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Makin’ It Thru The Nite
The Old Testament Lesson: The days are
surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of
Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with
their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of
Egypt-a covenant that they broke, although I was their husband, says the Lord.
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those
days, says the Lord; I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their
hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people.” A few minutes ago we shared in reading the words of the prophet Jeremiah as he relates to us God’s declaration: The days are surely coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel…I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Of all the prophets of Hebrew Scripture, it is quite possible that we know the most about Jeremiah. We know that he was of the relatively tiny tribe of Benjamin and that he came originally from the Northern part of Judah. We know that he was a descendant of one of King David’s chief priests. Of course it is fairly obvious that he was a devotee of the Mosaic Tradition. This is critical because, quite apart from the popular and traditional depiction of Jeremiah as a chronicler of the pain of Babylonian captivity and the tragic of the fall of Zion, he was also a pivotal figure in the theological debate between the Levitical and Davidic priestly classes which characterized the incipient stages of Rabbinic Judaism. Jeremiah’s real lament was that the people had fallen away from God. The people had estranged themselves from God. Other matters had become far more important or at least exigent. Intimacy with the Father had become passé. A flirting at least with apostasy, all justified by a community which still observed the juridical and priestly traditions. Their minds were focused. Their hearts were not. Jeremiah’s great contribution was to follow God’s commission, to accept God’s deliverance and to be a powerful oracle for salvation. As the proclaimer of a new covenant. A new covenant distinguished by renewed genuine commitment to an actual emotive relationship with the Heavenly Father. Leo Perdue of Texas Christian’s Brite Divinity School summarized that new covenant as “being marked by an inward transformation of the human heart that will allow the people to not only obey the commandments but to know God intimately.” Knowing God intimately. A matter not of observance but of joyous interaction…not of cogitation or necessarily even exclusively deep meditation but of overriding and overarching feeling. A matter not of the intellect but of the heart. I will put my law within them and will write it on their hearts. The little girl was ten years old. A good kid. An exceptionally faithful little girl, actually. She seemed to have a very solid relationship with God. So much so that her Sunday school teacher (could have been either Charlie or Meg) commented to her “Dear you seem to have a wonderful relationship with God.” “Sure do she replied. I take my troubles to Him all the time. Sometimes right in the middle of the night. You know, He’s up anyway.” I will write it on their hearts. . I will be their God and they shall be my people. What a relationship! A relationship not of duty or tradition or tidy theology…but of joyous matter-of-fact love and expectation. The faith in things hoped for. The conviction of things unseen. Now another girl. Actually a young woman. A good person. God’s child. Distraught, discouraged, depressed and despairing. Angry, alienated, alone and lonely. Scared. Hopeless. She has lost her way. Along the way of losing her way she has lost herself. In her pain and despair, she is doing her level best to establish a new land speed record for getting to the bottom of a fifth of Jack Daniels in the hope that the effects at least will dull if not deaden her unbearable pain. And, if that doesn’t do the trick…she’s invited a complete stranger over for a one-night stand of pathetically searching intimacy. All this, of course, only exacerbates her pain, alienation anger and resentment as she realizes how utterly she has discounted and demeaned herself. Through tears of torment she cries out “Lord, yesterday is dead and gone…tomorrows out of sight…its so sad to be alone…help me make it thru the nite.” I’m not sure if that sad person is fictional or not. I do know that she was the subject of a hit country western tune in the 1980’s. The lyricist of that hit song will be remembered by many of you…a fellow by the name of Kris Kristofferson. Now the extent to which that poor woman is a dynamic of Kristofferson’s imagination, whether she is or was … wholly or partially grounded in reality, I just don’t know. What I do know is that she is absolutely pathetic. She is so forlorn and so hopeless and so very lonely. The title of the song is Help Me Make Thru the Nite and it garnered Kristofferson a Grammy nomination some years back together with the profound contempt of the Christian Right who immediately branded it evil. It was, they lamented, an ode to “rampant hedonism.” They missed the point entirely. “Lock, stock ‘n’ barrel as Grandpa used to say. This is not a song about pleasure It’s a song about pain. It is not about sensuous engagement but of painful disengagement that dulls the senses. It has nothing at all to do with joy or even feeling good. It is about deep and abiding and overwhelming