“Back to Normal”? Do we want that? Can we go there? A reflection on Romans 6.Adapted from a sermon.
Copyright 2021 by Charles AustinAre we “back to normal”? Has the pandemic passed? Maybe, but we have a problem “adjusting.” The problem is that everything passes, even the things we do not want to pass, even what is “normal.” Good things, once “normal” things pass.
We want “back to normal,” but can we go back?
Most Augusts, I want to go back home to Iowa in the 1950s, to a Lutheran church, and to a neighborhood full of friends.
They say, “you can't go home again.” I hope they are wrong about that. They say, “you can't go back, you have to go forward.” I guess they are right about that.
So every August, I get a little homesick for the Iowa of my childhood.
I didn’t live on a farm, but it was farm country; we knew the growing seasons. This, I believe, leads to trust in God. A sense that God is in control.
Farmers think of the words of the Psalm, “The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.” People who trust God for the seasons understand planting, growth and harvest.
In Sicily some years ago, I learned that Mediterranean climate makes lemon trees produce four harvests each year. Well, that’s not true in Iowa. You get most of the crops in the summer, especially the vegetables. Sow seeds in spring; harvest in summer. One crop.
Iowa summers were free from care, all those years ago. We stayed out late at night, we could roller skate (not roller–blade but roller skate, with metal skates that you clamped onto your shoes, the skate key hanging from a string around your neck.)
Evenings we sat in our yards and watched the lightning bugs, caught them and put them in jars. We lay on our backs in the grass and looked at stars.
It got hot in July and August, but we didn't know it because we didn’t know about air conditioning. It wasn't hot, it was just summer; and there were shady places where you could go for relief. Or the swimming pool.
Nobody told us sugar was bad for you, so we drank gallons of grape Kool Aid. We froze it in ice cube trays with toothpicks and made little square popsicles.
There was the sweet smell of lilacs and peonies and cut grass. Sprinklers whirled in the yards, sending spirals of water over the lawns. We ran through them; getting just wet enough to cool off; but not so wet your mom would yell at you.
No cellphones. No Facebook. No Instagram. No Zoom. Only three channels of television.
But there were friends and we played Monopoly games lasting for weeks and rode our Schwinn bikes. I don't know where any of those friends are today; but those many summers ago, they were – outside of my parents – the most important people in the world.
The library summer reading program gave you an award or put your name on the bulletin board if you read a certain number of books. I don’t remember specific books; but I remember the joy of reading them. Adventures. Biographies. Travel. History. Whole new worlds; flowing off the printed page right there under a tree in my backyard.
That was my “normal.” Iowa. Summertime. Childhood. I remember it as paradise.
Every August, I think I'd go back to that “normal” in an instant.
But they say you can't go home again. They say you have to go forward, to progress.
That is our destiny. We cannot be 11 years old forever. If time for us stops, we die.
In the Bible, St. Paul says we cannot go back to what we were. But Paul refers to our old sinful selves, before we knew the gospel. He says “Once you were slaves to sin; and you died from it. Now you are free in Christ Jesus and have life eternal.” He asks the Romans Christians, “do you want to go back there? Back to sin? Back to that death? Why would you want to do that?”
A very sound theological point indeed. Why go back to your old sinful self? But I don't think my Iowa childhood was so “sinful.” I know a lot more about sin now than I did then. I guess I haven't improved very much. I'm a bigger risk, in need of more grace now than when I was 13.
Paul says to remember that we have “died” to sin; that once we were doomed and now we are saved.
Those Roman Christians could remember a time when they weren't Christians, when they weren't redeemed. I can't. Sometimes I feel less redeemed now than I did back in Iowa.
We had Vacation Bible School those Iowa summers. That was like daily Sunday school; except that we played games outside and you didn't have to get dressed up or go to church afterwards. And they'd give us more of that wonderful, sugary Grape Kool Aid. Sometimes cherry.
The grace of God is more evident in summer; especially in Iowa. Winters in Iowa don't bring out many thoughts about God's wonderful grace.
But summer! It showers us with so many blessings. So many blessings that we took them for granted. Blessed. Happy. That was “normal.”
Food was a special summer blessing. Neighbors who fished gave you walleye. Vegetable gardens produced sweet peas and beans. Rhubarb grew like weeds in our back yard. And some foods – like the fried chicken and potato salad brought to church picnics and family reunions – tasted better because you ate them outdoors.
Simple food, prepared in simple ways. Fry the chicken in Crisco. Boil the potatoes and mash them. Nothing fancy. Nothing unusual.
