Takoma Park Baptist Church, Washington, DC, August 28, 1988
Here we are at the end of summer, or nearly so. It's the end of August, which is at least psychologically the end of summer. It's the end of the summer feeling, for now it's back to reality, now it’s back to business and a breathless run through days and nights of activity. It’s the end of summer, I know, because students are packing up and heading back to their universities. It has to be the end of summer, because teachers are getting back in those classrooms and dusting off those supplies and those lesson plans. And if the Redskins are finishing the exhibition games and writing new contracts, can fall be far behind? No, it’s the end of summer.
Where does the time go? Is that what you are asking and feeling? Where does the time go? And I was going to do so much with my summer! Why, somebody says, I was going to get that closet cleaned out while I had a little extra time, without so many activities. I was going to plant that garden that had been on my wish list for such a long time. Where did the time go? Can it really be the end of summer already?
As for me, you know, just about the time the summer was beginning, we got our second computer in the church office. I think it arrived while I was attending the Southern Baptist Convention, and so I made a mental note that this summer I would learn to use these magic machines. After all, it looks bad when the secretary and the associate pastor are doing all sorts of mysterious things and the pastor is still dipping his quill pen into India ink. So that was going to be my summer project.
Well, first there was Vacation Bible School. Not a good time to get into something new. And then in July just a rash of counseling sessions, everybody needing attention at once. Can't concentrate on sitting at a machine when people need help. And then August, and suddenly we are doing revival planning, we are doing budget development, we are off to Ridgecrest. Where did the summer go? Where did the time fly off to? If I had learned to use the computer, maybe I could find out where it went! But no, the summer is ended and I did not accomplish what I set out to do.
Come to think of it, a whole lot of life is like that. There are all kinds of good intentions that most of us carry around, but we never get down to them. We never quite find the time to accomplish what we have said we want to do. And suddenly we wake up and find out that there isn't really any time left. The summer is ended, and 'we have to get on with other things. The summer is ended, and the chill of fall is coming, and no longer is there the leisure of saying, “Some day, one day.”
I say a whole lot of life is like that. There is nothing to compare with the frustration of coming to a certain stage in your life at which you realize that you have missed something you will not be able to recover. There is nothing quite so anguishing as waking up to the fact that it is the eleventh hour, and there is practically no more time to achieve something that was very important. You're a high school senior, and all of a sudden you realize that unless you get it in gear right now, I mean right now, those grades will not get you into McDonald's Hamburger College, much less Harvard or Howard … and the summer is ended.
You're a parent, and this morning you see that that child of yours is not really a child anymore, that there are others who influence him, that there are other sources for her mind to draw from, and if you are going to shape that mind, that heart, it's just about too late. The summer is ended.
You're a man or a woman of many years, you've nurtured many dreams and hopes. You always thought of yourself as having plenty of time. One day you would learn that new skill, one day you would travel somewhere, one day maybe you would make that fantasy come true. But have you looked at the calendar? Have you felt that pulse lately? It is the end of summer. It may be just about too late. The summer is ended.
Here we are at the end of August, at the end of summer, and what has happened? Where are the good intentions of May and June? Where are the fond hopes of two months, three months, three years, thirty years ago? Scorched and shriveled, shelved and set aside, still waiting for us to get down to them. The closet still jammed, the garden full of weeds, the pastor still computer illiterate, the summer is ended, and it may be too late. Frustrating.
Somewhere around the year 600BC the people of Judah woke up to discover themselves in a day of enormous frustration. They had planned so many wonderful things for themselves. It had seemed that they were on the very edge of tremendous national prosperity and achievement. They had a fine king, Josiah, who had gotten some significant projects under way.
He had begun to repair the Temple. He had rediscovered the law of God. Incidentally, the book of Deuteronomy that we have been studying was what Josiah had used as the basis for the total renewal of the nation. It looked as though everything was on the drawing board for tremendous national revival.
But then the battle of Megiddo. Josiah and Judah's little army had marched out to intercept the Pharaoh of Egypt, King Necho, on his way to do battle with Babylon. And the dreams of the people were dashed on the plains of Megiddo … Josiah killed, the army destroyed. Bad as that was, it got worse, for only a short time later, another battle, the battle of Carchemish, and this time Egypt is defeated, Babylon steps in, and Judah – Judah with its bright hopes and its worthy ambitions, becomes a vassal of the Babylonians and seems to be on its way to total defeat.
And thus the people cry out; Jeremiah the prophet reports their plaintive cry, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." We don't have any time left, Jeremiah. Our days are almost over, and what we set out to do has not been accomplished. The hopes and dreams of our lives … they are about to disappear with the sunshine of summer, they are about to be clouded over and lost in the confusion. Prophet of God, what do we do now? There is no time; “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved."
Sang the poet Langston Hughes, “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” We might well ask in almost the same way, “What happens to a dream without enough time? Does it burn out like dry grass in the sun? What happens to a dream at the end of the summer?
