The Regard of God

This sermon was first preached in the Chapel service of Shaw University Divinity School on February 7, 2015.

Sermon Texts from the Revised Common Lectionary

Isaiah 40:21-31, highlighting verses 27-28, 31

--> -->

The language we use is always changing.  We commonly use the verb “disregard,” but we don’t often use its opposite “regard.”  It means to see, to pay attention, to look upon, to consider.  In the hymn we sing that “Christ has regarded my helpless estate.”  What sorrow it would be if he had disregarded us!  This morning I want us to reflect on the regard of God…the regard of God.

In today’s text from the Prophet Isaiah, we read familiar and beloved words.  As is so often the case in our reading of scripture, one verse stands out in most people’s memory—the last verse.  All of us want to mount up with wings like eagles.  Such a text can take on a life of its own, living apart from its original setting as an icon, a free-standing piece of tradition.  This process may sometimes be beneficial, characterizing key aspects of our faith.  Other times, it may open the door to distorted interpretations and wayfaring teaching.  Those of us called to lead and teach have a responsibility to read with great care so that we may guide along the path that leads to God.

As always, we must discipline ourselves to understand even these favorite texts in their context.  This text comes near the turning point in the canonical shape of Isaiah.  The book began with a denunciation of the ways of Judah and a warning that unless they changed their ways, judgment would arrive swiftly and harshly.  Those pre-exilic oracles clarify something that you and I need to understand—the judgment against Judah came because of their unjust economic practices:  debt-slavery, violence toward workers, low wages that shift wealth from the poor to the rich, laws which favor the wealthy, foreclosure and seizure of homes and land, ignoring the widows and orphans, filling rich homes with gold and silver while many are hungry.  There was a temporary repentance, and the Assyrians failed to conquer Judah.  Isaiah died.  New kings arose.  God sent other prophets.  There is much more of the story to tell, but not today.

In the long run, the rulers were afraid to change their policies for fear of becoming unpopular with their supporters or for fear of crossing and offending the neighboring empires.  The wealthy did not believe things would go wrong for them, since they were too big to fail.  The priests and prophets glibly said whatever their patrons wanted to hear.  Finally judgment came.  Jerusalem was invaded, conquered, and destroyed.  Many people of all ranks and classes died.  A large number of the elite were forced to go into exile in Babylon and serve their conquerors.  The people who were left behind suffered the results of war and the insecurity of having their defenses destroyed.

After decades had left the prior Kingdom in ruins, a new set of oracles came to the people, and these oracles were later canonized in this book of Isaiah.  A new calling to a prophet appeared in that time, most likely among those who had carried on the traditions of Isaiah and preserved his oracles.  Chapter 40 begins with this new calling to the prophet, “Comfort my people.”  It speaks of a new beginning.

But as the chapter continues, it becomes apparent that the people are not hearing what the prophet is saying.  They are set in their ways.  They and their parents have followed Jeremiah’s advice to build homes, raise families, marry off their kids, and make a life where they are.  Many things are not what they want them to be, but they are not expecting their lives to change.  They figure that the God of their ancestors has lost interest in them, stopped paying attention to them.  They believe that God has disregarded their situation.  

I don’t mean that they have all rejected God.  This era in exile is most likely the era in which the Jewish faith practices that we read about in the New Testament began to take form:  the collecting of writings, the editing of histories, the compilation of liturgical and wisdom texts.  Clearly many of the people had made a place in their lives for God and for the regular observance of the Sabbath.  New practices of reading, study, and conversation about sacred texts were taking hold.

People had God in their lives, but they did not expect much from God.  They had worked on preserving a way of life and the stories of their past.  However, they did not really think God would have much to offer beyond that.  They were resident aliens in a place where they would always be second-class citizens and outsiders.  They regularly ran into problems with the empire, so they just tried to keep to themselves and be left alone.  Of course they knew it was true that God had led their ancestors out of Egypt, but that was back in the day.  They did not live as if God had any regard for them.

Now and then I hear the same kind of comments in church.  When someone starts talking about the injustices that the poor endure, some church people are likely to say, “You know Jesus said that the poor will always be with us.  That means there’s nothing we can do to change poverty.  It’s just going to keep on being the same old same old.”  Or if church people get started talking about racial injustice, somebody is going to say, “Racism goes back to the beginning of time, and it’s never going to go away.”  They will shake their heads with doubt that anything can change.  Whatever the social ills we face, it seems that far too often our congregations just want to throw up their hands and give up.  One of the hardest things to do is to get church people to talk through and think through and plan for making changes in the way things are.  We don’t even like to change the arrangement of the Sunday service or change where we sit in the church house.

Somehow church people have gotten satisfied to go through the weekly practices of reading, singing, studying, preaching, and holding meetings without believing things can be different.  We figure if we can just get a little recharge to get us through the week, that’s enough.  If we can sometimes get a little shout on, we’ll be satisfied that we have a little bit of God in our lives.  If we can fill all the nominations for committees and offices, and if we can repeat the same calendar events year after year, then we are satisfied that church is being church, and God is being God.  

Some other churches have trained their focus on getting a little piece of what the world loves.  They go to church to get in on the money machine.  They figure if they say the right incantations and perform the right sacrificial offerings and rub shoulders with the right holy people, the money will come their way.  They aren’t concerned to think about what is wrong with the world we live in.  They just want to get a little piece of the world’s action.  Maybe we would rather not have the regard of God.

