National Insecurity State
Jeremiah 1:4-10; 7:1-11
Reign of Christ
November 23, 2014
Reign of Christ
November 23, 2014
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
Being a prophet is
not an easy gig. God never sends a
prophet to tell people, “Hey, you’re doing fine! Good work.
Just keep it up. Keep on keeping
on.” No, when God sends a prophet it’s
because the covenant is in trouble. But,
of course, when the covenant is in trouble, it’s because someone has figured
out how to get ahead by cutting corners, ignoring commandments, and betraying
the deep values of the covenant. When
someone’s wealth depends on ignoring the covenant, the last thing in the world
they want is to be reminded. And
reminding people is a prophet’s job.
So no wonder
Jeremiah wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about God’s call! “I’m only a kid. I don’t know how to do this. I’m no good at public speaking.”
God didn’t buy
it. In the first place, Jeremiah was probably
not all that young. He was just
inexperienced. But every experienced
prophet started out with no experience. So
that just didn’t fly. Jeremiah will go
where God sends him and say what God tells him to say. And here are those words again: “Be
unafraid. Be very unafraid.”
Jeremiah’s mission
is speak to nations and empires. His
mission will not just be political, but geo-political. He is appointed “dig up and pull down, to
destroy and demolish, to build and plant.”
There are four kinds of ruin before there will be building and
planting. God knows what anyone who has
remodeled a kitchen knows: before there are the new appliances, cupboards, countertops
and floors, there will be demolition, rubble and dust, dust, dust. Jeremiah will be God’s way of setting things
right, but not until a lot of bad things have happened.
He has his work cut
out for him, because Jerusalem is a mess.
Jerusalem doesn’t think so. Jerusalem,
or at least its upper crust, thinks things are just fine. Well, maybe not fine. After all, they are a little country caught
between two superpowers.
But with help from
the diplomatic and military establishments, the king has it pretty well figured
out. When you are a small country with
powerful enemies, it might help to have a powerful friend. So, with Babylon rising in place of Assyria and
threatening all the little kingdoms to its south and west, Judah sought aid
from Egypt. Can you believe it? They looked to their former masters from when
they were slaves for help against the new threat! But that’s what you do in the real world: you
hold your nose and do whatever it takes to survive.
Judah prepared its
military, too. It drafted its young men
into arms. It worked hard to get
weapons. It stockpiled food for
sieges. It made sure that there were
sources of water inside its walled cities.
They wouldn’t have to hold out forever, of course, only until they could
get word to Egypt and Egypt could send a relief army. It would work.
Of course, paying
for their defenses and for the tribute needed to keep Egypt on its side meant
that there simply wasn’t any money to spare.
They couldn’t afford any social welfare programs. It might be fine to provide for the poor in
times of plenty, but these were no longer those times. The widows, the orphans, and the guest
workers would just have to look out for themselves.
But with this
belt-tightening, the diplomacy, and the preparations for defense, Judah stood
as good a chance as any of the little kingdoms.
Besides, Judah had something those others did not. They had a special relationship with their
God, Yahweh. They were a special people,
an exceptional people, a chosen people. God
had chosen them to be in covenant, a choice, they were told, that would last
forever. God would protect them.
Remember that some
seventy-years earlier when Hezekiah was king, in the prophet Isaiah’s time, the
Assyrian army had surrounded Jerusalem and then, when everything seemed
hopeless, their king Sennacherib heard a rumor of unrest at home in Nineveh and
stole away in the night. God rescued
Jerusalem then. God hadn’t
changed. God could be counted on. Jerusalem was safe and would always be safe.
God had not just
chosen Judah. God had not only given
Judah promises. God had given them the
Torah. The Temple was in Jerusalem. God’s name and glory lived there in the
Temple in Jerusalem. The people came to
worship and they shouted, “This is the Temple of Yahweh! The Temple of Yahweh! The Temple of Yahweh!” Who or what could possibly threaten the
Temple or Jerusalem, the city of the Great King, or Judah God’s chosen
people? Judah had its protective
alliances; it had its fighting forces and fortified places; and, above all, it
had Yahweh as its covenant God.
Too, bad about the
widows, the orphans, and the guest workers, though.
And that, you see,
was the flaw in Judah’s plan. They
thought that their security was to be found in armies, alliances and
architecture.
