The Saturday Stoke 30
Listen to The Stoke
Today’s stoke is all about the hope of our faith.
This week I marveled at the beauty of God’s word and how it weaves together a story of rescue for his children. As I reflected on the rescue part, my spirit recoiled at the truth of our exile status. First, exiled from the Garden. Then we witness the exile of the children of Israel at the hand of Babylon. They lived as trangers in a strange land.
I reflected on how we too live as exiles. We live in the tension of engaging in our everyday lives, yet longing for our true home. How do we live in this tension?
The stories of Joseph and Daniel remind us that we can not only get by living in this tension, but we can thrive. Too often we’re presented with the option of either opposing the world in which we live, or adopting the customs and worldview. Jeremiah offered a third option when he instructed the children of Israel how to live as exiles among the Babylonians:
Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.
Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
This is our message today. Seek the peace and prosperity of the place in which we find ourselves. But why? The second part of Jeremiah’s instructions was a reminder that YHWH was coming for them. And he is coming for us.
We should not assimilate to the culture by adopting its worldview or moral standards, nor rise up against it. Instead, we seek the third way: to live in anticipation of our Beloved, seeking God with all of our hearts and souls.
Do we not cling to the hope of the return of Jesus? Are we not his pilgrim ambassadors, exiles in a foreign land pining for reunion? Can we not rise above the cultural muck and set our lives ablaze with the hope of YHWH, who is making all things new?
And yet I fear perhaps we do not live clinging to this hope. I believe we’ve allowed complacency in. Assimilation doesn’t always look like an outright rejection of God’s Way. We can fall asleep, slowly adopting the way things are, to the point where the holy fire flickers out.
But a life lived in anticipation? That’s a life on fire.
Think about the scene when young lovers part ways. The days drag on—yes, life goes on, but each moment fills up with the hope found in the wandering eyes of the lover.
When will she return? Is today that day I see him again? The days—as long and sometimes lonely as they can feel—only fuel the flame. What about you? What about me?
Does your light dim? Has it flame flickered out? Has mine?
Here’s a quick hack for kindling the flame of hope in your heart: remember to remember.
Recall today, fellow exiles, Israel’s promise to his son Judah. Judah, who will always have a king upon the throne. And one of those kings will have “eyes darker than wine.” And in him, the world will see mysterious beauty and abundance. He is the one "who will wash his garments in wine?”
Remember, dear pilgrim, Jesus with his mother in Cana. And how he conceded and submitted to her request, and intervened at the party; turning water into wine. Think of the lavishness of the gesture and the symbolic nature of it in the culture. My wife and I have been watching The Chosen with our daughters over the last two weeks. One of the episodes tells the story of this wedding feast. And shows Jesus attending with his disciples. They dance, joke, play with kids, drink wine, and eat the food. They’re celebrating!
And then the unthinkable happens. They run out of wine, which could potentially bring great shame and embarrassment to the hosting family. Up until this point in the show’s narrative, Jesus’s miracles have all been private. What does it mean when Jesus tells his mother that his time had not yet come? Well, I won’t go into the different views of this passage, but I think the show does a wonderful job showing the weight of Jesus’s decision to intercede for his mother and her friend who was the host. After this miraculous and very public sign, there was no turning back. People would know about him and it would begin a chain of events that he knew led to the cross.
The powerful scene shows Jesus standing in the room with the vats of water that have been filled to the brim. The jars of made of stone because they contained the ceremonial water. They were stone because stone is pure. Jesus walks up to the stone vats, places his hands on the opening of one and prays to his Father. He says: “I am ready Father.”
He dips his hand into the water, and pulls out a cupped hand of wine. The wine drips off of his hand, and even though he understands the gravity of the moment, you see in his face also his pure delight. He provided not only wine, but the very best wine. When they distribute the wine for another round, the host stops the party and proclaims the wonder of wine and also the lavish bounty the host bestowed on their guests.
Jesus stands in the crowd, listening. Then, the host raises his cup of wine and says, “Blessed are you Lord our God, Kind of the universe, who brings forth, the fruit of the vine.” He doesn’t realize the very God to whom he gives thanks stands among them, in the crowd. He doesn’t see the delight on Jesus’s face.
God wants to give us the bounty of heavy, the abundance of his love. It was perhaps the first time I recognized the utter beauty of Jesus’s wedding gift of heavenly wine.
“But Tim,” you say, “What does this miracle have to do with our current state as exiles? I mean, we’re all struggling with how to cope with this pandemic and fear and well, it just seems a bit to quaint don’t you thing?”
“Ah yes,” I say, “I do see how it might seem that way. But think of the wild beauty of King who came after us as a pilgrim himself. How he showed us how to delight in life even while walking to his death. Is not the very life of our Pilgrim King cause to give us hope in our everyday?”
Do you see the Pilgrim King coming for us? I see him walking the dusty path, the “blessing of Judah” himself, come to remake our hearts with the abundant beauty of his goodness and holiness. I see the Lion of Judah himself, making the old ways, new. Marking the path for reunion with water turned to wine.
And this vision of my Pilgrim King makes yearn for home! Think on it. The Lamb of God, coming to rescue us from exile. The hope of Glory! Joy everlasting! Is this not why we still gather each Sunday—these Little Easter days of Hallelujah!
If so, then how can we sit and be still? How can we complain with long faces and heavy hearts because of the calamity of our own Babylon? Where is the fire of our Hope? How can we not jump, sing, clap our hands; sing new songs; and speak to one another in spiritual songs? Where is the constant Hallelujah of our lives?
We are the Burning Ones, my fellow exiles! On fire with the hope of another place, of a Pilgrim King who is coming for us on the wings of heaven, his own burning with the flames of reunion.
Stay stoked my friends!
