Sermon for Homecoming Sunday, September 19, 2010

Weeping Prophet; Weeping God

Text: Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

Jeremiah is often called the weeping prophet.  If you read all 52 chapters in one sitting you would see why.   Jeremiah witnessed the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586 BCE and their plunder into exile.   Jeremiah was a prophet sent by God to Judah, to warn them of this coming day of judgment, and to plead with them to repent – to turn back to God.

 

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel,”  Jeremiah proclaimed, “For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt…I gave them this command: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you. Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels, and looked backward rather than forward” (7:21-24).  

What is the result of this turning away?  What happens when the people continue to look backward rather than forward to the God who leads the way?  God sent Jeremiah to the people of Jerusalem to let them know…

 

When people fall, do they not get up again?  If they go astray, do they not turn back?  Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding?  They have held fast to deceit, they have refused to return. How can you say, “We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us”?  The wise shall be put to shame, they shall be dismayed and taken; since they have rejected the word of the Lord, what wisdom is in them? Therefore I will give their wives to others and their fields to conquerors, because from the least to the greatest everyone is greedy for unjust gain; from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.  They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace (8:4-11).

They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace

It’s not hard to see why Jeremiah was not the most popular prophet of his day.   No one likes to hear what he has to say.   It’s for that reason that I confess to cringing when I opened the lectionary for this Sunday and the text from Jeremiah jumped off the page.  Why, God?    Don’t you know it’s Homecoming?  Surely, Lord, there is something far more palatable I can preach this week of all weeks to set the mood for the great feast we are all about to eat.   Please?   

Jeremiah didn’t want his task, either.  He tried to get out of it by convincing God he was only a boy – too young to do this sort of work.   But this is a God who has habit of calling the most unlikely into service – from an elderly Abraham, a stuttering Moses, a young virgin Mary, a shepherd named David and now a youthful Jeremiah.  To him, God says, “Gird up your loins; stand up and tell them everything that I command you.  Do not break down before them, or I will break you before them” (1:17).    Anyone sensing God’s call on your life to be a preacher yet?  

So friends, we find ourselves in a real dilemma here.  The prophets words are not only for Jerusalem, a people about to be driven into exile, but for us today!  For if God was upset with the greed from the least to the greatest of his chosen people Israel, a people not great in size or reputation, then surely this same God, who is the same today, yesterday, and tomorrow, is upset with the greed from the least to the greatest among we who live in the richest nation on earth.  

If the same God who takes offense when his chosen people say of themselves, “We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us” how much more might God take offense upon any of us who presume to be in right standing before this God?   And if this same God who is ashamed of his people treating the wounds of others carelessly, saying “Peace, peace” when there is no peace, how much more might this God be ashamed of we who fail to truly see the wounds of God’s people all around us?

Friends, all of us this homecoming day are found to be under the same watchful eye, under the same judgment.   None of us escapes this, from the least to the greatest, the wise to the foolish, the rich and the poor, the churched and the unchurched, the child who stays close to home and the prodigal who wanders off – all of us are under the same roof today.    Today, this Homecoming, the one great sin we shall try to escape is the presumption that our homecoming celebration as it is normally understood glorifies this God.   We gather and feast and say “Peace, peace” when there is no peace.   

What then should we do? 

Before we can begin to even utter an answer to that question, which may prove to be elusive to us in the end, we can do what the prophet does:  we can weep.    The antidote to treating the wounds of the people carelessly is to first rend our hearts before God and become a people who weep.     Hear the youthful Jeremiah once more….

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: “Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” (“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols?”)

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”

For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?  

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!

Contrast this prophet’s cries with this letter I read this week which is making its rounds on the internet…

Dear Mr. President: 

During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone. 

While glancing over her patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as “Medicaid”! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one pack of cigarettes every day, eats only at fast-food take-outs, and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer. And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman’s health care? I contend that our nation’s “health care crisis” is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a “crisis of culture” a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one’s self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. It is a culture based in the irresponsible credo that “I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me”. Once you fix this “culture crisis” that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you’ll be amazed at how quickly our nation’s health care difficulties will disappear. 

The doctor mocks; The prophet mourns.  The doctor judges, The prophet grieves.  The doctor shows contempt; The prophet cries.   The doctor is political; The prophet is contrite.  The doctor is aloof; The prophet weeps.  

God have mercy on us.   Before we render judgment on the least or the greatest, the wise or the foolish, the prophets or the doctors, the churched or the unchurched, may we first, before any words are spoken, be a people who weep.    What might happen if the church wept along side those who are weeping?   What would happen if rather than just say “Peace, peace” or, rather than simply writing a check or bringing cans of food for the hungry we actually mourned with, for, and alongside those to whom we offer our charity?   What if rather than offer our words we offer our weeping selves?

Now, my Old Testament professors would remind me that one of the tricky things about this book we call Jeremiah is how difficult it can be to tell who is doing the speaking.  The poetry and prose do a complicated dance making it hard to tell where one voice ends and another begins. And so it is with our passage today.   Is this Jeremiah speaking or is it God?   I am content to answer that question this way:  Yes.  

What if these words come from the mouth of God?  Hear them once more…

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: “Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” (“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols?”)

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”

For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?  

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!

Remember, none of us can escape the gaze of this God.   We have all been brought to level – we are all under the same roof.    How does it strike you that this God, the Creator of the heavens and earth, the Judge of the living and the dead, weeps for you and the world?   If we cry out as the people of Jerusalem did, saying, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved,” how does it affect you to hear this God reply not with contempt and aloofness and mockery towards we who routinely squander his grace and mercy but with tears of his own?   What does it mean that this God would ask where is the balm?  Where are the healers?   Why are my poor people not yet restored?  

Perhaps it is because God has more faith in us than we have in ourselves.   Our epistle reading for today urges that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions,  (and most certainly for the poor and underprivileged) so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.    

And why should we do this?  St. Paul continues: This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:1-4).  

This God desires everyone to be saved.   And church, our dilemma, or rather, our calling, is that we stand in between the desire expressed by God for all of creation and the fulfillment of that desire.    This is why, I think, God loves homecomings like ours today.    Our Homecoming today, properly understood, is a sign, a gesture, pointing towards that which God desires to do for everyone.   The truth is, every Lord’s Day we gather is a Homecoming.   And in this way, it glorifies God.   

Friends, today is indeed a day worth celebrating.  This Homecoming can mark our return from exile.  We can depart from here and feast together, celebrating that the universal desires of God are being fulfilled in mysterious ways through our fellowship today.  We can break bread together with thanksgiving because we know the God who was broken for us and bids us to become broken, offering our very lives as a balm to the wounds of his people.   

If you are visiting with us today and seeking a place to weep alongside those who suffer as well as create signs that point to the God who desires all to be saved, I hope you’ll consider joining us.  

The Weeping Prophet;  The Weeping God.   May we be known by the world as a Weeping Church.  Amen.