C Jeremiah Final/Reign of Christ Sunday BFC 2018
Isaiah
52:7-12
November
25, 2018
Calling Jeremiah a poet,
Hebrew Scripture scholar, Walter Brueggemann, believes that the prophet
Jeremiah offered Judah and Jerusalem an alternative version of faith. Jeremiah offered a faith filled with risky
prayer, that affirmed grief, and led to new possibility, a hope against hope.[1] A hope against hope knows intimately that
hope cannot found in the present system.
Just singing all the old songs with more verve, just doing it better
with a little reformation, fiddling with the on switch won’t get it done. It cannot be duct-taped together. The poor, the most vulnerable, and the good
earth know this better than anyo<->One because the system never worked
for t<->Them. New reforms will
just deliver the pain more efficiently. A
new song must be song to contemplate a new or transformed reality.
The official and royal version
of faith, the status quo, was to offer polite prayer that denied pain and led
to a domesticated or too easy hope. That
official and royal spirituality informs the political and economic values found
in Judah and Jerusalem.
Brueggemann points to several
scholars who believe that not only the prophet Jeremiah but also the prophet
Micah were attacking Judah’s national agribusiness policy. Big banks in Jerusalem were buying up all the
land, displacing small and subsistence farmers, adjusting the market to royal consumption
rather than sustainable diet, and creating a poverty class. According to the covenant, the Mosaic
covenant, shared with the Children of Israel to move from slaves to liberation,
people cannot be treated in this manner.
For this is the road that leads people back into debt slavery.[2]
Strongly based in that Mosaic
covenant, the poet and prophet Jeremiah believes that systems and structures
based on such values undercut creation and throw creation into chaos. The consequences are dire. Those who live by the sword will die by the
sword. Those who live by creating wealth
will suffer economic blight and pestilence.
Those who live by being wise in the things that harm the nation shall
suffer famine as the nation moves from interrelationship
with the land to the land as some”thing”
that can be bought and sold, as a commodity.
First and foremost, the Mosaic
covenant begins with an understanding that God owns the land and gives it to
the community for the sustainable benefit of all. Literally, the land is the grounding for all
relationship. Therefore, the land
requires mutual relationship. To treat
the land as a commodity makes the land into some “thing” we are forever mining,
stripping, and poisoning to give us more than it has. War is waged on the land, and famine is sure
to ensue.
Jeremiah believed that a
return to the Mosaic covenant would restore the mutual relationship with the
people, the nation, and the land. And
so, with the Babylonians about to invade the city of Jerusalem, the poet and
prophet redeems the land of Anathoth, the land of his family. Such acts in Judah were intended to protect
the poor and sustain the community. Such
an act does not win military victories or create wealth. Nor is it wise in the way of the world. Within the commercial enterprise that is Judah
and Jerusalem, Jeremiah’s act seems stupid and senseless. But within the covenant culture, Jeremiah’s
act is a way of keeping faith.
Jeremiah knows that
assimilation into another culture was always the great threat to Judaism. To maintain their identity, Jewish people
would have daily disciplines or practices that would remind them who they are
in the world. Keeping Sabbath,
maintaining kosher eating practices, and redeeming the land to restore the
community were some of the daily, regular, and consistent disciplines which
maintained that identity. Maintaining
their disciplines or practices was a part of remembering their story, a way of
orienting them in the universe that held back the chaos.[3]
When the Jewish people
forgot their story, did not regularly practice their disciplines, the center
could not hold and the nation would be consumed by its imperial policies and
practices. The nation of Judah enters
into the warfare, dislocation, and poverty of the Babylonian Exile. Where at one time the Exodus had been the
defining story, the story to be remembered among the Jewish people, the
devastation of the Exile changed all that.
Notice that in the passage
read for today, the writer says the people shall not return in haste (like the
Exodus), nor in flight (like the Exodus).
A new story has become authoritative for the people—the return from
Exile.
Going into the Exile, the
Babylonian Empire had become the imperial power in the ancient Near East. The Babylonian Empire displaced Judah and
Jerusalem as the source of military might, royal wealth, and wisdom in the
things that harm. So now, instead of
engaging the totalitarian claims of Judah and Jerusalem and their worthless
idols, the God of steadfast love, liberation, freedom, justice, and
righteousness engages in a deathly conflict with the gods and imperial power of
Babylon. To the naked eye, it would
appear that Babylonian authority, technology, intelligence, and hardware seemed
beyond challenge. Babylonian power
appeared to be absolute and eternal.[4] Babylon, to all the peoples and the land
that it conquers, is the world in totality.
But to know the history of
God, is to know that any Empire which makes absolute claims will run counter to
the will of God. Again, though the night
is long, faith in God’s character to work against such absolute, imperial
claims is to know that God’s purposes are being worked out.
And so . . . the Jewish
people wait for hope. Hope is not even
on the horizon. The people wait so long
that the story of the poet and prophet Jeremiah comes and goes. War, devastation, and tears are the food[5] of
the Jewish people every day and every night.
If the war, devastation, and tears are to end for the Jewish people,
their “[p]eace depends on having the freedom and imagination to speak the world
differently.”[6] Will they remember their story? Will they remember the practices and
disciplines so as not to be assimilated into Babylonian culture?
It may seem strange to
choose a Scripture verse from Isaiah for our last Sunday in this Jeremiah
sermon series. The book of Jeremiah,
however, does not really have a Scripture verse that looks back on the Exile to
celebrate the end of that horrific time of warfare, dislocation, and poverty
for the Jewish people.
As the Jewish people
return from Exile, this Scripture verse from Isaiah imagines the Babylonian
ruler replaced on the throne by God.
