“Wherever You Go, There You Are”

• Scriptural Reference: Jeremiah 29:1; 4-7; Luke 17:11-19
• October 14, 2007

There’s a book out right now on meditation. The title is, “Wherever You Go, There You Are.” When I first heard that title, I laughed. I saw it as a great little joke, a play on words, sort of like the kind of thing the comedian Steven Wright used to come up with. Wright was the one who said, “If everything’s coming your way – then you’re in the wrong lane.” (Laugh, laugh.) I was sitting at a table with some friends having coffee and talking when my friend Philip Pate, usually the comic center of our discussions, said, Hey Drexel, have you read that book ‘Wherever you go, there you are’?” And I laughed.

He didn’t. “No, I’m serious. Have you read it?”

His seriousness gave me pause and I rethought the title. “Wherever you go, there you are.” Suddenly it wasn’t a tautology. The sad fact is; no matter how often you change your external circumstances, who you are internally always goes with you.

There’s this little town just south of Louisville, Kentucky on a high hill overlooking the Ohio River. It’s not the sort of place people plan to stop in, but if they’re hungry enough, they’ll stop at the Tijuana Diner. The Tijuana, curiously enough, isn’t a Mexican restaurant. It just seemed like a good name according to the restaurant’s owner, Howard Simpson. It was the kind of diner that had linoleum floors and those Formica tables with aluminum legs topped with red and white checkered plastic table cloths. Artificial ferns hung near the windows, coated in dust and wreathed in cigarette smoke. If that would drive you nuts, there was always a meat loaf special to make you feel better. At lunch, it came with bottomless, instant iced tea.

Avalene Simpson had grown up in the town and often went down to the diner to help out and watch her dad hold forth from behind the lunch counter talking with folks who dropped in. Avalene often witnessed this kind of exchange:

A car would come crunching into the gravel in the parking lot. You’d hear the thud of car doors slamming, and then the tinkle of the bell over the front door. The folks would come in, eyes surveying the patrons already seated and the patrons already seated interrupting their conversations to eye the strangers who’d dropped in. Sooner or later, Mr. Simpson would engage them in conversation and many times it went like this.

Patron: “What kind of town is this?”

Mr. Simpson: “Well, let me ask you what kind of town you came from.”

Patron: “Oh, a miserable little place filled with small minded people with nothing more on their minds than how they can make a buck and step on you doing it.”

Mr. Simpson: “I’m sorry to tell you then, that that’s exactly how this place is. After all, what can you expect from a place with a name like ‘Muldraugh.’

But Avalene also witnessed this exchange as often.

Patron: “Excuse me sir, but, what kind of town is this?”

Mr. Simpson: “Well, let me ask you what kind of town you came from.”

Patron: “Oh, it’s a wonderful place! We have some of the best neighbors who’d give you the shirt off their backs.”

Mr. Simpson: “You know what? That’s exactly what this town’s like. We have to be great people when the town has a name like Muldraugh!”

Little Avalene asked her dad about that one evening at supper at home. Didn’t it have to be one way or the other? “No, honey,” he said. “The place doesn’t make you – YOU make the place. The town you leave will be the town you arrive at.”

Wherever you go, there you are. This explains why some people go through multiple divorces. They think their problem lies in the jerk they married. Solution? Divorce the cad. Then, lo and behold, the next person has the same stupid stuff. This produces people who say things like, “Women: can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.” Or, “Men are like parking places: all the good ones are taken and the only available ones are handicapped.” Listen, folks, the town you leave’ll be the town you arrive in. The Marriage you leave will be the marriage you find.

That, at least in part, is what Jeremiah was dealing with in the passage for today. Consider the historical context. Jeremiah lived about a hundred years after Isaiah and lived immediately prior to and through the fall of the kingdom of Judah, the northern of the two Hebrew kingdoms. The Persians under King Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem and carried off much of the population back to the Persian capital of Babylon. Psalm 137 comes from that time and tells us how the captured Israelites felt about their captors.

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept

at the memory of Zion. . .

How can we sing the songs of Zion on alien soil?

May my tongue stick to the top of my mouth if I ever forget you!

Daughter of Babel, doomed to destruction,

A blessing on any one who treats you as you have treated us,

A blessing on anyone who seizes your babies

And shatters them against a rock!

These were not happy people. They hated where they were. They hated who they were there with.

But Jeremiah has something different to advise. The attitude of hatred and grief reflected in Psalm 137 (which, incidentally, is not meant as instruction on how to treat enemies) is understandable. On the other hand, Jeremiah understands that if that attitude persists, it will not be the Babylonians who have the problem. Rather, the very souls of the Israelites themselves would corrode. And if that attitude were to become entrenched, it would demonstrate how dark and unredeemed their character had always been.

