Like A Motherless Child

"Like A Motherless Child"
Ezekiel 34:11-17

Some times I feel like a motherless child
Some times I feel like a motherless child
Some times I feel like a motherless child
Long way from home
Long way from home

The words and the music of the spiritual describes well the scattering and shattering experiences of being in exile—of being lost in place that is not your own.  Maybe some of you saw the recent movie, Gravity staring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.  During a walk in space, she becomes untethered from the main ship and is floating away in space.  One moment she is OK, held on by the safety strap, the next she is flying away, tumbling in space, away from the ship.  One moment secure, the next she is helplessly floating away from that security.  Rescue improbable, if not impossible.

Imagine what that would feel like.  Imagine what it would be like to suddenly snap free from everything that at one time was your security.  Imagine what it would be like to be holding your end of the rope and suddenly feel the other end go slack.  Imagine the fit of panic, quickly pulling in the rope to see for yourself there is nothing on the other end.  Or like this deep sea diver:

If you can imagine that, you know what it means to be scattered.  You know what it means to be in exile.  You know what it means to be in ancient Israel.  The circumstances may be different, but the feelings are the same.  The Israelites had been taken over by the invading Babylonian army.  The Israel countryside totally sacked through a pillage and burn policy of the enemy.  Separated from family and friends, not knowing if they are dead or alive.  Anything of cultural or religious value stolen or destroyed.

On a more basic level, there is the loss of the familiar, such as a daily routine.  We can imagine, for example, that one person as they are being marched away in chains, must have wondered, “But who is going to take out the garbage—today is garbage day,” without realizing it doesn’t matter anymore.  It’s not that they are concerned with the garbage; it’s more the loss of the routine.

Add to all that the uncertainty that the enslaved Israelites faced, not knowing what their future held.  In freedom, in their past lives, they may not have known what the future held either, but at least they felt like they had some control, some say, as to what would happen the next day, the next week.

El Cordobes, the famous matador, who when asked if he was afraid of death in the ring with the bull, said, “No.  Only life scares me.”  That is what being in exile does to a person.  Life scares you.  The parts of life, like:  Dislocation.  Rootlessness.  Hopelessness.

Some times I feel like I’m almost gone
Some times I feel like I’m almost gone
Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone
Long way from home
Long way from home

What about people like me and you who have never been routed by a conquering army, never been dragged kicking and screaming from everything and everybody who provided our stability?  Even though we have never gone through that particular devastation, I think, nonetheless, we do have experiences that throw us into emotional exile.  They are scattering experiences that hit us on two fronts, each of which is singly capable of pulling the rug out from under our stable lives.

One front on which we are attacked is our need for continuity.  We are a church and we are a community that highly prizes our historical continuity.  We are proud of our history.  We know from where we have come, and how we got to where we are.  We use that tide of historical forces to create the wave and the momentum to ride upon into the future.

But what happens when we thought the wave we were on was the big one, and we would ride it all the way to the shore of our destiny, but it turns out to be a little one that quickly blends itself back into the vast ocean and we sink, way short of our goal?  Something has happened.  Something has changed.

Change has a way of scattering us from our sense of continuity, and what is lost is the vision and the hope for this fulfillment of our dreams.  As one philosopher-humorist once pointed out, “We’re all in favor of progress provided we can have it without change.”

We base our lives on some kind of values, and assumptions.  With those values and assumptions, we create a role for ourselves.  What happens is that there are times in our lives that a change takes place, and those values and assumptions are challenged.  The crisis is so severe that it forces us to reevaluate and redefine our roles.  The humorist Sam Leveson once said, “I set out in life to find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Now I’m eighty and all I’ve got is this pot” (pointing to his stomach).

At some point comes the loss of youth, youthful dreams, and our “some day” aspirations.  All the magic hopes that all our dreams will come true must go through the scattering experience of change.  It has been said that if our dreams do not come true we can take consolation that neither do our nightmares.  But change can be a living nightmare, a process that must be lived through, and you don’t know if you are going to be able to escape from all the monsters along the way.

The book, Dear Deedee,is the published diary of Dori Schaffer.  She was a beauty queen, a prize-winning artist, a writer, a Phi Beta Kappa scholar, a Woodrow Wilson fellow, and a promising doctoral candidate.  She was riding an amazing wave to high aspirations.  Then, through a variety of bitter experiences, her wave played itself out beneath her feet.  At one point, she wrote:

I compare myself to Ivan (in Doestoevesky’s The Death of Ivan Ilych) where he is tormented by the feeling that his life was not worthwhile.  His mental sufferings were due to the fact that at night…the question suddenly occurred to him:  What if my whole life has really been wrong?

When that question is asked, imagine what happens.  The past that provided one’s sense of continuity is suddenly dislodged and made irrelevant.  With the past debunked, the future suddenly disappears into a fog of fear and meaningless.  Suddenly there is only the here and now.  Only the here and now is real, and what is here and now hurts with a distinct sharpness.  Life becomes a bow whose string is broken and from which no arrow can fly.

