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.
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. 3 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. 4 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
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.
