Jeremiah 1 BFC 2018
Jeremiah 10: 12-13; 5:22; 4:24-28a;
September 30, 2018
In Jeremiah Chapter 1, the first question
God asks the prophet Jeremiah is, “What do you see?” Look out and tell me what you see, young man? See. No.
Look harder. Really see your
nation . . . Judah. What is going on in
your nation’s capital, Jerusalem? See.
As a young person studying earth science, I was
taught that earth dependably spun on a hypothetical axis, a sense that, as the
world turns, I was safe and secure within that regular due course. I was therefore alarmed to read this week
that NASA recently released their finding that climate change has caused the
earth to wobble on its axis. The major
contributor is Greenland’s ice melt.
Over the past century, a total of 7500 gigatons of ice, the weight of 20
million Empire State buildings, has melted into the ocean.[1] All is not right. All is not well. What we see is, the threads with which the
earth is woven together are fraying and coming undone.
Within Jewish myth and theology is an understanding of
creation beautiful in its set revolution, order, orbits, boundaries, limits,
and rhythms. That order, those boundaries and rhythms, are seen as Creator’s
broad and vast love for humankind, animals, and the whole universe. Hear that in the beautiful simplicity
spoken in this poem written by a Jewish rabbi:
Bless Adonai
who spins day into dusk
With wisdom watch
the dawn gates open;
with understanding let
time and seasons
come and go;
with awe perceive
the stars in lawful orbit
Morning dawns,
evening darkens;
darkness and light yielding
one to the other,
yet each distinguished
and unique.
Marvel at life!
Strive to know its ways!
Seek Wisdom and Truth,
the gateways
to Life’s mysteries!
Wondrous indeed
is the evening twilight.[2]
I love that poem. Orbits are
kept. Day and night keep their appointed
times. Distinct limits to times and
seasons keep all in order and peace. In
that poem, the world is a safe and secure place. In chapter five of Jeremiah, that poem is
echoed with God saying, “I placed the sand as a boundary for the sea, a
perpetual barrier that it cannot pass; though the waves toss, they cannot
prevail, though they roar, they cannot pass over it.” Necessaries boundaries and limits within
creation provide a safe and secure place.
British theologian Michael Northcutt’s book, A Political Theology of Climate Change, details how the separation
between science, politics, and faith has not given us a cosmology by which we
might reference the “politics of slow catastrophe” which is now stalking us as
the ecological threads unravel.
Traditional cosmologies, which included the Bible, saw the climate as
intensely political. The actions of
sovereigns and nations influenced the climate.
When lords and states behaved badly, the earth behaved badly back. Our modern understandings have banished this
worldview as unscientific and superstitious.[3] We are in control. We just need more science and not more
courage!
Meanwhile, Northcutt believes, we are beginning to see the
shortcomings of this “modern” cosmology.
Mother Nature is biting back.
Hard. As eco-philosopher, farmer Masanobu Fukuoka warns, “If we throw
Mother Nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork.”[4] Northcutt references this as a climate
apocalyptic.[5]
Jewish Biblical scholar Richard Elliott Friedman believes that the
prophet Jeremiah may have been responsible for writing much of the text we have
in Hebrew Scripture. Correlating with
Friedman’s conclusion, the verses we have from Jeremiah line up with the
theology found in Genesis’s first creation story. Bringing order out of chaos to create the
universe is part of that first creation story.
The Hebrew, literally translated, begins with “At the beginning of God’s
creating of the heavens and the earth[6],
when the earth was wild and waste[7],
darkness over the face of the Sea, rushing-spirit of God hovering[8]over
the face of the waters . . .”[9] Wild and waste, darkness over the face of the
Sea, indicates that creation begins in chaos.
