Those who have planned our observance of Black History Month this year selected the theme, "New Currents, Ancient Rivers". Many of you will recognize that the words, "Ancient Rivers" are drawn from a well-known poem by Langston Hughes.
The phrase "New Currents, Ancient Rivers" suggests to me that while we are celebrating history and heritage, we also need to be sensitive to the issues that are still around and have never gone away. Certain issues, certain concerns may be expressing themselves in new ways, but they are really the same old issues, the same old concerns. They may be new currents, but they flow out of ancient rivers.
More than that, I recognized that in the Bible, certain rivers figure into the history of salvation. Significant things happened in association with certain rivers. In the Bible, there are key incidents happening "down by the riverside". And so I’ve tried to bring these elements together -- Black History Month, the theme ’’New Currents, Ancient Rivers", the notion that old problems are still with us, and the Biblical image of the river -- I’ve tried to bring all of these elements together for today and for the other Sundays this month when I am to preach.
Three rivers in the Scriptures suggested themselves to me. Each has its own special relevance, as you will discover. Today, the River Euphrates, that great river that forms a part of the fertile crescent, what has been called the "Cradle of Civilization"; two weeks from today, the River Jordan, crossed in a day of adventure by Joshua and entered in a day of· new venture by Jesus; and three weeks from today, the River Nile, nourished by the heart of Africa and providing both the location of oppression and the source from which God would draw a rescuer named Moses.
Three rivers, three sets of issues; but three times when the grace of God poured out like an ever-flowing stream.
Now there is always something awkward about my involvement as a preacher in Black History Month. It may feel uncomfortable for me to be the one addressing certain matters. I do not share that history. All I can say is that I am trying to be sensitive to what you may feel, and that I cannot compromise my responsibility to share God’s word. But if at any time something l may say or do hurts you, makes you feel wounded, I hope you’ll just come to me personally about it. I do want to hear and I do want to respond.
Today, then, will you hear these lines from the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, and following them a reading from the 13th chapter of the prophecy of Jeremiah:
I’ve known rivers;
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers; Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes has begun, "I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young." The great river Euphrates is mentioned frequently in the Bible. It is named in Genesis as one of the rivers of Eden. It is cited in the First Book of Kings as the extent of Solomon’s empire. And the strangest mention of all comes in the prophecy of Jeremiah, because the Lord tells Jeremiah to travel all the way up to the river Euphrates, in what today is the nation of Iraq, and to act out a message. The eloquent prophet Jeremiah, who can certainly preach with words, is now also to act out a parable. He goes to the river Euphrates and teaches us something powerful:
Jeremiah 13: 1-11
Let me summarize this incident for you. Jeremiah is first told to go and buy a new linen cloth •• the translation we are using calls it a loincloth, others call it a girdle or a sash. It was an article of clothing worn around the waist and hips. It was a belt, but a whole lot more than a belt. This sash, or loincloth, was something a man in Biblical times could use to dress up his otherwise drab costume. And, to a degree, it could become a badge, it could be a status symbol.
I guess it might be a little like a necktie is today. Neckties are the most useless articles of clothing you can imagine. You don’t need one to hold your shirt together. You don’t have to have one in order to protect your privacy. Why do we wear neckties? Well, they do brighten up our otherwise drab appearance -- honestly, gentlemen, what are we doing in all this black and dark brown, while our wives and daughters wear every color under the rainbow? Neckties are the only chance we men have to shine; and did you know this? Neckties make a statement! Anybody here still have a yellow tie with polka dots all over it? Well, that made a statement a few years ago. It was supposed to be a power tie. Today, I think you are supposed to have a handpainted thing with twists and swirls on it? It is a fashion that makes a statement. Some might call it a foolish fashion, but it makes a statement.
All right. Here is Jeremiah, and he is to walk the streets of Jerusalem with this new linen sash around his middle. The fact that it was to be linen is significant. Only the elite -- the priests and the nobility -- would wear fine linen. So here is Jeremiah, seeming to posture and to flaunt his fine foolish fashion around the city.
But then God says, Jeremiah, take this new linen sash all the way up to the river Euphrates, some 600, 700 miles away, and hide it in the cleft of the rock above the river. And so that is what Jeremiah did; he took his new, expensive linen sash and dug a little cave above the river Euphrates and left it there.
That is, he left it there until he heard the Lord’s command again, after a number of days: "Go back to the Euphrates, dig up your beautiful sash, and let’s see what it looks like.” And, to nobody’s particular surprise, the loincloth was now completely ruined, good for nothing. Jeremiah’s foolish fashion shrank. That’s always true: "foolish fashions shrink". They won’t last.