In one way or another, most of our church life ends up being confined to a building and unconnected to the rest of our lives.  Outside of service or Bible study, when people struggle with injustice, when the poor cry out for bread, when the thrown away people are longing for a friend to walk with them, we find ourselves throwing up our hands and giving up.  Those problems seem too big.  Mass incarceration is too complicated to understand.  Voter ID restrictions are just an irritation to be ignored.  Underpaid teachers and underfunded schools are too big for us to manage.  Low wages, no safety net for the poor and marginalized, and no access to health care are just too many things to wrap our little heads around.

It seems we have found ourselves right where those people in exile were.  We think we meet God at church for our limited purposes, but as for the rest of our lives, our day-to-day issues and the injustices all around us, those must be hidden from God.  Our God is only concerned with saving souls from hell and not with the problems of this world.  Our God has disregarded us.  As for dreaming about a world we think would be right, we’ve settled on the belief that God has no regard for it.  At least that’s what our ways show.

But Isaiah will have none of it.  He is not satisfied to have a God who shows up for worship and ignores the rest of our lives.  He does not believe that the God of the Exodus has decided to go into retirement.  So he brings a word from God that is mostly in the form of questions.

“Haven’t you heard who God is?  Haven’t your Momma and Daddy told you from the beginning?”  At times, the inquisitor is God’s own self.  “Who do you think I am?  Don’t you know what I have done?  I made the world, by the way.  No earthly ruler can stand up to me.  And NO, I did not get tired and go into retirement.”

The Psalm for today says,

The LORD builds up Jerusalem, and gathers the outcasts of Israel.

The LORD heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.

The LORD determines the number of the stars, and gives to all of them their names.

Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; God’s understanding is beyond measure.

The LORD lifts up the downtrodden, and casts the wicked to the ground.

When we settle, in one way or another, for the world as it is—the world with all its injustices, its unjust structures of economic life, its domination systems that aim to keep the masses down—we show ourselves to have forgotten who God is.  We may still be going to church and reading our Bibles and certainly praying for God to do things that we can’t be bothered to do.  But we are not really thinking of who God is.  We are not thinking through the stories that we have heard about what God has done.  If, in fact, we can put those stories out of our minds, we can just settle in to this old world and have our church routines and not have to be bothered.

But the problem Isaiah is noticing is that this kind of living falls far short of all the good that God wants for us.  God made this wide world and placed us in it so that people could share loving and just lives together.  God did not want us to give token worship and all the while let ourselves and our neighbors continue to be crushed under the feet of unjust systems.  God wants us to soar into the fullness of beloved community.  God wants us to run like the prodigal son into the loving arms of blessing.  But most of all, God wants us to walk and not faint.

What does it mean to have the regard of God?  God’s eye is on us,in the same way that God’s eye was on the children of Israel who were slaves in Egypt.  God hears our cries.  God knows our struggles.  And God comes among us to deliver us.  But the Israelites could not have headed out of Egypt to make a better life if they refused to walk.  It turned out to be a whole lot of walking, but they walked and did not faint.  

In our text, the Jews in exile are being told that God will make a new beginning, so they will have to shake their old habits of settling for the world as it is and start walking toward the world as it should be.  God sees a better life for humanity, and God sees us living it.  This is what it means to have the regard of God.

When the economy crashed half a dozen years ago, the easiest thing to do was to relegate economic injustices to the realm of things too complicated for action.  Church people too often shrank back from the challenges the world was throwing at us and said, “[Sigh!] All we can do is pray.”  When I hear that, it often seems to be a way of saying, “We give up, and we don’t plan to use our energy trying to make a difference.  We will just leave it to God and ask God to fix it without us.”  That is a sad kind of prayer.

Praying is actually a big thing to do, if we do it right.  Praying, contrary to much of our actual practice, is not about changing God’s mind.  It is about God changing our minds.  If we had prayed seriously, we would have come out of prayer meeting working on a plan for action against economic injustice.  If God hates injustice, then praying ought to ignite hunger and thirst for justice in us.  That hunger and thirst should stir us to walk and not faint.  A congregation cannot do everything, but it can do something.  We can do the obvious things of offering relief to those who struggle, but we can also do the less obvious things of economic development, forming credit unions, insuring the health of our poor members, creating business incubators, growing fresh and healthy foods, investing in our neighborhoods, providing job training and jobs, shutting down the usurious lenders, pressuring businesses and governments to act justly toward the people.

Next Saturday is an important day on the calendar for churches in North Carolina.  It is the day of the Moral March on the Capital, the Historic Thousands on Jones Street, the Forward Together Movement.  Right outside Boyd Chapel, people will gather when some of us are in class.  Our chapel hour will be a brief observance to affirm the God of justice whom we serve.  And then we will walk.  We will walk symbolically and demonstratively.  It will be a walk of witness.  We will be bearing witness to the God whom we serve, a God who does not faint and does not grow weary.