Throughout Scripture, evidence that the world is in chaos is found in
physical, tangible, and real manifestations:
hunger, violence, unemployment, and land loss.[10] In Scripture when hunger, violence,
unemployment, and land loss are rampant, chaos reigns. Climate crisis is rooted in persistent,
historic and systemic inequality, which makes climate crisis a justice as well
as a survival issue.[11]
Returning to the first creation story in Genesis, we do not linger
long in chaos. Immediately, God begins
creating order out of chaos. Day is
separated by night. Waters are separated
by waters. The heavens are separated
from earth. Dry land is separated from
water. Order is created out of chaos.[12]
This first creation story goes on to suggest that by setting limits or
boundaries on the origination of creation, all of life is brought to its
culmination in Sabbath and shalom—a holy sanctuary of rest, wholeness, and
peace. Remember that this creation story
was written by Jewish people who knew their Hebrew ancestors had been slaves. For slaves all of life is deprivation, chaos
and liberation leads to a new creation in order moving to rest, wholeness, and
peace. These boundaries and limits to
chaos, particularly chaos created by out-of-control power, these boundaries and
limits provided a safe, viable, and fruitful place for human habitation—a place
without scarcity.[13]
I want to make clear that the Bible does not juxtapose “law and order”
with “chaos.” Biblical order is related
to the neighborliness referenced in the Mosaic Covenant. The Jewish people believed and believe that
the covenant with Moses was given to them as a gift to keep their communities
vital, maintain their freedom, and protect the most vulnerable. That order set limits and boundaries on the
wealthy and the privileged, those who could easily use their power to steal
from the common and tip the scales of justice to their side. Creation maintains its coherence when we
recognize our limits and boundaries as creatures who are a part of the
creation. We were meant for boundaries
as an integral part of creation. We were
meant for limits. We are not god.
What the prophet Jeremiah sees is that order is losing its grip to
chaos. The great unraveling is taking
place, the climate apocalyptic. Mother
Nature has returned with her pitchfork.
The world is not a secure place for the economically poor, safeguards
built in to preserve them are abandoned, and disaster seems imminent for the
nation of Judah, the elite in Jerusalem, and its king, Jehoiakim.
Again, at the core of the prophet Jeremiah’s understanding of God and
the universe is the first creation story.
It is by God’s power that the earth was made. It is by God’s wisdom that the
world was established. It is by God’s
understanding the heavens were stretched out.
Jeremiah makes those statements in one of our Scripture verses today as
if there is a rival to those claims.
Someone or some thing is not even blinking at the limits and the
boundaries God has set, but, instead, either believes God does not see, God
does not care, or assumes that their own decisions, actions, and judgments are
righteous because God has pre-ordained it to be so. Out-of-control power is threatening and destroying
a safe, viable, and fruitful place for human habitation.
As the ruler and his advisors, the nation, and the religious figures
continue to exceed necessary boundaries and limits, creation is undone. In Jeremiah chapter 4, creation returns to
its original chaos. The land becomes
waste and void. Instability, evidenced by quaking and moving,
is unleashed. The word “all” is used
repeatedly (all the hills, all the birds, all the cities) to say that nothing
will be spared, nothing will be held back, nothing guaranteed.
That is characteristic of the prophet’s voice throughout Scripture. They are apocalyptic. The prophet always knows that the world
cannot remain as it is, as it has become institutionalized, and be
faithful. It all has to come down. Miriam sings of the entire Egyptian war
machine thrown into the Sea, into the chaos.
Mary of Nazareth sings of scattering the proud, bringing them down from
their thrones and lifting up the lowly, a total upheaval.
The literal meaning of apocalyptic is to reveal or unmask. Jeremiah, the boy, is asked to see
what is being revealed. As Biblical
theologian Ched Myers has written,
[Apocalyptic] has to do with a kind
of vision that is able to see through the dominant stories of empire—the grand
fictions of entitlement and sovereignty, militaristic triumphalism, seductive
myths of grandeur, and severe orthodoxies of law and order. Apocalyptic seeks to lift what Morpheus, in
the 1999 film The Matrix, describes as “the world that has been pulled over our
eyes”: the propaganda of empire that masks the truth, distorts what it means to
be human, and hijacks history.
