Saturday, June 28, 2014



The Choice

Jeremiah 28:9-14

          Politics and religion don’t mix.  Well, they don’t mix well.  Well, they sometimes have to mix.  Well, perhaps it is more correct to say that they need each other, even though they both adversely affect each other.  Today politics and religion are so intermixed with each other that it we may not know where one stops and the other one begins.  But these messages may pull us in different directions.  We may be confused by all the conflicting messages around and all the people who claim ‘God’ is on ‘their’ side.
          God’s and Generals where two soldiers stare at each other across the river.  One is a Confederate and one is a Union soldier.  They look at each other and you begin to notice the marked similarities between them.  Here are two men who were raised in pretty much the same American culture.  They both (probably) prayed to the same God and they both read the same Bible.  One was so adamant that God supported the practice of slavery that he was willing to put his life on the line.  The other was so adamant that God opposed the practice of slavery that he was willing to put his life on the line.  And God, for His part, remained silent on the whole question and let the people fight among it down here on earth.
  There is a powerful moment in the movie
            This passage is very similar to this picture.  We have two prophets whose worldviews and prophesies collide here.  Earlier in the chapter Hanaiah preaches a good word to the congregation along the following lines:
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: qI have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. rWithin stwo years I will bring back to this place all the vessels of the Lord's house, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place and carried to Babylon. I will also bring back to this place tJeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and all the exiles from Judah who went to Babylon, declares the Lord, qfor I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.”
Now we have to take a break here to remind ourselves what is happening in this whole situation.  The world of politics and superpowers has caught up to the people of Israel.  Babylon was the sole superpower of the day, they controlled pretty much the entire world and they were coming Israel’s way.  Zedekiah, the king of Judah was faced with a decision: submit to Babylon and live in relative peace or resist and rebel and get crushed in the process. 
            We have romanticized the notion of resistance especially in movies like 300.  If you remember that movie (and if you are really good you remember that it is based in Herodutus) where the envoy of the Persian Empire comes to King Leonidias in Sparta and demands the Spartan loyalty.  Of course, Leonidias rejects him and says, “THIS IS SPARTA!” Part of us wants to be like that guy.  But of course Leonidias and his Spartans died in the rebellion against Persia.  This is not to say that we should not rebel, but that we need to know when to rebel. 
            So Zedekiah is faced with this same choice.  This choice is made more difficult by the fact that you have different prophets going around saying different things.  Some, like Jeremiah, are saying that you need to submit that God is bringing the Babylonians into power.  Others, like Hananiah say that God would never forsake his people and his covenant and so it is necessary to rebel for the sake of holiness. 
            We know what this tension is like.  We live in a divided time in our country.  We have faced the greatest economic downturn in the last 80 years.  The country is divided into two factions and there are essentially two party lines drawn on the issues.  Which one is right? Which one should you commit to? You cannot commit to both? Where is God in this issue? How would you rule if you were Zedekiah? How would you rule if you in charge today?

