Milton S. Carothers - "From Hopelessness to Hope" (June 3, 1973)
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| Man | Testing testing one, two, three, four | 0:04 |
| testing testing one, two, three, four. | 0:06 | |
| (congregation singing) | 0:09 | |
| Woman | Hear these words from Jeremiah. | 1:58 |
| For thus says the Lord, | 2:03 | |
| "When 70 years are completed for Babylon, | 2:05 | |
| I will visit you and I will fulfill to you my promise | 2:09 | |
| and bring you back to this place. | 2:14 | |
| For I know the plans I have for you" says the Lord | 2:17 | |
| "plans for welfare and not for evil. | 2:21 | |
| To give you a future and a hope." | 2:25 | |
| "At that time," says the Lord, | 2:35 | |
| "I will be the God of all the families of Israel | 2:37 | |
| and they shall be my people." | 2:42 | |
| Thus says the Lord, | 2:45 | |
| "The people who survived the sword | 2:47 | |
| found grace in the wilderness." | 2:49 | |
| When Israel stopped for rest, | 2:52 | |
| the Lord appeared to him from afar, | 2:54 | |
| "I have loved you with an everlasting love. | 2:57 | |
| Therefore, I have continued my faithfulness to you. | 3:01 | |
| Again, I will build you | 3:06 | |
| and you shall be built O virgin Israel. | 3:08 | |
| Again, you shall adorn yourself with timbrels | 3:12 | |
| and shall go forth in the dance of the merry makers. | 3:16 | |
| Again, you shall plant vineyards | 3:20 | |
| upon the mountains of Samaria. | 3:22 | |
| The planters shall plant and shall enjoy the fruit. | 3:25 | |
| For there shall be a day when watchmen will call | 3:29 | |
| in the hill country of Ephraim | 3:32 | |
| 'Arise and let us go to Zion, to the Lord our God.'" | 3:35 | |
| For thus says the Lord, "Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob | 3:41 | |
| and raise shouts for the chief of the nations. | 3:47 | |
| Proclaim, give praise and say, | 3:50 | |
| 'The Lord has saved His people, the remnant of Israel.' | 3:54 | |
| Behold, I will bring them from the north country | 3:59 | |
| and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, | 4:03 | |
| among them the blind and the lame, | 4:08 | |
| the woman with child and her who is in her veil together, | 4:11 | |
| a great company. | 4:16 | |
| They shall return here, with weeping they shall come | 4:18 | |
| and with consolations I will lead them back. | 4:23 | |
| I will make them walk by brooks of water | 4:26 | |
| in a straight path in which they shall not stumble | 4:30 | |
| for I am a father to Israel and Ephraim is my firstborn." | 4:34 | |
| "Behold the days are coming," says the Lord, | 4:43 | |
| "when I will make a new covenant | 4:46 | |
| with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. | 4:48 | |
| Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers | 4:53 | |
| when I took them by the hand to bring them out | 4:56 | |
| of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke | 4:59 | |
| though I was their husband" says the Lord. | 5:04 | |
| "But this is the covenant which I will make | 5:07 | |
| with the house of Israel after those days" says the Lord. | 5:10 | |
| "I will put my law within them | 5:15 | |
| and I will write it upon their hearts | 5:18 | |
| and I will be their God and they shall be my people | 5:21 | |
| and no longer shall each man teach his neighbor | 5:27 | |
| and each his brothers saying, | 5:30 | |
| 'Know the Lord' for they shall all know me | 5:33 | |
| from the least of them to the greatest," says the Lord. | 5:38 | |
| "For I will forgive their inequity | 5:42 | |
| and I will remember their sin no more." | 5:45 | |
| And that ends the reading from the Word. | 5:50 | |
| (piano playing) | 5:54 | |
| (congregation singing "Alleluia!") | 6:04 | |
| And now with Thanksgiving, let us affirm our faith. | 6:37 | |
| Unison | We believe in God who has created | 6:41 |
| and is creating, who has come in the poor man Jesus | 6:45 | |
| to reconcile and make new, | 6:49 | |
| who works in us and others by His spirit. | 6:52 | |
| We trust Him. | 6:55 | |
| He calls us to be in His church, to celebrate His presence, | 6:57 | |
| to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, | 7:02 | |
| to proclaim Jesus crucified and beaten | 7:07 | |
| at the church and at home, | 7:10 | |
