Week 04

Sermon Conversations with Alex and Aaron

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What can you expect? Pastors Alex, Aaron, and the occasional guest having a casual conversation, diving deeper into ideas related to last Sunday’s teaching.

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During this Lenten season, we’ve been looking at the calamitous prophecies of Jeremiah. The persistent and ungrateful rejection of God and his ways by the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem made it impossible for them to escape impending disaster. This week our focus has been Jeremiah 6-9.

As a parallel to Jeremiah’s lament, I’ve been thinking about Jesus’ week-long “Road to Jerusalem”. Matthew 23 contains Jesus’ intense rebuke of religious leaders during that time frame. It begins:

…woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites!

Jesus ended his assessment of these leaders with this lament:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’” Matthew 23:37-39 ESV

He used the same words during that week with different additions in these laments, Luke 13:33-35 and Luke 19:41-44.

Jesus made many pointed overtures to these religious leaders during and prior to his public ministry. Their acceptance of Jesus as the longed for Messiah should have begun at Luke 2:46-47. They should have appreciated and pursued the twelve year old prodigy for his unmistaken understanding and answers to life’s most profound questions. Instead they ignored and persecuted him.

The rejection of Jesus’ messages, miracles, and the leaders’ disdain of his rightful claim for the worship from all mankind, is at the core of all lament. Let’s try to enter into the deep sadness God endures as humans reject his words, care, and support.

Look at Jesus’ final lament (Matthew 23:37-39) before his surrender to the ordeal of the Cross. Recall the catastrophic second fall of Jerusalem and demolition of the second temple – just as Jesus sorrowfully foretold in his Luke 19:41-44 lament above.

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” Psalm 2:1-3 ESV

• Lament the brokenness of the world around us.
• Lament your own brokenness.
• Let it soak in that: rejection of Jesus’ sacrifice and message is deeply personal to him.
• BONUS PRACTICE: Read or listen to Psalm 85 as you pray for the hope of restoration of future generations, asking the Holy Spirit to move hearts to surrender fully to him for fulfillment of his promises.

Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears!
I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.  Jeremiah 9:1 NIV

This is what the Lord Almighty says:
“Consider now! Call for the wailing women to come; send for the most skillful of them.
Let them come quickly and wail over us till our eyes overflow with tears and water streams from our eyelids.

The sound of wailing is heard from Zion:
‘How ruined we are! How great is our shame!
We must leave our land because our houses are in ruins.’ ”

Now, you women, hear the word of the Lord; open your ears to the words of his mouth.
Teach your daughters how to wail; teach one another a lament.
Death has climbed in through our windows and has entered our fortresses;
it has removed the children from the streets and the young men from the public squares.  Jeremiah 9:17-21 NIV

The kind of lament described above, isn’t familiar to most of us in this country. Until I researched it, I didn’t know that people (usually women, in certain cultures), were trained to be lamenter/wailers. They were to be available to grieve with people who had experienced loss of something or someone.

For many of us, it is hard to freely express our grief openly. I have been grateful for this church community and the help I’ve received during a number of deaths in my family. I am also grateful for books I have been given and for support groups that are available, to enable people to share in each other’s griefs and struggles. I could have used help with more than one loss, particularly when I was a child.

I’ve mentioned before that because of a physical illness that our parents had (which meant that we had to be isolated from them periodically), my sister and I were moved around among different family members a number of times from our infancy on. Sometimes these moves included my younger sister and me, but sometimes, we were split up to live with different sides of the family. I am fourteen months older than my sister, and it was easier for some of the relatives to have us one at a time rather than together.

Our father died when I was four and my sister was three. When our mother got well, we were moved to live with her, her sister and their mother in New Mexico.

When I was 10, our mother got sick again. In the spring of 1953, because it was easier to isolate one of us while our grandmother was nursing Mom, my sister remained in New Mexico, and I was sent to live with our father’s sister and her husband in Denver,.

I turned 11 in August of 1953 and Mom died in November. We had been getting progress reports via daily postcards up until the phone rang at 9:30 one night, I remember saying, “Mom’s gone!”. I couldn’t cry for weeks. My aunt wasn’t very concerned, but my uncle was, and he resorted to a ruse to help me.

My aunt in New Mexico had sent a card with a $5.00 bill in it. There had been 2 of them in Mom’s purse. My sister and I each got one. I saved mine for weeks. My uncle rushed in one morning and asked if he could borrow it as he needed to pay the paper boy. I gave it to him, but said that it was the last thing I had from Mom. I started to cry, and cried for a long time that day. After that, every time I started to cry, my aunt would ask, “What are you blubbering about?” or threaten me with, ”I’ll give you something to cry about!” I learned to stuff my grief around everybody.

I still am more apt to cry for joy than for my own grief. I am learning that Jesus shares my sorrow and that he is safe to cry with.

Do any of you reading this relate? Ponder Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” I recommend Darrell W. Johnson’s book, The Beatitudes: Living in Sync with the Reign of God.

