Two affirmations are given in the lectionary texts for today. First, people of faith look reality in the face, deny nothing, and endure. Second, they do so by a tenacious confidence in the amazing rule of God that defies the facts on the ground. People of faith, we among them, have a deep capacity to watch for the extraordinary from God and so to endure ordinary with boldness, and confidence and freedom.

I am led to this awareness by focus on the Psalm for the day, Psalm 66. (Since we have this weekend been studying the Psalms, this seems the right place to begin). The Psalm acknowledges trouble from God, the kind we know about currently:

For you, O God, have tested us;
you have tried us as silver is tried.
You have brought us into the net;
you have laid burdens on our backs;
you let people ride over our heads;
we went through fire and through water (vv. 10-12).

I thought the notion of “through fire and through water” makes a good connect to our wars and our oil spill, and all the troubles that come with them.

But before the Psalmist gets to such candor, he celebrates what he has witnessed and what he now remembers:

How awesome are your deeds!...
He is awesome in his deeds among mortals.
He turned the sea into dry land;
they passed through the river on foot…
He has kept us among the living (vv. 3, 5-6, 9).

The pattern for life is set in the Psalm:

First, remember the extraordinary goodness of God;

Second, tell the truth about the present.

And then, third, in verse 12, “Yet!”

Nevertheless!

Notwithstanding!

“Yet, you have brought us into a spacious place.” You have made us safe. For that reason (in the verses we did not read), I will remember to give thanks. I will be seen in public as one of your people. And the conclusion is:

He has not rejected my prayer
Or removed his steadfast love from me (v. 20).

We end up facing the real troubles, confident of God’s good, faithful steadfast love for us.

This is an extraordinary act of resolve and defiance. It is not, however, unusual in biblical faith. Because biblical faith is not soft, sweet romanticism. It is hard, tough truth-telling, but truth-telling in the context of God’s good love.  This is a different story from the one the world tells. The world tells us either that it is all right and you do not need to worry…or that it is a jungle out there. But people who cluster around Jesus refuse either easy romanticism or angry cynicism. The wonder of faith is to trust in the midst of the truth.

It is the same in the text from Jeremiah. The people of God are deported away from their homeland. The cheap preachers are saying that it will all return to normal in two years. But Jeremiah tells another truth. No, no return to normal, any time soon. Get used to strangeness. Get used to being an outsider. Get used to having a new home in a place that feels threatening to you. Indeed, pray for the Babylonians whom you fear, for when God gives shalom, God will give it to you with them, all of us together. The letter from Jeremiah is a summons to have faith amid the real world, to make a difference by being an agent of God’s shalom, even there.

It is the same when Paul tells his life story to his friend, Timothy. Paul tells of his hardship, of being chained like a criminal because the empire feared his Gospel news. But Paul did not give in. Indeed he writes four times of the defiant “yet” of his endurance:

If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
If we endure, we will also reign with him;
If we deny him, he will also deny us;
If we are faithless, he remains faithful…for he cannot deny himself (vv. 11-13).

As a result, Paul says to the church, “Quit quarreling. Quit quibbling fine points and get on with the task of ministry.” Because no matter how tough it is, God is reliable and will give you life.

Thus we have three witnesses:

The Psalmist with “yet.”

Jeremiah with the work of shalom.

Paul assures that God will not deny God’s own purpose.

The ground for such confidence, as we have seen in the Psalm, is that we remember the wondrous gifts of God that run beyond all our worldly possibilities. The Psalm is nearly generic about God’s awesome deeds. But the narratives are more particular.  They concern leprosy. We have to remember that in the pre-scientific days of old, leprosy was a deep threat to society; they could not control it when it reached epidemic proportions. So their strategy was to quarantine people who had it, to isolate them and exclude them from social life. The way they did that was to declare them “unclean” and impure and a danger to normal life. To have leprosy was to be banished; we practice some of the same banishments for some of the same reasons, of gays, immigrants, Muslims,  those who  are unlike us and who threaten our way of life…sometimes Blacks, sometimes women, anybody who is not a good-looking white male! Keep the world of power and control as it is!

So the story goes in the Book of Kings. There is a Syrian general, Naaman by name, who has leprosy. He risks, like General McChrystal, losing his spectacular command. He gets word of healing that is available in Israel, among those who are his perennial enemy.  He goes there because he is desperate. He comes with an impressive entourage, as would an important general. But Elisha, the quixotic “man of God,” is not impressed. He simply says to the general, “Go wash seven times in the Jordan River and you will be clean.” After some resistance, the general does so. We are told that his flesh was restored, as sweet and tender as the flesh of a young baby boy. It is a wonder! It is the power of God that reaches into unacceptable places among unacceptable people, and makes all things new. No wonder the Psalmist could say:

            How awesome are your deeds;

            He has kept us among the living!

The story of Jesus is not different. There are ten lepers on the road. They are dangerous threats to society, unclean, impure, excluded, banished. They cry out to Jesus. He stops to speak with them. He risks exposure. He moves close to their danger. He says, “Go and show yourselves to the priest.” As they went, we are told, they were healed. Jesus word healed them; he did not flinch at their danger. No wonder the Psalmist could say:

            How awesome are your deeds;

            He kept us among the living!

 So here is the word for us today. The world is filled with danger. The world is filled with threat and danger. There is so much to fear, so much we do not understand, so much that is beyond our control. And the church gathers, this odd people with a strange vocation. As Paul says, we are a people “approved as those who have no need to be ashamed.” It is not news that the world is a troubled place. But it is news that amidst such a troubled world, there are those who linger over the miracles whereby God has broken the world open to well-being, for lepers and for all those who are excluded.

            For that reason the Psalmist says,

                        Yet you have brought us to a spacious place.

            For that reason, Jeremiah can say to the deported:

                        Yet, even here, in time to come God will make this a place of shalom.

            For that reason, the Syrian general, as he was healed, can say,

                        Yet God has brought me to a new healing.

            For that reason, the one leper who came back in gratitude can say,

                        Yet the healing of God came to me, even though I am a Samaritan.

            For that reason, Paul could write,

                        Yet the word of God is not chained.

So dear people of God, as we look the world in the face, consider the bold, defiant “yet” of faith that is grounded in God’s extraordinary capacity for life. We have signed on with this news. It is the ground of our hope and of our joy. It is the ground of our ministry. The place where God has put us is indeed spacious enough, enough for joy and freedom and obedience. Even now, yet!



Walter Brueggemann
Columbia Theological Seminary
October 10, 2010
Edgewood United Church of Christ, East Lansing, Michigan