Spoiler Alert:
There are several references to Downton Abbey's new movie. If you haven't seen it and don't want to hear how it ends, you might want to see the movie first before reading today's sermon.
Equipping the Saints
(basd on
Jeremiah 31:24-37, 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5)
Have you ever been consumed by a dream of
something you’d love to have or accomplish or realize in your life, motivated
by an impulse so strong that it might seem crazy to those around you, perhaps a
little bit crazy even to yourself? For
some people, that dream may be of offering a better life for our children than
we had ourselves, so we work two jobs, sometimes at night or on weekends,
pouring our hearts into that future for our children to give them that
dream. For others, that empowering
vision may be of taking a trip to distant and exotic places, to see the immense
diversity of God’s creation, so we scrimp and save in order to travel. For some it could even be owning their own
home. For one woman I met years ago, through
a mission project our teens got involved with, that dream seemed just that – a
dream. But obtaining a home after years
of apartment dwelling with four children, owning her own home was the
experience she thought she would never have.
Thanks to hard work and a new vision of her future, an organization called
“Habitat for Humanity” helped her reach her dream and through them, we had a
small hand in making that happen for her.
What existed once only as thought, she
couldn’t begin to express all that it meant to her. Which is true for all of our dreams, once
realized. We can’t even begin to put
into words the great satisfaction, the empowering sense of accomplishment,
pride and joy that having a dream realized gives us. But it could have only remained a dream if
she hadn’t made it her destiny.
The distinction between dream and
destiny is not a matter of truth or fiction, but rather one of perception. It is one thing to talk about the future, and
another actually to invest in that future; just as it is one thing to have a
covenant with God inscribed on stone, and another to have that covenant written
on the heart. When it is inscribed on a
stone, the covenant is outside our lives.
It is external. It might be
something to achieve, but it is not necessarily something to realize within
ourselves. When that covenant is written
on our hearts however, it no longer is something external, but now it is
internal. It is part and parcel to who
we are. It is the future dream hoped for
and actualized – then and only then does it become destiny.
Jeremiah was a prophet active in
Jerusalem in the years before the city’s fall in 587-586 BC. He was a prophet especially “tuned in” to
God’s perception of how far God’s people were from the people God wanted them
to be.
Over a period of years, Jeremiah tried
to persuade a succession of kings that God wanted obedience and not political
solutions to Judah’s problems. Beginning
with King Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, Jeremiah tried to convince these kings that
what was happening around them in the political world was less important than
what was happening at home and that God wanted them to obey God’s laws and
God’s requirements for living. God
wanted them to look inward and not outward.
Looking outward was a trap. God
wanted Israel to see the things they had done to themselves to bring them to
their own destruction. But the kings
would not listen and they tried to find political solutions to Israel’s
problems and this only created more problems.
Jeremiah’s warnings fell on deaf ears.
In 587-586 BC. Babylon took advantage of Jerusalem’s inner weakness and
made a final conquest of Judah. The city
of Jerusalem was sacked, the temple was razed, and most of the people of Judah
were carried off into exile.
Jeremiah’s special prophetic anguish
came from knowing that God’s covenant with God’s people was not wrong. What was wrong, was the way God’s people had
tried (or more accurately, not tried) to keep that covenant. Jeremiah had a vision of a time when God’s
covenant would not be subject to human error: “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…I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their
hearts.”
God
will go directly to the hearts of God’s people, who then will know God as their
God.
The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah to buy a
piece of land. So, Jeremiah bought a
field in his home town, an investment in a time yet to be realized. He took a dream and made it his destiny. Jeremiah knew what the future would hold and
invested in that future as proof that God would call the people back from their
exile and renew the covenant that God had with them.
The distinction between dream and destiny is
not a matter of truth or fiction, but rather one of perception. It is one thing to talk about the future, and
another to actually invest in a future; just as it is one thing to have a
covenant inscribed on stone, and another to have that covenant written on the
heart.
Several years ago there was a series
on PBS called Downton Abbey, which just recently added a full-length feature
film about the same characters and storyline.
How many of you watched the series on TV and have seen the movie?
For those of you who have, this will
be a bit of a recap; for those of you who haven’t, this will be a brief
summary. But, if you have only seen the
series, but not the movie yet, the rest of today’s message does have a bit of a
spoiler in it. So, just a warning.
Downton Abbey is a fictional story set
in Yorkshire County centering around the lives of the Crawley family and their
hired domestics during the declining aristocracy in England from 1912 through
1926. As the new century brings with it
turmoil in the world, new industrial innovations, and a growing middle class,
the great houses of England are in decline.
Economics bring their privileged status into question and many of these
once great houses cannot survive. Lord
Grantham of Downton Abbey finds himself in much the same situation. His eldest daughter Lady Mary, as well as the
rest of his daughters, buck conventional traditions and find ways of making
their way in this new world that is changing rapidly around them. The series concentrates the storyline about
their way of life and all the drama of living in such a world.
The movie furthers the storyline, but
it also presents several scenes where I believe there are some messages (100
years later), particularly for the church about the changing world we find
ourselves in, as well. Truthfully, it
isn’t much different than the message that Jeremiah has for us, nor the message
that Paul gave to Timothy in his letter to the young leader.
I’m going to ignore the one great
divide between the rich and the poor, which unfortunately is definitely an
enormous part of Downton Abbey’s storyline, but in making some comparisons between
Downton, our scripture texts and the message it has for us, I’d prefer to concentrate
on other aspects of the story.
Historically, Downton Abbey was the center of
life for the community. The family of
Downton held festivals and parades, held fundraisers and did charitable work
for the community. Every person in the
community looked to Downton Abbey and the family living at Downton Abbey as
their benefactor through work that they provided them or through the lifting of
their spirits by holding community-wide festivals, providing money for the
hospital, leading various social groups.
As the grand houses of England slowly disappear, leaving their own communities
without such centers, the question at Downton Abbey is, how will they survive?
In the series, Lady Mary finds various ways of
diversifying their resources and coming up with new methods of earning money. But the questions remain; will that be enough?
will they survive?
In the movie, the Dowager Countess of Grantham,
Lord Grantham’s mother, tells Lady Mary, her granddaughter, in a heartfelt scene
towards the end of the move, that she is the future of Downton Abbey. That Lady Mary and her generations will find
a way to make Downton Abbey the center of the community it once was, that Lady
Mary has the spirit and the ability to make Downton Abbey viable, and that the
memory of the Dowager Countess will go on through the leadership of her
granddaughter.
The church, here in the US, is seeing the very
same situation occur. We were once the
center of our community, but we aren’t any more. We struggle financially to make it work, when
we didn’t used to have that same struggle.
We’ve had to downsize the need for staff, as the “family” has dwindled.
But the Dowager had a message for her
granddaughter much the same as Jeremiah’s message to the exiles in Babylon and
Paul’s message in Timothy. Do not make
the dream an external part of yourself, it must be internal. For Downton Abbey, that meant that the granddaughter
had to look inward to find the skills and the leadership her grandmother saw in
her and to live into that destiny, to embrace it, and bring Downton Abbey back
to its grandeur once again; probably in a completely different way, because the
old ways no longer work.
Dowager Grantham tells her granddaughter Lady
Mary that Downton Abbey is her destiny. Jeremiah
tells the exiles to invest in their future, to write that future on their
hearts. Paul tells Timothy to equip the
saints.
So, today, I tell you; this church and its
community are our responsibility. We
must be at the center of it. And we will
hand it down to the next generation, but only if we have faith in a future and
invest in that future.
Amen.
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