Pentecost 22B
Texts: Jeremiah 31:7-9; Mark 10:46-52
sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
October 24, 2021
From Out of the Corners
We get a first lesson this morning from the book of the prophet Jeremiah. It was a couple or three years ago I committed myself to read Jeremiah straight through, chapter 1 verse 1 all the way to chapter 52 verse 34. Jeremiah is the longest book in the Bible … and it is brutal.
Why do I say that? Ninety-five percent of the book is pure, unadulterated doom and gloom, condemning the people of Judah for their great sin and announcing the imminent destruction of the nation and the coming exile to Babylon. Here it comes, says Jeremiah: fields and vineyards will be laid waste and the national economy will be a shambles for years. We will know pestilence and plague. And we’re going to suffer with it for a very long time, so long that it’s gonna take 52 chapters to tell you all about it and raise the national lament.
It was a prophecy for the nation Israel, but there’s so much about it that could be a prophecy for our own nation right now: the economy, the fear, pestilence, shambles, grief and loss, and all of it going on for such a very long time.
But the lesson we get this morning sounds a very different note, does it not? Today’s lesson is taken from those couple of chapters in the middle of Jeremiah in which you get these promise oracles, interrupting the gloom and doom, radiating with promises of hope, comfort, and restoration. In times like the one in which we live, can we believe in such things? Can we hope? Dare we restore?
“Save, O Lord, your people!,” shouts the prophet here. “Save the remnant of Israel!” And the Lord responds:
8See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north,
and gather them from the farthest corners of the earth,
among them the blind and the lame,
those with child and those in labor, together;
a great company, they shall return here.
9With weeping they shall come,
and with consolations … I will lead them back,
I will let them walk by brooks of water, [with all of its promise of refreshment in a dry time, its promise of new life]”
in a straight path in which they shall not stumble ….”
You know, these days every Sunday in church I see one household or another that I have not seen in a year and a half. Perhaps you all were not thrown into one of the farthest corners of the earth, but certainly you were cornered in your own little pandemic pod, and now the Lord gathers us from those corners again. Every one of us: the blind and the lame, those with child and those who are very old; it is a great company that returns here. With weeping they shall come, promises the Lord, and with consolations for the grieving. I will lead them back, says the Lord; I will let them walk again by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they will not stumble.
We get the same vision of promise, I suggest, in the Gospel lesson this morning. Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside, sitting there in his own little corner of hell. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he shouted, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet; you know why? Because they wanted him to stay in his corner! Know your place! Keep to your lane! Shut your mouth and stay cornered!!
But Jesus stood still then, we are told. And Jesus then said, “Call him here.” No more corner for him, because I am going to bring him and his kind out from their lands of desolation and loneliness and Covid-19. I will gather them again from the farthest corners of the earth! The blind – oh, yeah! – they shall return here, and I will lead them all through the way of refreshing, life-giving water, and they shall walk a straight path and not stumble. Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well,” and immediately Bartimaeus regained his sight and followed him on the way. He set out then, to walk the straight path.
My wife has this great story about the pandemic, and the place she works. It’s the University of Chicago Medical Center. It’s a place of long, squeaky-clean, antiseptic hallways with a whole lot of over-educated, over-worked, hyperactive and self-important medical types running around. Everything about it speaks of power, intellect, science, and achievement.
But when the first Covid vaccines were administered last December and January, those sacrosanct academic hallways were transformed into a public health clinic. Staff members moved beat-up old desks into those pristine hallways and ran computer cables all over to check people in. Med techs and nursing staff ran the haphazard stations set up in every nook and cranny. And the people came. You will remember that the first vaccines were given to Tier One, the most vulnerable, the elderly and those living in long-term care facilities. The halls filled with people, masked and keeping their social distance; they were the old and the infirm, some who’d come by bus or cab, some who’d come with a younger family member to help them along. And the people came: the halls filled with people from every corner of the South Side and the south suburbs. And from all the pandemic corners of the city the people came, seeking hope, healing, and restoration.
Deb says it’s one of the most beautiful things she’s ever seen.
The pandemic is far from over; believe me, nobody knows that better than I do. Just this week I am praying again for a family member of mine who has contracted the disease. The Lord has called us out from our corners and onto the straight path, but that straight path is still a long way to go, I know.
But do not forget: the evil arc of the pandemic is interrupted again and again by a word of promise from God, spoken to us through the prophet Jeremiah. By the healing ministry of Jesus, our Lord calling us out of our corners. By a medical community and a wider society bent on bringing health and safety to people. By our own efforts beat this thing. By a church community learning to worship safely and gather again, return again to our spiritual home.
I submit to you that all around us radiate those promises of Jeremiah, the promises of hope, comfort, and restoration. In times like the one in which we live, let us believe in such things. We can hope. We can restore.