This week’s gospel text from Mark 1 tells about the intensity of Jesus’ ministry when great multitudes of people were crowding him all day and even into the night. It was hard for him to get any rest.  Sometimes his disciples would get caught up in the mob excitement.  One problem for Jesus revealed by the gospels is that the crowds often interfered with the tasks Jesus believed he needed to be doing.  The worst example comes later in Mark, when they began organizing to force him to be their king.  But in this passage, Jesus gets away for some rest.  Your fellow student, James McRavion, is preaching on these same texts today in High Point.  We compared our notes, and he pointed out something from this text.  After Jesus rested, then he spent time in prayer.  The prayer must have stirred him to do his work. You could say he got his marching orders.  He tells his disciples to get to walking.  They need to go on to other towns and proclaim the Reign of God.

People from many communities will come to Wilmington Street for many reasons.  Some believe in democracy.  Some believe in America.  Some have suffered financial loss and felt what it’s like to be abandoned.  Some have struggled without means to get health care, housing, or a job.  Some care for their neighbors deeply.  Some have learned the hard way about the strength of solidarity.  Some come out of self-interest.  Many are angry.  Many are frustrated.  Many are hopeful.  

We will march because we have known.  We will march because we have heard.  We will march because it has been told to us from the beginning.  We will march because we have understood from the foundations of the world.  We join the march because it is a sign of who we are.  We march on that day as a foretaste of our discipleship for the long haul.  We march under the everlasting, unsearchable regard of God.  

If next Saturday is the only day we walk, we have not heard who God is.  God is the one who has regard for us.  The everlasting God, creator of the ends of the earth, created our little corner of it too.  God has regard for us.  We walk in the regard of God who does not faint or grow weary.  Saturday’s walk is another beginning of a long walk to justice, to love, and to community.  Let’s plan to walk and not faint, thankful that we live and move and have our being in the regard of God.

Facing the Future

This sermon was originally preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church in Durham, NC, on September 30, 2013.

Jeremiah 32:1-3, 6-15

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the tenth year of King Zedekiah of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar--At that time the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and the prophet Jeremiah was confined in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah, where King Zedekiah of Judah had confined him.

Zedekiah had said, “Why do you prophesy and say: Thus says the Lord: I am going to give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it?”

Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came to me: Hanamel son of your uncle Shallum is going to come to you and say, “Buy my field that is at Anathoth, for the right of redemption by purchase is yours.”Then my cousin Hanamel came to me in the court of the guard, in accordance with the word of the Lord, and said to me, “Buy my field that is at Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, for the right of possession and redemption is yours; buy it for yourself.” Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord.

And I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel, and weighed out the money to him, seventeen shekels of silver. I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales. Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing the terms and conditions, and the open copy; and I gave the deed of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel, in the presence of the witnesses who signed the deed of purchase, and in the presence of all the Judeans who were sitting in the court of the guard.

In their presence I charged Baruch, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these deeds, both this sealed deed of purchase and this open deed, and put them in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last for a long time. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.

I want to restate a few words from this text in Jeremiah… And from this story of a city at war, of a king, and of a prophet, I want to speak today about “Facing the Future.” Facing the Future. And let me go ahead now to say that I may have to stop and catch my breath now and then as we go. I may shed some tears here among people who love me and understand my tears. And those tears are part of the testimony of truth that we trust God’s Spirit to bear us up and guide our steps, to be a lamp to our feet even when the darkness surrounds us.

It was the tenth year of Zedekiah, King of Judah. Zedekiah reigned for about eleven years in all. All of his reign coincided with the imperial reign of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar had already invaded Jerusalem a decade earlier. He wanted to make sure that the people of Judah knew who was in charge. He took over Jerusalem around 597 BC. He took the temple treasure and desecrated it back in Babylon. He deported the young king, Jehoiachin, to imprisonment in Babylon. Zedekiah, Jehoiachin’s uncle, was the emperor’s own choice to sit on the throne. It was supposed to be a puppet reign for Zedekiah. Nebuchadnezzar would leave one of the royal family on the throne, but Zedekiah was expected to do the beck and call of the emperor, be Nebuchadnezzar’s man in charge.

Who knows how Nebuchadnezzar decided Zedekiah should be his puppet king? He was a young member of the royal family, who had been destined to anonymity after two of his older brothers had already succeeded their father, Josiah, as kings. Jehoahaz had succeeded their great father when Josiah died in battle against Pharaoh Necho’s army. It was the beginning of the end. When the Pharaoh finished a failed invasion of Babylon, he stopped back by Jerusalem and took Jehoahaz prisoner. Another brother, Jehoiakim, was the Pharaoh’s choice for king. Jehoiakim reigned for over a decade, until the Babylonians stretched their imperial influence down into the land of Judah. Then his son Jehoiachin succeeded him, but not for long. That’s when the Babylonians put Zedekiah on the throne.

What a messy story the kingship of Judah had become after Josiah’s death. Josiah, one of the few kings that the Bible has praise for, had restored the temple worship to focus on the God of Moses and promoted the reading and study of the Torah, the written scriptures that have their origin back in the days of the Exodus.  Much had happened since then, and many kings had turned to other gods.  Josiah reversed that trend and sought to focus on the one true God.  However, he seems to have made a fatal mistake when he decided to fight against his more powerful neighbor, Egypt, rather than simply standing by to let the big empires fight it out among themselves.

