“See your children
gathered from west and east at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God has
remembered them.” Baruch 5:5
In our family, sometimes we call my mother the
sheepdog. She likes nothing better than
to herd all her charges into one place.
My mother has always loved big family gatherings: the heaping table,
decorations all in their places, music playing in the background, children
shouting and dogs barking underfoot. When
we all get together there are fourteen now, the majority of us under seven. It can make for quite a racket in a house
built for smaller crowds. Sometimes one
of my brothers or I will suggest that it would be simpler to host us in batches. It really is easier to talk at a smaller
table. There’s no need for quite so many
dishes. But she’ll have nothing of
it. Since my father died ten years ago,
my mother spends most of her time alone.
For a woman who gave so much of her life to the things that make for a
happy family, that’s sometimes very difficult.
When we are all together, I think that for her, it’s a bit like putting
life back together again, recovering something of what was lost and can never
quite be again.
Of course, this is the season for big family gatherings,
when we endure hair-raising traffic and the nightmare of airport security to
head back to our home places, to sit around the family table, among old, familiar
things.
I met a man who lives in Tennessee
He was headin’ for, Pennsylvania,
and some home made pumpkin pie
From Pennsylvania, folks are
travelin’ down to Dixie’s sunny shore.
From Atlantic to Pacific, gee, the
traffic is terrific,
For there’s no place like home for
the holidays.[1]
And increasingly, as our families spread even farther apart,
and our work schedules become more demanding, we can’t even make it back
together for the holidays. I hear often
of families who keep a Christmas together half-way through November, or at
Martin Luther King weekend in January.
Taylor, our seminarian, is at a family Christmas like that today—the
only time when they could all fit in the trip.
The liturgical purist in me cringes a bit at this, I acknowledge. But there something about the gathering the
loved ones together that marks true festivity—when we can look around and see
the old faces and remember together happy times. There are few sweeter blessings God has
placed in human life.
But of course, sometimes we can’t all find the time to be
together. The warm invitation receives
no reply. Sometimes we must sit and wait, and acknowledge with tears that the
family which was once so happy together cannot quite be gathered into one
again, that we are scattered far and have quite forgotten the road that leads
home.
For Israel, this is what it was like to be in exile. Israel had once all been one people, living
together in one land under one ruler.
They were the descendants of a family of brothers, and once upon a time,
they had come together from every corner to Jerusalem to keep the great feasts,
to pray and sing and dance and eat, to put themselves together again and
remember God’s goodness, His everlasting “promise of mercy.”
But Israel had sinned.
They had run after other gods. They
had perverted justice and neglected the poor.
There had been a bitter dispute in reaction to a reckless king which had
split them into two states, with two temples and two kings. And then the Assyrians had come and conquered
the Northern Kingdom, hauling them off to vanish from the pages of
history. The Southern Kingdom, ruled by
David’s sons from the grand old city of Jerusalem with its majestic temple, it
had lasted a few generations more. But
it would not repent. It spurned the
warnings of the prophets. And God sent
the great Babylonian armies against it.
They conquered the city, tore down the walls, hauled off the treasures
of the temple, led away the people in chains.
And for seventy years they lived in Babylon, unable to come
home. They did not lose faith, and
eventually God allowed them to return.
The Persian king gave them their freedom, and helped them to rebuild the
walls, to construct a temple on the spot of the old ruins. The law book was brought out again, the
sacrifices were made. There was no
proper king, but the arrangements gave them far more dignity than they really
deserved.
But it just wasn’t the same as it had been before. For one thing, maybe only half of them
returned. Many of the Jews had made out
quite well for themselves in Babylon.
They spoke the language now, they had good jobs, friends among the local
people. It might be nice to die in the
homeland, they thought, but the living’s not bad here in the meantime. Maybe once they’d make a trip back for the
Passover, to see if it really was as grand as old grandmother had
half-remembered—but to move back, to start over again, wasn’t that asking too
much?
There had been an initial burst of piety back in the land of
Israel, a generation of pioneers that rediscovered the lure of holiness. But faithfulness is the work of a lifetime, not
the adventure of a summer’s afternoon.