There was once a businessman who noticed one of his friends walking downtown wearing a band around his arm with the initials, “B-A-I-K.”  As they stopped at the same corner, waiting for the light, the businessman asked his friend what the letters stood for.
“Boy Am I Konfused,” replied the man.
“But, you don’t spell confused with a K,” protested the businessman.
“Hey,” the man replied.  “You don’t know how Konfused I am!”

When our lives have been fixed on some track of continuity, and something derails us, everything becomes fluid.  For a while, nothing stays the same or permanent.  With great change comes many aftershocks of change.  Life is now a collage with many different pieces, rather than a flowing unity of brush strokes.

God is searching for those kinds of people who have been scattered by change.  He is looking for people who have lost their dreams.  God wants to give them a place of rest where they can dream again.  God is delivering them to a place and a perspective where they can see that past and present have been meaningful, and thereby gaze again with anticipation into the future.

One of my seminary professors told me about the time he had gone through a deep depression.  For a couple of years his life was a sucking whirlpool.  The farther he was pulled in the faster it seemed to make him spin.  Dreams had been very important to him, and had kept a journal of his dreams.  One recurring dream was about a foundation being built.  Then a carpenter began putting up studding.  Now and then the man saw himself helping the carpenter who was doing most of the work.

When my seminary professor shared the dream with a therapist, the therapist asked him if he knew any carpenters.  The professor said he didn’t.  “Wasn’t Jesus a carpenter?” asked the therapist.  “Isn’t he rebuilding your life right now, piece by piece?”

In a way God knew he could get the professors attention, he was telling him, “I have found you; renew your hope.”  And in ways that God knows He can individually get our attention, He will find us and speak to us, and to our feelings of hopelessness brought on by some change.

Some times I feel like I been runnin’ too long
Some times I feel like I been runnin’ too long
Some times I feel like I been runnin’ too long
Long way from home,
Long way from home.

The other side of the coin to our need for continuity is a need for permanence.  There needs to be something or someone that we are sure will be with us no matter what.

Stopped by a policeman for driving with a tail light out, the driver became quite distressed.  “Don’t take it so hard,” consoled the policeman.  “It’s not a ticket.”
“That’s not the point,” replied the troubled driver.  “What worries me is what’s happened to my wife and my trailer!”

When we lose those things in our lives that give us a sense of permanence, we find ourselves suddenly scattered and exiled.  Psychologists have found that most people depend on some other person or on an external goal to constantly reassure themselves that they are of value.  When that significant other, or that dominant goal is lost, we ache, we feel empty, and abandoned.  The dark and fast moving clouds of meaninglessness and the feeling of being unnecessary begin to roll in and block our blue skies.  Self-esteem can be shattered.

Who we thought, or what we thought we would always have to hold on to—that which we thought would always be our lifeline—may be gone.

As he aged, James Moore, owner of Dinty Moore’s restaurant in New York City, badly missed two of his departed cronies.  One quiet afternoon, the absence got intolerable.  The old man fixed up two packages wrapped in butcher paper and tied them with string, climbed into his chauffeur driven Packard, and went to Woodlawn Cemetery.

At the mausoleum of his friend Sam Harris, the theatrical producer, Moore placed a beautiful hunk of corned beef and reminded him aloud how inconsiderate he had been to die young.  By the time Moore had marched over to the mausoleum of George M. Cohan, he was steaming mad.  The other parcel was a fish, which he beat against the mausoleum door.  “Cohan!” Moore shouted.  “In case you don’t know, today’s Friday, and I just wanted you to see what you’re missing!”  And with that, the old man slid to the floor and wept.

This is the work of grief, when it creates its aching distance between ourselves and that which we wanted to hold on to as solid ground.  How do we go on with life without the significant other?  How do we rebuild our lives without some external and captivating goal?

In Charles Dicken’s, A Tale of Two Cities, a prisoner in the Bastille lived in a cell for many years and cobbled shoes.  He became so used to the narrow walls, the darkness, and the monotony, that when finally liberated, he went straight home and built, in the center of his home, a cell.  On days when the skies were clear and birds were singing, the tap tap tap of the cobbler’s hammer could still be heard coming from his own dark cell.  Grief has a way of imprisoning us and keeping us that way.

God is looking for such grief-trapped people.  He is searching for them personally—those who have been scattered and exiled into cells of loneliness.  When God finds such people, He wants to lead them out of the cell by their hands and open up before them a wide and comfortable place where they can roam and grow and feed on all that God can provide.  God is coming with the message that even though all else may tumble down around you, He is permanent, and will always be so for those whom he loves.  God is searching for, and finding, and caring for, and delivering those who “were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day.”

Some day the Lord’s gonna find this child
Some day the Lord’s gonna find this child
Some day the Lord’s gonna find this child
Lord, take me home
Lord, take me home