sadness. Tex Sample of St. Paul Seminary (who has written extensively on the topic of country music/working class America and mainstream Christianity), I think best characterizes the words of that sad woman as bespeaking nothing less than abject despair. She is hurting and hopeless. Her yesterdays are dead and gone. She has traveled and continues on a trail of tragedy. Bereft of anything other than bitter disappointment. Her present is wretched and she is terrified of her tomorrow. She cries out… prays really. The problem is that she cries out to God she isn’t sure exists with a prayer she consequently isn’t sure will be heard and for relief she has no expectation of materializing. . Through her tears she pathetically searches for a God she doesn’t know. A plaintive prayer whose efficacy she questions. She wants comfort. We all now she deserves comfort but she has absolutely no basis to believe in the comfort which only God can give. . Now I realize that Sudbury, Massachusetts is hardly a hotbed of the country music genre. But I like country music. Always have. What’s more I suggest that in its basic rhythms, uncomplicated melodies and straightforward lyrics …country music frequently speaks to a wisdom as percipient as it is engaging. I think that is very much the case with Kristofferson’s Help Me Make It Thru the Nite. The woman has made God situational. A God of the moment. A Lord of exigent circumstance. Of course nothing could be further from reality. Of course God is there through the night. But He was also there yesterday. And if she will but allow it, He will be there tomorrow and the next day and, well…always. Just, as in the words of that wonderful old hymn, as just as “He always has been and forever will be”. A God of constancy not of happenstance. We can learn from that country western tune. We surely can learn from that unhappy woman. Her sadly skewed understanding the Father is predicated upon not knowing the Father. In not having taken the time or expended the effort to develop an intimate relationship with the Father. O, she believes…sort of…but why? Custom? Tradition? Convention? Of course we don’t know for sure. What we do know is that her situational God is a product of not having the kind of intimate relationship which moved Jeremiah’s thousands of years ago. She, like the prophet’s people and countless millions in one hundred thirty succeeding generations, never bothered to allow God’s law to be written on her heart. Consequently the situational God she imagines is of no comfort at all in those situations that haunt her. And I guess to a greater or lesser extent it has ever been so with us, hasn’t it? Now I know that we’re not accustomed to holing up in a cheap motel rooms, inviting over complete strangers and tossing’ back shots of Jack Daniels. But that sadness is only symptomatic. I know we have a decided tendency to observe God and think about God and study God…all without necessarily feeling God. At least I know I do. I like to study and think and observe…but sometimes I don’t feel. Certainly not nearly as much as I should. I believe that above all else, God wants us to feel. I think that is amply demonstrated in the history of His covenantal relationship with us. To feel. To feel through study. To feel through thought. To feel through prayer. To feel Him as a matter of the heart because to truly feel God can only be a matter of the heart. To feel our Heavenly Father every single day as an accepted consequence of life. God never told Jeremiah … “I will write the law into liturgy or custom or tradition or even confession” The Law was already the liturgy, the custom, the tradition and the confession. And it all fell abysmally short of God’s will. What our Heavenly Father said was I will write my law on the hearts of the people. Just like that precious little girl who just knows that God’s up all the time anyway and who as an adult can be what I aspire to. To view the beauty of the sun-filled sky…Lord you are one heck of an artist. To view the grandeur of a roaring river…Lord how awesome is your power. To greet the afternoon rain…Lord thanks for watering the flowers for me. Or to marvel at His goodness and love and ever present humor as Andrew Miller races across Fellowship Hall…gives Wendy a big hug and fat ol’wet kiss and declares I love you… Daddy! I will write my Law on the hearts of the people. You know there is a wonderful alternative to Kris Kristofferson’s Help Me Make It Through the Night. Another tune which we don’t sing it much anymore. It is very very old. It also was very likely the country western equivalent of its day…thousands of years ago. It speaks to a relationship where God orchestrates and man follows. Where God controls and we rejoice. Where God sustains our bodies and restores our souls. Where God conquers our darkest fears. Where God, sometimes gently and sometimes not so gently comforts. Where God orders human interaction protectively. Where God makes each and every one of us important. It speaks of a relationship where God gives far far more than He gets. Where goodness and mercy are assured for eternity and where each of us dwells in His house…forever. An ongoing intimate relationship with the Creator God where His Law really is written upon our hearts. And that my dear friends is really makin’ it and a darn sight better than just Makin’ It Thru The Night. God bless you all. Amen |
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