Well, I’m a lectionary preacher and I usually don’t wiggle away from it too much.  But when I read this passage, especially Jeremiah, I thought, oh gee.  I’m going into a church I’ve never been in before just to substitute for a friend who is not here today and the passage is Jeremiah sitting in the rubble. You know you’re going to be challenged when the verse starts — by God — “What did I do that you would forsake me?  My people have changed good for something that doesn’t profit.  They should be appalled, they should be shocked, and utterly desolate.”

Well Jeremiah is sitting in a doom that you and I could hardly appreciate.  There are some things lately that bump up against it: September 11th, Chilean miners who are so far under ground for the next four months, Haiti, Pakistan, and today is the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

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You know the little song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy?”  I like that song.  Especially when it is with a little Jamaican sound and a little Jimmy Buffet overtone to it.  Don’t Worry Be Happy.  It’s a cute little song, but it is something that is very difficult to do.  Happiness, I think, is such an elusive goal for most of us.  Thomas Jefferson said that we have the right to pursue it, but he never said we would catch up to it.  Those who know us best — psychologists and consumer market consultants — say it is the most powerful motivator there is.

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There is a story from the Zen Buddhist tradition about the disciple who thought he could enhance his chances of enlightenment by seeking out on his own.  So he bid farewell to his brothers in the monastery, he took the ferry across the river and went up into a cave high in the mountains and stayed all by himself.  There he meditated for twenty five years non-stop. At the end of the time he emerged from the cave.  He stretched his arms above his head as if he were just awakening from a long night’s sleep.  He made his way down to the river, and without even testing the water he started walking across the river toward the monastery that he had left over a quarter of a century ago. 

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The lesson this morning is rife with possible titles.  I first thought it should be named “How Do Your Figs Grow?”  Then thought better of that.  How many figs grow in Texas, after all?  Mesquite, perhaps, but figs?  Not so much.  The topic could of course be “Are We Just Using Up Soil?”  And I have about a thousand other titles, but as you may have noticed I settled on “A Last Sermon, Kinda.”  I know this one makes as much sense to me as it likely does to you, but hear me out please. 

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She thought for a moment and she said, “Well Thursday is my Sabbath.”

The rest of us kind of looked at each other. “You mean that’s your day off?”

“No, Thursday is my Sabbath.  Saturday is my day off.  Thursday is the day that I devote to worship and to reflection on the love of God.”

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So what are Moses and God in such foul mood about in our Scripture reading?  The place was Israel, almost 2,700 years ago.  A long time.  But see if at least some of it doesn’t sound familiar to us.  The nation has enjoyed forty years of peace and prosperity, largely because the Assyrian Empire has problems of its own to deal with. Without hot or cold wars to fight the nation now has used the lull in hostilities to grow strong.  And with no one watching, Israel has managed to reach out and reclaim some of the lands that they had lost to their neighbors and then they would give this land away to the rich rulers.  So the rich have gotten richer, and the poor have gotten poorer.

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“As Gregor Samsa awoke early one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself being transformed into a giant insect.”

Thus, that is the opening of one of the most familiar opening lines in modern literature.  Some of you may have recognized it as the opening line in Franz Kafka’s great story The Metamorphosis.  Kafka was writing in the early twentieth century in Europe, living in Prague.  He wrote stories about people struggling with affliction and alienation and existential experience.  It is a shocking and bizzare story.  Here is a guy who is sort of a middle-of-the-road person — he is a salesman — and one morning he wakes up in his bed and he is somehow physically being transformed into this insect.  Because of his condition there is change, there is transformation that starts to occur.  And as a result of the transformation it creates fear and uncertainty, especially on the part of his family.

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“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

“America is more than a place to hang your hat.  It represents a value system most of believe in very strongly.  That value system has to do with the worth of human beings, wherever they are.  We believe that lives are worth saving,” – John Danforth, Episcopal clergy and former Senator of the United States Senate.

Some people ask me from time to time, “How are you going to celebrate the fourth?”  And one of the things I often state back is, “By reading the Declaration of Independence again.” 

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. . . Freedom is an essential part of the Judeo-Christian faith.  It is part of Israel’s great remembrance of the Exodus, which was to freedom.  Paul talks a lot about freedom in his writings, especially in Romans.  So we would ask the question quite naturally, “What makes us free?”  There are probably some Biblical scholars here this morning who would say, “Well, you look in John 8 where it says, ‘the truth will make you free.’”  But then we could also start asking, “Well, what do you mean by truth?”  “Well, I mean Jesus Christ!”  “Well, then, what about Jesus Christ?”  And now we’re back to the story about acquisition and renunciation that brings freedom to a situation.  Freedom is a large concept.

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One of my favorite Charles Shultz “Peanuts” comic strips reminds me of one of my own childhood trips, and how swiftly childhood passes away.  Picture, if you will, Charlie Brown sitting under a tree and he’s talking with Peppermint Patty, and she asks him, “What do you think ’security’ is, Chuck?”  His answer is, “Security is sleeping in the back seat of the car when you’re a little kid and you’ve been somewhere with your mom and dad and its night and you’re riding home in the car asleep and you don’t have to worry about anything.  Mom and Dad are in the front seat and they’re taking care of everything and they’re worrying abut everything.”  To which Peppermint Patty responds, “Wow, that’s really neat!” 

But then Chuck says, “But it doesn’t last.  Suddenly you’re grown up and it can never be the same again.  Suddenly it’s over and you’ll never get to sleep in the back seat again!”

Peppermint Patty says, “Never?” 

“Never,” says Chuck, “absolutely never.”

To which she replies, “Hold my hand Chuck.”

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A woman was bitten by a dog that they suspected of having rabies.  And she was rushed to the hospital and left in a room to wait to hear the results of the autopsy of the dog.  Only then would she know for certain whether she had the possibility of having rabies.  An intern who was on duty saw her sitting in the room by herself and so he went in to comfort her and console her and he began to tell her what could happen and she wanted to know more and more.  Well, toward the end of the visit he realized he probably said more than he should have because she was visibly shaken.  And later when he came in to look on her she was sitting on the side of the bed and writing occasionally something and then looking off into space and then writing some more, so he decided he should go back in and see what he could do to help.  He went in and he asked her, he said, “Are you writing your last will and testament or a letter to your family?”  And she said, “Oh no, no,” she said, “just in the event that I have been infected, I am making a list of the people that I want to bite before I die.”

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This morning I wanted to preach for you a very powerful sermon on motivation, but somehow I just couldn’t get up for it.  You know how it is.  Actually though, motivation is one of the hottest topics that is being discussed in our world.  There are many voices in this discussion that range from Maslow’s charting the hierarchy of human needs, to Ayn Rand answering the question with one word: selfishness.  (By the way she makes a pretty powerful case using human history and the first book of the Bible that we call Genesis.)  Motivation is the force that propels the flow of life.  It is the stimulus to action.  Much like the Big Bang, motivation pushes and it expands and it creates.

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A teacher of a fourth grade Sunday school class was leading a discussion on the doctrine of the trinity, and all was going fairly well.  One little girl did a nice job talking about God, and a little boy talked a great deal about Jesus, and then there was an awkward silence, a long pause, nothing was said, until finally one of the little girls explained to the teacher what was happening.  She said, “Teacher, the boy who believes in the Holy Spirit is absent today.”  If there’s any criticism directed toward Presbyterians it is sometimes Presbyterians are absent when you talk about the Holy Spirit.

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