| in life, in death, in life beyond death. | 7:13 | |
| God is with us. | 7:16 | |
| We are not alone. | 7:18 | |
| Thanks be to God. | 7:20 | |
| Woman | The Lord be with you. | 7:23 |
| Unison | And also with you. | 7:24 |
| Woman | Let us pray. | 7:26 |
| O God, we bring you our joy and the beauty | 7:36 | |
| and opportunity of this day, | 7:39 | |
| in friends and family who love and support us, | 7:43 | |
| in all that we can smell, touch, hear, see and taste. | 7:47 | |
| We give thanks for laughter that bubbles in us | 7:54 | |
| and breaks out to be shared, | 7:57 | |
| for friendships just beginning, | 8:00 | |
| for memories of persons who have become woven | 8:03 | |
| into the fabric of our lives, | 8:06 | |
| for bad times lived through, | 8:09 | |
| for the singing of all creation. | 8:12 | |
| We thank you for moments of insight, | 8:16 | |
| periods of struggle and growth, | 8:19 | |
| and for life entrusted to our care. | 8:23 | |
| Some of us cannot rejoice in this hour with light | 8:28 | |
| and singing hearts for we have experienced | 8:31 | |
| unbearable separation or loss that deadens our senses. | 8:35 | |
| Some of us are anxious or fearful for ourselves | 8:41 | |
| or those we love. | 8:45 | |
| Some are angry over ill treatment and injustice, | 8:48 | |
| and some of us are too exhausted to care. | 8:52 | |
| Yet we dare to believe that you are hope | 8:56 | |
| in the midst of our hopelessness. | 9:00 | |
| Please help us rejoice in your presence | 9:03 | |
| no matter what our condition is at the moment. | 9:06 | |
| Father hear our prayer for all the people | 9:12 | |
| who inhabit this earth, for government leaders | 9:15 | |
| and all persons in responsible positions. | 9:20 | |
| For those who are disillusioned and bitter, | 9:24 | |
| for people who can't seem to communicate with one another | 9:28 | |
| and find their relationships crumbling, | 9:33 | |
| for people who dream dreams | 9:37 | |
| and try to make their visions a reality, | 9:40 | |
| for those so crushed by circumstances of living | 9:44 | |
| that they have lost all hope and feeling, | 9:48 | |
| for those who take and crush | 9:53 | |
| and give no thought to the damage they do. | 9:55 | |
| For those who give and build and are seldom thanked, | 9:59 | |
| for children who do not laugh | 10:05 | |
| and will never be allowed to develop their potential, | 10:08 | |
| for all people who are never allowed to control their lives. | 10:13 | |
| For the sick, the handicapped, | 10:19 | |
| the desperately lonely, the tired who cannot stop to rest | 10:22 | |
| and for those who are really hungry. | 10:29 | |
| O God help all your people become what you created us to be | 10:33 | |
| and fill our lives with a strong awareness of your presence. | 10:40 | |
| Amen. | 10:46 | |
| We welcome to the pulpit today in this university service, | 10:51 | |
| the Reverend Milton Carruthers, | 10:56 | |
| Presbyterian youth university chaplain at Chapel Hill. | 10:59 | |
| Reverend | The Watergate Scandal | 11:20 |
| it is clear now is different, truly different, | 11:22 | |
| different in kind from all the scandals | 11:27 | |
| that have preceded it in American history. | 11:29 | |
| It is this difference that makes Watergate so frightening. | 11:33 | |
| So wrote Stewart Alsop. | 11:38 | |
| Mr. Alsop is noted as a conservative columnist | 11:40 | |
| who doesn't scare easily. | 11:43 | |
| "Just as the Vietnam war shattered the hope of many of us | 11:47 | |
| that we could be a moral example to the world | 11:50 | |
| in foreign affairs, even so the Watergate Scandal | 11:53 | |
| has shaken our confidence in our political processes. | 11:57 | |
| The Watergate has been an attempt to alter the very nature | 12:02 | |
| of the ancient American political system." | 12:05 | |
| concluded Mr. Alsop. | 12:08 | |
| Now, this is not a sermon about Watergate or Vietnam, | 12:12 | |
| but about hopelessness and the basis for our hope. | 12:15 | |
| But it is for a time like this and a people like us | 12:21 | |
| who have lost our way that Jeremiah's words are meant. | 12:24 | |
| And in our religious tradition, | 12:31 | |
| it is always the hope of the church | 12:33 | |
| that God's spirit will take these ancient words | 12:35 | |
