Tag: prophet jeremiah

Dealing with Denial (Jeremiah 32:1-9, 36-41)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

The Lord spoke to me in the tenth year that Zedekiah was king of Judah, which was the eighteenth year that Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylonia. At that time, the Babylonian army had surrounded Jerusalem, and I was in the prison at the courtyard of the palace guards. Zedekiah had ordered me to be held there because I told everyone that the Lord had said:

I am the Lord, and I am about to let the king of Babylonia conquer Jerusalem. King Zedekiah will be captured and taken to King Nebuchadnezzar, who will speak with him face to face. Then Zedekiah will be led away to Babylonia, where he will stay until I am finished with him. So, if you people of Judah fight against the Babylonians, you will lose. I, the Lord, have spoken.

Later, when I was in prison, the Lord said:

Jeremiah, your cousin Hanamel, the son of your uncle Shallum, will visit you. He must sell his field near the town of Anathoth, and because you are his nearest relative, you have the right and the responsibility to buy it and keep it in the family.

Hanamel came, just as the Lord had promised. And he said, “Please buy my field near Anathoth in the territory of the Benjamin tribe. You have the right to buy it, and if you do, it will stay in our family.”

The Lord had told me to buy it from Hanamel, and so I did. The price was 17 pieces of silver, and I weighed out the full amount on a scale….

Jeremiah, what you said is true. The people of Jerusalem are suffering from hunger and disease, and so the king of Babylonia will be able to capture Jerusalem.

I am angry with the people of Jerusalem, and I will scatter them in foreign countries. But someday I will bring them back here and let them live in safety. They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will make their thoughts and desires pure. Then they will realize that, for their own good and the good of their children, they must worship only me. They will even be afraid to turn away from me. I will make an agreement with them that will never end, and I won’t ever stop doing good things for them. With all my heart I promise that they will be planted in this land once again. (Contemporary English Version)

Denial is a powerful mental force.

Disaster was about to befall Jerusalem and its inhabitants. Few were prepared for what was ahead. But they should have been ready. That’s because the prophet Jeremiah repeatedly told the king and the people about their need to live in justice and righteousness.

The dominant belief within the city was that judgment would never come to them. The people looked at their covenant with the Lord, and the presence of the temple, as some sort of rabbit’s foot or insurance policy that would keep invading armies at bay.

But they were in denial about what was actually occurring. The people lived as they wanted, giving Yahweh some temple time and a bit of worship, but then turned around and also worshiped other gods. Furthermore, they exploited the poor, took advantage of the needy, and engaged in unscrupulous business practices. So, the prophet Jeremiah was given a message by God to the people:

I brought you here to my land,
    where food is abundant,
but you made my land filthy
    with your sins.
The priests who teach my laws
    don’t care to know me.
Your leaders rebel against me;
your prophets
    give messages from Baal
    and worship false gods….

You, my people, have sinned
    in two ways—
you have rejected me, the source
    of life-giving water,
and you’ve tried to collect water
in cracked and leaking pits
    dug in the ground. (Jeremiah 2:7-8, 14, CEV)

The message was repeatedly ignored, along with warnings of judgment, if the people did not change their errant ways. The city’s denial was palpable, holding the false belief that the Babylonians could never take them, and that God was on their side.

Pay attention, people of Judah! Change your ways and start living right, then I will let you keep on living in your own country. Don’t fool yourselves! My temple is here in Jerusalem, but that doesn’t mean I will protect you. I will keep you safe only if you change your ways and are fair and honest with each other. Stop taking advantage of foreigners, orphans, and widows. Don’t kill innocent people. And stop worshiping other gods. Then I will let you enjoy a long life in this land I gave your ancestors. (Jeremiah 7:3-7, CEV)

The antidote to denial is acceptance – not necessarily accepting that a situation is okay, fine, or right – but that the situation is actually there; it’s true, and I’ve got to face it as it is, and not as I want it to be.

The Babylonians were at the city gate. Yet, even then, Jeremiah was getting the stiff arm from King Zedekiah and was in prison for preaching sedition. Nobody wanted to face the music – that a funeral dirge was about to play. But they needed to own up to what was happening and why they were in such a position.

It’s a sad scene. It’s hard to watch, whenever others refuse to listen, knowing what will happen if they keep to their denial. There were some things Jeremiah did and didn’t do when he was in this awkward and precarious position.

Jeremiah did not:

  • Give up and/or shut up. He didn’t give in to the temptation of being frustrated, throwing up his hands, and walking away; and he didn’t adopt their denial and stop talking.
  • Manipulate by resorting to shaming the people, or using Machiavellian tactics to force or leverage repentance out of them.
  • Say, “I told you so!” In fact, he did just the opposite; he grieved and lamented the unchanged hearts and the destruction which did happen.