Josiah’s sons did not seem to learn a lesson from their father.  They also tried to use military might to thwart the wishes of their powerful neighbors.  Jehoiakim had made the mistake of trying to use an alliance with Babylon to hold off Egyptian power, only to have Babylon come back and invade.  You would think that Zedekiah would have learned something from his brother’s failure, but instead he switched it around and made an alliance with Egypt to hold off the Babylonian power.  Father and sons trusted in military might rather than leaving things in the hands of God.  It cost all of them their lives, Zedekiah included.

             

One of the oddest parts of the story is that both Jehoiakim and Zedekiah kept the Prophet Jeremiah nearby.  Kings of Israel and Judah had many kinds of advisors, including prophets.  Some were false prophets, and some were even prophets of Ba’al, as in the case of Ahab and some others.  But the way the story of Josiah’s heirs plays out, Jeremiah is never too far off, even when he is in jail, from these kings.  As this passage of scripture tells us, Jeremiah was confined in the royal courts.  He was often protected and fed when the city was filled with danger and empty of food.  That is the situation here in the story we are examining today.  Zedekiah seems to understand that Jeremiah is a special case among the prophets.  Jeremiah does not say what the king wants to hear.  This prophet speaks a troubling word in the presence of the powerful.  When Jeremiah gets punished for what he says, he comes back and sticks to his story under threat of worse punishment.

            

 Zedekiah probably had some level of belief that among all the prophets who advised him, Jeremiah might actually speak a word from God.  It was regularly not the word Zedekiah wanted to hear.  Maybe he kept Jeremiah around hoping for the day to come that this true prophet would get a different message from God.  He was probably hoping Jeremiah would finally come through to say that God is on Zedekiah’s side.  That may be what is bugging Zedekiah right here in this text.  He asks Jeremiah why he has to keep on saying that God is going to let Babylon conquer the city.  If you read more of the story, you find that Jeremiah has told these kings that God wants them not to fight against the Babylonians.  Since Babylon will win, these kings should go ahead and give up before the fight.  You can imagine that those are not popular words among the rulers of the land.

             

Yet Jeremiah does not change his prophecy.  He still holds to the message from God that Babylon will conquer Jerusalem and the surrounding Kingdom of Judah.  Zedekiah’s only hope is to go along with Babylonian rule.  But then again, by this tenth year of Zedekiah’s reign it is probably to late for him.  He could have gone along with Babylonian rule as Jeremiah advised him long before, and his family might have survived.  But now, the time is up for him.  The Babylonian army has laid siege to Jerusalem for many months.  Nebuchadnezzar will want to punish Zedekiah and the political establishment.  Things are already very bad in Jerusalem.  People are hungry.  Violence awaits outside the door.  And Zedekiah is desperate to hear that things will change.  No doubt, Jeremiah himself also hoped to hear that things will change.  They were living in very hard times.

             

Today’s lectionary text from Jeremiah speaks a word to people living in hard times.  It is about a time when God’s people were struggling through an economic crisis brought on by war.  It was probably worse than a recession.  Surrounded by the Babylonian army and cut off from their usual access to production and trade of necessary goods, the people were barely getting by.  Starvation and illness were everywhere.  Fear gripped their hearts.  The future seemed to offer little except more of the same or even worse.  People called out to God and wondered if God even listened to them any more.

             

When we read Jeremiah and other prophets we know that corruption was rampant among the powerful in Israel and Judah.  The rich did not always come by their wealth honestly.  They did not pay a living wage.  They cheated their workers, and if that was not enough, they beat them.  They grew wealthy on the sweat and blood of others.  They drove the poor deep into debt, then took their homes and their lands.  They made debt slaves of the masses.  The kings were either in on the scams or turned a blind eye to the plight of the people.

             

Add war to the equation, and things only get worse.  Scarcity means that those who have very little become those who have nothing.  People become ill and don’t have the strength to recover.  Families lose loved ones to the army, to starvation, and to disease.  In every street there is mourning and sorrow.  No one knows what to expect.  Even people who have faith see nothing but trouble as they look to the future.

            

Economic crisis, war, family hardship, losing loved ones—we don’t have to be in the ancient Kingdom of Judah to find ourselves in hard times.  Things are not exactly the same for us now as they were for the people of Zedekiah’s time.  But some things may still resonate from the story.  Some things ring true.  We do face uncertain futures.  We do find ourselves fearing whether what comes next will be more of the same or even worse.  We do feel the deep ache of loss and grief.  You know that today I speak as one who has seen my life reshaped by the loss of my beloved Everly.  The future we had expected will not come to pass.   

Many of you have walked this same road.  For others it may not have been the loss of a loved one, but another form of crisis that reshaped your life and made you wonder just where the future would lead.  Someone lost a job that had provided food for a family, and there was no union to stand up and intervene to help keep the job.  Someone lost a home to foreclosure and had no place to go.  Someone saw a son or daughter drift away physically and emotionally.  Or your loved one was taken far away by a job and can hardly ever visit.  Someone lost a neighborhood to rising crime and violence and does not feel safe to go outside.  Yes there are many reasons why we struggle to face our futures.

             

In this story we find two primary characters who struggle to face their future:  King Zedekiah and the Prophet Jeremiah.  We remember that Jeremiah is sometimes called “the weeping prophet.”  He was not especially happy about what life had handed him.  It is hard enough to be a prophet in any times, but when the whole political system is collapsing and your job is to deliver the message of doom, well let’s just say Jeremiah did not apply for this job.  It wasn’t his chosen career.  As the son of a priest, he could imagine plenty of other ways to have lived out his life in relative peace.  And now that all those doomsday prophecies were coming true, Jeremiah probably felt worse than ever.