| and give them new meaning and fresh vitality | 12:39 | |
| for those of us who have ears of faith. | 12:42 | |
| Jeremiah wrote to a people separated from the place | 12:47 | |
| of their birth, in confusion about the ideals | 12:50 | |
| of their nation and uncertain about | 12:54 | |
| which direction to take in the future. | 12:57 | |
| They were in exile. | 13:01 | |
| You and I know that there are other kinds of exiles | 13:03 | |
| other than those who are geographically displaced persons. | 13:06 | |
| Those people, like us, were spiritual exiles too | 13:12 | |
| and they had used up all their hope. | 13:16 | |
| For them the future looked like the kind described | 13:20 | |
| by an old man in the Western part of North Carolina | 13:23 | |
| who recently was talking about the future | 13:27 | |
| to some friends of his and is reported to have said this, | 13:29 | |
| "You know the future just ain't as good as it used to be." | 13:34 | |
| Of course they've placed their hope in themselves. | 13:40 | |
| The future wasn't as good as it used to be | 13:44 | |
| to those Jews in Babylon. | 13:46 | |
| So the prophet pointed them to a different kind of hope | 13:49 | |
| when he wrote this. | 13:52 | |
| 'Well, thus says the Lord, | 13:55 | |
| "When 70 years are completed for Babylon, | 13:58 | |
| I will visit you and will fulfill to you my promise | 14:01 | |
| and bring you back to this place | 14:07 | |
| for I know the plans I have for you" says the Lord, | 14:10 | |
| "plans for welfare and not for evil, | 14:13 | |
| to give you a future and a hope." | 14:17 | |
| 1st Jeremiah held out the hope of return. | 14:22 | |
| 'Well, thus says the Lord, | 14:26 | |
| when 70 years are completed for Babylon, | 14:27 | |
| I will bring you back to this place.' | 14:30 | |
| And the Jews had a love for that place, Jerusalem, | 14:35 | |
| which colored their lives wherever they wandered | 14:38 | |
| and influenced and even dominated their thoughts | 14:41 | |
| in whatever location they were driven. | 14:44 | |
| It must've been a feeling somewhat like that described | 14:48 | |
| by William Morris in his book "North Toward Home", | 14:50 | |
| in which he wrote, | 14:54 | |
| "Mississippi may have been the only state in the union | 14:56 | |
| which had produced a genuine set of exiles | 15:01 | |
| almost in the European sense, | 15:04 | |
| alienated from home yet forever drawn back to it, | 15:07 | |
| seeking some form of personal liberty elsewhere | 15:13 | |
| yet obsessed with the texture and complexity of a place | 15:17 | |
| from which they had departed". | 15:21 | |
| Now the Jews in Babylon were in another kind of exile, yes, | 15:25 | |
| but perhaps we and they, along with Willie Morris | 15:29 | |
| all know what it means to be alienated from home | 15:33 | |
| and to long for a place where we feel at one with ourselves | 15:37 | |
| and with our environment. | 15:41 | |
| Christopher Morley once wrote, | 15:45 | |
| "To be deeply rooted in a place that has meaning | 15:48 | |
| is perhaps the best gift a child can have. | 15:52 | |
| If that place has beauty and a feeling of permanence," | 15:58 | |
| he wrote, "it may suggest to him that sense of identity | 16:02 | |
| with this physical earth, which is the humblest | 16:06 | |
| and happiest of life's intuitions". | 16:10 | |
| For us restless Americans who frantically move | 16:16 | |
| from place to place, from job to job, | 16:18 | |
| these words have a special poignancy. | 16:22 | |
| In the new culture emerging in our midst, | 16:26 | |
| there are signs of new appreciation for places of beauty | 16:28 | |
| and a fresh regard for the importance of our environment, | 16:33 | |
| and this can be a source of hope for us. | 16:37 | |
| But this return to which Jeremiah pointed | 16:41 | |
| is more than a journey back to a place | 16:45 | |
| like Jerusalem or Mississippi. | 16:48 | |
| The German philosopher Heidegger once wrote, | 16:52 | |
| "Homecoming is the return into the proximity of the source". | 16:55 | |
| Or to use less heavy words, | 17:02 | |
| to return home means not only a physical trip | 17:05 | |
| back to a place, | 17:07 | |
| but a mental journey back to those memories | 17:10 | |
| which have shaped our lives and which color our future. | 17:15 | |