Jeremiah did:

  • Connect with both God and the people. He was able to differentiate himself from the situation, while at the same time, remaining connected as a voice to the people.
  • Accept his role as prophet. He took responsibility for himself and his own particular calling – and nothing more than that. He focused on what needed to be said and done in the moment, and left the rest to God.
  • Kept living his life. He went and bought a relative’s field, keeping the land in the family, knowing he was still going to have a life after such devastation.

The Lord, as the Good Shepherd, isn’t going to herd cats – so we must follow as the sheep who trust in the Lord’s voice and actions, to say and do what we most need to hear and obey.

Just and right God, you invite us to give ourselves in service to others, equipped with justice and righteousness. Be with me as I choose each day to reflect your divine presence in our world. Give me the courage and generosity to respond to your love, and to your call. May all your people speak your message with bravery, humility, and skill. Open the minds and hearts of those in denial — that they may accept you and your words. Amen.

Forsaken (Jeremiah 2:4-13)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

Hear the word of the Lord, you descendants of Jacob,
    all you clans of Israel.

This is what the Lord says:

“What fault did your ancestors find in me,
    that they strayed so far from me?
They followed worthless idols
    and became worthless themselves.
They did not ask, ‘Where is the Lord,
    who brought us up out of Egypt
and led us through the barren wilderness,
    through a land of deserts and ravines,
a land of drought and utter darkness,
    a land where no one travels and no one lives?’
I brought you into a fertile land
    to eat its fruit and rich produce.
But you came and defiled my land
    and made my inheritance detestable.
The priests did not ask,
    ‘Where is the Lord?’
Those who deal with the law did not know me;
    the leaders rebelled against me.
The prophets prophesied by Baal,
    following worthless idols.

“Therefore I bring charges against you again,”
declares the Lord.
    “And I will bring charges against your children’s children.
Cross over to the coasts of Cyprus and look,
    send to Kedar and observe closely;
    see if there has ever been anything like this:
Has a nation ever changed its gods?
    (Yet they are not gods at all.)
But my people have exchanged their glorious God
    for worthless idols.
Be appalled at this, you heavens,
    and shudder with great horror,”
declares the Lord.
“My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
    the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
    broken cisterns that cannot hold water. (New International Version)

We are all wounded lovers. Keeping a steadfast commitment to someone who’s fickle, and sometimes spurns our love, is a universal feeling of deep hurt. And that is precisely how God felt about the ancient Israelites.

The feel of today’s Old Testament lesson is like being in a divorce court – God lamenting the distance which evolved between divinity and humanity. It happened because Israel went after other lovers, and practiced infidelity in their relationship with the Lord.

Since a person tends to take on the character of the god they follow, Israel had become a mess of a people. Because the gods they turned to were nothing but worthless idols. The Israelites became empty and vacuous, drained of all the robust spiritual character within their nation.

The object of love determines the quality of love.

To lose God is to lose our way of being in the world.

And the reason we lose God is that we stop telling our stories of grace, love, and forgiveness. New life, over time, becomes old hat. We end up forgetting where we came from, and so, discover that we don’t really know where we’re going.

We suffer from a severe case of spiritual amnesia.

God is who God is; I Am who I Am – and not as we may think God might be. The Lord is tied to justice and righteousness; and so, is concerned for both the individual and the community. Private life and public life each need to be characterized by integrity, service, and meeting one another’s needs.

Public institutions, corporate businesses, and even faith communities all collapse without the guiding compass of civic duty, social justice, and community service. Leaders everywhere have forgotten that power and authority is divinely given, not personally earned.

Whenever a people loses sight of their foundational stories and ethical points of reference, systemic evil arises to keep certain folks in power. And the rest of the people are coerced into serving those in authority. It’s a situation ripe for the judgment of God.

The Lord will take people to task for failing to remember who they are, where they came from, and thus, what they’re supposed to be doing.

Tragically, the Israelites swapped their God for other gods who are utterly unreliable and, frankly, not real. They lost touch with reality itself, not being able to distinguish between truth and error, and unable to discern what the good life actually is.

We must take God on God’s own terms. We are people created in the image of God, not people who create a god in the image they want. We can no more do that than a cake can claim self-existence apart from the baker.

Heaven and earth are witnesses to the folly of human forgetfulness – a lack of memory which forsakes commitment to the Divine. It’s the sort of madness that can result from a lack of sleep or water.

In such a condition, we need living water. We cannot conjure it up. There’s no way to be our own source of life, any more than a child can birth itself without any parents. Life must be given. Life is a gift.

The gift has been given. The real issue is whether we will receive it, open it, and use it.

