Jeremiah
4(6) BFC 2018
Jeremiah
36:1-8,15-19, 22-23, 25-26; 38:3-4,6
October 21, 2018
Prologue: One of the things I regularly see on Facebook or put
into a meme are the things a pastor should never say to a congregation, or a
person, or to a grieving person. (https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/5552/10-things-you-should-never-say-to-a-grieving-person). They are trite and untrue phrases that are
meant as a form of fake compassion or empathy perhaps because we are
uncomfortable with grief, complaint, or lament.
Things like, “God never gives us things we can’t handle” or “You just
need to think more positive!” or “You think you’ve got it bad . . .?” I’m sure I have done a variation of those in
my own stellar way over the course of 26 years in ordained ministry, but I do
pray that I keep the “ugh factor” to a minimum.
Let us pray. May the imperfect
words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your
sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer.
Amen.
It is not fun preaching from the book of
Jeremiah. The prophet comes out of a
tradition of lament and grief which is downright depressing. Couldn’t he be more positive? We all feel so numb and exhausted. Couldn’t he be a little more hopeful? Sheez.
He’s just a downer. He never
talks about the positive things.
In the more hip and groovin’ adaptation of the
“Wizard of Oz” titled the “Wiz”, the Wicked Witch of the West sings, “If we’re
going to be buddies; better bone up on the rules; ‘cause don’t nobody bring me
no bad news; you can be my best of friends; as opposed to payin’ dues; but
don’t nobody bring me no bad news.” In
“The Wiz” the part of the Wicked Witch of the West was usually cast as the
biggest woman with the biggest voice.
She was to command respect by literally throwing her weight around and
letting everyone know within singing distance that you best not mess with the
Wicked Witch of the West.
From the Wicked Witch of the West to Pharaoh to the
king of Jeremiah’s own country, this is the repeated message of every
tyrant. Do not tell me that things are unwell
with the Empire. I do not want
reality. I do not want to hear that
things are amiss on the battlefield or that the economy is about to crash. I
want to hear the good news. Do not tell
me about the mistakes made or the growth needed. Tell the royal house about the beams of
sunlight that emanate from the throne.
If there is any one thing seminary
tried to teach me that I quickly learned was anti-Biblical, it is the message
that I am to preach the good news in every sermon. That message was not only anti-Biblical, it
cut across the grain of the very real ministry needed in local churches. For there were people on their last leg in
the communities I served, wives I held hands with as their husbands died, or
untold tragedies as classmates had to mourn the death of friends lost in a car
crash, parents who had to mourn the death of children lost much too young. I think the promise of getting to heaven
falls short in such situations, and it is my belief that the most profound way
God loves us in such times is to be present, hold our hand, and give full
throat to our complaint and lament.
Indeed, many of the Psalms are Psalms of complaint and lament.
Jesus railed from the cross, the opening line of
Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forgotten me?” My favorite psalm, Psalm 42, is also a psalm
of lament or complaint “My tears have been my food day and night as my enemies
ask me, ‘Where is your God?’”
Indeed. For
the good news never promises without threatening. The good news never begins without ending
something. The good news never gives
gifts without assessing harsh costs.[1]
If God is God, and not some pretender,
God is not afraid of the reality in any situation, not afraid to hear our real
complaint and lament, our cries and screams against pain and injustice. Indeed, the initial cry of most Biblical
prophets on behalf of their people is, “How long, oh God, how long? How long in this bitter slavery and
abuse? How long in this imperial
exile? We have waited, in justice and
truth for you. We are ready, O God. Where are you? How long?”
But I believe my seminary professors
were just cooperating with a culture that was telling us not to be too
negative, see what power there is in positive thinking, and reminding us of the
very real prospect that people do not line up in the pews if we somehow do not
make Sunday brighter than all the other days of the week. When people in the pews are asking us to
recharge their batteries, do we dare tell them the truth? (Hands
in a balancing motion.)
We are told again and again that if we
just think more positively, consume and spend more voraciously, and believe
more optimistically in some foggy notion of what is America, the economy will
improve and the nation will be able to turn itself around.
We are in the month of pink when so many of us share
how deeply breast cancer has touched our lives or the life of someone we
love. In her 2009 book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive
Thinking has Undermined America, author, activist, and cancer survivor,
Barbara Ehrenreich, was told over and over again that the only way she would
recover from her breast cancer was through cheerfulness and a sunny
disposition. People would tell her that
her cancer was a gift, that positive thinkers were the most likely to end up on
the other side of cancer. All that shiny
optimism just ticked her off. She wrote,
“[t]here is a vast difference between positive thinking and existential
courage.” Ehrenreich believes this
“power of positivity” movement is strongly advocated for in evangelical
Christianity as a way to make the individual responsible, their personal
disposition, and “to move our attention away from the larger economic,
political, and social forces behind poverty, unemployment, and health care.”[2]
Americans see themselves and others see them as a
relentlessly positive people. But though
positive, we are not necessarily happy.
In 2009, Ehrenreich reported, we ranked twenty-third in happiness and
even lower in well-being indicators. Yet we were the nation that consumed
two-thirds of the antidepressants in the world, antidepressants being the most
commonly prescribed medication. We just
need to be more positive about it. We
make tons of money for Lilly Pharmaceuticals which then supports all that great
spirituality and NPR programming. That’s
good? Right?
It is to remember that the ancestors of our
democracy were honed and shaped in Congregational churches where they struggled
with diverse voices at town hall meetings, were immediately considered traitors
to the crown, and many of them lost their lives, families, and fortunes in the
struggle for a new nation. Though the
outlook and outcome were bleak, they struggled anyway.[3]
A hope against hope emerges when we get real to
enter into the struggle, however small, to speak to the larger forces at
work. We find our meaning in
solidarity. We stand shoulder to
shoulder to say that we may not be optimists.
