exile – Prudent Graces

“When the LORD turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream.”

Psalm 126:1 [KJV; see Psalm 126]

Psalm 126 lives in my mouth in its King James cadences, whether spoken aloud or in my mind’s ear only. The “t’s” in “turned” and “captivity” are clipped in soft staccato while the “e” of “dream” stretches longer than its single syllable. Its sound ebbs as I am drawn into the vision it pronounces. Remember that dreaming? Remember what it was to live a dream?

Pause at the thought of dream, then let the recitation of it tumble from my lips. My mouth pronouncing the phrases is again brimful of brightness. Remember what it was when others saw our joy, named it for us, even before we ourselves recognized that our shoulders were lifting, our steps become lighter? “The LORD has done great things for them.” O! Savor it!

My singing tongue slows, then continues, resolutely: “The LORD has done great things for us, whereof we are glad.” The glow of remembrance fades even as I recollect it. My voice catches, my tone shifts from reverie to plea: “Turn again our captivity, O LORD!…” Memory of God’s prior graces moved into urgent demand of God-self: remember us, do again great things for us.

Psalm 126 is a psalm from a middle place. Prayed by a people who know God has done great things for them. Prayed by a people who know, also, that the great thing is yet unfinished, who pray that God is not done with them.

I pray this psalm as I walk in the day. I pray this psalm as I lie down at night. I pray this psalm as I read the news. I pray this psalm as I move into Holy Week. I will pray this psalm on past this Easter Sunday, as I am praying it now, past all the prior Easters that have been.

“Christ is risen!” we will proclaim on Sunday. The sanctuary will be filled with flowers and the Hallelujah Chorus and jubilation. Our mouths will be filled with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy.

And then we will leave the sanctuary and go into the world. And then we will find, again, or still, that resurrection has changed everything and that the world remains broken.

The LORD has done great things for us! Turn again our captivity!

The Hebrew is something like ‘Turn, O LORD, our returning ….’ The verb echoed in its object; the dream memory of v.1 revised in v.4 to imperative demand. ‘Turn our return.’ The unfamiliar syllables feel awkward in my mouth. They resonate differently than “turn again our captivity.” The latter might be read as a turning-back, a restoration to what was before. I’ve pictured it so: freed exiles streaming back to a rebuilt city. Perhaps this psalm was rooted in a real memory of return, yet in that history, the city’s rebuilding was but an incomplete fulfillment. God called God’s people to further walking. God’s people called God to further rescue.

Read Psalm 126 not as returning back to some prior way of being but as turning on to what yet will be. The final verses tell it so: they do not rest in the storehouses of some prior season’s harvest but call for sowing anew and promise that the resulting harvest will be abundant, occasion for new shouts of joy. Easter does not turn back the clock nor deny death. Easter overcomes it: Thomas knows the risen Jesus not by his unblemished skin but by his wounds.

The world remains broken. Sow the seed anyway. Because resurrection has changed everything. Because we can practice it. Must practice it. Sing joy — even in tears, even while weeping — that in singing we experience already the harvest anticipated as God turns our return on towards God’s intended end.

These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. […] Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; lectionary text for Sunday October 13, 2019

I am not the addressee of this letter. Jeremiah is writing to the remaining elders and priests and prophets, all who had been taken captive by the king of Babylon and carried off into exile. They had seen their city besieged, their temple plundered. Jeremiah is writing to people who had been taken to a far-off land. Who sat beside a foreign river and its strange trees and endured the taunts of captors who bid them sing (Psa 137). Jeremiah is writing to people who defiantly had hung their harps on the willows and rejected the possibility of mirth, who resolutely set their hearts upon their loss as if to forget the city they loved would be to lose their hands, their tongues, their very selves.

To these people, Jeremiah writes the word of the LORD: ‘Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you….’ And in myriad pulpits in many cities, this text will be preached as a call to social justice in urban settings. Seek the welfare of the city. Support early literacy and food pantries and more. In the city’s well-being, we will find our own.

The LORD does require of us justice and mercy (Micah 6:8) and the rolling down of righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24). But I’m not sure urban renewal is the sum of this particular Jeremiah text. It seems to me less about place and more about time.

Build houses, the LORD says. Live and plant and eat and marry and multiply.

Your old city is lost to you. Your old life is over. Leave it behind. Leave behind, also, the future you had looked forward to. Leave behind the expectation of living and working and growing old in the familiar place, in the shape that had held stable for so long you presumed it would hold longer still. That particular future is as over as the past that had seemed to promise it. Grieve as you need, but don’t get stuck there. There is living yet to come, a future yet unfolding.

Seek the welfare of the city where you are, for in its welfare you will find your own.

Wander the streets of this unexpected city. Look closely at its waterways, its trees, the way its houses are built. Taste its foods. Try its words upon your tongue. Realize that your old life is over, yes, but that you do not, after all, leave your past behind. You bring it with you as you live forward, as you connect the old experiences and expectations with the new possibilities. Grieve and bury that lost future, but refuse to lose yourself in the same grave. Pivot into life.

The prophet did not address his letter to me. But the LORD did. I have not suffered the violent trauma of Jeremiah’s original audience, but I have grieved the loss of a foreseen future and I have found myself living in an unexpected present. Hope — however reasonably and enthusiastically sown — has not flowered as I had anticipated. So leave go not only of those sown seeds but of the expected color and scent of the flower. Till the actual ground on which I stand. Do this work. Plumb these depths. Savor this beauty, this purpose — however furtive or partial, it is here. Give thanks for the grace that does come.

Find my new future unfolding by living deeply in the particular here and now where I am found.

Seek the welfare of the city where I am. In its welfare I will find — or be found by — my own.

Tag: exile

Turn our return!