My mother once caught me slipping potato chips into my peanut butter sandwich. “We don't do things like that, no sir! You do things like that, young man, and who knows what will come of it! You start doing things like that and … you could end up in New Jersey!”
And the greatest blessing of all – sweet corn. Mothers turned some of it into relish; but I'm not sure God approves of that. I'm fairly certain God intends sweet corn to be eaten on the cob, with butter, with salt.
Childhood summers. Who wouldn't go back to that “normal”? But who can? If we survived the pandemic as adults, we are still adults, not children.
I don't believe God gives us wonderful graces and then snatches them from us. Why would such blessings flow if God did not intend for us to enjoy them always, and praise God for them?
Aging cynics will say that childhood and summer dies; and will dismiss my longings as looney escapism. St. Paul must have had a bad day when he wrote to the Romans saying that the past has to die. “All those things you were before! They lead to death, destruction. You died to those things when you came into Christ. Come on! Give it up!”
If I were a newly–converted ex–pagan; I would say “Yes, brother Paul; I died to those old things; and thank you for reminding me what a pagan I was.”
But St. Paul didn't know the innocence of my youth, Iowa, and summer with the smell of lilacs and the taste of fresh sweet corn. Poor Paul never knew those graces and blessings.
I think he knows now – because I think the whole, completed Kingdom of God preserves all those blessings; and even perfects them. There is sweet corn on God's banquet table in heaven and there's never a dark spon on the ear or a little clump of deformed kernels that throws you off your pace as you gnaw from one side to the other.
Perfect rows of sweet corn kernels to delight the teeth of the angels.
The Kingdom of God restores all the blessings God ever gave, all the blessings our mortal lives tend to lose. We do go forward in time, day after day in our lives. And it is not always “progress.” We let ourselves be led and become the slaves of the wrong things. Paul is very right about that. Paul called on the Romans to remember their baptism, give up the things that wrongly enslave us and put all that old, pre–baptism stuff out of their lives.
Maybe the Holy Spirit now calls us to our old “normal” lives; not our old pre–baptism, sinful, unredeemed lives, but to those moments, those times when we are so filled with the blessings and graces of God that it is nearly heaven on earth.
Once, after I had been in New York a few years; I flew to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Landed about 9:30 on a summer night. This was in the days when you actually got out of the plane into the night air.
There were crickets chirping; and nearby an alfalfa dryer was at work, sending out waves of the musky very–Iowa smell of dried alfalfa. I cannot begin to describe what those sounds and smells evoked.
Summer graces. I think that's what the Kingdom of God is like. A most blessed “normal.”
I don't know how God will handle our different experiences of “normal”. I know there are those for whom “normal” summer meant playing three–sewer stickball, sleeping on the fire escape and a ride on the Cyclone coaster at Coney Island.
But I'll bet God can handle that. Maybe in the eternal kingdom a kid from Brooklyn will learn how to eat fresh sweet corn, and I'll get a ride on the Cyclone.
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” Jesus said in Luke 12. And God does indeed.
There were limits to “normal” Iowa summer evenings. Usually about 9:30, a mother on our block would stand in her front door and call: “T–o–m–m–y! T–o–m–m–y!” And Tommy would reply “c–o–m–i–n–g.” Another mother would pick up the call. The rest of the mothers didn't have to call; for we would all drift home, just a little afraid of the dark without our friends nearby.
And we'd go to bed. We could just look forward to another glorious day; the smells of summer, riding bikes, and blessings from God – taken, alas! – for granted, but granted nonetheless to small children.
“It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Glimpses of it at least; and a promise that if we stray, we can always come home, come back to “normal”. If our friends have left, if we're a little too far from home, maybe over in the next block, and if the darkness gets sort of scary, or now, when we know that there are no more childhood summers in Iowa (or Brooklyn or New Jersey) – a heavenly voice calls in the night and says: you have a home.
It’s all in this hymn. “Normal.” Normal is that Jesus calls us, that we have a home, that we have mercy, forgiveness, blessings, a home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkRTfrLBii0 Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me.
See on the portals he's waiting and watching, watching for you and for me.
Refrain: Come home, come home. You who are weary come home.
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling 'O sinner, come home!'
Oh, for the wonderful love he has promised, promised for you and for me.
Though we have sinned, he has mercy and pardon, pardon for you and for me.
Come home, come home. You who are weary come home.
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling 'O sinner, come home!'
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