“This is Not Your Father’s Heart Burn”

• Scriptural Reference: Jeremiah 31:27-34
• October 21, 2007

The ninth chapter of John has an interesting story. Jesus and his disciples, his usual entourage of lay philosophers who dared take the spirit of God seriously, were on their way from one place to another place. There beside the road or path where they were walking was a blind beggar. Maybe he had a cardboard sign that said, “Home from the Gaelic Wars. Please help. God bless you.” Immediately, the text tells us, the disciples wanted to find out who they could blame for the man’s misfortune. “Who sinned,” they asked, “He or his parents?” Here, nearly 500 years after Jeremiah, popular opinion still had a hunch that if something bad happened to you, you were being paid back for something somebody did, either you or, more than likely, your parents. Here almost half a millennium after the book of Job was written to wrestle with the issue that apparently good people get screwed by life, the disciples showed that they still carried the tendency to blame the victim.

Jesus, on the other hand, had read Jeremiah and had inwardly digested the message, and had embodied it in his life and teaching. So, Jesus answered the disciples by saying, in effect, “You guys are asking the wrong question. When you see misfortune, your responsibility isn’t to assign blame – your responsibility is to live out God’s mercy, justice, and love. You know what the problem is. Fix it.” So, instead of blaming the man or his parents, Jesus gives the man his sight.

I’ve always been fascinated with what follows in the ninth chapter of John. No one but the blind man and Jesus celebrate the healing. Everyone else gets upset. Go read it some time. Of course, the ninth chapter of John isn’t what we’re talking about today, but it does serve as an illustration as to how hard it is to get people to believe in and act upon wisdom rather than foolishness.

Jesus certainly knew the writings of Jeremiah. Jesus certainly knew what Jeremiah had preached in the 31 st chapter. “When things are restored the way I intended them to be, no longer will people say, ‘the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes – his own teeth will be set on edge.”

Have you ever eaten a sour grape? Personally, I haven’t, but I have eaten a sour apple, and I imagine had Jeremiah issued his prophecy in Virginia, he’d used apples rather than grapes. I remember climbing into some apples trees once on my grandfather’s farm. I don’t remember what kind of apples they were, but it was some time in June or July and they had just come out. There I sat in the crook of an upper branch with those little fruits hanging down all around me and I just had to try. I took a bite and my mouth nearly turned inside out. I could feel my glands protesting all the way down my neck – and later that morning in a more visceral manner.

In Jeremiah’s day there was a popular notion that sin got passed down the generations and they used this sour grape metaphor as a way of expressing its irony and injustice. For instance, the kings of Judah had quit taking the word of God seriously and had led their societies to practice a watered down faith in God and a concentrated faith in secular philosophies of commerce and war. The kings of Judah leading up to Jeremiah’s time had concentrated on building up their military, on becoming an imperial power like the nations around them, and trusting in alliances of humans more than the wisdom of God. They’d laid aside the directives of equality described in the Deuteronomic code and had taken up a philosophy of mercantilism wherein nothing mattered more than making a profit and protecting that profit.

Slowly, the social situation in Israel and Judah deteriorated as it grew further and further from the ideals of God. Because of the decisions of the fathers, the nation of the children had been greatly weakened. The fathers, in other words, had eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth were set on edge. The fathers had climbed the apple trees, eaten the premature fruit, and the children had to run to the toilet.

There’s much truth in this. One prime example is how we continue to deal today in this country with the effects of the slave trade. It began over 450 years ago. A war was fought, in part, because of slavery. And today, whether we immediately sense it or not, the truth remains that we still deal with the effects of the decisions our European ancestors made and the beliefs they all harbored concerning the humanity of Africans. They decided to eat sour apples and we’ve had to take Rolaids.

In a way, it’s mighty unfair, isn’t it? We have to clean up the mess left by our fore parents. In fact, lots of them lived and died happy, totally oblivious to the way their way of living would affect generations to come.

On the other hand, what kind of world are you and I leaving for our children? What sour apples are we eating that will make our kids sick? One of the things that confused the Lakota Sioux about us whites was our short sightedness. One Sioux leader told a US presidential representative that their deliberative process in considering Washington’s offers was so slow because they had to consider how their decisions would affect the tenth generation.

In fact, all cultures know this. The decisions of the fathers don’t just affect the fathers. The affects cascade down through the generations. In fact, blindness to this reality results in even greater intergenerational injustice. I wonder what the long-term affects of our addiction to oil, big cars, and hundreds of electric gadgets per household will have on the generations to follow. What will our mindless throw-away lifestyle bequeath?

We can also see how this pattern works in families. Ask anyone who has worked with abusive husbands. The vast majority of abusers grow up in the home of an abuser, who was also abused. It’s not any searing insight to recognize that what we learn, we pass on. And in our families, we start learning long before we have the critical facilities to question whether or not the lessons we’re being taught are worthy. Dads yell at their children because their dads yelled at them, because their dads yelled at them, because . . . On the other hand, some mothers tend to over-function because their mothers over-functioned, because their mothers over-functioned, because . . .

This would depress us but for two things. First, our ancestors also passed along good things. Sure Jefferson had slaves. But Jefferson also penned one of the most soaring documents government has ever known that recognizes and guarantees the rights of all human beings. That Jefferson didn’t perceive how far reaching those ideals were doesn’t change the fact that we have those ideals articulated in the document he penned. Which brings us to the second thing – we have the power of interruption.

It’s what Jesus did in the ninth chapter of John. “I don’t care what the generations have been responsible for! I DO know that this man’s blindness isn’t good and I know what to do about it. So I’m not going to sit around speculating. I’m going to do the right thing. After all, this isn’t my father’s heart burn. It’s mine, and I know what to do to relieve it!”