             

Zedekiah, on the other hand, as the son of a king, probably had always hoped he would get a shot to be the king.  When the Babylonians hauled his nephew away and put him on the throne, he probably thought his future looked pretty bright.  If only Jeremiah could come through with a word from God that matched up with Zedekiah’s hopes, then he could be sure.  But now the game was in its final rounds.  The clock was ticking, and the outcome was not going to get better.  How was Zedekiah going to face the future?

             

What is Zedekiah’s tone in these verses?  Is he merely puzzled by Jeremiah?  Is he deeply troubled and asking a question because he sincerely does not understand?  On the other hand, is he angry, as his brother Jehoiakim often had been with this prophet?  Is he asking a rhetorical question only, but intending through the question to be blaming Jeremiah for his problems?  I have to say I can’t be sure from the evidence in the text.

             

From one angle I can see a king who feels defeated already.  He may be facing the future with resignation and fear.  Jeremiah keeps telling him that even if he fights, he will not win.  Jeremiah has told him that he will not escape the Babylonians.  He will lose the war and be captured.  Eventually he will die as a prisoner.  His family will no longer be on the throne.  Zedekiah may be grieving the loss of his dreams and resigning himself to doom.  In any case, Zedekiah has little reason to hope.   

For too long, Zedekiah had refused to listen to the word of God that came through the mouth of the prophet.  He had made up his own plans for the future in defiance of God’s word.  He had believed in his own cleverness and strength to handle life’s challenges.  He had treated his best adviser as a false prophet, and perhaps even as a traitor.  Who would dare to stand up to the king and say, “The invading army is coming, and I advise you to surrender”?  So Zedekiah had ignored the bad news during good times, and now there was no way to ignore it any longer. 

             

So maybe Zedekiah had gotten so used to ignoring God’s guidance for his life that he was deeply confused and puzzled by Jeremiah’s persistent message.  Maybe he was crying out this “why” to Jeremiah as a “why” to God.  Why me, God?  Why is this happening now?  Why can’t it go away?  Why are you still sending this message through this irritating man Jeremiah? 

But of course, Zedekiah knew deep within himself why the message never had changed.  The message a decade ago had called on the king and the people to change their ways, but they never had been willing to do so.  Zedekiah had spent too many years facing the future with denial.  He was hearing God’s word, but acting like it didn’t apply to him.  He was denying that God could see the way that things would go.  He was throwing matches into a parched field, denying that he would soon set the land on fire.  Let’s pick an example of this behavior.

Elsewhere in the book of Jeremiah, it tells of Zedekiah proclaiming a Year of Restoration, a Sabbath year, maybe even a Jubilee.  Slaves were set free.  Debts were cancelled.  But it turns out it was a sham.  It was just for show.  The wealthy people who had owned the slaves went around and gathered them back up and enslaved them again.  That kind of sham righteousness was the problem.  Putting on a show of piety in the midst of injustice is what made God’s stomach turn.  It still does.   

When we face the future, we can’t be scheming to do things our way, ignoring the righteous calling of God.  We can’t be assuming that if we keep messing things up that God will come along at the last minute and sweep away all the mess we made.  God wants honest piety and faithfulness.  God wants us, in the midst of struggle, to live with integrity, love, mercy, and justice.  God wants us to choose nonviolence even when we would rather gather up our weapons and fight the King of Babylon.  God has a way that we should go and sends messengers to help us understand it.  We ought not to be puzzled when we refuse to listen, for decades at a time, and then keep on thinking God will come around to our way of thinking.  We don’t want to be like Zedekiah, facing the future with puzzlement that God does not do things our way, that God doesn’t join up with us in our schemes.

Or maybe Zedekiah called Jeremiah in to ask these questions out of anger.  Maybe he was blaming Jeremiah for all his problems.  In some kind of twisted logic of rage, he was saying that if Jeremiah had just prophesied what Zedekiah wanted to hear, then all this mess would not have happened.  Maybe he thought Jeremiah’s words had broken the rules of positive thinking.  Maybe he thought Jeremiah had spoken the disaster into existence.  Whatever messed up logic that anger brought about, Zedekiah may have been blaming Jeremiah for his problems.  And through Jeremiah he was blaming God.

Never mind that God had given ample warning for the king to change his ways.  Never mind that God had placed Jeremiah in the midst of Zedekiah’s life, even in the worst of times, to help him find the error of his ways and repent.  Never mind that time after time, Zedekiah had been willing to make choices exactly the opposite of the word of God.  Now, it’s Jeremiah’s fault.  Now it’s God’s fault.  Blaming anyone but himself, Zedekiah may have been lashing out.  Everything has gone wrong and somebody is going to have to take the blame.

But chapter 27 of Jeremiah tells us that the prophet told Zedekiah early in his reign that he did not have to die.  Any of the lands that did not rise up to fight against Babylon would be allowed to remain in their homes.  They would be subject to Babylon, but they could continue living much as they had lived in their own homeland.  But Zedekiah preferred the words of the false prophets that Babylon would soon grow weak and good times would be just around the corner.  Jeremiah was an irritant, even a traitor in his eyes.  He did not want to hear God’s word, and he now faced the consequences of his rebellion against God and against Babylon.  That unwanted turn of events may have caused the anger to well up within him.  Now in this story, he may have been lashing out in anger toward God, as if God were just picking on him.

