Hi everyone.
This Sunday is "Kick-Off Sunday" (it's also the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost). That means that we are "kicking-off" two things:
- The new "program year" (the church's equivalent to a new "school year".
- The resumption of our three-service format.
At our annual picnic this year we are introducing in a more formal way the capital campaign fund-drive, whereby we hope to raise money to make minor but very important improvements to our parish property.
This Sunday is a time for celebration, picnics and renewal. It's a little bit like New Year's Day where we find ourselves with all kinds of hopes for the new year and all kinds of resolutions for what we will be doing.
The first words we will be hearing from Scripture are probably not the ones I would have chosen since this is for us a Sunday to celebrate our new year. They come from the Prophet Jeremiah (in seminary we to call him "Weeping Jeremiah"): "My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick". Not the very words to launch a picnic with.
On the other hand, we need always to remember that Jeremiah was the Prophet who walked with his people into exile in Babylon. Because the Israelites were stubbornly resistant to the Word of God and unwilling to enter into any kind of repentance ("repentance" is really another word for "self-reflection" or "self-evaluation") their culture and society fell into patterns of injustice and division which made them weak and vulnerable in the face of Babylon's great political power.
The grief, the loss of joy and the sickness of heart of which Jeremiah speaks is an expression of God's great sadness over what has happened to his people.
Jeremiah helps his exiled congregation remember that in spite of all that has happened to them, the God who weeps over their terrible situation is the God who loves them and will find a way to be present to them, and will ultimately find a way to save them. We Christians believe that salvation came in the person of Jesus, the Son of God: "For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son to the end that all who believe in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."
So it turns out that there's something to celebrate in these words after all. What better reason to have a picnic than to give thanks for a God who loves us and will never give up on us no matter how stubborn and resistant to his word we may be.
Thank you for your wonderful ministries among us. God bless.
Tim