There are many questions which cry out for us to answer:

  • Will the ego get in the way of living well?
  • Will a false sense of self delude us into believing we are the architects of our own reality?
  • Will we colonize others for what they can do for us, rather than seeking to uphold the common good of all persons?
  • What is our relationship to power and authority?
  • What are we doing with the influence we have?
  • What fault have you found with God?
  • When are we going to renew our vows to God?
  • Who are you?
  • What are you doing?
  • Where are you going?
  • Why are you here?
  • How, then, shall we live?

Sovereign God of all, I will try this day to live a simple, sincere and serene life, repelling every thought of discontent, anxiety, discouragement, impurity, and self-seeking; cultivating cheerfulness, magnanimity, charity, and the habit of holy silence; exercising economy in expenditure, generosity in giving, carefulness in conversation, diligence in appointed service, fidelity to every trust, and a childlike faith.

I will try to be faithful in those habits of prayer, work, study, physical exercise, eating, and sleep which I believe the Holy Spirit has shown me to be right. And as I cannot in my own strength do this, nor even with a hope of success attempt it, I look to you, O Lord God my Father, in Jesus my Savior, and ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A Divine Calling (Jeremiah 1:4-10)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment
The Prophet Jeremiah by Marc Chagall, 1960

The Lord gave me this message:

“I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb.
    Before you were born I set you apart
    and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.”

“O Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I can’t speak for you! I’m too young!”

The Lord replied, “Don’t say, ‘I’m too young,’ for you must go wherever I send you and say whatever I tell you. And don’t be afraid of the people, for I will be with you and will protect you. I, the Lord, have spoken!” Then the Lord reached out and touched my mouth and said,

“Look, I have put my words in your mouth!

Today I appoint you to stand up
    against nations and kingdoms.
Some you must uproot and tear down,
    destroy and overthrow.
Others you must build up
    and plant.” (New Living Translation)

“Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity.”

St. Paul to St. Timothy (1 Timothy 4:12, NLT)

I write to you, young people,
    because you are strong
    and the word of God abides in you,
        and you have overcome the evil one. (1 John 2:14, NRSV)

Young Jeremiah had an unusual calling from the Lord. It wasn’t to reach thousands with a life-giving message of hope and encouragement; the call was to declare destruction to an unjust people who believed they were fine, thank you very much.

It was a calling that would have been a huge challenge for the most seasoned of veteran prophets. But God called the young Jeremiah. This was his first crack at being a prophet of the Lord; and it was a doozy of a call!

Yet, when it comes to God’s call, age really means nothing. That’s because the Lord equips whomever the Lord wants to empower. Young or old makes no difference. All that’s needed is a willingness to submit to the voice of divine calling.

And to Jeremiah’s credit, the lengthy prophecy bearing his name in the Bible is a testament to his sense of call and straightforward obedience to it.

There is, and always has been, a divine/human cooperative in the world. God, of course, could do everything without humanity’s assistance. But it’s never been that way. Throughout the entirety of Holy Scripture, the Lord calls and empowers people for service.

On the one hand, this may seem like some strange convergence which, on the surface, is sure to end in some screw-ups and failure. Yet, on the other hand, this cooperation between Creator and creature gives people, at the least, a sense of ownership in the world; and, at the most, a powerful opportunity to bless the world with divine gifts of speaking and service.

Although Jeremiah was called to (mostly) pronounce doom, it’s first and foremost a message of justice. The Lord is concerned for the common good of all persons, not just some. Yahweh is not about to be forever idle whenever certain segments of humanity go rogue and harm their fellow sisters and brothers with unjust ways.

The Prophet Jeremiah by Marc Chagall, 1968

What’s more, the Lord delights in using people whom society at large might deem less than usable.

Now remember what you were, my friends, when God called you. From the human point of view few of you were wise or powerful or of high social standing. God purposely chose what the world considers nonsense in order to shame the wise, and he chose what the world considers weak in order to shame the powerful. He chose what the world looks down on and despises and thinks is nothing, in order to destroy what the world thinks is important. (1 Corinthians 1:26-28, GNT)

If God can use a donkey to communicate a message, then it’s likely that the Lord can enable any person on earth to speak words of justice – no matter if they’re young, uneducated, or underprivileged – and make the older, educated, and privileged look like jack asses. (Numbers 22:22-35)

For Christians everywhere, every believer has been called by God to proclaim the gospel of grace. The Word has come to us in Christ, in the flesh (John 1:14). Jesus is the primary and ultimate revelation of God’s Word to us.

God has also set the Church apart to serve as proclaimers of God’s Word to the nations. The Great Commission and the Great Commandment summarize our call to ministry. (Matthew 22:37-40; 28:19-20)

Yahweh’s intentional purpose was for Jeremiah to proclaim God’s word. That’s also God’s intentional purpose for the Church; the Lord puts God’s words in the church’s mouth. Christians proclaim the Word, which we know most fully and experience most personally in Jesus Christ.