God as peace, good news, liberation, salvation, well-being, and
life-giving order overthrows Babylon. The
second writer of Isaiah teaches that for that good news to reach the Jewish
people, certain things must take place.
First, there must be people observing or watching for that good news to
arrive. As sentinels, there must be
people ready to receive it. Second,
there must be people who discern and determine what the plain meaning of this good
news is. There must be people who ponder
its meaning. Third, there must be people
who are runners or the messengers. The
people will act on this good news and share it with others. Finally, celebration and singing are
necessary to refuel the nation and the community. There need to be people who will sing and
celebrate this good news so that the community and nation have the energy to
watch, discern, and act upon the good news again.
Not everyone can do all of
the tasks needed. But within a spiritual
community there are always people needed to be the watchers, the discerners,
the actors or runners, and, finally, those who help the community
celebrate. New life, peace, and good
news depend on all of the people in these roles to shatter the status quo, the
hold the status quo has on the community and the nation.
The author of the gospel
Luke uses this Scripture verse from Isaiah within the Christmas story.[7] The language of the New Testament is Greek,
and the Greek word for messenger is angelos,
the word we translate as messenger or angel.
Those angels announce peace, bring good news, announce salvation, and
tell those that are listening that God reigns (not some imperial pharaoh, king,
or Caesar). In that Christmas story the
messengers come to announce a peace that depends on having the freedom and
imagination to speak the world differently.
The shepherds go to observe this good news. Mary, the mother of Jesus, ponders and
discerns what this good news means. The
shepherds go home celebrating the news.
That is how important the Exile story was to the story of Christ. In the life, mission, and ministry of Christ,
time after time the gospel writers saw the life-giving order, salvation,
well-being, good news, liberation, and peace that would imagine the world
differently.
I have shared the story of
Jeremiah with you throughout this fall because I believe it has such a powerful
message for our time. Jeremiah spoke of
alternative values and practices to a people and a nation that did not want to
hear his bad news, his grief-filled critique.
He was ridiculed, had his life threatened, had his patriotism called
into question, and thrown into jail. He
believed God had called the Jewish people and the Jewish nation to be
different, to have alternative values.
Jeremiah believed the only
way to move from the bad news and realism he shared in his critique to the good
news and imagination of a new day was through daily or regular disciplines or
practices that helped the Jewish people remember their story. Or that the Jewish people would remember
their story which made claims on them for alternative disciplines or
practices. To not remember the story and
their daily disciplines, Jeremiah believed, was to have God’s purposes being
worked out against their own nation and religion.
We live in a time when we
our told that it is our duty to buy and spend to maintain a consumer culture
that consumes us and relies on our greed.
If we are to find our role as people who watch for the good news,
discern what is the good news, act upon that good news, and celebrate its
arrival, we will need to intentionally practice or have disciplines that do not
allow us to be totally assimilated into that consumer culture. I believe our ancient stories are shouting to
us what the poor, vulnerable, and the land have been sharing with us, in grief,
for years.
In 2017 the United Nation’s
independent adviser Dainius Pūras reported that “mental health policies and
services are in crisis—not a crisis of chemical imbalances, but of power
imbalances.” Greater disparities in
wealth and income are associated with increased status anxiety and stress at
all levels of the socioeconomic ladder. Epidemiologists
Kate Pickett and Richard G. Wilkinson have found the more inequity in the
country, the higher the prevalence in mental illness. And in the United States, those disparities
are growing exponentially as all the safeguards against neo-liberal, corporate
capitalism are being stripped. Mental
and emotional distress are the canaries in the literal coal mine of an economy
not based on health and wellness but on violence, injustice, and the land as a
commodity.[8] We must build economies based on cooperation
and collaboration, not only with each other, but also working with earth and
animal as partners to know ourselves as more well and whole.
In researching issues that
lead to mental health, the World Health Organization Europe stated in 2009 that
“[a] focus on social justice may provide an important corrective to what has
been seen as a growing overemphasis on individual pathology.” I have long believed one of our shortages in
Billings is mental health providers and services. Maybe what we need are both more providers
and services . . . and more justice.[9]
I know, for many of you, this has been a long sermon
series with way too much repetition. My
hope and my prayer, though, is that through this sermon series, I have helped
many of you see that the Bible has much more grit and real-life than you
believed before. That we might have
faith enough to be God’s covenant partner, knowing that God, as this Scripture
verse from Isaiah details, goes in front of us and has our back. God goes in front of us to let us know that
suffering and death is real but it cannot kill the movement of courageous
people who speak and act and practice a new world into being. God has our back to remind us . . . we are
not alone.
Courageous people, as we enter into this new church
liturgical year, this Advent, let us do so with a hope against hope to work on
the real-life issues that adolescent people, unwilling to grieve people, are
unwilling to acknowledge and confront.
Let us imagine a world where messengers say, “Glory to God in the
highest, and, on the earth, peace . . . on the earth, peace.” With God at our back and God walking in
front, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, with steadfast love,
justice, and righteousness typed on every last red blood cell in our bodies, let
us move with God to transform the earth.
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who
announces . . . peace. Praise God. Amen.
[1] Walter Brueggemann, Like Fire in the Bones (Minneapolis: Fortress Press), p. 166
[2] Ibid, p. 201.
[3] Ibid, p. 208.
[4] Ibid, p. 166 ff.
[5] Psalm 42
[6] Brueggemann, Fire, p. 174.
[7] Luke 2ff.
[8] Tabitha Green, “What a
society designed for well-being looks like,” Yes! Magazine, September 12, 2018.
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