We are blessed to have the word of God to guide our lives.  Even more than Zedekiah and Jeremiah, we have the revelation of God in Jesus Christ to show us the path to take.  We have the light of the Spirit shining in our hearts and on our paths.  Why do we refuse to heed the word of God?  Why do we continue in our own ways, thinking we can make it turn out better?  But God is not mocked.  It makes no sense to be angry with God about consequences we should have anticipated.  We don’t want to find ourselves in the place of Zedekiah, angry at God, at God’s people, and at the world in general because things are not going our way.   

Frankly, one of the truths we have to face about the world is that it is not organized around making things go our way.  None of us is at the center of the universe.  We have to be ready to deal with hardships and unexpected turns of events.  It’s a complex world, and we are not in control.  Whether kings in Judah, emperors in Babylon, financiers on Wall Street, terrorists in a mall, people handing out bribes in the halls of government--powerful people will try to twist the world to their wills.  The repercussions of their actions may send ripples out to affect millions and billions of people in our world.  And God has left open the possibility that people will freely choose to do what they ought never to do.  It’s not God’s fault when we turn to our own ways.  And when powerful people do so, the effects may reach all of us.  God is still with us in the crisis.  God is still making a way when the world is handing us no way.

This way-making God is the reason Jeremiah can see beyond the intense pain of the crisis they were facing.  When Zedekiah calls him in to ask these questions, Jeremiah has an answer.  The answer reminds us a little of the Friend of Sinners.  When people asked Jesus questions, sometimes he answered indirectly by telling a story.  That’s what Jeremiah did on this occasion.  He told the king a story. 

At first it seems a bit confusing.  Jeremiah starts talking about his cousin.  His cousin came over to say, “Hey, Jeremiah.  Jairman.  Listen to me a minute.  I’ve got a way to hook you up with something.  Now don’t look at me that way.  Don’t go walking off.  Hear me out, cuz.  You know I wouldn’t steer you wrong.  Look, it’s me, your boy Hanamel.  You know me, man.  Okay, here’s the deal.  There’s this piece of land down in Anathoth, and I can help you work out a good deal on it.  Anyway, you already have the right of first refusal on this deal, see.  So let’s make this happen.”

Jeremiah had already heard from God that this very cousin was coming with a deal on some land.  Having trusted God until now, Jeremiah continued to trust God in these harsh times.  So he went along and made the deal.  The story almost gets tedious after that, as he goes into such detail about the price and the deed and the witnesses and the storage plans.  But all those details are there to drive home the point.

Jeremiah had been living through the same hard times as Zedekiah, without all the fringe benefits that go with being the king.  While Zedekiah had to hear so much bad news from Jeremiah, Jeremiah had to learn about it first and then go out in public and say it.  He was one of the least popular guys in town.  People got tired of hearing his messages of doom.  Jeremiah got on everyone’s last nerve.  He felt their cold stares and bitter insults.  It was not the life he had hoped for.  But when God told him it was a good idea to buy some land and store the deed for safekeeping in a place that it would last a long time, he did it.

Jeremiah was not in denial.  He had believed God’s word from the beginning, even if he did not like it.  Jeremiah was not angry with God, even if at times he begged God for things to be different.  Jeremiah had learned that God is faithful and true.  He knew that he could trust God to come through, even in the hard times.  The economy of Judah was in a mess.  The invading armies were burning cities and destroying agricultural lands.  Homes and city walls were being destroyed.  It was not really a time to be investing in property.  For sure, prices were low.  But it was not clear that an investment would pay off anytime in the near future.  Yet Jeremiah went down and bought the piece of land.

After finishing his story, Jeremiah gave Zedekiah the interpretation:  “For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:  Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”  It was not a very direct answer to Zedekiah’s questions.  But the answer it gave is this—the same God whose word is being fulfilled in the destruction of Judah’s political system and the fall of your family, the same God who offered you a way to continue to live on in this land with your family, the same God you have refused to listen to, this same God whose word is true has promised that this present time of destruction will not be a final end.  Once this corrupt system is swept away, people will start to regroup.  Eventually, the conquering empire will crumble from its own self-destructive ways.  

Out of this chaos a new beginning will arise.  God’s people will get a new start.  So I’m buying a piece of land now to be ready for what God is going to do for me and my descendents.  I may not see the promised land, but I have been to Anathoth and taken a look at it.  I see where it’s going to be.  I may not get there myself, but I’m getting it ready for future generations.  My heart is heavy now.  I hurt for my people.  I hurt for you, my King.  It didn’t have to be this way.   

But now that the walls are closing in on us, I’m not giving up.  I took a little bit of my money and put it on the future.  It may be a burned up piece of barren land right now, but there’s going to be a nice house up under some shade trees:  olives and figs growing next to the house.  There’s going to be a vineyard up on the hill.   I see the perfect spot for a vegetable garden.  Grandmas are going to teach their grandchildren about gardening there.  Over there’s a good open space for children to play.  Down below the house is a place to put a barn and pen to keep some goats for milk and cheese.  Yes, this little place in Anathoth is going to be nice.  Maybe there will be a bee-house so we can have milk and honey.  Zedekiah, I’m not giving up hope, even though I’m mighty weary right now.

