The high priest, Hilkiah, comes to
the secretary, Staphan, with a message: I have found the Instruction scroll in
the Lord’s temple!” (2 Kings 22:8). This might seem like a very little thing,
but it is one of the earliest accounts we have of people following written
scripture. Apparently, the Bible—as it existed in those days—was hanging out
somewhere in the temple for Hilkiah to find. What this scripture is we don’t
know exactly, though best guesses suggest something like the 12th-26th
chapters of Deuteronomy, since the reforms that Josiah institutes are limited
to that section of what became Deuteronomy.
Josiah must have realized that he
had only part of the law. He had to have known he was dealing with partial
information, but he also had to start somewhere. He understood that it’s often
better to do something with little information than to do nothing until you
have a fuller picture. He took the next step. And today I want to talk about
what that looks like for us on the day we celebrate and give thanks for the
harvest of 2019.
I was pleased to find that the commentary
on Working Preacher for the scripture of the week was by Mark Throntveit.[1]
Dr. Throntveit was the seminary professor who preached at my ordination, and at
that ordination service (eight years ago this month), he talked about the lamps
that burned in ancient times, citing Psalm 109:105, “Your word is a lamp unto
my feet and a light unto my path.” We have a pretty modern image of lamps,
something with a halogen or LED bulb, i.e. something awfully bright. The
headlamp that I wore while hiking for a month had something like 325 lumens,
which was enough to light my way for thirty feet without much difficulty. But
the lamps they were using in the ancient world were lit by candles. Their lamps
weren’t anything like the lamps we use today, not even like the kerosene lamps
used for generations before us.
Dr. Throntveit was making the point
that “Your word is a lamp unto my feet” only means that God’s word gives us
enough light to get us to our next step. We can’t see even three steps ahead,
just one. We have only a little light, which means we only ever see a very
small part of the picture. We might imagine that what we see is all there is,
but it’s really only a little view, hardly anything in the scheme of things. If
we overanalyze and overexert ourselves, fixating on every detail about the
little that we see right now, then it’s easy to forget what is anchoring us.
This is especially important to remember when the harvest
is bad, and the prices are bad, and the future looks uncertain. Fixated as you
may be by the despair of financial loss, it is easy to imagine that everything
is a disaster. We all have a baseline, and when reality does not meet our
baseline expectation, we slip into a familiar narrative of success and failures.
The story we tell about ourselves becomes monotone, we see only the rough
patch, since it is a little lamp that guides us after all, and our hope can go
with it if our hope is only ever based on the small patch of reality in which
we currently live.
This is what happens when we get anxious, when we are
stressed, and when we are depressed. We assume our little lamps are showing us
the big picture, when they aren’t and they can’t. It is particularly easy to
slip into this dark place when the image of yourself that you hold is defined by
a single thing. You are farmer. You need to know: You are more than that.
Whatever your work is, you are more than that. No matter what you do in life,
you will make as much of a difference through your relationships with other
people as you will by the labor you provide. I don’t care what work you do. You
are more than your work, because your work will end.
I’ve discovered in many ways that
pastors and farmers are similar, but maybe no more similar than in the way we
define ourselves exclusively by our work. There’s a saying that pastors never
retire, they just die, which might resemble some farmers you know as well. Of
course, there’s nothing wrong with being passionate about what you do, but on
this harvest festival we should remember that whatever we are we are as a gift,
and we are more varied than we give ourselves credit.
God’s chosen people in the Old Testament discover this,
because they are quite often a people without a land. From slavery in Egypt to the
captivity in Babylon, the people, had no land to work, not even a safe place to
live. The people wondered how to define themselves any longer. The writers of
the Psalms were agrarian people often crying out over the loss of their land!
If you are afraid, turn to the Psalms! They exist for you!
God’s people learned to live into a
future that was different from their expectations. And it was hard. And there
was a lot of cursing and screaming at God. Once you’re done reading the Psalms,
read Lamentations, then read Jeremiah. God’s people learned to let their
displeasure with God be known, because the alternative was to resign themselves
and lose hope. You can’t be upset with God and lose faith in hope at the same
time; these are mutually exclusive. To be upset with God is to retain hope for
something better. What we need most desperately is hope.
Returning to the reading from 2
Kings, you should know that Josiah’s reforms didn’t end well. It was only a
couple generations later that the people lost their land to the conquering
Babylonian empire. They became a landless people, displaced refugees, like the 65
million displaced peoples in the world today. Approximately a quarter of these
are farmers by trade—16 million people who not only can’t work on the land,
they have lost their homeland entirety.
On the one hand, that’s terrible, but it’s also a reminder that
our present circumstances are not without parallel. In fact, even those of us
struggling with crushing debts have more than we know. For the Jewish people in
exile, it was understandably hard to find hope, but there’s something about
losing everything that reminds us what is truly important. In exile, the people
discovered a spark. It wasn’t much—call it a candle, a very meager lamp—a hope
that they could only see dimly. Hold your hope like that candle. It doesn’t
need to be bright, some days it might feel gloomy, but hold on to that hope in
all things, not because God promises you everything you desire, but because, as
we approach Christmas, we are reminded that God provides the one thing we
actually need.
It feels particularly appropriate to
have Harvest Festival on this Sunday preceding Advent, because our hope lies
ahead of us. The Christmas season is a time of little lights on dark paths. You
can only see a single step in front of you, but the whole picture was never
yours to see. As Madeleine l’Engle reminds us, “We point have point of view,
but God has view.” So, it can be hard to see that you are more than your
present difficulties, you are more than your work, and you are more even than
your relationships. If you see only one way—only one path—it is only a sign
that you aren’t seeing all the possibilities God has in store. There are plenty
of ways forward. You are more than the one-dimension you see.
On Harvest Festival we remember that
we are more together as well. We are blessed with gifts even on years we
consider lean. We might not see where it’s all heading since our path is lit
only by that dull lamp, but together we are more. You are more. And God is
providing more, even when it doesn’t meet our expectations. Hold on in hope.
Hold on to your hope. Hold it like that candle, seeing little but hoping for
much, and know that God holds you underneath it all, even if you cannot see it.
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