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

Regrets? I've had a few . . . ((a brief lectionary reflection by Steve Orr))

There is so much I don't remember. 

 I don't remember asking her out. I don't remember where we went on our date. I don't remember driving to or from. I don't remember what we did. I don't even remember when ... Weekend? School night? Fall? Winter? Spring? 

There is so much I don't remember. 

 Here is what I do remember: walking her back to the her dorm. We are strolling along one of the campus walkways. It is fairly dark, but there are enough lights from nearby windows and from the mostly decorative pole lamps along the side of the distant library that we can see our way along the path. [Were we holding hands? There is SO much I don't remember.] 

 As we near her dormitory, I see there are two steps up and then more walkway. This little step-up is still a few yards from the lighted front porch of her dorm. When we get to these steps, she steps ahead of me and onto the first step. She turns. We are almost eye to eye. She smiles that wonderful smile, the one that made me want to ask her out in the first place. Her hair is long and wavy, framing her face perfectly, and so in tune with the times. I realize, perhaps for the very first time, that she is truly beautiful. We look at each other ... for what now seems like a very long time. I tell her I had a wonderful time; the truth. She tells me the same. We continue to look at each other. And ... 

 I don't kiss her. 

There is so much I don't remember. Why, I often wondered, is THIS what I do remember? ... this opportunity lost; this "Why didn't I?"; this little agony; this regret. Do you have one of these? A wish-it-was-different? The person you almost kissed, the job you wanted but never pursued, that place you always wanted to visit but didn't, the words you wished you had said. On and on. 

For some time after that date, I experienced an escalating disappointment; a growing obsession with the kiss-that-wasn't. I kept seeing that moment as a lost opportunity, an experience I wished I could go back and correct . . . no, not correct . . . complete. Do the follow-through. Kiss her. 

Now, though, looking back through the lens of several decades, I know I made the right choice that night. My choice was the road not taken, and absolutely the right one. Each of us moved off into diffent trajectories from that point. Each to another person, the right person; then children; then grandchildren. 

Months after that night, God gifted me one day with a sudden clarity about that moment. It was not "an almost kiss." It was a sweet and cherishable moment between two people, a couple who needed to not be a couple, at least not with each other. I have often thanked God for transforming that seeming regret into a wonderful memory for me. 

Do I have regrets? Yes. But, like the song says, too few to mention. And this is not one of them. My regrets are for things I did or said that hurt people; things we all should regret. We must not allow ourselves to be enslaved by these memories. The only power they have over us is the power we invest in them. If we can find a way to regard them differently, we can defuse them of their power over us. 

And that is exactly what God did for his people when they were long-time captives of King Nebuchadnezzar. In one of this week's lectionary scriptures (Jeremiah 29:1-7), we find they were spending way too much time longing for the way things used to be, for moments now lost to them. In fact, they spent so much time obsessing about the past, God stepped in and refocused them. "Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." 

In other words, memories are fine, but not if they are the fodder for "woulda, shoulda, coulda." God wants us to "be here now". We really are expected to "bloom where we're planted." God has plans for us. An "almost kiss" (in fact, an almost anything) is not a reality, and thus not a real memory. It's just a longing for something that never was. 

 The readings this week: Proper 23 (28) (October 10, 2010) First reading and Psalm - Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Psalm 66:1-12 Alternate First reading and Psalm - 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c; Psalm 111 Second reading - 2 Timothy 2:8-15 Gospel - Luke 17:11-19  

If you're in Waco on Friday morning, join the group at Cafe Cappuccino (on 6th, between Austin and Washington) at 8:00 for good food and thought-provoking discussions of this week's readings. Enjoy! Steve