But we are romantics about what the world might be. As God is . . . tearfully hoping that we
might see our destinies bound together with earth and sky, soil and
breath.
And it is not so much that we win or ever carry the
day as we learn that we are stronger, more resilient, worthy of the challenge
that is before us. When the Berrigan
brothers took hammers to B-52 bombers as a way of shaping swords into
implements of cultivation and harvest, they had no hope that they would fashion
weapons of war into plowshares. Or when
they poured blood onto draft papers, they knew they would not stop the war
machine. But they hoped against hope
their work would help remove the romanticism around the implements of war and
death, lift the veil to reveal the suffering and misery.
In the Scripture before us today, the
prophet Jeremiah is prevented from going to the Temple, either because he is
not usually the bearer of good news or because his priestly family had been
exiled to Anathoth years ago. Therefore,
Jeremiah tells Baruch, a scribe, to write down every word of judgment God has
against the people of Judah. Write down
every word of judgment against Jerusalem at the Temple so that as many people
as possible may hear it.
We often think of God’s judgment being about
hellfire and damnation. For the Jewish
people, God’s judgment was a realistic assessment of where they were as a
people so that they might turn and return to God in repentance and
relationship. And so Baruch records the
words of judgment from Jeremiah and then goes to the Jerusalem Temple to speak
these words.
It is not clear whether Baruch
encounters priests serving in the Temple or layfolk coming to the Temple from
their various towns in Judah, but whoever hears Baruch clearly understands the
purpose and import of the words. Whoever
hears Baruch also knows that this bad news will not be well-received by the
King of Judah. Baruch is told by the
first hearers of Jeremiah’s judgmental words to go and find Jeremiah and
hide. This will not go over well in the
royal court, and God’s word of judgment threatens the life of Jeremiah and
Baruch.
The Word of God is read to King
Jehoiakim as he takes residence in his winter apartment—a reference to the
king’s luxury and affluence. A chill is
in the air, a crackling fire is before him, all to indicate his comfort and
leisure while other people in his nation suffer at or below subsistence level. As three or four columns were read, the king
would take a pen knife to the holy words, cut them off and throw them into the
fire. “Fake news,” he must have
snorted. He is begged by other priests
not to throw the sacred words into the fire.
In every age, ministers of sacred word, be they true priests,
librarians, or prophets have legitimate fears that book burnings, the burning
of holy words, the burning of say, a Koran, has bad karma. For the burning of sacred and profane words
always seems to have the opposite of the intended effect in our world—the words
catch fire within the wider community.
As expected, after hearing and burning
the words of the prophet, King Jehoiakim sends out a posse to hunt down Baruch
and Jeremiah. And the Living God hid
them. People inside the beltway, the
royal palace, complained about this bearer of bad news—the prophet
Jeremiah. The people close to the crown
complain that Jeremiah is not patriotic enough and does not support the
troops. He does not care enough about
the city and the nation. Hands are put
on Jeremiah, and he is lowered into a well with no water. At the bottom of that well, it is said, he
sinks into the mud.
These Biblical stories are
authoritative because we hear within them our story. We hear a story that is told in one empire,
and see that story repeated again and again throughout the ages, in empire
after empire. When we do not want to
hear how an empire’s greed and consumption poisons the community well, how the
empire’s expansionist policies empty the community well, and how the empire
calls traitor anyone who speaks truth, makes it look in the mirror, or asks it
to confront reality, we lower that person or those people into the mud of our
now empty wells. We do not discuss the
merit of the words. Rather, we say to
them, “You are unpatriotic! You do not
support the troops! And you are not
positive enough about our country! Why
can’t you be more positive?”
As Jeremiah might have said, “It’s not time to get
positive. It’s time to get real.” We too often react to critique of our
country and its economic system as the King of Judah did with Jeremiah. One of the reasons the economic bubble and
resulting crash happened several years ago was because nobody was willing to
“get real.” Even when all the evidence
might point to the contrary, we too often resort to name-calling which does not
allow for a prophetic voice to bring us bad news, realistic news. In doing so, we seal off the necessary dialog
or argument which might save us.
Chanting “U.S.A, U.S.A!” is great during the Olympics but doing so to
drown out words of dis-ease, that might help us reflect on the mortal wound in
our souls, may also drown out the still, small voice of God asking us to turn,
turn around, or return.
Being relentlessly positive often does not allow us
to hear the suffering of others. We are
called to enter the struggle and stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity. Jesus once wept over the city of Jerusalem,
knowing that their end was coming because they murdered the prophets. In the book we are studying in Adult Forum,
Walter Brueggemann writes, “The way of Jesus’s ultimate criticism is his
decisive solidarity with marginal people and the accompanying vulnerability
required by that solidarity.”
The gospels may have been good news for people
hurting at the time of Jesus. But
certainly, Christ was the bearer of bad news for those who wanted to continue
an economic system that destroyed the poor and those who sought God’s
mercy. Even when it was not popular,
Jesus spoke with a strong voice—critiqued, complained, lamented, and stood arm
in arm around a table with others. Preaching Jeremiah is not fun but necessary
for the time we live in. May we hear the
voice of the prophet in our time, knowing that God, in love with all of
creation, wants our salvation. Amen.
[1] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination-40th
Anniversary Edition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018), p. 84
[2] Patricia Cohen, “Author’s
Personal Forecast: Not Always so Sunny
but Pleasantly Skeptical,” New York
Times, October 9, 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/books/10ehrenreich.html.
[3] Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive
Thinking Has Undermined America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009), pp.
6, 13.
No comments:
Post a Comment