Growing Together into Redemption

 

Given the horror of these past three days, it’s daunting for me to know what to say this morning. When bad things happen to good people, all of our carefully constructed theology crumbles quickly away. 

I can offer thanks for the blessing that we are alive today, that our church is still standing, that St. Ambrose parishioners didn’t lose their homes. I am so deeply grateful. But there are many buildings and livelihoods that are indeed lost. Why didn’t the inhabitants of those houses receive such a blessing?

I can point to the “helpers” and give thanks for their efforts, as Mr. Rogers teaches us to do. That’s a helpful step, but it doesn’t let God off the hook. 

I can get angry about climate change and help us to point fingers at one another, but that doesn’t     heal our grief. 

I could say that we shouldn’t worry so much about losing our possessions, that they’re “only things.” But our homes are reflections of ourselves. They hold our memories. They are indeed precious to us, deep down in our souls.

I could even take a cue from the televangelists and say that God is punishing us for our collective sins or teaching us some lesson that we need to learn, but that is just plain bad theology. Who wants to worship a mean-spirited God like that? The loving God of Jesus Christ isn’t a vindictive, abusive parent.

What I can easily say today is that we are both thankful and grieving. We are both fearful and angry. We are both relieved and daunted by what lies ahead. I believe that the people of Israel in our first reading today would understand our feelings quite well. They, too, have lost everything. They’ve been carried into exile, away from their homes. What does Jeremiah say to them? He paints them a beautiful word-picture, a picture of a redeemed creation. “The Lord has ransomed Jacob, and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him,” Jeremiah proclaims. Perhaps we too need to hear of redemption today?

What is redemption, though? Isn’t that what you do with your Sky Miles to get a free trip? The language of redemption comes from the Hebrew Scriptures. In the ancient world, you could redeem a prisoner by paying a ransom to his captors. You could also legally redeem a piece of land by paying the debt on it. You could even redeem a woman! This is what happens in the biblical story of Ruth: her husband dies, and she finds Boaz, one of her husband’s next-of-kin. According to the law at the time, she convinces him to redeem her, taking her from the life of poverty and rejection that is the lot of the widow by making her his wife.

When the Hebrew Scriptures talk about God as redeemer, however, the metaphor moves away from the idea of involving a literal payment. Without any money exchanging hands, without any legal contracts being drawn up, God promises over and over to redeem the people of Israel. Take a look at our lesson from Jeremiah. Redemption here is described as a kind of liberation for the whole community. It is liberation for the blind, the lame, for those who are normally excluded from the group, for pregnant women, children, the weak, for people from every corner of the land, all together. Together they will be lifted from the suffering that has oppressed them as an exiled and defeated people. God will release them from “hands too strong” for them to lift from their own hunched shoulders. And God will set them down to walk on smooth paths along brooks of water. The redeemed people will dance and sing together. Redemption in Jeremiah reminds me of singer Bob Marley’s “Songs of freedom, redemption songs.”

I especially like Jeremiah’s image of the watered garden, especially after watching first hand the terrible result of the drought that plagues the West today. “Their life shall be like a watered garden,” the prophet says of the redeemed community. I can see God bending over our dry and withered shoots with a watering can in the early morning light. I can imagine God pouring the life-giving water of love and forgiveness deep into the tangled roots of our common humanity day after day. I can imagine us growing imperceptibly taller, faces turned toward the sun, branches intertwined and tendrils touching, more and more ready to bear fruit. In this image, God is redeeming us by tending us, by giving us what we need to grow together into what we are called to be, day after day.

I can also imagine Jesus as the bearer of this kind of divine redemption. We human beings are fragile plants, born today and gone tomorrow, tossed about and ripped by powerful winds too strong for us to bear. We feel that truth keenly today. God, however, comes down into the garden with us in the face of Jesus. Jesus puts his whole trust in his Father’s love, even in the frightening presence of death. Jesus loves us more than he loves his own life. With Jesus, the life-sapping powers of this world hold no sway. He lives and dies as a part of the world, submitting to death at the hands of powerful oppressors. And yet he lives; he rises in glory. In his living, dying, and rising, Jesus redeems us from the lie that we live alone in the desert. Jesus waters us with the life-giving truth of our unbreakable relationship with God. Christian redemption puts humankind back in right relationship with God. It trades in fear for love; it trades in coercion for love. It happens in the life-giving garden of the Christian community, in the all-inclusive community gathered around their crucified and Risen Lord.

The story of redemption promised in Jeremiah, in our Psalm, and in Ephesians today lifts my trembling heart. The watered-garden sparks my longing. The love of the baby who is God-with-Us gives me courage. But it’s not just about me. It’s about us. God’s freeing action involves us in the intricate process of relationship. If we don’t come together to show love to our siblings on earth—then how will anyone know that we are redeemed? Redemption changes our lives. It waters. It rebuilds. It offers comfort with open arms. I can define redemption for you, but it is up to us, as a community, to make it visible in our burned and suffering world.