Apocalyptic, in contrast, seeks a “double unmasking,” by:
stripping away the layers of denial
and delusion that keep us distracted, in order to expose realities of personal
and political suffering and injustice—that is, to see the world as it really is
from the perspective of the poor and victims of violence; and then transfusing
our dulled and dumbed-down imaginations with visions of the world as it really
could and should be from the perspective of divine love and justice. The possibilities of a different way of being
are revealed, or at least glimpsed, in apocalyptic visions.[14]
As
prophets of our own age, we are tasked to develop our own apocalyptic,
revealing visions from the perspective of divine love and justice. See.
No. Look harder.
Some of you may remember that in January of this
year I preached about the 21 youth, ages 7 to 18, who are suing the federal
government around issues of climate justice—one
of them a son of a UCC pastor. In
August, the United States Supreme “Court denied
the Trump administration’s application for stay, preserving the U.S. District
Court’s trial start date of October 29, 2018. The Supreme Court also denied the
government’s premature request to review the case before the district court
hears all of the facts that support the youth’s claims at trial.”[15]
These young boys and girls refer to
themselves as the Zero Hour movement.
And define themselves in this way:
The mission of the Zero Hour movement is to center the voices of diverse youth in the conversation
around climate and environmental justice. Zero Hour is a youth-led movement
creating entry points, training, and resources for new young activists and
organizers (and adults who support our vision) wanting to take concrete action
around climate change. Together, we are a movement of unstoppable youth
organizing to protect our rights and access to the natural resources and a
clean, safe, and healthy environment that will ensure a livable future where we
not just survive, but flourish.[16]
Mother
Nature has arrived with a pitchfork and these young boys and girls “see.” Like the young boy Jeremiah, they are asking
us to invest in a new world that is being revealed, uncovered, and unmasked. May we have the grit, the courage, and the
vision to see with them. For wondrous
indeed is the evening twilight. Amen.
[1] Pam Wright, “Climate
change is causing earth to wobble on its axis, NASA says,” weather.com. https://weather.com/science/space/news/2018-09-25-climate-change-earth-wobble-more-nasa
[2]
Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro, Earth Prayers from
Around the World (San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco), p. 371.
[3] Michael Northcutt, A Political Theology of Climate Change (Grand
Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2013),
p. 45ff.
[4] Ched Myers, “Nature
against Empire: Exodus Plagues, Climate Crisis and Hardheartedness,” chedmyers.org https://www.chedmyers.org/blog/2018/07/08/%E2%80%9Cnature-against-empire-exodus-plagues-climate-crisis-and-hardheartedness-ched-myers
[5] Northcutt, “A Political,”
p. 26.
[6] “the heavens and the earth” poetic for “everything” or “everywhere”
[8] Indicative of “flitting.”
[9] The Five Books of Moses, translation, notes (including above
footnotes), and commentary by Everett Fox, (New York: Schocken Books, 1995), p. 13.
[10] Walter Brueggeman, Like Fire in the Bones (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), p. 170
[11] Myers, “Bible against
empire.”
7The
Joker’s speech in the Batman move, “The Dark Knight” brings forward that
ancient struggle between order and chaos.
Unfortunately, Joker juxtaposes “law and order” and “chaos.” The Bible juxtaposes the order created by the
Mosaic Covenant with injunctions to do justice over and against the chaos of
the created order which sees itself as limitless or as god rather than
creation. Hear implicit in the Joker’s
speech a conversation about justice.
Here are some quotes from the Joker’s incredible speech to Harvey Dent
in “The Dark Knight”: You know what I
am, Harvey? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I
caught one. I just DO things. Introduce
alittle anarchy, you upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos.
I AM AN AGENT OF CHAOS. And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey. It's fair.”
[13] Brueggeman, Like Fire. Deuteronomy 8:7-11, “For the Living God, your
God, is bringing you into a good land, a land of flowing streams, with springs
and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and
barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and
honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack
nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine
copper. You shall eat your fill and
bless the Living One, your God, for the good land the Source of All Being has
given you.”
[14] Myers, “Bible against
empire.”
[15] James Conca, “Children
Change The Climate In The US Supreme Court -- 1st Climate Lawsuit Goes
Forward,” Forbes, August 3, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/08/03/children-change-the-climate-in-the-us-supreme-court-1st-climate-lawsuit-goes-forward/#436929aa3547.
[16] http://thisiszerohour.org/
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