most important places to start. Self-love is not selfish! Self-love is defined as 1. An appreciation of one’s own worth or virtue, and 2. Proper regard for, and attention to, one’s own happiness or well-being. What is most important about these definitions is that they still require the individual to look at themselves from a “right-sized” perspective, not from a narcissistic or grandiose perspective. When I begin to overvalue my own worth or virtue, or only desire happiness and well-being for myself and no one else, then I have skewed the entire commandment.

Self-love is not an easy trait to nail down. We most often miss the mark because we undervalue or overvalue ourselves. It takes extraordinary effort to do enough self-evaluation to get this right. It’s as if our vision of ourselves is always slightly, or in some cases, dramatically distorted. This is where the community can rescue us. If we are doing our best to live in community and love in community, the community can help hold us accountable. When we are disengaged from the whole community, we are more likely to have a skewed opinion of ourselves and of other communities.

This commandment to not covet pushes us to re-evaluate everything we know about how we engage with one another. It calls us to remember who we are in God, who we are to each other, and who we are to ourselves. It is easy to invite suffering into our lives when we are fixated on gaining that which never belonged to us. As I have worked with this commandment, it reminded me of our earliest days in this country. When we first encountered indigenous people, we talked about land ownership and boundaries that cordoned us all off into our separate spaces. Indigenous people, however, did not adhere to the same land ownership ideas. The Great Spirit allowed them to occupy the land. The land was a gift to the people, and in return, they must be caretakers of the land. The more they cared for the land, the more the land cared for them. They lived in manageable sized communities and shared all of their resources because they understood the value of communal living.

God’s establishment of the people of Israel was essentially in the same vein. So much of what God tried to teach the people, though, we tossed aside when we decided that Jesus was disconnected from this message. The commandments were never meant to fall by the wayside, nor were God’s instructions to live in community. Interestingly enough, all people of faith, from every religious tradition around the world, understand what it means to live in “community” and what the consequences are of not doing so. In the west, we have lost our focus. Our communities consist of only people who look like us and act like us. God’s definition of community was much broader and much more inclusive.

As we continue to contemplate the impact of the 10 Commandments on our lives, it is imperative that we re-evaluate how we live in community, how we share our lives in community, and how we nurture that community. Our need for self-love is paramount. We must be able to love ourselves and love others in the same way that we proclaim that we love God. They all go hand in hand.

Reflecting on the 10 Commandments and walking through this series of services has allowed me to remember what God ultimately requires of us:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?

(Micah 6:8)

This should always be our goal, justice, kindness, and humility. Each of these provides a framework for self-love, love of neighbor, and love of God. If we are just and kind, we will not covet. If we are humble, we will live and share in our communities as is necessary for the whole of that community. This isn’t about imposing our beliefs on others; it is about bringing our best selves to the table. We are more likely to find common ground when we are willing to just love because love is the better answer. I would like to believe that Love Wins; that love always wins. This is only true, though, if we nurture it and watch it grow.