How will we face the future?  Will we trust God even when we can’t see how things will turn out?  As for me, I’m trying to be with Jeremiah today.  Everything I had planned seems like it has been swept away from me.  I don’t know for sure which direction I should be going right now.  But I do know that the One who brought me this far is still with me.  The One who gave me the blessed gift of my wife still holds her and holds me.  So even if I don’t know where the next steps are going to take me, I’m still walking with the Lord.  I’m going to find my way down to Anathoth and invest in the future.

A well-known pastor of my parents’ generation published a book of four sermons entitled Tracks of a Fellow Struggler.  In it, John Claypool shared with the world his pastoral struggle and personal struggle with the loss of his ten-year-old daughter to cancer.  I found the book on my shelf not long after Everly died.  So far I’ve read two of the sermons.  The first one he preached not long after they learned of his daughter’s cancer.  The second one came when she had a severe relapse many months later.

In that second sermon, he looked at the familiar passage from Isaiah 40 that tells of the prophet’s words to those among the exiles who felt that God had abandoned them.  Isaiah reminds them of who God is—the creator, the mighty one, and also the loving one who gives power to the faint and strength to those who have no might.  Isaiah acknowledges that in difficult times even young people will faint and be exhausted, but then offers well-known comforting words to those who wait upon the Lord.  They will renew their strength.  They will mount up with wings as eagles.  They will run and not be weary.  They will walk and not faint.

Claypool says that in the past he at times might have thought that the progression of encouragement should have been in the opposite order.  Walking leading to running leading to soaring seems like an ever-upward trend.  But now in his grief and struggle he realizes that while God may bless us at times with moments of high soaring, and while God may strengthen us at times for a season of running hard, those are not the norm for our lives.  There is a grace in walking with God in our day-to-day living.  There is a steadiness of walking that is not replaceable by bursts of energy or bouts of ecstasy.  And in the midst of our hardest times, there is an utter dependence on God to lift us up on our feet to keep on walking when we are sure that all we can do is to faint.  Claypool said of his own grief that he was sure that he had no wings to fly, and what he had of legs would do no good for running.  Then he said, “but by the grace of God, I am still on my feet! …. All I am doing is walking and not fainting…. And this is the most needful gift of all.”

As you face the future, God will give you strength even in your weakest times.  God will lift you up and give power when you faint.  God will never fail us.  While we may be unfaithful, God remains faithful.  So go on down to Anathoth.  Invest in the future, because God has big plans for us.  There will be houses and fields and vineyards built and bought in this land.  Thanks be to God.
 

       

Hosea Sees Only Self-serving Misleaders

In the previous post, I pointed out that the prophet had identified the priests and king as the cause and core of Israel’s sins, the target of divine judgment.  This argument emerged in the opening four chapters, and was summarized by the opening words of chapter 5.

Hear this, O priests!

  Give heed, O house of Israel!

Listen, O house of the king!

  For the judgment pertains to you;

for you have been a snare at Mizpah,

  and a net spread upon Tabor,

and a pit dug deep in Shittim;

  but I will punish all of them.

The misleaders are laying traps for the people.  They are the tempters.  They strategize as hunters who set up snares, who spread nets and lie in wait, who dig pits and cover them with brush.  God is fed up with their scheming.

Now Hosea extends the condemnation to Judah as well.  Israel and Judah are two of a kind.  Although Judah may not have done all the same things, the sins of both kingdoms are alike.  Both are led by people who live in contradiction to God’s laws.  They both act like adulterous lovers.  The deeper they go into their sinfulness, the more they found themselves facing external oppressors, harmed and injured by their own plans, and growing more rotten as each day passes.  Assyria, the hoped-for protector, has its own designs on the future of Israel and of Judah.

Chapter 6 opens with the voice of Israel saying, “Let us return to the Lord.”  Admitting that their hardships and judgment may originate in God, they are hoping that showing more faithfulness may lead to healing.  They admit they do not know God as they should.  Have they been listening to what Hosea has said?  Do they admit they have failed in helping the people know God?  Don’t get your hopes up.

Hosea responds in the voice of God, saying, “Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early.”  Even their proposed repentance is self-serving.  They just want to get relief from their mess.  They are still strategizing.  They are trying to hedge their bets.  Maybe if they play nice with God, they can get back on their feet, get their edge back, get their mojo working again.  God will have none of it.  Much like Isaiah or Amos, Hosea says that the empty practice of temple rituals, pretended worship, is of no value to God.  One of the most famous lines of the entire Hosea oracle appears in chapter 6:  “For I desire love and not sacrifice, knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

Hosea then begins to list the sins of Israel and Judah.  These sins, he says, go all the way back to Adam, but they are multiplying in this time.  The priests and king have broken the covenant and turned to other protectors, other gods, other laws.  They have been faithless in their dealings.  Negotiating in bad faith is just another way to call someone a liar.  Such people never meant to do what they promised.  It is the way of a colonizing power with the indigenous people:  say whatever it takes to gain an advantage, then stab them in the back at the end.  They were faithless toward God, trying to manipulate God to do them favors.  They were faithless in their leadership duties, twisting their official power for personal gain.  All around there was evildoing.  Faithlessness implies the promise of good with covert scheming to undermine it.  Evildoing implies overt and direct harm toward others.