Chapters 8 and 9 in Jeremiah in are difficult to read. Jeremiah continues to tell the people of their sin, but the people continue to act as if all is well – they do not see a need to repent or change their ways. Imagine a small animal that has had its stomach completely ripped open by a predator, and someone comes along and puts a small Band-Aid designed to cover a scraped knee onto this gaping bleeding wound. Do you get the picture? Can you grasp how a Band-Aid would be completely inadequate to heal the wound inflicted on this poor animal? In Jeremiah 8:11 this is the picture the prophet is trying to make clear to the people of Judah.

They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. “Peace, peace,” they say, when there is no peace. Jeremiah 8:11

Jeremiah has walked the streets of Jerusalem looking for anyone who is righteous or honest. He tells us what he has found instead.

From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. Jeremiah 8:10b NIV

Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; they will be brought down when they are punished, says the LORD. Jeremiah 8:12 NIV

The wound of the people of Judah is not a physical, bleeding one – at this time. The siege, the sword, and the famine are still in Judah’s not too distant future. No – the wound Jeremiah was speaking of was a spiritual one. Judah had turned away from their one true God, had embraced, followed, and worshiped other gods, who had no power to save them, to help them, or to even listen to them (as these were simply made of wood and stone).

Jeremiah describes his own and God’s lament over Judah’s sin in these verses.

O my Comforter in sorrow, my heart is faint within me.
Listen to the cry of my people from a land far away:
“Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King no longer there?”
“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their worthless foreign idols?”
“The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.”
Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me.
Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?
Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people? Jeremiah 8:18-22

These words are painful to read, and they express a deep grief over a wound that was not being addressed, so could not be healed. The balm of Gilead was a well known salve used to help heal wounds. Egyptians sought it (Genesis 37:25, Jeremiah 46:11), and its medicinal qualities were well known. But, to heal a wound – first the injury must be recognized and acknowledged. Then steps can be taken to clean the wound, apply medicine to the area, stitch it, and wrap it up, so that healing can actually take place. The people of Judah couldn’t apply the ‘balm of Gilead’, as they did not acknowledge that they even had a wound. Do you have a wound that needs to be acknowledged? Do you have an injury that you have ignored, or denied? If so, identifying it to yourself and to God, is a good first step.

“The people of Judah have done evil in my eyes, declares the Lord. They have set up their detestable idols in the house that bears my Name and have defiled it. 31 They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire — something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind. 32 So beware, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer call it Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter, for they will bury the dead in Topheth until there is no more room. 33 Then the carcasses of this people will become food for the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. 34 I will bring an end to the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bride and bridegroom in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, for the land will become desolate.”

8:1 “At that time, declares the Lord, the bones of the kings and officials of Judah, the bones of the priests and prophets, and the bones of the people of Jerusalem will be removed from their graves. 2 They will be exposed to the sun and the moon and all the stars of the heavens, which they have loved and served and which they have followed and consulted and worshiped. They will not be gathered up or buried, but will be like dung lying on the ground. 3 Wherever I banish them, all the survivors of this evil nation will prefer death to life, declares the Lord Almighty.” Jeremiah 7:30-8:3

In chapters 7 and 8 of Jeremiah, we begin to see the first signs of the fate that awaits the nation of Judah. Convinced of their own special connection to Yahweh [YAH-veh], they do not see their fate coming. In chapter 7, we see Jeremiah at his fiery best, as he calls out the nation that has continued to sacrifice in the temple but has failed to live out the way of Yahweh [YAH-veh] in practice. Even their repentance has been hollow. He predicts that the fate of Judah will be the same as Israel’s. He tells us of an “end to the sounds of joy and gladness”.

Disaster is coming. Lament will begin.

And the city once full of the sounds of joy and gladness will be left desolate.  Jeremiah 7:34

At the end of the seventh century BC, the Chaldean Empire would sweep across the area we know today as the Middle East. While we might have some sense of what would take place, our information is limited. Kathleen O’Conner notes that the writing of history usually omits mention of human suffering. The brutal practices are often lost in the simple narratives of Jeremiah, and we are left to imagine as best we can: the displaced families left with nothing, the stench of a city under siege, and above all, the loss of life and dignity.

It is perhaps Lamentations rather than Jeremiah that best provides us a window into this suffering.

Our ancestors sinned and are no more, and we bear their punishment.
Slaves rule over us, and there is no one to free us from their hands.
We get our bread at the risk of our lives because of the sword in the desert.
Our skin is hot as an oven, feverish from hunger.
Women have been violated in Zion, and virgins in the towns of Judah.
Princes have been hung up by their hands; elders are shown no respect.
Young men toil at the millstones; boys stagger under loads of wood.
The elders are gone from the city gate; the young men have stopped their music.
Joy is gone from our hearts; our dancing has turned to mourning.
The crown has fallen from our head.
Woe to us, for we have sinned!   Lamentations 5:7-13

As we enter a week of contemplating and participating in ”lament”, begin by placing yourself in the midst of the people of Jerusalem. What are your emotions? What actions follow? Where is God in the midst of it all?