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.