So what is the message? "I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young"? What does the parable mean?
You’ll need to stay with me carefully now and see how I use the Scriptures. What I am about to do will not be particularly easy, but I think you’ll find it fascinating and profitable if you’ll work with me.
I
First, Jeremiah will teach us that the basic issue for everybody is how to balance pride and shame. The essential spiritual issue for every human being, no matter what their race, no matter what their history, is how to deal with being a proud person on the one hand and with being a shame-filled person on the other hand.
The first time the river Euphrates is mentioned in the Scriptures it is identified as one of the rivers of the Garden of Eden. And Genesis tells us in its story of the creation and fall of the human race that next to this river and in this garden there was something called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now we could get all twisted and tangled this morning in how you read the Biblical material in Genesis. I simply want to zero in on this. The story of the creation and fall, the story in Genesis that points us to some tree of the knowledge of good and evil planted by the river Euphrates – this story is intended to remind us that every one of us has a basic human problem: we want to be like God. We want to be in God’s place. We want to be in charge. We want to make our own decisions about what is right and what is wrong, we want to decide for ourselves about good and evil. That’s pride. That’s trying to get ourselves into God’s place.
The first time the river Euphrates is mentioned in the Bible, it reminds us that we are pride-filled creatures, but it also says that we are ashamed of ourselves. You remember how when the man and the woman of Eden ate of that forbidden fruit, they made clothes for themselves, because they were ashamed?
And so when Jeremiah goes to the river Euphrates with this gaudy sash of his, this garment of pride, and hides it away, only to see it ruined, it reminds us that every person and every nation have a problem balancing their pride and their shame. Whether we be African-American or Caucasian; whether we be Hispanic or Oriental; whether we be young or old, male or female, whatever we are and whatever history we
have lived, it all begins in the same place and it all takes on the same character. When one person oppresses another, it is the overblown pride that thinks it knows better than God. And whenever someone is plagued by the low self-esteem, the shame, that comes out of racism, it’s just the other side of the basic human problem. We are sinners, all of us!
Our basic problem is that we are at one and the same time too proud of ourselves and too ashamed of ourselves. And that is true of all peoples, all races. What a foolish fashion we wear, every one of us!
II
But now when the prophet Jeremiah goes to the river Euphrates and buries his garment, stashes his sash, there is another ’lesson. There is something else I believe he is acting out. He is teaching us that a people will not get anywhere by obsessing on their history, by dwelling on the broken promises and failed hopes of the past. He is telling us that our disappointments do not need to keep us from being whatever God wants us to be today.
What do I base this on? You discover by reading a little farther in Genesis that the Euphrates River was the northern boundary of the land which God promised to His people Israel. They believed that this land where Jeremiah had gone was rightfully theirs, although it had not been theirs at all for many years.
And if you read in the First Book of Kings, you discover that under King Solomon, the empire of Israel actually did reach as far as the river Euphrates, at least for a little while. But they had lost it. They couldn’t keep it. Others had snatched away their conquests, and it had been a long time indeed since their empire had stretched those hundreds of miles up to the Euphrates.
And so now here is Jeremiah, carrying and burying a proud and fashionable garment back on the banks of the Euphrates, but there it spoils. There it is ruined. That says to me that however disappointing the past may have been; however unfair and unjust the power of an oppressive system may have been, a great people cannot afford to obsess on their history and use it as an excuse. We cannot dwell on the mistakes of the past and use them to keep us from going forward.
Friends, today we do understand that there are historical reasons for many of the problems facing the African-American community, just as there are historical reasons for the unique issues in other racial groups as well. But as I watch Jeremiah bury his proud garment on the banks of the river Euphrates, I hear him pleading with us, "Let’s not use that history as an excuse. Let’s not dwell on the stolen legacy with such passion that we fail to work at creating a vital present. You see, if you make excuses for yourself every time you fail to achieve something, and assume that it’s always discrimination, it’s always prejudice, then you are adding to the humiliations of the past. If you stay behind where God has called you to be and do nothing but blame racism, then you are only compounding the problem. In Black History Month, it is important to celebrate the achievements of a stolen legacy. And it is important to call attention to the terrors of oppression. I would not for one moment deny that.
But God says, "Let’ s bury the foolish fashions of the past. * Let’s live in the present reality. Live in the real world. And get on past the disappointments in your history.