With our words, perspectives, attitudes, relationships, and actions, God’s Word flows through us to the world. As believers, we know that gospel proclamation will accomplish God’s purposes.

We trust that God is empowering us to effectively proclaim God’s words with effectiveness so that all the earth may be renewed and blessed.

Most High God, you knew each of us before we were ever born. And so, you know us better than we know ourselves. Your divine power is already there, deep within us. As you call forth that power, enable us to respond with submission, obedience, and willingness to speak words of justice, love, and grace to a world in need of hope and betterment, through Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, in the strength of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Hope for the Grieving (Jeremiah 31:15-22)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment
Orthodox icon of Rachel weeping for the children

This is what the Lord says:

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
    mourning and great weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”

This is what the Lord says:

“Restrain your voice from weeping
    and your eyes from tears,
for your work will be rewarded,”
declares the Lord.
    “They will return from the land of the enemy.
So there is hope for your descendants,”
declares the Lord.
    “Your children will return to their own land.

“I have surely heard Ephraim’s moaning:
    ‘You disciplined me like an unruly calf,
    and I have been disciplined.
Restore me, and I will return,
    because you are the Lord my God.
After I strayed,
    I repented;
after I came to understand,
    I beat my breast.
I was ashamed and humiliated
    because I bore the disgrace of my youth.’
Is not Ephraim my dear son,
    the child in whom I delight?
Though I often speak against him,
    I still remember him.
Therefore my heart yearns for him;
    I have great compassion for him,”
declares the Lord.

“Set up road signs;
    put up guideposts.
Take note of the highway,
    the road that you take.
Return, Virgin Israel,
    return to your towns.
How long will you wander,
    unfaithful Daughter Israel?
The Lord will create a new thing on earth—
    the woman will return to the man.” (New International Version)

The bereavement of losing someone you care about is awful. A parent experiencing the death of a child is next level grief. There is no bereavement like it.

As a hospital chaplain, I occasionally attend to a grieving mother who just lost her baby. I have shown up for premature and stillborn deaths, full term births, then death, sudden infant death, and more. The grief is indescribable.

On some level, there is no comfort – and never will be. I know that, for me, providing grief support to mothers who are enduring the death of a baby or young child has profoundly changed me and forever impacted my soul. So, I can only imagine what it’s like for a mother.

Many Christians will recognize the verse of Rachel weeping for her children as part of the early story surrounding Jesus:

An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt,where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”(Matthew 2:13-18, NIV)

It’s really hard to have hope when you’re in the throes of lamenting the death of children. We need hope. It’s necessary to life. We cannot survive, let alone thrive, without it.

It is possible to simultaneously experience hopelessness and hope. At the same time, we hold both despair and desire, anguish and anticipation, in our hearts. While we may never forget who we have lost, we make it through our days believing that another child can change the world for the better. We place our faith in the Christ child, in Jesus.

Wily old King Herod massacred innocent toddlers in order to ensure the destruction of Jesus. Behind his atrocity was the devil himself who knew that Jesus was the coming King who would one day bring salvation. But the old King’s sinister plan didn’t work. 

Reflecting on a vision of Christ’s birth, the Apostle John stated:

The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. (Revelation 12:4-5, NIV)

Satan wars against God’s Son and God’s people, whose roots go all the way back to the first prophecy of Christ:

And I will put enmity
    between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
    and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15, NIV)

There has been bad blood, ever since the Fall of humanity, between the serpent and the seed of the woman. The Old Testament Israelites were continually being threatened with extermination; they were constantly tempted to conform to pagan ways for handling their suffering and grief. 

Herod was just another in a long line of demonically animated men trying to perpetuate the kingdom of darkness. The devil knows that his time is short; and he uses twisted persons like Herod for his insidious schemes.

Many people experience hell on earth because Satan is on a rampage; mothers and their children are often the collateral damage.

The holiday season is a hard time of year for many people, filled with depression instead of joy, grieving over lost loved ones for whom you will not spend another Christmas with. And yet, there is a reunion coming, the hope of a bodily resurrection in which we will be with Jesus and God’s people forever.

Satan’s most powerful weapon, death, has lost its sting because of Jesus. Death does not have the last word; resurrection does. And this hope for the future helps us in the present to keep going and not give up.

The prophet Jeremiah was dealing with children lost in war to the invading Babylonians. His words are a lament in the context of the hope that captivity and exile will not be forever. 

Matthew wants us to see that the exile is over for us; Jesus has arrived, and the tears that were shed will shortly dry up. There may be a time of suffering that we must endure, but there is glory ahead.

Jesus is the Great Deliverer who brings us out of the grip of death, grief, and lament and into the promises of God. Christ is our hope. Amen, and amen.