Sermon - 3d Sunday After Pentecost (6/21/2020)
Jeremiah 20:7-13; Psalm 69:7-10, 16-18; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39
The first reading today is a prayer of the prophet Jeremiah, by our standards a very unusual and almost shocking prayer, if you were to hear it on the lips of a modern Christian. Which perhaps says something about us, and a tradition and way of prayer that we have largely lost touch with, and I think much to our loss.
Jeremiah lived in Jerusalem at the very end of the 600s B.C. and the beginning of the 500s B.C. The direct descendants of King David had been on the throne for four hundred years, and God was worshiped in the temple built by David’s son, King Solomon.
Trouble was brewing in the world, but there had been trouble before, and the kingdom had always muddled through. Some said that was because God had always protected the people, and God could be counted on to do that again. But many, including most of the kings themselves, put their trust in pagan gods, gods that allowed them to accept and rationalize great injustices, even the sacrifice of children.
Into this world Jeremiah speaks the word of God: “You have been unfaithful to the true and living God. God freed us from slavery in Egypt and brought us to a land filled with blessings so that we could be a people that lived the love and the peace and the justice of God, yet you have chosen to follow other gods. You have chosen to steal from and oppress the poor, you have told yourself it’s OK that others die because you got yours and you say your gods have told you they approve. Well, the true and living God does not approve.
“And God’s patience with you has limits. Soon God will allow you to suffer the consequences of your choices, and you’re not going to like it. But it will be your choice. God will, in the end, prove faithful to God’s promises, but for you who have attached yourselves to things other than God, God’s faithfulness is going to be very painful, and it’s going to feel like disaster and suffering and the loss of everything you thought was yours. And it will all have been your own choice.”
Jeremiah turned out to be correct. He lived long enough to see the Babylonians invade, to see the Temple burned to the ground, to see the city of Jerusalem destroyed, the survivors sent into exile. He himself died in a refugee camp in Egypt, proven right in the end, but that was hardly a consolation in the midst of such death and destruction and devastation.
But during most of his lifetime, while Jerusalem was still standing and the majority of the people – the ones who weren’t offered as human sacrifices, the ones who weren’t crushed by inequality and poverty, the ones who thought their pagan gods were treating them just fine – well, you can imagine, the majority of the people didn’t care for Jeremiah very much. What a downer! How divisive! How ungrateful for all the blessings he has as a citizen of Jerusalem! Why do we have to listen to this? Jeremiah was routinely mocked, insulted, at one point thrown into a well and left to die. We know that in the end Jeremiah turned out to be correct, but at the time nobody knew that, and being right about the word of God didn’t make for a pleasant or easy life for Jeremiah.
In the first reading today, after Jeremiah has learned of yet another plot to assassinate him, Jeremiah turns to God in prayer. And his prayer is full of anger and rage – anger and rage towards God. “You deceived me, God, and I let myself be deceived.” You tricked me, and I fell for it. How could you do this to me? Do you see how people are treating me? Everyone just laughs at me. Even my closest friends are just waiting for me to take one wrong step, and they will pounce!
God, this is your fault! They don’t see the truth of what is going on, but I see it, because of you! And when I think, I’ll just keep my mouth shut, I can’t take any more of this abuse – then I see the injustice, I see people dying, and I can’t just sit here and do nothing! It’s like a fire in my bones, I’ll explode if I don’t do something! Why didn’t you tell me it was going to be like this? You tricked me into this, and I’m a fool because I fell for it.
Jeremiah feels free to let God have it. To vent his anger and his frustration on God. That Jeremiah had a tough time as a prophet is not surprising. But it may seem unsettling to us that he is so quick to accuse God of deceit, to rant at God for making him a prophet. Because most of us have been taught not to talk to God that way.
After all, we are taught that we should pray to accept God’s will. Didn’t Jesus pray in the garden, “Father, let this cup pass from me, yet not my will but thy will be done.” Yes and amen. But not everything that happens in the world is necessarily God’s will. Some of the things that happen in this world that break our hearts break God’s heart too. And so Jeremiah is not afraid to share his broken heart with God. We might be tempted to hold back a little, because we know we’re supposed to hurry up and get to the “but your will be done” part. But Jeremiah isn’t in a hurry.