The old sins crept back in again, like weeds that can never quite be
grubbed out. Soon the priests were on
autopilot again, the prophets were ignored, the people as indifferent as
ever. They needed a deeper kind of
restoration: not just construction and moving vans, a complete spiritual
renewal. It’s as if they were still
waiting to come home, their hearts back on Babylon’s shores even while living
in the middle of the ancient city.
The Book of Baruch, from which our first lesson is taken,
reflects this sense of so many faithful Israelites that their exile had never
really ended.[2] There was a Baruch who had seen Jerusalem
fall back in the sixth century. He was the scribe of Jeremiah, whose words had
gone unheeded. He fled with Jeremiah and
the king from the city as it burned. The
Book of Baruch is attributed to him, but almost certainly it was written much
later. His name is used, rather
poetically, to prove a point. We count
Baruch among the writings of the Apocrypha, written between the Old and New
Testaments. The scholars mostly date it
to the second century, some four hundred years after the first Baruch had
died. We have it only in Greek, written
for Jews who lived far from Palestine and didn’t quite remember how to read the
mother tongue.
It says, pointedly, that Israel is still in exile. Its first section concludes by addressing God
with these words: “See, we are today in our exile where you have scattered us,
to be reproached and cursed and punished for all the iniquities of our
ancestors, who forsook the Lord our God.”[3] It was a rather remarkable thing to say,
really, while Jerusalem stood rebuilt, five hundred miles away, while
sacrifices burned on the temple’s altars.
It’s as if four hundred years of history had never happened. Baruch is still speaking to people far from
home. Maybe the best modern analogy
would be when the gung-ho tea party folks dress up like George Washington and
Ben Franklin at their rallies. It’s
still 1776, they’re saying, we’re still living under tyranny with a need for
revolutionary change—and maybe they’re being ironical, or maybe they’re rather
serious about it—depends on who you ask.
Well this writer, this man who called himself Baruch, he was
quite serious. And not just because he was
dissatisfied about the way things had fallen out. He believed that God was about to do
something new. God had promised more
than what they had seen so far, so clearly He must be planning soon to launch a
new plan for the restoration of His people, to get the whole family back
together again. First, they would need
to turn back to God. Baruch’s book includes a great confession of the people’s
sins with an expression of their desire to live new lives, to be dedicated
completely to their eternally faithful God.
But he ends, as the prophets always do, by looking
ahead. Baruch’s last word is this
jubilant song of hope, our Old Testament lesson. It is addressed to mother Jerusalem, who sits
at the window and waits forever for her children to come home. Look east, he says, and see them coming, from
east and west, from every place where they have scattered. God is calling them to return, and paving the
way before them. A pleasant path it will
be, a level road, shaded with trees. God
has not forgotten your sorrow. He knows how
much you want to see them all together again.
Look east, and see them coming home.
When John the Baptist spoke in the wilderness, calling the
people to confess their sins, and be washed clean to greet the Redeemer, he was
speaking from exactly the same conviction as Baruch. The exile was about to end. God was about to answer their lonesome
prayers. The way must be prepared for
all to come home, the valleys exalted, the mountains brought low. Prepare the way, he says, for the Redeemer is
coming soon.
And He has come, in the man Jesus Christ. John the Baptist would mark Him out so there
could be no question: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world.”[4]
Jesus came to make a new covenant, to
call the whole world into God’s new kingdom, where “many would come from east
and west and take their places at the feast.”[5] He would gather home all Israel, and welcome
in the Gentiles too. He would blot out
sin, and pour the Spirit, and reconcile us once and for all to God who always
“remembers His promise of mercy.” The
great homecoming feast is what we share in today, the table spread where all
humanity can taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”[6]
But sometimes, we still seem to be waiting, don’t we? This world is not yet put right yet, and many
of God’s beloved seem to be wandering from home. We hear God’s gracious will for us, as we did
when His Ten Commandments were read out today, and we number our own
failures. This is a violent world, but
we too are angry. There is great
irreverence, but we too are distracted and cold. There seem to be no restraints, but we do not
check our own desires. There is so much
division, and yet our own love is so weak, we are still separated from each
other. Because Advent is a season of
expectation, it is also a time for penitence.
For we still long for renewal, for a return of His transforming
mercy. Come and save us, O
Emmanuel. Come and forgive us. Come, and bring us home.
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