| When you and I return to our birth place | 17:22 | |
| or a place in which we lived and love, | 17:24 | |
| the emotions are stirred and the soul is restored | 17:28 | |
| not only by what we see, but also by what we remember | 17:31 | |
| of memories of people we have loved and who loved us, | 17:37 | |
| of homes where we knew security and satisfaction, | 17:43 | |
| of experiences which contributed to our growth as persons. | 17:47 | |
| Jeremiah had this kind of homecoming in mind | 17:53 | |
| when as he remembered these exiles | 17:57 | |
| and acted as spokesman for the God who had given freedom | 17:59 | |
| and hope to their ancestors | 18:02 | |
| says this in the name of their God, | 18:05 | |
| 'I will gather you from the ends of the earth. | 18:09 | |
| You will come home weeping as you come, | 18:12 | |
| but I will comfort you and be your escort | 18:15 | |
| for I have become a father to Israel | 18:19 | |
| and Ephraim is my eldest son.' | 18:21 | |
| Jeremiah was holding out hope of a return, | 18:25 | |
| not only to a promised land, | 18:28 | |
| but also to the promised security, | 18:31 | |
| which was still available to the covenant people. | 18:33 | |
| Once again, these people, Jeremiah hoped | 18:37 | |
| would be at home spiritually as well as physically. | 18:40 | |
| I don't know about you, | 18:47 | |
| but I know for myself this word from the prophet | 18:49 | |
| is one I desperately need to hear. | 18:52 | |
| There are times like those ancient Jews | 18:55 | |
| when I myself had given up hope on this promise | 18:57 | |
| and can only pray, Lord, I believe help out my own belief, | 19:03 | |
| but then faith is not necessary if it is easy to hold. | 19:08 | |
| Secondly, Jeremiah held up the hope of reunion. | 19:15 | |
| '"At that time," says the Lord, | 19:20 | |
| "I will become God of all the families of Israel | 19:22 | |
| and they shall become my people." | 19:26 | |
| Listen to the word of the Lord you nations. | 19:30 | |
| He who scattered Israel shall gather them again | 19:33 | |
| and watch over them as a shepherd watches his flock.' | 19:37 | |
| Originally there were those 12 tribes | 19:42 | |
| there in the promised land, | 19:46 | |
| it then united under Saul and David and Solomon. | 19:49 | |
| And then after the death of Solomon | 19:53 | |
| the empire split into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah. | 19:55 | |
| These two nations existed side by side for centuries, | 20:01 | |
| sometimes at peace but often at war | 20:06 | |
| and Israel was carried away captive in 722 B.C. | 20:11 | |
| and Jeremiah was preaching about 150 years later | 20:15 | |
| just before Judah met a similar fate. | 20:18 | |
| And yet Jeremiah could look forward and hope | 20:23 | |
| to the time when the old breaks would be healed | 20:25 | |
| and God's people would be united again. | 20:29 | |
| You and I are a divided people living in the same land | 20:35 | |
| sometimes at peace, but often at war with each other. | 20:41 | |
| Vietnam and Watergate are only two of the many things | 20:46 | |
| that divide us and symptoms of how deep the divisions run | 20:50 | |
| at home and abroad. | 20:55 | |
| We're divided by race, by class, by poverty and wealth, | 20:57 | |
| by generations and by expectations. | 21:03 | |
| Sometime ago, one of the editors of Time Magazine | 21:09 | |
| toured our country surveying what America was really like | 21:12 | |
| and concluded in an essay that the real polarization, | 21:18 | |
| the crucial struggle is not between middle America | 21:24 | |
| and all the rest of us, | 21:29 | |
| it is everywhere. | 21:32 | |
| It is within middle America. | 21:34 | |
| It is within America's heart. | 21:37 | |
| Our heart is divided and no one, | 21:42 | |
| certainly not our president has brought us together yet. | 21:44 | |
| And there is increasing hopelessness about the possibilities | 21:49 | |
| of real reunion among our people. | 21:54 | |
| Later there arose in Palestine | 21:59 | |
| a prophet who was compared with Jeremiah. | 22:01 | |
| His name was Jesus of Nazareth. | 22:05 | |
| He too dreamed of a day when all of God's people | 22:08 | |
| would be reunited. | 22:11 | |
| And He prayed to His father at the end of His life, | 22:13 | |