I heard an interview with a pastor this week that started with some reflections on what the pandemic has taught us about our society and about our churches. And within the first 4 minutes, the interviewer asked, “So, in that sense, is the pandemic a gift to the church?” And the pastor being interviewed said, whoa, wait a minute. Before you call the pandemic a “gift,” let’s recognize that literally millions of people are grieving loved ones right now. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have died, alone, drowned by the fluid in their lungs. Millions suddenly have no jobs, or have had their pay cut, and don’t know how they’re going to eat or pay for a roof over their heads. And we haven’t even begun to see the long-term effects on children, in other ways we haven’t even begun to imagine yet. Yes, God can bring good out of any situation, no matter how bad, but let’s not go there too quickly.
I think that pastor was very wise. We don’t like being uncomfortable, we don’t like dwelling on negative things, but sometimes that’s reality. The lament of Jeremiah is a cry that holds nothing back, that doesn’t move too quickly to find the silver lining, because Jeremiah trusts that his losses and his sufferings are real to God.
Jeremiah shares everything with God – the good, but mostly the bad and the ugly. And maybe the ugliest thing Jeremiah prays is to tell God that he, Jeremiah, can’t wait to see God punish his opponents. “Let me see your retribution on them,” Jeremiah prays.
Well, that’s not how we’re supposed to pray, is it? Isn’t our model Jesus praying “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do”? In that moment Jesus shows us who God is, and what a human heart completely in harmony with God’s own heart is, and God’s desire is for all of us to have such a heart one day. But if we’re honest – and Jeremiah is nothing if not honest – that’s not who we are yet.
I remember seeing the news a few weeks ago about a sheriff out West who was refusing to tell people to stay home and refusing to force people to wear masks, saying it was unconstitutional – American freedom apparently includes the God-given right to spread our germs wherever we want. And this week this sheriff was again on the news, with the report that he and his whole family had tested positive for coronavirus. I will confess to you that my first reaction was: Ha! Good. Serves him right.
I’m not proud of that, but there it is. And in my defense, my filters immediately kicked in, and of course, I don’t want anyone to get sick. Nobody deserves that. Really I don’t. And to be fair to Jeremiah, his filter seems to kick in right away too, because his prayer to witness God’s revenge on his enemies is immediately followed by this: “Sing to the Lord, praise the Lord, for God has delivered the needy from the hands of evildoers.” As if, as soon as Jeremiah said his prayer of vengeance, he recognized that the important thing is that God is good because God saves the needy from those who take advantage of them. How God does that, how God deals with those who do wrong, is something that – upon further reflection – Jeremiah is willing to leave to God. But his brief moment of honest prayer perhaps helped him to see, as my brief moment of schadenfreude helped me to see, that one of the imperfect, sinful, violent people that God needs to restrain is me.
Why does the Holy Spirit include the prayer of Jeremiah in our Scriptures? Why does the church propose it for our reading today, to go with a gospel text in which Jesus tells his followers that they, like Jeremiah, should expect hardship and opposition? Because Jeremiah’s prayer is a model of what the ideal prayer is like? No. Jesus shows us that. But Jeremiah isn’t Jesus, and neither are we, and God wants us to pray and to come before God as the actual people that we are, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because it’s when we put the entire reality of our lives before God, all of it, even the parts that are in need of redemption and healing, that’s when God can do the work of redeeming and healing us.
And so if you are feeling angry and frustrated, if the world is making you uncomfortable these days, my advice is not to move too quickly to easy comfort and cheap reconciliation. Take your discomfort and your anger to God, and if it doesn’t come out right – as Jeremiah’s prayer didn’t come out quite right – trust that God will know which of your prayers to say no to. And if it takes time before you can authentically move to gratitude and peace, that’s OK. When you get there, it will be that much deeper and more real for the honest lament you make to God.