Now in saying that I am not asking you to let American society off the hook. I am not suggesting that any of us sweep the ugliness of racism under the rug. Most certainly I am not suggesting that we stop uprooting the deeply tangled web of racism wherever it has persisted. But I am suggesting that the strategy for today is to work past that history, to work through that history, and to let God do what He says He wants to do: "to make a people, a name, a praise, and a glory."
Foolish fashions shrink; well might they, when they are nothing more than an obsession with the past and a paralysis in the present.
III
But there is something more. "I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young." Not only does the river Euphrates, mentioned in Genesis, represent the problem of managing both the pride and the shame of every people; and not only does the river Euphrates, reported in First Kings as the outer boundary of a once-grand but now lost empire, a stolen legacy •• not only does that remind us that the past is past. But there is something else that the river Euphrates meant, in Jeremiah’s own day. Why did God send the prophet all the way up there and ask him to stash his sash and then go all the way back up there a second time to pullout this rotten old rag, from the cleft of the rock? What else is going on here?
God is teaching Jeremiah •• and God is teaching us •• that when we accept unworthy values from others, we are putting on a foolish fashion, and it will shrink, it will be ruined. God is telling us to be careful whose values and whose ways we pick up.
In Jeremiah’s day, to be sent to the river Euphrates meant to be sent to the empire of Assyria. Assyria was a powerful and bloodthirsty nation. They had been the scourge of God’s people. But now there was a new empire rising called Babylon, and some of the leaders of Judah, including its king, thought that if they could make an alliance with Assyria, they could be protected against Babylon. Sort of like going to the jungle and thinking that the best way to protect· yourself against the lions would be to bed down in the tigers’ den!
And so as Judah fostered an unholy alliance with the evil Assyrians, perceptive prophets like Jeremiah could see that all the worst of Assyrian customs and habits would creep in. One of the most revolting habits of the Assyrians was to sacrifice children to their gods. There is evidence that this had begun to happen in Judah. The Assyrians were a warlike, ruthless, dispassionate people; there is evidence that these same traits were showing up in God’s people.
And so when Jeremiah goes back to the river Euphrates, acting out his parable, and pulls out a ruined, rotten linen, he is crying out, ’’why do you borrow the worst other people have to offer? Why do you discard your own heritage and imitate the most damaging aspects of somebody else’s culture?"
Did you hear God’s own interpretation of the parable of the loincloth? "This people ••• who stubbornly follow their own will and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be like this loin cloth, which is good for nothing."
People of God, you are called to live in the world, it is true. But do not borrow the worst of the world’s traits. As African-Americans you have a long and illustrious heritage of spirituality. That heritage includes a consciousness of the presence of God in daily life. It involves a way of speaking that is shaped by the Scriptures. It is deeply rooted in a life of fervent prayer. So why would you go off to Assyria and trade that for the polite skepticism of all lukewarm mainstream Christians? Why would you borrow the antiseptic, bloodless, lifeless, boring worship life that others have settled for? Why would you wear a foolish fashion that is not your own, only to see it shrink and be ruined?
African-Americans have cultivated a heritage of compassion, caring for the lonely and the handicapped and the wounded. Yours is a legacy of sharing what you have, though it be very little sometimes. So why would you now scrap that in favor of the tight-fisted individualism that a success-driven society has fostered? Why would you go to yuppie, me-first, Assyria, why bathe in the polluted Euphrates?
When I see young people involved in drug sales and when I see their parents look the other way because it brings in a few extra dollars, I am fearful that somebody has gone off to Assyria. When I hear young adults talking about abandoning the institutions and the communities that have nourished them, I am afraid that they are looking for linen sashes in the Euphrates.
Why would you become Assyrians when already the economy is showing us how faded and shrunken is that foolish fashion called materialism?
I am pleading with you not to fall into the traps set by racist America. You have a distinctive legacy. There are some values that have grown out of hundreds of years of interaction with your God. Surely these things must not be scrapped for a quick dollar or for the right designer shoes. These things may be the fashion of the day, but they are foolish fashions, and they will shrink. Like Jeremiah’s loincloth, they will be ruined and good for nothing in the end.
God says, "For as the loincloth clings to one’s loins, so I made [this people] to cling to me, in order that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory". Come home from Assyria; come home to your God.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young; yes, but bathe now in that crimson flood. Be made clean in the river of grace, in the blood of the Christ who made Himself of no reputation, but took on Himself the form of a servant. Come home from Assyria and be what God called you to be. Come home from Euphrates and be for Him, proudly and yet humbly, His people. Come home from the river and make no excuses, wear no ruined garments. Come home to this Table, and accept gladly your glorious heritage, your beautiful identity. "I made [you], says the Lord, to be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory."