The prophets,
however, never saw the problem of Judah’s security in the way Judah’s kings
did. Kings, then as now, saw their job
as securing and if possible growing their place among the nations. They saw their job as increasing their own
power—political, economic, and military—to protect the nation. When they had to choose between justice and
power, they chose power. Protecting the
poor was a value that fell far down on their list of priorities.
Unfortunately for
Judah’s kings and for Judah itself, in God’s mind Judah’s security was based on
two things and only on two things: Did
they put their full trust in God rather than hedging their bets by calling on
other gods? That was the first
thing. The second was this: Did they
protect widows, the orphans, and guest workers from the rich and powerful?
A long, long time
ago, when I was a seminary student I learned some Hebrew, the language of the
Old Testament. In the advanced class we
were each to write a report on a single Hebrew root and the words that are
derived from it. I was assigned the word
גָאָל—that’s the verb form—and the related noun, גֹאֵל. The word is
translated in two quite different ways in our English versions. It is either “avenger” or “redeemer.” This was a puzzle to me. How could two ideas as far apart as
redemption and vengeance come from the same root?
I looked at how it was used through the Old Testament, trying to find an
answer to the puzzle. And here is what I
found. Behind the two ideas of “avenger”
and “redeemer”, there was another idea, an older and deeper one. In the absence of an effective criminal
justice system, family members protected each other. If someone was killed, it was the duty of the
closest male relative to exact vengeance by killing the killer. If someone had to sell their land, it was the
duty of the closest male relative to buy it back, or redeem it, and restore it
to its original owner. If someone had to
sell themselves into slavery, it was the duty of the closest male relative to
buy them back, or redeem them, and restore their freedom. The word that is translated either as avenger
or redeemer in its root sense means “the one who acts as next of kin.” To redeem a debt is to act as next of
kin. To obtain justice is to act as next
of kin.
But what of those who have no next of kin obligated to protect them? What of the widow who has no husband? What of the orphan who has no father? What of the guest worker who has no kin at
all? Who protects them? Who acts as their next of kin? What I found was this: God acts as the
next of kin for those who have no kin. God
appoints God’s self to be the next of kin for the widow, the orphan, and the guest
worker. That is what it means for God to
be a redeemer.
The other thing that I found is that God expects that the kings of Israel
and Judah will take on this task. It is
the main reason why they are king. Not
to amass armies to conquer their neighbors.
Not to play at the game of geo-politics.
Kings are kings so that they may act as God’s agents to defend the
defenseless, to speak for the voiceless.
Widows, orphans, and guest workers are not distractions from a king’s
duty. They are a king’s
duty. The security of Judah depends upon
it. When kings see to the welfare of the
poor, things go well for Judah. When
they do not, when they act like the kings around them, Judah is at risk. In that case, diplomacy will not help. Armies will not help. The Temple will not help.
This, of course, is if you believe Jeremiah and the other prophets. He tells us what he believes God is like and
is about in their world. He tells us God’s
point of view. Maybe he is right. Maybe he is wrong. There were prophets other than Jeremiah who
believed that that Jeremiah was wrong, that God would bless the king’s
diplomatic efforts, that God would bless the king’s armies with success, and
above all, that the mere presence of God’s Temple guaranteed Judah’s safety.
As it turned out, of course, history proved Jeremiah right. Our tradition judges Jeremiah to have been a
faithful and true prophet. The only
reason we even know the names of Jeremiah’s opponents is that they are in
Jeremiah’s book. Otherwise, these
prophets of realpolitik would have been altogether lost to history.
It is easy to look back and see that Jeremiah was right. The real trick is do today what he did
then. When I say, for example, that the
nation that spends three-quarters of a trillion dollars a year on its armies and
then claims that it cannot afford to properly house its two and a half million
homeless children[1]—that’s one child
in every thirty—has built its security on sand and cannot claim the blessing of
Jeremiah’s God, am I right or wrong? History
will eventually provide the proof one way or another, but we haven’t the luxury
of waiting for history. We have to
decide now.
That is the challenge posed to us. This
text, like all Biblical texts, invites us into a world in which God is the
central actor, but to enter that world we will have to accept the laws of that
world. If we decline the invitation, then
we have our world and the way it works and in that world homeless children will
have to wait until our enemies are defeated.
But if we accept the invitation, then homeless children come first.
To be the messenger of stark choices like this one is what it means to be a
prophet. It’s why Jeremiah didn’t want
the job. It’s why I don’t want
the job. But sometimes the job chooses the person and not the other way around.
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