Musical Introduction: “Talk About Suffering”
(Singing) “Talk about suffering here below and let’s keep loving Jesus. Talk about suffering here below and let’s keep following Jesus. Oh, the gospel train is coming. Now don’t you want to go? And leave this world of sorrow and trouble here below. Talk about suffering here below and let’s keep loving Jesus. Talk about suffering here below and let’s keep following Jesus. Oh, can’t you hear it, father? And don’t you want to go? And leave this world of sorrow and trouble here below. Oh, can’t you hear it, mother? And don’t you want to go? And leave this world of sorrow and trouble here below. Talk about suffering here below and let’s keep loving Jesus. Talk about suffering here below and let’s keep following Jesus.”
Sermon Transcript
We don’t live in the church world of 50 years ago anymore. You may not have gotten the memo. We live now, and our time is not the equivalent of King David and the glory; it’s closer to the time of exile. Even though we still have church buildings and we still have a place at the table in the culture, things have changed, and they’ve changed big time.
This is really important for us to know. We sense and know that the church is no longer as at home in this culture as it used to be. There are not as many people who know our Savior as once did. Our influence is not as great. We know that the confident, even cocky superiority that Americans felt toward the rest of the world is a little harder to come by now. And the economic challenges of this past year have been a brutal reminder that we do not live as securely in this world as we used to think.
Five Responses for the Contemporary Exile
Barry Jones, in writing about this chapter of the Bible, once listed five responses from Jeremiah for contemporary Christian exiles:
- Exile demands that we battle against despair.
- Exile is a loss to be grieved.
- Exile fosters a disciplined spirituality.
- It invites prayers of lament.
- It demands new engagement in mission.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll give attention to each of those five in turn, and I will talk about them in the light of stories from the history of blues music and how it helps us voice the deepest cries in those times.
The History and Influence of the Blues
I love blues music. It’s filled with a lot of mythology—stories made up by wealthy music executives who came to the South to find quaint stories about Southern African American singers. The blues come from the Delta blues of Mississippi, though that’s a confusing term because there are really two “Deltas.” There is the one at the mouth of the Mississippi River in Louisiana, and there is the Delta region right around the Mississippi River itself, stretching toward Memphis.
It produced a lot of great musicians, though many people called “Delta blues singers” in history are actually from Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Chicago, and Detroit. But it really refers to a handful of very important musicians who were recorded in the early 20th century. It forms the source of virtually all pop music today. When you take it together with gospel, bluegrass, and jazz, they form the original American contributions to music. Almost everything in rock and pop flows out of this handful of singers.
Battling Against Despair through Lament
Today we talk about this: Exile demands that you and I battle against despair. That’s not always easy because we are living in a world that can throw us into despair pretty quickly. It is a world in which things change fast, technology is leaving us behind, and you can go from rags to riches and back to rags in a quick time.
In such a time, it is possible for us to lose faith in the power of God. We need assurance that the presence and power of God are just as great as ever. One of the things that can help us with that is giving voice to our pain. I’m not talking about whining or complaining, but there’s a real tradition all the way through the Old Testament of lamenting. There’s a whole book called Lamentations. It is “holy whining”—bringing our injustices and our anguishes to God and giving voice to them.
The Book of Consolation
Jeremiah 30 and 31 is often called the “Book of Consolation.” This material begins to sound a note of incredible hope in the midst of absolute despair. In chapter 29, Jeremiah has just told the people, “We’re going to be here living in this ghetto in Babylon for a long, long time. We’re not going home for quite a while, so settle down.”
And yet, in the middle of that, he begins to say, “We’re going to go back.” God is going to take us back to that place, and all the former glories are going to come back again because God has loved you with an everlasting love. God’s promises and faithfulness are absolutely sure.
Life is not spared for believers. All the things that people go through in life, we go through. There is grief, heartache, and economic distress. But what we are given is the assurance of the presence and power of God to endure, survive, and to hope.
Three Pillars to Withstand Despair
1. Daring Theology Theology is just our talking about the revelation God has given us in scripture. It is the way we think about and involve ourselves in what it means to follow God and the story of who Jesus is. If our sense of stability is too rooted in our emotional experience, then it’s too easy for it to be taken away. Good theology lifts us out of ourselves; it reminds us that 2,000 years of Christians have been thinking along with us. The church has lived in these kinds of times before.
2. Deep Hope Born of Experience Hope is a measure of maturity and faith. It means you and I learn more and more to look past “right now.” It’s hard not to look at “right now” because it is the emphasis of our culture—we want everything right this minute. But maturity in our faith means learning to look down the road. Discipleship says: keep learning to look past this moment, keep hoping, keep praying, and keep working.
3. Living in the Face of Truth There is happy truth and there is painful truth. Most of my growing has come from my painful truths. Painful truth is looking at things we don’t want to see and learning from them.
One of the most important figures in blues music was a man named Robert Johnson. He only lived to the age of 27. He recorded only 29 songs and had a six-year career. He was a very restless man. You can almost tell the story of the Bible from the idea of “home”—being at home, losing your home, coming back, and losing it again. Humanity finds its home only by fellowship with God.
The blues are music that sings about that restlessness. Robert Johnson, born into desperate poverty in Mississippi, was a restless man who went through one relationship after another. On August 13, 1938, at a juke joint named Three Forks, he played his last gig and died shortly after. He was known as a “long-armed fellow”—a restless man who, through his music, captured the struggle of the human spirit.
Sources:
- Original Presentation: October 25, 2009 Location: Vestavia Hills Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama Biblical Text: Jeremiah 31:1-9
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