            You could not necessarily label one of these prophets good or bad, given the context of the day.  Walter Brueggemann suggests “it maybe more correct to see the conflicting political advice given by the two prophets as rooted in conflicting visions of God and God’s plans.”[1]
            Hananiah stresses the faith in God’s covenant with his people.  God will not forsake the people of Israel because He established his covenant with them.  Therefore, they should not worry about things like the giant super power who is coming to invade their country.  God is with them and God has promised that he will establish the people of Israel into a powerful kingdom. 
            We see this type of theology everywhere today.  This is an early version of prosperity gospel or a version of victory in Jesus, where the focus is on the good news that God has promised, not anything that might be difficult.  Sometimes, we are told to sit and be faithful and wait for all the good things that God will deliver to us.  We should not let obstacles get in our way, because God can overcome them and they can not stand in our way.  We are told that if we do not receive good things, then it must be something that is defective in our faith or that we have ‘hidden sin’ in our lives that we must confess before the good stuff can come flowing our way.
            Over against this, we see Jeremiah’s response.  It might be tempting to see his initial reaction as sarcastic, and it might be so, but I am not necessarily convinced that this the case.   He might have truly wished that things would work out the way that Hananiah presented.  After all, who wouldn’t want things to go this way? The problem was that things were not going to have a happy ending.  Things were going to be bad. 
            In the previous chapter, Jeremiah had been preaching to Zedekiah: “Bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him and his people and live” (Jeremiah 27:12).  He announced that it was God (YHWH) who was raising up Nebuchadnezzar to be the ruler of the earth and so to stand in his way would be to stand in the way of God. Jeremiah had been preaching to the people that they needed to repent and be right with God, but the people have not listened.  Now as a consequence, they too will come under the yoke of the king of Babylon. 
            This message as not going over well…and frankly why would it?
            If people today had a choice between what message they would listen to, which one do you think they would?   Imagine if you had a preacher who was preaching that God wanted you to be ‘healthy, wealthy, and wise?’  All you had to do was to trust in God and you could get all the riches you wanted and all the possessions you wanted and all the victory that you wanted.  On the other side you had a preacher who was preaching that God was going to send you into a time of poverty, destitution and desperation.  Which one do you think would become more popular? Well isn’t that what we see when we look out at the modern world?
            None of us want to hear that God’s message for us is defeat, sorrow, or suffering.  WE all try to avoid these things and we say that “God love us and has a wonderful plan for us.” To hear that God’s plan is going to mean for us to give up our dreams, our hopes and our lives destroys us.  It is no wonder that Jeremiah was threatened with death just about everywhere he went.
            When I was younger, I used to believe that God had great plans for me and that ministry was going to be spectacular.  I would preach and people would come to listen to me.  But lately I have had to accept the Jeremiah message that I am not meant for greatness…or even mediocrity.  I am meant for obscurity, exile and to live life at the edge.  To accept this has come at a great cost emotionally, but I think it has deepened me spiritually.  When we have to give up the very core of what our beliefs have been, we must grow to accept a new set of beliefs and to redefine who we are in light of who God is
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            In this passage, God is calling Israel, His chosen people, to a life in Exile, to a life confined to the edges of society where they will not be important nor influential nor cared about.  They will be ignored, stepped on, beat down and destroyed.  (This is of course the experience of the vast majority…some of them have different experiences, such as Daniel or Esther).  Who wants that?  
            We do not always understand God’s ways in this life…and maybe we don’t in the other world as well.  God never promised that our lives would turn out the way that we wanted them to.  Nor did He say that we would be completely without struggle and without difficulty in our lives.  In fact he never promised that he has a wonderful plan for our lives. 
            Jesus warned about this in the gospels.  In fact, the disciples weren’t even assured that they would have a place to live.  “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Mathew 8:20).  In fact, Jesus’ followers were told that they were to be kicked out of the synagogues (John 16:1) and people will turn against them (Matt 5:11) and they will generally not be places of great importance in the world.  But what is important in the Gospels is the same lesson that was important for the people of Jeremiah: that God will be with them, and no matter what happens, they need to trust in the Lord.
            At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus knows he is going to send his disciples out into the world.  They are going like serpents out into the world, but need to be as gentle as doves.  They are going out to a hostile environment.  The very last thing that Jesus says to His people is “I am with you always…to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20). 
            Jeremiah promises the same thing to the people of Israel.  Even though God is sending them into the Exile, even though God is relegating them to the edges of society and bringing many of their dreams to an end, he is not forsaking the people.  In the very next chapter we read the most famous verse from Jeremiah, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, to give you a hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11). 
            What is it that God might be calling you to? Might God be calling you to an experience that you would rather not go through? Is God calling you to a desert life, one that is not in keeping with your wishes and desires? 
            I think that of the Church as a whole that is where we are heading. Our doctrines and our values are under constant scrunity and we pushed more and more every day to the edge of society.  We no longer enjoy the privilege we may have at one point in our history and that is hard for many of us to accept.  Whereas church leaders in the past were looked up to and respected, so now we are scorned and ridiculed.  To join the church is almost to put yourself in exile from the dominant culture of the day and to sacrifice much of what can be enjoyed in this world.
            But what about personally? Individually? Are you hearing a message from God that might be difficult for you to accept? Would you rather, like Hananiah, accept the message that everything will be fine and that life is filled with days of endless wonder for you?   Or would you rather hear the message of Jeremiah that God is calling you to a more difficult life?
            This might mean giving up a dream of being a world changer and settling for something less.  This might mean sacrificing the place you want to live at for a different and more ‘dull’ existence.  This might mean not having the career you once dreamed of, but rather working in a job that pays the bills. 
            This is not an easy message, and it was never meant to be.  Remember that God goes with you into whatever the future holds.  But this passage reminds us to listen dutifully and diligently for God’s voice, even if we do not want to hear it.


[1] Feasting on the Word Year A vol 3 Loc 5788