Things were so bad that the cities were “tracked with blood.”  Tracking blood means that pools are on the ground to be stepped in and spread as the violent evildoers run away.  Priests and royal courtiers are in the midst of this evil.  Priests lie in wait like robbers, using their power to demand payment, sucking up the livelihoods of people who long to draw near to God.  They are like murderers.  Their crimes are monstrous.  Using the façade of the Temple cultus, they have created systems and structures of organized crime.  The royal family and courtiers have done the same.  Rather than being servants to the people, they are serving other interests.  They sneak around on their responsibilities to line their pockets and solidify their political power.

Chapter 7 continues to provide a laundry list of sinfulness.  Again, Israel’s king and court deal falsely.  They do not protect the people.  Inside the city, thieves break into homes with impunity.  Outside the city, bandits raid the people in the countryside.  The King, it is implied, may even get a cut of this widespread criminal activity.  Gild the palm of the security apparatus, and the gold finds its way to the top, thus making the king glad.  Royal officials enjoy all their treachery.  It is the game of power, fun for all who play.  They are so corrupted and debauched that their duties are dissipated in drunkenness.  They drink until they are sick.  They get drunk and behave badly.  It is no wonder that the dynasties of the Northern Kingdom continue to end with bloody coups d’etat.  Their evil is so intense it is like a hot oven that burns all day.

Blinded by their self-serving actions, they turn to foreign alliances for protection and hope.  They can’t see that by trusting in God they would find a path to peace.  Instead, these who have behaved as hunters scheming to trap their own people will soon become trapped in the snares and nets of Assyria.  Their actions are senselessly setting themselves up for destruction.  They look silly going from one alliance to another like a weakling, a bird that will easily be ensnared or entrapped.  They reject the ways of God, but they can’t even tell the truth about who God is or what God expects.  Desperate, they whine, cry, cut themselves, shout with rage, but still rebel against God.  As the likelihood of an advancing imperial army draws ever nearer, they still cannot shut up their corrupt, raging, rebellious gibberish.

There is a right way for people to live together.  It involves serving one another and seeking common good.  When leaders and powerful people of Israel or any society turn away from their calling to become self-serving, it gets bad for everyone.  When a wealthy elite gains ever more wealth and power, a reckoning cannot be far away.  Hosea was doing his dead-level best to get the leaders of Israel to turn things around.  The response was not promising.

Waiting for Life to Happen

Back in November, this essay appeared as a guest post on Stan Dotson's blog, Daily Passages.

Daily Passages:  Prophetic Passage for Nov. 10
Guest writer Mike Broadway

Fellow Passengers:  This week’s Prophetic Passage (Isaiah 55:6-13) transports us to that inward place where we find ourselves twiddling our thumbs, spinning our wheels, waiting for life to happen.  The inward place may correspond with any number of outward places:  a doctor’s office waiting room, a line at the department of motor vehicles driver’s license office, a room full of people trying out for a part in a show, a bed in the dark after drinking too much caffeine.  Sometimes the place where we are waiting for life to happen is more like being trapped:  a job from hell, a jail cell, a mountain of debt, a deafening silence between spouses.

Isaiah was writing to the people of Judah in exile, far from home in Babylon.  As a displaced minority, most of them probably lived in substandard housing on marginal land.  The first generation remembered better times back home, and the new generation had heard the stories and built up the resentment that goes with being an outsider in the only home you have ever known.  It would not have been hard for these people to find themselves in that inward place of waiting for life to happen.  When will we go back home?  When will we get our piece of the pie?  Maybe after a little longer, things will start to go right.

At the very beginning of their sojourn in Babylon, Jeremiah had warned them about this kind of thinking.  He told his people in Babylon to settle down, build houses, have families, and make the most of life wherever they were.  As the bestselling title from Jon Kabat-Zinn cribs from ancient wisdom, WhereverYou Go, There You Are.  Now decades later, Isaiah speaks again into this pain in which people wait for life to happen while life is passing them by.

Anyone whose livelihood depends on the land might know this place of waiting during severe drought conditions.  The prophet describes the water cycle and the productivity of the farm to remind the people that much is happening when they may not be able to see it with their eyes.  Water disappears into the soil to do its work.  It evaporates invisibly and makes its way toward cooler altitudes to form clouds.  “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”  More is going on than the drudgery of the daily routine.  When our eyes are fixed on the television or computer screen, a whole world of life is going on outside that tunnel of vision.  While I wait to get a new driver’s license, so many other people are getting theirs.  My moment of seeming stagnation means I am ignoring a universe of frenetic activity.  In my moment of isolation, God is present and loving in infinite worlds and ways.  Am I really destined to miss out on all that while I’m in a stuck place?

What the prophet wants his friends to remember is that their time is limited.  They do not have an endless number of mornings.  If they can’t change everything about their situation, they can at least try to find what God is doing in the middle of their little patch of the world.  Isaiah is convinced that when they start looking they will find with William Blake, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God . . . . There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.”  They will find that at root, it’s all grace.  It is grace on grace on grace.  Grace all the way down.  When we’re waiting for life to happen, grace happens.  Settle into it.  Wallow around in it.  Breathe it in deep.  Go ahead on.

How about you?  Where does this prophetic passage take you on your journey?