| that they may all be one as thou Father art in me | 22:17 | |
| and I in thee. | 22:23 | |
| So also may they be in us | 22:25 | |
| that the world may believe without it's ending. | 22:29 | |
| And this was a hope that we see all through His life. | 22:35 | |
| Expressed in another way on this occasion | 22:40 | |
| when he stated to His friends, | 22:43 | |
| "And I shall draw all men to myself, | 22:46 | |
| when I am lifted up from the earth." | 22:49 | |
| Now for those of us in the Christian tradition, | 22:55 | |
| there is the obligation to live as a community of hope | 22:59 | |
| and in our dealings with each other, | 23:05 | |
| both within the church and without | 23:07 | |
| we are acting out whatever hope or hopelessness | 23:10 | |
| we harbor in our hearts. | 23:14 | |
| A contemporary theologian has written | 23:18 | |
| that what we do to our brothers and sisters, | 23:22 | |
| especially to the least of them, | 23:25 | |
| we are doing to our hope | 23:28 | |
| because in our brothers and sisters, | 23:31 | |
| we are faced with the challenge | 23:33 | |
| of giving expression to our hope. | 23:34 | |
| Our actions toward them stands concretely | 23:38 | |
| under His judgment. | 23:41 | |
| The last day, he says, will not be the only judgment. | 23:43 | |
| It will only bring to life what we have become | 23:47 | |
| in the encounter with our brothers and sisters. | 23:51 | |
| Jesus our hope cared for all men and women, | 23:55 | |
| but particularly for the poor, the outcast, | 24:01 | |
| those who had no clue as to what life was really all about. | 24:05 | |
| He came to sinners that all | 24:10 | |
| might recognize themselves as sinners. | 24:12 | |
| He came to the lame, to the withered, | 24:17 | |
| the deaf, the blind, that in their disabilities | 24:19 | |
| you and I might recognize our own. | 24:25 | |
| That in their hope we may discover our own. | 24:28 | |
| This Jesus will come again | 24:34 | |
| and in this Jesus we claim to believe | 24:36 | |
| He has promised to draw all men unto Himself | 24:40 | |
| in a glorious reunion. | 24:43 | |
| This Jesus we claim to be our hope | 24:46 | |
| and before this Jesus we shall one day stand | 24:50 | |
| or so we say we hope, and then it will be revealed to us | 24:53 | |
| whether as a matter of fact, He has been our hope. | 24:58 | |
| Now it's difficult for me to believe that we Americans | 25:05 | |
| will experience a sense of oneness with each other | 25:09 | |
| much less with the Russians, with the Chinese. | 25:12 | |
| Hard for me to believe that we Christians | 25:17 | |
| shall ever be reunited with each other | 25:19 | |
| much less with all mankind. | 25:22 | |
| Yet I have to hold to this hope | 25:25 | |
| and work for its fulfillment. | 25:27 | |
| While I'm in a mood of confession, | 25:31 | |
| I confess that the reunion just to the Presbyterian | 25:33 | |
| and Reformed Family of Faith | 25:36 | |
| seems to me hopeless at the moment | 25:38 | |
| and yet I cannot give up that dream. | 25:41 | |
| I believe the apostle Paul was correct in his emphasis | 25:45 | |
| on Christian unity and that this is the basis for it. | 25:48 | |
| For there is one body and one spirit | 25:53 | |
| just as you were called to that one hope | 25:57 | |
| that belongs to your call. | 25:59 | |
| One Lord, one faith, one baptism, | 26:02 | |
| one God and father of us all who is above all | 26:06 | |
| and through all and in all. | 26:10 | |
| I need the word of Jeremiah to encourage me in | 26:15 | |
| and to sustain my hope for the reunion | 26:20 | |
| of all of God's people. | 26:22 | |
| Finally, Jeremiah held out the hope | 26:28 | |
| of the renewal of the covenant. | 26:31 | |
| "Behold, the days are coming," says the Lord, | 26:34 | |
| "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel | 26:36 | |
| and the house of Judah." | 26:41 | |
| This new covenant or agreement | 26:44 | |
| would not be like the old treaty which the people broke. | 26:45 | |
| The old covenant had failed because it depended | 26:49 | |
| upon the faithfulness and the obedience of the people. | 26:52 | |
| And when they failed, there seemed to be no hope | 26:56 | |
| and no future for Israel and for Judah. | 27:01 | |
