"A Warning" (Jeremiah
1:9-10; 9:1-16)
Sunday, November 1, 2020
(The
Sunday before election day in the race between President Donald Trump and
challenger Joe Biden)
Watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwXuHk9JGbs
How does God feel about politics in America? Sit with that question. What is God thinking? Our North Carolina senate race has been
rocked by a sex scandal. Our governor’s
race is a referendum on how we’ve handled the Coronavirus. And what can we say about the presidential
race, so filled with strife, anger, and hatred?
I heard a word from God.
At least, that’s how it felt. Not
some secret message. What I heard is there
for anyone willing to open the Bible, read Jeremiah, and listen and honestly
face what God has put before us.
Jeremiah prophesied in the 6th century BC in
Jerusalem, the capital of Judah. God’s
people faced annihilation. A century and a half earlier, the mighty
Assyrian empire had all but destroyed the northern kingdom, Israel. Broadscale intermarrying with people the
Syrians relocated diluted the genealogical ties to the original 10 northern tribes
of Abraham’s descendants.
By Jeremiah’s day, Judah remained as the nation of God’s
chosen people. Babylon had taken
Assyria’s place as the world super power and was about to overrun Judah. Jeremiah prophesied that the end was
inevitable. His words ring ominously in
our time, if we will listen. I don’t
think some other nation will overrun the United States as Babylon did to Judah,
nor do I think the United States is a chosen nation as Judah was. America is more like Babylon, a super power
imposing its will on everyone else. But Jeremiah’s
words still speak because God is as angry at our self-centered arrogance. God allows sin to run its course and sin
always ends up hurting humankind.
Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann writes, “I believe the
great pastoral reality for the church in the United States is that we are
watching the termination of the world we have loved too long and lost – a world
of Western, white, male, heterosexual domination, privilege, and certitude.”[i] Of course there’s nothing particularly good
or bad about being white, male, heterosexual or western, but there’s something
unjust about a world where all those qualifiers gives a person a slew of unfair
advantages. People of color, women, and others
are tired of bowing before white male dominance.
Brueggemann’s prescription
for pastoral response to the changes in America, came in his book about
Jeremiah, written in 2006. Since he
wrote that, we’ve had a white woman as a vice presidential candidate, a black
man elected president, a white woman was one of the presidential candidates
four years ago, and on Tuesday, if you haven’t voted already, one of your
vice-presidential choices is a woman who is both African American and Asian
American.
Termination of a world is the way Brueggeman
described the reality pastors must address.
Sinking into Jeremiah’s message, we see the issue is much deeper than
the race or gender of our leaders. We
are a materialistic society who relegates God to the margins. We are hedonistic society whose god, as Paul
writes in Philippians is our bellies (our craven appetites for excess, sex, and
pleasures we often have not earned). We
are an impatient people who want what we want, and we want it now. We see God as a possession here to serve us,
not as the Lord we must obey. When God
allows the consequences that result from our collective sin, pain and darkness far
worse than that wrought by the Coronavirus pandemic follow.
Termination of a world is how Brueggemann put
it. God’s warning in Jeremiah 9 – I
will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a lair of jackals … a desolation – is God’s warning to American
Christians regardless of who wins on Tuesday.
God’s disgust at how easily we disregard His holiness eclipses the noise
of Trump v. Biden.
Thus paying attention to
the real issue, we listen to Jeremiah 1:9-10.
“Now I have put my words in your mouth,” God tells his prophet. “See, today I appoint you over nations … to
pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to
plant. Pluck up. Tear down.
Build. Plant.
You’ll hear pastors and
religious leaders desperately implore us to pray for this election, the most
important one of our lifetimes. Such
rhetoric is nothing more than a cheap fear tactic used to cajole us into
praying for victory for the candidate that religious leader supports. In every election, someone, in a voice
dripping with desperation, declares it the most important of our lives.
Jeremiah and the other prophets of God did not tie their hope to political
leaders.
