Faithful Fernweh--October 20, 2020

Faithful Fernweh--October 20, 2020

"Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
The wild animals will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise." [Isaiah 43:18-21]

There is a word in German for which there is no good English equivalent.  And it has been echoing in my ears lately, pulling me forward.  It is teaching me about the nature of hope, and about the direction in which faith moves us.

It's the term "fernweh," and it could be roughly translated as "far-sickness," as in the opposite of "homesickness."  It is, I suppose, a sort of longing, something like wanderlust, to go to a new, perhaps unknown, destination.  Or, as I like to phrase it, it is a homesickness for a place you have never been.

And the more time I spend in the Scriptures, the more I think that is the orientation of the whole story of God and creation, from Genesis to Revelation (and beyond that, to Maps!).  The whole arc of the Bible traces a forward-moving line to a new destination that is somehow home--somehow the right place, even if it is a place the people of God have never been.

It is the movement from Ur of the Chaldeans, where Old Man Abram had grown up,  toward the new and "promised" land that God showed.  It was the migration after that to the temporary refuge of Goshen during the famine that brought Abraham's great-grandchildren to the outskirts of Egypt.  It was the promise of a journey out of slavery into the unknown wilderness and at last to a homecoming in the land the Israelites had waited for.  And it was the journey both into exile for a time, and then, for a new generation that had never known it, the return of the exiles' children and grandchildren back to a land their parents and grandparents had called home, but which was new to them.

And all of those journeys toward a new place that was somehow home point ahead toward God's vision of a whole new creation where both God and humanity will unpack their things once again, and then at last be home in a place we have never been.  The whole Bible points us forward, rather than backward, to a new thing, a new place, a new reality.  Maybe the whole life of faith is learning to let God kindle in each of us a homesickness for a place we have never been, but which is somehow still home. And then all along this life's journey, that fernweh of faith leads us to be unsatisfied with the world as it is, so that we keep striving to make our lives here and now reflect the Reign of God toward which we are pulled--as Jesus taught us to pray for that Reign to come "on earth as it is in heaven."

We need regular reminders of that pull to a reality in our future, because otherwise, we are constantly tempted to make idols of the past--a past which is somehow always rosier in our memories than it actually was in lived experience.  You see it everywhere, the sentimental nostalgia for "the way things used to be," which we selectively remember, or only ever saw partially in the first place.  Everybody has their own (mostly imaginary) picture of that time in the past when things were "great"--and of course, we rarely stop to seriously inquire whether it was really great for everybody, or if it came at a price for somebody we have chosen not to remember.  And then we become suckers for anybody who promises us a taste of those "good old days"--whether it was ten years ago, twenty-five years ago, fifty years ago, or further back.  (For a case study in being disillusioned about the imaginary "golden ages" when things were really so great, so watch the 2011 Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris, about a man who magically can go back to his ideal time period in his ideal city, only to discover that the people there are longing for a time further back, and that those people are wistful for an even earlier time as well--no one is ever satisfied, and everyone is convinced things were better "back then.")

The prophets were regularly the ones that got called upon to step up with a bit of honesty about how things in whatever golden age of Israel's past weren't really so golden.  And they were also the ones God raised up to offer a new vision of something God was about to do that was genuinely good.  "Do not remember the former things," says the voice of Isaiah 43, "I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth--do you not perceive it?"  It is the voice of faithful fernweh--a pull toward a new creation and a new kind of community, one which does not exist yet and which perhaps never has, but which God is bringing into being.

It is rather like that beautiful, haunting line of Langston Hughes:  "Oh, let America be America again--the land that never has been yet--and yet must be, the land where every man is free...."  Hughes saw that we have never quite lived up to the vision sketched out in our foundational documents as a nation, but he was convinced we were being pulled toward that future.  The direction to look, then, was not backward, to some perfect moment in the past when everything was right, but toward the horizon, toward the vision of a community where justice and peace were really at home.  Or, as a song of Billy Joel's put it into my ears in childhood, "You know the good old days weren't always good--and tomorrow's not as bad as it seems."

If even the Piano Man can see that the direction to look is forward, rather than backward, maybe we should listen.  Perhaps we need the prophets again to speak, and for us to listen to their old announcement of a new destination. Perhaps we need to be shaken out of our idol of nostalgia for a selectively-edited "great" time of the past to instead allow God to turn our attention forward.  Then instead of spending our energy, our time, and our resources trying to get "back" to some time we cannot reach any longer, we will let God lead us toward the new thing God is doing.  And perhaps we will dare to let God kindle a little faithful fernweh, so that we can let go of the resentments that build up in us when it turns out we simply can't make things be like we remember them being once upon a time, and instead, to begin to live now in light of that future day when lambs and wolves lie down in peace, when weapons are beaten into plowshares, when death is vanquished, when tears are wiped away, and when God is all in all, as the Scriptures describe it.

Perhaps, if we are straining forward to glimpse that future reality that is somehow home, we will begin to be more fully alive even now, and a little resurrection will begin among us on this day, too.

Lord God, make us forever dissatisfied with all that is not yet your new creation, so that we will press on forward toward the fullness of your Reign, rather than looking backward hazily to what we cannot get back to.  Lead us to that reality for which you have made us, in which we will all be home at last.