During the introduction, Pastor Bryan told this story. Legend has it that Ernest Hemmingway was having dinner with his writer friends and he told them he could write a story in only six words. They bet him he couldn’t so he took out a napkin and wrote these words: For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn.
A powerful and sad story invoking many mental pictures and conjuring numerous thoughts.
More of these stories can be found at sixwordstories.net and examples include:
Missed my plane caught her eye.
Nerdy kid, rocket launcher, bully gone.
As Bryan, said, it only takes a a handful of words to make us laugh or break our hearts.
This sermon focused on the fall of Jerusalem and their six word story was: Covenant made, Covenant Broken Disaster Falls. Judah had already fallen to the Assyrians in 609BC but Jerusalem hung in there. In just 5 years, the Babylonian empire conquered the entire region, the Assyrians, took over Judah and the Egyptians retreated back West.
Jerusalem tried to survive the but was finally conquered in 587BC by King Nebuchadnezzar’s army. Then the exile would begin. More on the exile next time but that was the sermon that I was privileged to give the following week.
I re-listened to this message the other day (a semi-consistent habit that I have made a difference in a few ways, you can listen here) and it made me reflect on the fall of Jerusalem. Back in college, I had the opportunity to visit the holy city (and look forward to one day going again). One of the consistent themes throughout the tour was when the guide would say, “This is where (insert significant landmark here) is believed to be but of course, underneath all of this in one of the older layers of the city.” Jerusalem had been destroyed and rebuilt so many times that so many of the landmarks of the First Century are lost below. That’s why archaeologist dig.
It made me wonder of what I have seen fall over the years. Naturally, I thought of 9-11, and then remembered quickly that thankfully, the entire city had not fallen which magnified the idea that the entire city of Jerusalem had fallen. I have seen so many “natural disaster and alien invasion” type movies where cities and masses of people have been annihilated but I was really struck by the tragedy of what happened in 587BC.
As I thought a little bit more, I thought of other types of “falls” – like the Fall of the Berlin Wall was a great moment for us all. I thought of some trivial types of falls like when a sports team fails in spectacular fashion in the midst of high expectations. I thought of how marriages and relationships and people “fall”. I reflected on my own failures and while I don’t have anything epic enough to impress you with here, I do remember the pain of these times.
It’s a pastoral instinct to finish a sermon, study, blog post on some type of a higher note. But since it’s a sermon journey, I think it’s good to linger here in the ashes a little longer. Maybe there is something for you to reflect on. I’ll just end with a six word transitional story:
Hope Looks Lost … To Be Continued
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