The prophets spoke hope,
but “their hope was not grounded in their sense that things are going to get
better, nor in the notion that things were evolving in a desired
direction. Therefore, they were not …
undone with things got worse.”[ii] We will see things get worse. Count on it.
However, we need not get rattled.
Our hope is the same as that of the prophets – in the new world given as
a gift from God. We have a clearer
picture of it than Jeremiah did because we know God’s promises are fulfilled in
Jesus, regardless of who lives in the White House.
Jeremiah’s charge from
God: pluck up! He will be the
play-by-play commentator calling the action as the structures, conventions, and
institutions of our time are uprooted.
This is God’s
warning. In Jeremiah 9 God spoke to his
chosen people, the ancient descendants of Jacob, those who lived under kings in
the line of David. With the fall of
Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, and the exile, it appeared the old
covenants with Abraham and with David were ended. God addresses this in Jeremiah 9:12. “’Why is
the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes
through?’ And the Lord says, ‘Because
they have forsaken my law that I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice,
or walked in accordance with it.’” God
will uproot the ground our society stands on for we have forsaken His
ways.
Pluck up. Tear down.
Understand that God does not relish the state of things. Listen in Jeremiah 9:1 as God speaks his
sadness. “O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of
tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!” Can God love us, and at the same time allow
us to fall into destruction? Have you
ever loved an addict, done all you could to help them, and then watched as
their life descended into hell anyway, in spite of your love and your attempts to
help them find a new course?
God’s warning is full of God’s
deep sadness when He sees us suffer what comes of the sins we commit. It has to mean something when we say ‘God is
love.’ It has to mean something to people in pain, even when they’ve brought
that suffering on themselves. “If the
love of God is more than an empty metaphor, then the suffering of God must also
be regarded as real.”[iii]
Pluck up. Tear down.
Societal
destruction. God’s sorrow at our
suffering – suffering we’ve brought on ourselves. What else did God tell
Jeremiah?
Build. God tells Jeremiah. Prepare.
Plan. Remember, Jeremiah was
quite certain. Destruction and exile are
coming. Your life will never be the
same. But, through prayer and study,
learning to see with God’s eyes, we get ready for what’s coming, whatever it
may be. Whatever happens next – extended
pandemic, backlash from the election results, or some new horror we haven’t
anticipated, none it compares with the God who loves us. That’s why, with confidence, we can say, we
meet God even in dark days. When every
warning comes true, we know God is in it, God loves, and is with us.
In chapter 29, Jeremiah
tells the exiles, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you … and
pray to the Lord on its. Behalf” (29:7).
After Tuesday, we will have the same calling that we had before
President Trump was elected. Again, from
Philippians 3:20, “our citizenship is in heaven.” We vote and try to be good neighbors, but
this is all temporary. We seek the
welfare of this city because of the love God showed us as Jesus hung on the
cross, dying for our sins. We build
lives here, we glorify God, and we invite our neighbors to put their faith in
Him.
The warning ends as all
God’s warnings do; with the hope of a new day.
Pluck up. Tear down.
Build. And finally, plant. Our culture is not moving farther away
from God, or sinning more egregiously.
We are just more open about our rejection of the Lord than ever
before. As many people rejected God in
prudish Puritan New England as today, but today, we tattoo our idolatry on our
arms.
As Jesus declared himself
sent to the lost (Mk 2:17), so too are we.
Having accepted God’s assessment of the world, having built up lives of
faith within the fallen world, we then go to the world as God’s messengers,
witnesses, telling the truth. God is
love, Jesus is Lord, and if people turn to him, they will receive forgiveness
of sins and new life in his name.
If you haven’t already,
vote. Handle your relationships with
friends and neighbors whose vote is different from yours with grace, and
kindness, humility. We’re followers of
Jesus. Our calling is about helping
people become followers of the king. No
matter who the president is, we answer that call. We love others, follow Jesus, and share the
hope of the gospel.
AMEN
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