It’s what Jesus learned from Jeremiah. God isn’t going to remember our sins. Why should we? God wipes the slate clean. It’s time we do the same. You’ll be responsible for what’s in front of you. If you have to run to the toilet, it’ll be because of the bad apples YOU ate, not someone else. Indeed, when it comes to God’s children, everyone’s first generation. God has no grandchildren. With God, the flow of the past can be interrupted. We’re not simply determined by the screw-ups of past generations. We can learn from their mistakes, profit from the treasures they unearthed for us, and actually improve the lot of those who follow.

But it takes us deciding that this will be the case.

“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” We interrupt the ill effects of the past when we determine to nurture transformation in our own hearts and minds. Paul said it: “Don’t be conformed to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Did Paul have in mind the cascading effects of the myths and understandings of the past when he said this? In part, he certainly did. We have the power of discernment. We can choose between foolishness and wisdom. We can reject what didn’t work and accept what did.

But it takes us deciding to nurture the Mind of Christ within each of us.

I was talking about this dynamic with a colleague of mine this past week. He related to me a story that sounded both unique and familiar. I don’t remember any names, so I’ll just make some up. The story, nonetheless, is what happened – and happens.

Ian had finally had it. Enough! The first two years of his marriage to Jessica had been really good; then his son was born, followed two years later by his daughter. The Jessica he knew just disappeared. She’d always been fairly easy going and laughed a lot. Now all she ever thought about was the kids and their needs. Her parents were hanging around all the time, making demands and assumptions, driving him crazy. And HIS needs always were last and when she forgot the office party the other night and failed to arrange babysitting, well, that by itself wasn’t much, but it was just an accumulation. He found himself thinking seriously about leaving Jessica – let her have the kids, since that was the center of her world anyway and get away from her nosey family.

A friend at the office, though, noticed one morning that Ian was preoccupied. The friend, Justin, brought Ian a cup of coffee and sat it down on the corner of his desk. He pulled up a chair, plopped into it, said, “Ian, you look shot, man. What’s up?”

Ian had always liked Justin and decided to open up. He told Justin about Jessica, about everything. “Oh, that’s why you came to the party alone?”

“Yeah.”

Justin said, “Ian, we’ve just started a small men’s group. We meet at my house on Thursdays. We’re studying a book called ‘Wild at Heart.’ Did you know that every guy in that group has felt much of what you’re feeling?”

Ian was genuinely surprised. “Nearly everyone? Are you the exception?”

“No, I’m NOT the exception. Listen, before you decide to leave Jessica, come to this group. Give it four weeks. It won’t hurt, and it may help.”

Ian thought about it and decided to go.

Making decisions like that have changed a lot of people, and Ian, because he liked Justin, decided to take the risk. He got ambushed – by some wisdom he hadn’t known existed.

It was on about the third evening when one of the other group members shared about how important it is for a dad to be present for his son when his son reaches adolescence. That’s a crucial time in the lives of all boys and they need to have their dads – or at least an extremely important male – to take them away from their mothers. That doesn’t mean take them out of the home, but rather to actively begin teaching the boy through word and example about what it means to be a man, and a man in the model of Christ.

That’s when it hit Ian. His dad had left his mother when Ian was ten years old. Ian shared this and the group listened. One of the members asked Ian if he was in touch with his dad. In fact, he’d heard from his dad only a few days earlier. There was going to be a reunion of Ian’s dad’s family in eastern North Carolina. The group suggested that Ian go and get reacquainted with his dad. The notion scared him, but he decided to give it a try.

The reunion took place at a BBQ restaurant in Smithfield. It was good to see his dad and they talked long and past supper. Ian finally mustered up the courage to ask his dad why he left. His dad blew a long line of cigarette smoke and scratched his head. He was obviously embarrassed and expressed his regret, that he’d made a mistake, “But son, at the time, I just couldn’t handle the way your mother changed. When I married her, I hadn’t bargained for the way she’d change when you were born, and the way she’d bring in that meddlesome family. I just couldn’t take that family.”

Then one of his uncles suggested that they go visit the MacDonald family cemetery.

It was in the middle of a cotton field off the side of a county route. They got out of the car and walked through cotton that was about waist high, about 150 yards into the field toward a small cluster of scraggly trees growing in a patch of tall weeds surrounded by a crumbling brick wall. When they reached the wall, Ian realized that this was the family cemetery. Ian, his dad and his uncle climbed over the wall and began searching for the MacDonald family patriarch they knew was buried there. Finally, they found it. Ian Joshua MacDonald, Ian’s great-grandfather, had died when he was only 32 years old. Ian’s grandfather had been 10 years old.

The uncle said, “The story is that our grandmother moved the family to Kinston because she couldn’t stand her in-laws. Our dad – your granddaddy – had to make his own way in the world.”

“Wow,” commented Ian’s dad. “He never was a home much. He said he was always working.”

“Well,” said the uncle, “The fact of the matter is, he couldn’t stand mom’s family.”

Ian’s dad said to his uncle, “How old were you when he took that job in Cincinnati?”

“Let’s see. I was 14. You were 12.”

And, Ian thought, that’s why you weren’t around when I needed you.

And that’s when it hit Ian – but I’m not going to do that to my son. It stops here. It was as if Ian were saying, “I’m tired of sons getting heart disease from the cheeseburgers their fathers ate.”

Ian returned to his small group and shared his experience. They shared their understanding. They also shared their support. Ian said, “Y’all’ve gotta help me, but I’m not going anywhere. This thing stops here with me.”

As far as my colleague knows, Ian’s marriage even got better.