They didn’t particularly want to do their customary worship in the foreign land. They didn’t like where they were and longed for the better place. They didn’t want to worship with their captors because that would in effect admit that they weren’t ever going home, and that was something they didn’t want to accept, or contemplate

So, Jeremiah instructs the exiled Israelites to make Babylon their home. Jeremiah essentially tells them to bloom where they’re planted. Do what you’ve always done. Design houses and build them. Plant gardens and tend them. Bake good meals and share them. Have children and show them how to court future spouses. Celebrate God’s goodness. Thrive.

Jeremiah knew that doing that would change their character, and you know something? That’s always been what God is more concerned with – what’s going on internally. When you think about it, Jeremiah was WAAAYYY ahead of his time in the passage. Jeremiah believed that his God is god of the whole planet. There isn’t any ground that’s more hallowed than any other ground. There isn’t any place where God is not. In recent decades, some of international Judaism and a lot of fundamentalist, so-called Evangelical Christianity has forgotten this. Islam, too, in understandably cherishing certain locations as sacred, nevertheless has forgotten this. Many religions tend to revere the geography of one part of the world more than other parts of the world as if God is more present over some dirt, shrubs, rocks and lakes than other geology. Jeremiah knew the problem wasn’t with geography – the problem, if you will, is cardiology. The problem is with the human heart, not the property lines. Wherever you go, there you are. And if you haven’t done much work to improve who you are, it won’t matter where you are or who you’re with. It’ll still be you.

When my sister and I first started talking with our parents about moving to Virginia from North Carolina, my mother wasn’t at all excited. My dad, on the other hand, jumped at the idea. “I can’t wait! Yes! Let’s move tomorrow! I can’t stand this city, the way it’s grown and the way the people have gotten. It’s too big and impersonal now, not the Charlotte I used to know.”

My mom was more thoughtful. She said, “But I’ve got a great Sunday school class. The neighbors are fantastic. I love our ice cream socials at the end of summer and our church’s mission efforts are so worthy. I’d really hate to leave all that. And I love my house.”

Eventually, though, mom came around to dad’s point of view, but not about Charlotte. Mom saw the simple practicality in being near her children and the kind of care we could and should give as opposed to counting on neighbors when both her kids lived six hours away. So, they packed up and moved to Virginia.

They hadn’t been in Leesburg more than three months when my dad became morose and surly. I asked him about it one day and he said, “Northern Virginia just ain’t Charlotte. You can’t beat North Carolina. This place is just too big and I don’t understand the people. It’s too big and impersonal.”

And mom? By the end of their first six months in Leesburg, she’d taken over the teaching leadership of her Sunday school class and had become the social chairman of the seniors group. They’d moved into an apartment attached to my sister’s house and on the second day there, mom went out to meet the neighbors. My sister told mom that Leesburg wasn’t like Charlotte. It wasn’t old South. People were more private. They worked in DC and valued their time at home without intrusions from nosey neighbors. Why, Suzette said, she only knew the first names of her next door neighbors to the left and the house to the right had changed owners so often, she didn’t know who was there now.

One day when Suzette came home from teaching, she found a young woman coming out of her front door with three kids. She greeted them kindly and went into her house to the smell of chocolate chip cookies. Mom had on an apron and proceeded to tell Suzette the names of her next door neighbors to the right, where they came from, and what the kids loved and didn’t love to eat. And by the way, the next door neighbors to the left were the Reagles. His name is Ray and her name is Carol and they’re going to vacation at a cabin on Lake Superior where they’re taking their kayaks. When they come back, they’ll be glad to watch the house while we’re on vacation.

Suzette was astounded, and then she laughed. Wherever Maxine goes, there SHE is. That’s how she was in Charlotte, the spark plug of the community, and when she went to Leesburg, the spark plug just kept firing. And this past week, she informed me that she’d been appointed to be the “roving reporter” for the Gayton Terrace Retirement Home Newsletter. Why? The residents have noticed how after each meal, Maxine hits every table to see how everyone’s doing.

Did you know that the poorest person in this room is filthy rich by the standards of the rest of the world? We’re tremendously fortunate in this country. Our issues, for the vast majority of us, are not external. On the other hand, I don’t know of any more difficult landscape to conquer than the landscape of our minds and hearts. But when we DO take that country for the Lord, everything else is small stuff. So, design houses and build them. Plant gardens and tend them. Teach your children the proper way to court. Give thanks. Determine to be servants of the Lord Almighty and discover the Abundant Life. It’s right there, folks, wherever you go.