Tag: Jeremiah

The Bible in a Year – 17 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

17 May. Jeremiah chapters 10-13

Much of these chapters is the same basic messages as the preceding ones: the folly of idolatry, the sin of the people and their leaders, the coming destruction and the hint of a faithful remnant who will return. But each time the ideas return they are expressed in different ways, like the variations on a theme in a piece of classical music.  If a message is important then it deserves repeating in a variety of eays. Jeremiah certainly had a vivid imagination, or rather was open to vivid imagery given by God.  Like any good preacher with an eclectic congregation he must have hoped that each re-telling would appeal to a few people and catch their imagination.  Imagery here includes shepherds, nomadic tent-dwellers, arable farming, vineyards and olive growing, and even iron-smelting, along with the repeated metaphor of prostitution (are the sayings about Judah being like a woman having her skirt lifted and being violated addressed to women or men?)

 

We also see here  for the first time in this book an acted parable – that of burying a clean loincloth and retrieving it dirty. There is also the first rumour of opposition, as Jeremiah hears that his own people are plotting against him.  For those who speak truth to power (even telling the King that his crown will fall, 13:18) rarely get away without facing strong opposition, such is most people’s reluctance to accept criticism and face up to their sins.

 

The Bible in a Year – 16 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

16 May. Jeremiah chapters 7-9

In these chapters, Jeremiah the prophet experiences some of the tensions that any minister, or particularly parish priest must feel as they go about their patch – for the parish system in the Catholic and Anglican churches means that our priests are given a responsibility for the spiritual care of everyone living there, not just those who attend church.

 

One of these tensions is that between proclamation and response (or lack of it). “So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you” (7:27). A prophet has visions, or hears voices, or otherwise understands the will of God, the love of God, the urgency of Gods call. He (or she, for there were and are many women with the gift of prophecy) cannot but tell people what they believe God is saying, and yet even the most eloquent prophet finds that there is little response.  Only a small percentage of people ever get the idea, understand the message and turn to God.

 

The other is whether it is right to pray for the sinners around us.  God tells Jeremiah, “As for you, do not pray for this people, do not raise a cry or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you” (7:16). The message is, don’t bother asking me to forgive them for this time they have gone beyond forgiveness.  Yet Jeremiah persists in praying for the people, for that is the burden God has laid on him. “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. Hark, the cry of my poor people from far and wide in the land … For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me … O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!” (8:19,21; 9:1). But there is no response – this time not even a suggestion of a remnant. It must have weighed heavily on him.

 

The result is that Jeremiah wishes he could get away from it all: “O that I had in the desert a traveller’s lodging-place, that I might leave my people and go away from them! For they are all adulterers, a band of traitors” (9:2). Priests, prophets and other ministers are prone to burn-out and need time away from the demands of their ministry, whether it is a short retreat or an occasional longer ‘sabbatical’.  Some churches expect this of their clergy, others at least allow it.

The Bible in a Year – 15 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

15 May. Jeremiah chapters 4-6

Jeremiah lived in the time before Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians, and his prophecies in these chapters grow increasingly urgent.  Again and again the message God gives him for his people is that their sins (compared, as in Isaiah, to adultery or prostitution) were so grave that the people and their city deserved destruction. After centuries of being sent prophets to turn them back to God, still they persisted in ignoring his calls to worship him alone and show justice and right living.

 

In 4:1-4 there is one final call to repentance, with the startling call (not to be imagined literally!) to “remove the foreskin of your hearts”. The metaphor means that it is not having gone through a religious ritual of commitment that matters, but having the heart (emotions and will) dedicated to God.

 

But this last call is also ignored. This time they have gone too far – the rich as well as the poor fail to show any evidence of faith, the educated as well as the peasant, priests as well as laity.  Just twice there is a hint that a remnant will be saved – “The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end” (4:27), “But even in those days, says the Lord, I will not make a full end of you” (5:18)

 

 

The final straw, before God sends the Babylonian horde in, bent on destruction and ethnic cleansing, is this: “An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule as the prophets direct; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?” (5:30-31). It is when even religious leaders are apostate that there is then no hope for the people.

 

If there are difficult times ahead for our nation, it may be due to any number of factors – economic, political or environmental – but there is at their root a spiritual cause.  If large numbers of people genuinely turned to God and sought to live their lives by his standards, there would be less inequality, more justice and truth in politics, more concern for the environment.  But is it the fault of the Church? I don’t think so.

The media in the UK often like to quote statistics of declining church attendance and prophecy the “death of religion” or similar.  But they ignore what I see within the Church, which is an increasing desire on the part of priests and ministers, and also lay people, to renew their own spiritual lives, as well as praying for the conversion of others. There are more people living in religious communities than for a long time (although they look very different from traditional monasteries), more people going on retreats, practising meditation, joining nurture groups. As traditional denominations have to cut numbers of paid clergy, more people are coming forward to train as lay leaders or self-supporting ministers.  We can never be complacent, but although the Christian church in Britain may be shrinking in numbers, it seems to me to be in good spiritual health.  And we may take comfort from the Bible that God will not overlook the faith of the few.

The Bible in a Year – 14 May

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

14 May. Jeremiah chapters 1-3

Like Isaiah and other prophets, Jeremiah had a clear call from the Lord.  Even more than other spiritual gifts, true prophesy is something that cannot be imitated or made up.   It is different from preaching (which is taking the scriptures along with common sense and a degree of specialist knowledge, and applying them to everyday life) and evangelism (persuading people of the truth of a particular faith).   Prophesy is always something that God puts in someone’s mind and heart and mouth, a message for a specific situation or person or group that applies directly to them.

 

As both Isaiah and Jeremiah found, receiving a prophetic word to speak to one’s contemporaries is very challenging.  Not only is the word likely to be rejected by many of them as too difficult or even offensive to accept, but the prophet himself is made to feel sinful by delivering it.    Both these great prophets had to feel that God had touched their mouth in order to make it clean enough to deliver his message.

 

Jeremiah’s message was, in one sense, nothing new: throughout the history of God’s people he was constantly challenging them about worship of other ‘gods’, spirits or idols.  Unlike other sins such as lust, anger or greed which can afflict even the most faithful of believers, and be repented of, the sin of idolatry – believing that there is something that is more deserving of worship than God – is a fundamental betrayal.

 

That is why the form of Jeremiah’s words is so hard-hitting.  Many times over in different ways he uses the image of Israel and Judah as women who have committed adultery, not just with one lover but as prostitutes with many.  What man would accept his wife back in such circumstances?  Why would God ever accept his people again?

 

Israel and Judah had indeed gone so far from true religion that they would be banished from the land.  But God never gives up completely, and even in these opening chapters (2:11-18) there is the hint of a future restoration.