I
Jeremiah would remind us that the problem is that we have expected God to guarantee our dreams, but that we have not wanted to pay the price of loyalty. If I hear this prophet aright, he would tell us that the problem is, the issue is, that we have somehow expected God to make it all happen for us, but we have not wanted to pay the price required.
Jeremiah says, this is what I hear people saying, “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” People are saying, has God gone on vacation? Isn’t it just God’s business to be there when we need Him? Isn’t it just God’s thing to be a faucet I can turn on whenever I need Him? “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?”
And yes, we do think of God that way. We do think of a God who is ready and accessible. We sing, “Just when I need Him most, Jesus is near to comfort and cheer, just when I need Him most.” The God of the nick of time! Or we sing, “Be not dismayed, whate’er betide, God will take care of you. Nothing you need will be denied, God will take care of you.” While there’s truth in that, I believe it is presumptuous, and so we like the people of ancient Judah somehow expect that the Lord of hosts, like some heavenly go-fer, will just go-fer whatever we need whenever we need it.
Ah, but Jeremiah says, you don’t want to pay the price. You cannot expect God to hop if you have not paid the price of being loyal to Him and to His cause. Jeremiah hears God saying, “Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images, and with their foreign idols.” How can we call on God to rescue us at the end of summer and at the eleventh hour if all summer long we have played with things that had nothing to do with His purposes? How can we expect God to do for us what we would not attempt to do for ourselves? And, deepest of all, how can we imagine that God will take our lack of discipline, our inattention, our disloyalty, and fix us? “Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images and with their foreign idols?”
One of my pet peeves through the years has been the kind of person who will lounge away the whole summer and then lean back in September, stretch, and say, well, I guess it’s time we got to planning for the fall. When I was in campus ministry I’d find this all the time: students, faculty, other campus ministers, who would somehow find the money and the time to roam around Europe all summer and then expect to plan the work of the academic year after it’s already started. It’s too late; it’s too late because we have not disciplined ourselves to work according to our calling.
And so I cannot just automatically expect God to rescue me from my fumbling. If I have pursued all the wrong goals and given myself to all the wrong purposes, how can I reasonably expect that the Lord will be in Zion and all will come out all right? I cannot. I cannot.
II
But there is another side. There is another angle to take on this. I believe we can also learn from Jeremiah that even at the end of summer, when there seems to be no more time left, when it appears that all will be lost, we can hang on to the dream because God is still God, and He is providing, in His own way and on His own timetable. I may not presume upon God; I may not simply expect God to be in the fixit business, taking care of all mess-ups. But hear the heartcry of Jeremiah and hear him hold out the hope that a sovereign God will not allow His purposes to be defeated.
The words of Jeremiah: “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?”
Oh, people of God, if there is a sickness, is there no cure? Is there no one to heal us if we hurt? Of course there is a balm in Gilead, of course there is a physician there. But if we are not healed yet, understand that our God does work, He will work, on His own timetable and in His own way. But God is God and He is not defeated, not even by our fumbling, not even by our failure. The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and why are we not saved? We are not saved yet because we have been faithless; but also because God asks us to stay with Him for the long haul. God asks us not to panic, not to lose patience, but to get in step with Him.
In August of 1963 hundreds of thousands of people came together to mark the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. They came to say that the harvest is ended, the summer is past, and after one hundred years, we are not saved. Justice is incomplete. The dream is not yet. But standing together before the Lincoln Memorial they and a nation were stirred by the rhetoric and the vision of a young prophet who, like Jeremiah, assured them that there would still be balm in Gilead, there would yet be a physician to heal the people. Even though so very much time had passed, Martin Luther King spoke at the end of the summer of 1963 about returning to the tough places of this nation with a faith that God would yet do justice, that after all these years, after all this time, we must yet wait a little longer. Get in step with God and the summer is ended and we are not saved, but God is God, and it will happen, if we remain faithful.
Yesterday, another 25 years, another march, another summer ended. And while justice is not complete, yet it has moved onward. While salvation is not absolute, yet God has worked on. And again the message is clear: if you dream, dream on, but see the hand of God at work, and trust Him. He is God, and He will not be defeated. He is God, and He will not be denied. He is God, and He will provide. Yes, Jeremiah, there is a balm in Gilead, there is a physician there.
You see, you and I know what Jeremiah with all of his insight could but dimly perceive. You and I know the God of the fresh start. You and I know the God who in Christ Jesus says, now, now is the acceptable time, now is the salvation of our God. You and I know the God who in Christ Jesus stands ready to receive and to forgive, ready to make all things news. You and I know as Jeremiah never could have that the great physician now is here, the sympathizing Jesus.
And so wait no longer. Yes, the harvest is past and the summer is ended and we are not saved. But wait no longer; yet there is time to respond to what God is calling you to do. Yet there is time to turn the energies of these days, these years, to our God. Yet there is time to be saved. There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole; there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sinsick soul. The summer may be ending, but now there is time to claim His salvation.
