Carrying the seed

Some of the most poignant images in the Bible come from the Babylonian Exile. Six hundred years before Jesus’s time, the city of Jerusalem was destroyed and many of the city’s people were taken away in captivity to Babylon—750 miles to the east in modern-day Iraq. That’s a journey of about a month and a half on foot. They went into exile knowing that the Temple that lay at the heart of their faith had been destroyed, that their homes were in rubble. They would remain in Babylon for more than fifty years.

You can hear the sorrow of exile in the well-known psalm: “By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down, and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”

You can hear the joy of exile’s end in Jeremiah’s promise. “See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth.”

The Babylonian exile was an historical event, but exile is also a spiritual experience. A sense of waiting, of homesickness, of separation from the true Jerusalem, from the kingdom of God we yearn for. The biblical stories of exile still resonate because they’re our stories too.

The stories of exile resonate because they’re honest about how brutally hard life can be—they’re honest about the reality of loss, fear, and loneliness. But the stories also resonate, I think, because they hold within them a kernel of hope.

I noticed something new in the psalm we read today. It’s a psalm of return, of exile’s end. It’s a song of celebration: “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.”

But listen again to the last line: “Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.”

There’s a celebration of exile’s end there. But there’s also an instruction for how to act in times of sorrow, in times when exile is only just beginning. Those who went out weeping had much to weep about. But they didn’t go empty-handed. They carried with them seeds. They carried with them hope for the future. They carried seeds, and even in exile they planted and nurtured those seeds. And when finally they returned home, they brought back with them bundles of harvested grain.

When we face times of exile in hour own lives, that’s what we need to do too. Go where we must. But carry hope with us even into exile. Continue to plant and harvest even when we’re not in the place or situation we want to be.

All creation is a gift of God, all that we have and all that we will ever be. But we have a role to play in shaping our lives. Hope matters. Persistence matters.

You can find that message in today’s Gospel reading too. Bartimaeus is in his own sort of exile. He might never have left his hometown, but he’s blind. He’s vulnerable. He has to beg for food and money if he wants to live. How many times must he have been told not to make trouble, to know his place, to do as he’s told, to be grateful for the scraps he’s given?

But when Bartimaeus hears that Jesus is nearby, he throws caution to the wind. He shouts out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Those nearby tell him to be quiet. But he doesn’t listen. He shouts out again, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus calls him to his side.

Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” And Bartimaeus says, “My teacher, let me see again.” And so it was.

If Bartimaeus had stayed silent, what would have happened? If he’d lived without hope, if he’d surrendered to despair, would he ever have called out to Jesus for help? Would he ever have been healed?

He did a bold thing, a risky thing. And Jesus said, “Go; your faith has made you well.”

It makes me think of the parable of the unjust judge in the Gospel of Luke. In that parable, a widow pesters the judge until he grants her petition. And Jesus says, basically, that if even an unjust judge will respond to a repeated plea, surely God will too.

Of course, it’s not always simple. Our prayers aren’t always answered when or how we’d like them to be. Terrible things happen. Unfair things happen. Innocent people suffer and die.

But hope remains. Hope beyond fear and exile and even death. That’s the promise of Jesus, the promise of exile’s end, the promise of resurrection. May we, like Bartimaeus, have the hope and the boldness to ask for the things we need. May we be persistent and clear—even when others tell us to be quiet and to put up with things as they are. May we hold on to hope. May we carry hope with us like a seed even when we find ourselves in times of exile.

For “those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.”