Bind up, Build up, Release and Restore

Don Friesen
December 11, 2005
Ottawa Mennonite Church

www.ottawamennonite.ca

Mennonite Disaster Service and many other organizations expert in responding to disasters have been hard at work in Louisiana cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina. The job is formidable! Homes destroyed; people displaced; health conditions questionable. It's a challenging task, even with the best of equipment and in a country with vast resources to apply to the task.

A similar challenge faced another city, two and a half millennia ago. The Israelite exiles were let go in 538 B.C., when the Persians conquered the Babylonians. The exiles returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the city, but the reconstruction was slow and labourious, and sixty or seventy years after arriving in the city very little progress had been made. The returned exiles were familiar with Isaiah's prophecies about how they would go back and put the city and the temple back together and everything was going to be wonderful — but — when they got there the enormity of the task hit them! Jerusalem was a mess! The Babylonians had basically bulldozed the place. Meanwhile other peoples had moved into the surrounding countryside and a generation or two later weren't exactly glad to see the returnees.

Jerusalem was a heap of rubble! A huge heap of rubble, covering several square kilometres. One of the few recognizable bits of rubble was the main altar that had once stood inside the temple. How do you turn a rubbish heap into a city, in an atmosphere of animosity? The initial excitement of returning home soon dissipated, and after a decade or so the Israelites were a very dispirited people, living in makeshift accommodations, among the ruins of a devastated city, greeted daily by hostility. They mourned for what they had lost but felt too weak to face the task of restoring what was lost. Their lagging spirits are reflected in our reading from Isaiah, which talks about "the oppressed, ...the brokenhearted, ...the captives, and the prisoners...." It talks about those "who mourn" (mentioned twice more in verse 3), who feel like they're up to their necks in "ashes," with nothing but a "faint spirit" to motivate them. And these same people, says Isaiah, "shall build up the ancient ruins, ...raise up the former devastations; (and) ...repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations." (Isaiah 61:1-4) Really?!? It seemed like an impossible situation, the former exiles caught between a rock and a hard place, trapped in a cul-de-sac, as it were, with no way out.

The Cul-de-sacs of Life

My parents held an auction sale just before my father died, and one of the family items on the auction block was a 1970 Ford Meteor car. It was one of those huge, lumbering cars — a gas guzzler — and at the time of the auction sale it was already 27 years old! Not only that, but the car's reverse gear no longer worked. This car could not back up! I was amazed that my father would bother selling this car and even more amazed to find a number of people bidding on it! Now, a car that can't back up is not necessarily a problem in Saskatchewan. Not only is there a lot of space to turn around, and fewer and fewer people to get in the way, but prairie people are forward-looking people and rarely second-guess themselves. However, if I had bought the car and brought it back to Ottawa — something Dorothy advised against — it would not have been long before I would have found myself up a cul-de-sac without a reverse paddle!

I imagine the returned exiles felt the same way. They couldn't very well go back to Babylon and say, Uh, excuse me, could we be exiles again? After several decades, however, the situation showed no noticeable improvement. It was nice to be home, but living in a rubble heap wears a bit thin after a while. Of course, it wasn't the first cul-de-sac the Israelites had faced. Centuries earlier they had suffered under Egyptian captivity. Then too they yearned to be let go, and after a number of devastating plagues and other unspeakable disasters the Pharaoh finally let them go — but then had second thoughts! The Pharaoh's army caught the Israelites in a military general's dream situation, the Hebrews caught in a cul-de-sac, their backs against the Red Sea!

From time to time we find ourselves in spiritual and relational cul-de-sacs, situations which seem to offer no means of retreat. One can get hopelessly lost in pursuit of meaning, wandering all over the place, in and out of one spiritual cul-de-sac after another, until we become bogged down, exhausted, and ready to give up. The end of a marriage may feel like a cul-de-sac, offering few avenues forward. The loss of employment, especially if one is past one's prime working years, can feel like a cul-de-sac. We may feel trapped by the onset of an illness from which recovery seems un-likely, or shackled by poor choices we've made. A friend recently told me of a pastor she knew who is suffering from depression. The congregation gave him some time off, but then fell in love with the person temporarily replacing him, which, I imagine, would do very little to lift his depression.

I recently read the story of William Cowper (1731-1800), an 18th century English poet who suffered severe bouts of depression. At the age of thirty-two Cowper tried to end his life by taking poison, but the poison failed to have the desired effect. He then hired a horse drawn cab to take him to the River Thames, where he planned to jump off a certain bridge, but it was one of the foggiest nights in the London, and as the cab went round in circles Cowper got so frustrated that he decided to walk there himself! He failed to find the bridge, so he went home. He tried to use a knife, but the knife broke! His actions would be comical were they not so tragic. Cowper made other attempts at taking his life — and life was never easy for him — but at the encouragement of a friend (Mary Unwin), he began to write. Some of his writings express his spiritual torment ("The Castaway," 1799), while others are humourous ("The Diverting History of John Gilpin," 1783), but he also wrote some hymns. One day, inspired by the epistle to the Romans, in which he found reassurance of forgiveness, he wrote a hymn entitled, "God Moves in a Mysterious Way" (1774), which contains some beautiful lines:

"Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense.
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face."