Thursday, March 19, 2020
The Rev. Nathaniel Bourne
Collect
Keep watch over your Church, O Lord, with your unfailing love; and, since it is grounded in human weakness and cannot maintain itself without your aid, protect it from all danger, and keep it in the way of salvation; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Reading
Jeremiah 7:23-28
But this command I gave them, “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.” Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels, and looked backward rather than forward. From the day that your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day; yet they did not listen to me, or pay attention, but they stiffened their necks. They did worse than their ancestors did.
So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. You shall say to them: This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.
Reflection
“...but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels, and looked backward rather than forward.”
The temptation to look backward is strong right now. I find myself looking back even just a couple weeks, to a point before self-isolation, social distancing, quarantining, and all the other ways of being that are suddenly present in our lives. I want to look back to a typical Lent, when we were gathering in church, worshipping as a usual, and gathering in the ways we’re used to. But we’re not in that moment. To dwell on the past denies the possibilities and realities of the present moment. It denies the ways we can show love to one another now. Being a community is challenging right now, but the way to do it is not to look backward and cling to what was but cannot be. In our reading, Jeremiah laments the people of Israel’s inability to live in the present moment and follow where God is leading them. I wonder what new ways of being God is leading us to? I offer this poem from Wendell Berry as a further reflection on that question.
"No Going Back"
By Wendell Berry
No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.
Question
How can you be generous towards this day – generous towards yourself, your loved ones, and the wider community? What new ways of showing love is God leading you towards?