God’s people are not exempt from tough times. Today’s texts are designed for those who are drowning in sorrows and troubles. We hear in Psalm 69:
1 Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.
2 I sink in deep mire,
where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters,
and the flood sweeps over me.
3 I am weary with my crying;
my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim
with waiting for my God.
This lament captures one’s insult by both enemies and relatives:
7 It is for your sake that I have borne reproach,
that shame has covered my face.
8 I have become a stranger to my kindred,
an alien to my mother’s children.
It captures one’s lament at being the subject of gossip:
12I am the subject of gossip for those who sit in the gate,
and the drunkards make songs about me.
And it involves a cry to God for help:
13But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord.
At an acceptable time, O God,
in the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me.
With your faithful help
14rescue me from sinking in the mire;
let me be delivered from my enemies
and from the deep waters.
15Do not let the flood sweep over me,
or the deep swallow me up,
or the Pit close its mouth over me.
16Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good;
according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.
17Do not hide your face from your servant,
for I am in distress—make haste to answer me.
18Draw near to me, redeem me,
set me free because of my enemies.
Likewise, in the gospel, we hear that Jesus’ followers would face death:
28Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Jesus assumes that those who follow Jesus will face strong opposition:
34 ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
Even more harsh, Jesus declares that following him comes with a cost, with one’s own cross:
37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
Jeremiah fits well into these dark and dreary words.
Jeremiah was a prophet by God’s own calling, formed by God in his mother’s womb (1:4-5). While outwardly the prophet appeared as a fortified city and as a wall of bronze (1:18; 15:20), what we hear today reveals the turmoil within.
One would wonder what it would be like if all of our laments were written down and saved for posterity. Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet, in his witness and his laments, he lets us know that he didn’t want the job in the first place (1:6); he claims that he was not only enticed but seduced into the job, overpowered by God (20:7).
He notes that his own family and his own friends turned against him, leaving him alone and unable to enjoy anything good (11:19, 21; 15:17). He goes so far as to wish he had never been born (20:14-18).
In his laments we hear that Jeremiah isn’t afraid to hold God responsible for his predicament. In fact, the word of the Lord that we read and for which we gave thanks is thought of to be the most blasphemous in all of scripture.
A little background.
Jeremiah was the son of a priest and a priest himself. God called upon him to preach a word of judgment in the land of Judah, whose political leaders formed alliances with other countries and other gods for their safety. Bad political choices led to bad political moves, which led to misplaced trust and downright idolatry. The people of Judah had broken not only their own future, but also God’s own heart.
Into this was Jeremiah called. Called to speak not a word of repentance, but of pure judgment:
I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon; he shall carry them captive to Babylon, and shall kill them with the sword. 5I will give all the wealth of this city, all its gains, all its prized belongings, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah into the hand of their enemies, who shall plunder them, and seize them, and carry them to Babylon. 6And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house, shall go into captivity, and to Babylon you shall go; there you shall die, and there you shall be buried, you and all your friends, to whom you have prophesied falsely (20:4b-6).
Who could speak such a word? But Jeremiah could not keep this word to himself:
For whenever I speak, I must cry out,
I must shout, ‘Violence and destruction!’
For the word of the Lord has become for me
a reproach and derision all day long.
9If I say, ‘I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name’,
then within me there is something like a burning fire
shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.
The word caused him great anguish, but he had to speak it. Abraham Heschel tells us:
Jeremiah’s soul was in pain, stern with gloom. To his wistful eye the city’s walls seemed to reel. The days that were to come would be dreadful. He called, he urged his people to repent—and he failed. He screamed, wept, moaned—and was left with a terror in his soul. …This was the root of his anguish. Those whom he loved he was called upon to condemn. When the catastrophe came, and the enemy mercilessly killed men, women and children, the prophet must have discovered that the agony was greater than the heart could feel, that his grief was more than his soul could weep for.” AJH 133-134, 153-154.
“His grief was more than his soul could weep for.” Makes you think twice about discerning a call to being a prophet and it makes you think hard about those who seem to be able to easily flaunt their supposed understanding of the will and working of the Lord.
“His grief was more than his soul could weep for.” Where do we find a gracious God in this? If God is love and grace abounds, what is God up to in Jerusalem in the time of Jeremiah? What is God doing to Jeremiah?
The better question is why. Why is God destroying his chosen people? For what purpose, to what end is this an act of our God who is good?
Could it be that God was destroying, in order to build back up? That God was breaking their bodies to give them a new heart, on that beat for him alone? You see, I Jeremiah’s time, the Jerusalem man was busy destroying, yet God was building.
This isn’t so hard for us to grasp. Think about the times when you’ve had to destroy something to make it better: remodeling a bathroom or kitchen…Think about a time when you’ve experienced despair only to receive faith and trust…Think about a time when you’ve had to rebuke someone you loved more closely than you love yourself…
• When your child picked up a drug habit, or started selling, or became an addict…
• When your mom or your dad became so sick, took a bad fall, and was found no longer to be able to care for him or herself. The time when you had to discuss care options that served their best interests, but all the same put them into a place that was not their home.
• When you’ve found that your partner has strayed, broken a vow or 2
• Or when we’ve had it with God:
• One too many diagnoses of cancer
• One too many unexpected Heart Attacks
• One too many a child dies because of disease, or abuse, or accident.
• When floods destroy our land, our crops, our future. When fire sweeps across the hills, destroying homes and hearts and plans.
• Or just when life is harder on you than it should be on anybody…
There is a heartbreak in speaking a word of truth, when the words you need to speak for the sake of love are within you like a burning fire, shut up in your bones; and when you are weary with holding it in, and you just cannot.
The prophet teaches us about the nature of life in God, within the life of faith. It's not roses and sunshine. It's not the daily lottery or mountain-top experiences. Sometimes, and more often than not, our lives in God lead us to the absurd, defy rationality and call us do things we would rather not do. In Jeremiah's case, tell Judah, his beloved, God's beloved, that they were headed towards death. But he would also be the one to tell them that God was at work for their redemption. That, though their actions caused much pain and anguish, only God could save them from their predicament and that God would save them. ()
Life out of death, new creation out of the destruction of the old. Jeremiah offers another echo of God’s redemption song.
The prophet's complaints against God were grounded in trust and faith. Blasphemous as they were, they were honest and they were real and they were accepted by God; the same God who had formed Jeremiah in the womb, the same God who knew Jeremiah since before he was born, this God accepted Jeremiah's complaint, just as God accepts our laments and our complaints.
It is out of trust in God that we can come to God with whatever is on our heart and it is out of this trust that we can praise even amidst our sorrows. Jeremiah says it this way:
Sing to the Lord; praise the Lord! For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hand of evildoers (20:13).
A lyric from a beloved song says it perfectly: “Love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”
I think that is the heart of faith. When the chips are up or the chips are down, that a word of praise still comes forth. Faith and trust are not a matter of superstition, that, if you only believe, you will achieve, but that faith in God trusts that God is with you, for you and will never forget you.
“Love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.” That's the song of Jeremiah and that's the song of our hearts from time to time, hopefully not too often, but it's so true. Whatever life brings us, however cold the sentiment, however broken our voices, Hallelujah.
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