| But Jeremiah could not believe | 27:05 | |
| that God was through with His people. | 27:07 | |
| He believed that somehow somewhere | 27:10 | |
| the Lord had a future and a hope for them. | 27:12 | |
| This new covenant would be different. | 27:17 | |
| It would be a law written upon the people's hearts. | 27:20 | |
| It would be more meaningful than a code carved on stone, | 27:24 | |
| for it would be engraved upon the soul of the believer. | 27:27 | |
| Thinking about the insistence of those in the new culture | 27:33 | |
| upon inner feeling and fulfillment, | 27:37 | |
| I recall that Jeremiah promised that this covenant | 27:41 | |
| would be one we would feel in our hearts, | 27:44 | |
| this new covenant would not be based upon our ability | 27:48 | |
| to teach it to one another, | 27:51 | |
| or even to learn from one another. | 27:53 | |
| For the Lord says, "I will set my law within them | 27:56 | |
| and write it on their hearts. | 28:01 | |
| I will become their God and they shall become my people. | 28:04 | |
| And all of them shall know me, | 28:10 | |
| from the least of them to the greatest." | 28:13 | |
| Rich and poor, young and old, educated and uneducated | 28:16 | |
| all of us will be recipients of the spirit of God | 28:20 | |
| and it will be a part of our personality | 28:24 | |
| because it is a gift of God | 28:26 | |
| and not the achievement of men and women. | 28:28 | |
| And in this new covenant | 28:32 | |
| there will be the forgiveness of sins, | 28:33 | |
| which holds out the hope of community with one another | 28:35 | |
| and with our Creator. | 28:39 | |
| "For I will forgive their inequity | 28:41 | |
| and I will remember their sin no more," says the Lord. | 28:44 | |
| This new covenant did not guarantee freedom from sin | 28:49 | |
| but it did promise the forgiveness of sins | 28:53 | |
| which assures the center of fellowship with God | 28:55 | |
| and with one another within that community of hope. | 28:58 | |
| Jeremiah could not have foreseen | 29:03 | |
| what these words would mean, but they're clear to us | 29:05 | |
| because Jesus must have remembered them himself | 29:10 | |
| when He said to His friends, | 29:13 | |
| "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, | 29:15 | |
| which is poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sin." | 29:18 | |
| And as you and I drink that cup, | 29:25 | |
| we acknowledge that God is still at work in us | 29:28 | |
| hopefully enabling us to become new persons in Christ, | 29:32 | |
| upon whom and upon whose heart divine law is inscribed. | 29:36 | |
| Now my problem with Jeremiah's word of hope is this, | 29:44 | |
| he doesn't seem to have any confidence | 29:49 | |
| in the power of the people. | 29:52 | |
| I still want to be able to hope that we can pull it off | 29:56 | |
| and bring in the kingdom and build the new Jerusalem. | 29:58 | |
| As a social activist, it's a blow to my pride | 30:04 | |
| not to have the Lord and His prophets | 30:07 | |
| recognize my contribution as a more significant item | 30:12 | |
| in the list. | 30:16 | |
| But Jeremiah was at the end of his rope, humanly speaking. | 30:19 | |
| He could see no earthly reason for hope | 30:24 | |
| and yet he did not lose hope | 30:29 | |
| because he did not lose faith in God. | 30:31 | |
| His nation was ruined, | 30:36 | |
| but he could not believe that God, the Lord | 30:38 | |
| who had gone through so much with this people, | 30:41 | |
| who had brought them to freedom, | 30:45 | |
| carried them through the centuries, | 30:47 | |
| that this Lord would desert them now. | 30:49 | |
| Jeremiah was willing to go against his better judgment | 30:53 | |
| and invest in real estate at a time when the enemy | 30:57 | |
| was already occupying the country | 31:01 | |
| and knocking at the gates of Jerusalem. | 31:03 | |
| And he did this because of his faith | 31:07 | |
| that that country had a future. | 31:09 | |
| Jeremiah saw no reason for hope | 31:13 | |
| as he surveyed the human scene, | 31:17 | |
| and yet he held on to hope because of his faith | 31:21 | |
| that with God all things are possible | 31:25 | |
| and so the prophet proclaimed the word of the Lord | 31:30 | |
| which is 'I will bring you back, | 31:32 | |
