Yesterday (a Steve Orr scripture reflection)

The recent film, Yesterday, is about Jack Malik, a would-be rocker who remembers the Beatles. The problem: he has miraculously awakened to a world where he is apparently the only person who remembers them.

In an early scene, Jack, still unaware of what has transpired, sings “Yesterday” to some of his friends. They are stunned. The song is far better than anything Jack has ever written. They are bowled over by the sense of longing the song so perfectly conveys through both lyrics and music. Yet, they assume it’s his song since they’ve never heard it before. As I watched the scene, and listened to actor Himesh Patel sing, I found I could easily imagine that I, too, was hearing it for the first time.

“Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.
Now it looks as though they're here to stay.
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be.
There's a shadow hanging over me.”

And there it was: a deep, deep desire to, somehow, turn back the clock, to travel back in time to something and somewhere that could no longer be.

Would you like to travel to the past?

Time is like a river ... or so Einstein thought. He believed it flowed; sped up and slowed down. His contemporaries thought time might have banks like a river, that the past was back there ... just out of sight, around a bend. They believed that if someone had great desire to do so, really wanted to go, he or she could travel back the way the "river" had come, back around the bend, so to speak, to the past. They could "return" to a place and time to which they may never have even been before; likely a place/time only their ancestors had known.

As strange as it may sound, this is the theme tying together several of this week's scriptures. Not time-travel, per se, but the almost overwhelming desire to return to the past. This is particularly true of Psalm 137 where the Psalmist captures the laments of the Israelites, enslaved by Babylon and exiled far from home (Don't read this one to young children; the ending is very harsh). It is also reflected in the first passage from Lamentations. To fully appreciate the overwhelming sadness of their situation, their longing to return, listen to this song ("Babylon") from the TV show, Mad Men: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsVCjykMHVw&app=desktop

The real problem, of course, is not the years, and it's not the miles, but rather the distance one has traveled from God. The Israelites mourned for Israel, not fully grasping that Israel was nothing without its relationship to God. That's why they were in exile in the first place: they had drifted away from God and needed time and circumstance to teach them that lesson.

Do you sometimes feel that almost overwhelming sense of melancholy for a time and place in the past? Could it be that what you really desire is a closer relationship with God? The selections from Lamentations 3, Habakkuk, and Psalm 37 provide us some relief and point us toward some true solutions to our longing.

As believers, we have a different situation than those exiled Israelites. As we find underscored in the Second Timothy passage, we have the Holy Spirit flowing within us, connecting us to God in ways we cannot even fully understand. Like a river, it brings life and nourishment to us. And when we feel ourselves drifting from God, we can pray in that Spirit for whatever is needed to fully reconnect us.

For Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. No time-travel needed.

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PHOTO: Adobe Spark Post

Jack Malik sings Yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlAZniSQ9mY&app=desktop

How Paul McCartney Wrote Yesterday: https://www.esquiremag.ph/culture/music/beatles-yesterday-history-a1926-20190913-lfrm

A somewhat different version of this, (Would you like to travel to the past?), appeared in 2016.

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 22 (27) (October 6, 2019)
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu//texts.php?id=282

Lamentations 1:1-6
Lamentations 3:19-26 or Psalm 137
Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
Psalm 37:1-9
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10

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Join us if you can, Friday morning, at Lectionary Breakfast. We still gather at Our Breakfast Place (formerly the Waco "Egg and I" restaurant). We start at 8:00 and wrap things up about an hour later. The food is good, but the scripture, discussion, fellowship, and laughter are better.

Enjoy the week!
Steve

"It's only a milkshake." (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

Some quotes become staples of life advice. For example, "Be the change you wish to see in the world" (Mahatma Gandhi), "Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game" (Babe Ruth), and "Never pay full price for late pizza" (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).

Often, when someone speaks or writes a quote, the very words are noteworthy; they remain illuminated in the mind long after the moment when they were heard or read. But there's nothing special about the words in the title quote, above. Standing alone like that, there is no particular import, no life-changing impact, no world-enhancing philosophy in them. Milkshakes, for the most part, are not momentous. Most of the things people say in this life, even the quotable stuff, must be understood in a context. And that is the case with the milkshake quote.

Fans of the TV show, Mad Men, likely recognized it, immediately. In the scene, a young woman is sitting in a restaurant with a man and his three children. While roughhousing, one of the kids knocks over a milkshake which begins to rapidly spread across the table. Everyone at the table appears horrified and frightened ... except the young woman. She gathers some napkins and kindly says, "It's OK. It's only a milkshake." *

As the last syllable of "milkshake" is still wafting through the air, the faces of the man and his children undergo a startling transformation; horror and fright become stunned wonder and a kind of hope-filled awe.

All of this comes at a watershed moment in the series, one of those pivot points where, to understand the full impact of the words, the viewer must have seen all the story that has gone before. Even describing the scene cannot convey its full meaning. Without the preceding four seasons, the viewer cannot fully understand and appreciate the true value of the words the young woman speaks, nor why they make such a powerful impact on the man and his children.

That brings us to this week's Lectionary reading from the Gospel of John. When pressed by the leaders of the Jews to "...tell us plainly" whether he is the Messiah, Jesus responds, "I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name testify to me...." Jesus is telling them that he has been revealing himself for the entire three years of His ministry. No mere words, at this point, are going to convey the full and correct answer to their question. They have ignored all that has gone before, not understanding that He has been communicating with them through his actions and through his words; that, taken together, the two form the answer to their question.

Jesus could give them a direct answer. But like the milkshake quote, His words could not be understood without all that has gone before. What they would carry away from the conversation would be, at best, a superficial understanding. They wanted to segment Jesus, separate his words from his deeds, remove him from the context of His story, and then judge Him based on what they perceived as blasphemous statements.

Sometimes, a milkshake is just a milkshake. But sometimes, when it comes at the end of a long line of words and actions, it transforms into hope and wonder right before our eyes.

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Fourth Sunday of Easter (April 17, 2016)
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/

First reading
Acts 9:36-43
Psalm
Psalm 23
Second reading
Revelation 7:9-17
Gospel
John 10:22-30
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We're gathering Friday mornings at the Waco "Egg and I" restaurant for Lectionary Breakfast, which is just a fancy way of saying we're going to talk about the Bible while we eat breakfast. We start at 8:00, and we enjoy an hour of discussion about one or more of the week's Lectionary passages. And we laugh. A lot.

But if you want a milkshake, you'll have to bring your own.

Enjoy the week!
Steve
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* "It's OK. It's only a milkshake."
Character: Megan Calvet
Madmen
Season 4, Episode 13: "Tomorrowland"
First aired October 17, 2010