| not you and I, but I will bring you back | 31:35 | |
| and I will give you a future and a hope.' | 31:38 | |
| Now both the current situation and the word of Jeremiah | 31:45 | |
| drives me back to the foundations of our faith. | 31:49 | |
| If this is God's world, then it looks as if | 31:53 | |
| He'll have to bring in His kingdom on earth | 31:57 | |
| if it is to be like that in heaven. | 32:00 | |
| I'd like to help, I'd still like to help, | 32:04 | |
| but I realize that God will have to take | 32:08 | |
| the major responsibility. | 32:10 | |
| I'd really like to believe that the eternal spirit | 32:14 | |
| were more dependent upon you and me | 32:17 | |
| but if I thought that probably | 32:21 | |
| I'd be driven to even more depths of despair. | 32:24 | |
| Now, Jeremiah did not know about | 32:30 | |
| that baby born in Bethlehem, | 32:32 | |
| who is the confirmation of our hope and his, | 32:34 | |
| but Jeremiah could still hope | 32:39 | |
| because he believed in the father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. | 32:41 | |
| No one knows how or when, but because of Jesus | 32:46 | |
| you and I can hope that the God who is in Christ | 32:51 | |
| is preparing some event in our times, | 32:55 | |
| which will result in a great homecoming | 32:58 | |
| in which there will be a grand reunion, | 33:01 | |
| as the covenant is renewed, | 33:04 | |
| binding us to one another and to our Creator. | 33:05 | |
| And maybe, just maybe this is already happening | 33:10 | |
| in the events through which we are passing. | 33:13 | |
| Jeremiah challenges you and me to live by faith, | 33:18 | |
| to live by faith in the God | 33:23 | |
| with whom all things are possible | 33:25 | |
| and therefore we can have hope for the future. | 33:26 | |
| W. H. Auden in his poem "For the Time Being" | 33:31 | |
| calls us to undertake the journey of faith | 33:35 | |
| in the spirit of Christ. | 33:38 | |
| So make your own translation in your own experience | 33:42 | |
| and with your own words of the direction Auden offers us, | 33:46 | |
| for it leads from hopelessness to hope. | 33:51 | |
| "He is the way, follow Him through the land of unlikeness. | 33:56 | |
| You will see rare bees and have unique adventures. | 34:02 | |
| He is the truth. | 34:08 | |
| Seek Him in the kingdom of anxiety. | 34:10 | |
| You will come to a great city | 34:14 | |
| that has expected your return for years. | 34:16 | |
| He is the light. | 34:21 | |
| Love Him in the world of the flesh. | 34:23 | |
| And at your marriage, all its occasions | 34:26 | |
| shall dance for joy." | 34:30 | |
| Let us pray. | 34:34 | |
| O Lord God Almighty drive us | 34:39 | |
| from our fool's hope of security apart from you | 34:43 | |
| into hopelessness and then and only then, | 34:47 | |
| help us to find hope again in your love and in Him | 34:53 | |
| who is the way, the truth and the light. | 34:56 | |
| Make us the kind of people who shall dance for joy | 35:01 | |
| because our hope is in your grace. | 35:04 | |
| For we pray in Jesus name. | 35:07 | |
| Amen. | 35:11 | |
| (piano playing) | 35:14 | |
| (congregation singing) | 35:57 | |
| (piano playing) | 38:37 | |
| (congregation singing "Gloria") | 39:32 | |
| (piano playing) | 40:21 | |
| (congregation singing) | 40:30 | |
| (piano playing) | 41:37 | |
| (singing continues) | 41:42 | |
| (piano playing) | 44:04 | |
| (congregation singing) | 44:35 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 44:47 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 44:50 | |
| (singing continues) | 44:54 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 45:07 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 45:09 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 45:13 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 45:16 | |
| ♪ Hallelujah ♪ | 45:19 | |
| Woman | O God, we offer you all we can give this morning. | 45:39 |
| Our time, our money, our willingness to be your people. | 45:44 | |
| We give thanks for all that we have been given | 45:50 | |
| and joyfully offer you our lives. | 45:54 | |
| Amen. | 45:58 | |
| (piano playing) | 46:01 | |
| (congregation singing) | 46:28 | |
| (piano playing) | 47:34 | |
| (singing continues) | 47:46 | |
| (piano playing) | 51:34 |