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One of my Biblical heroes is the prophet Jeremiah. But boy, I would not want
to have had his life! For his life, like Paul's, was a series of horrible
events that would probably cause even the most mature believers to rethink
their commitment to Christ. His countrymen continually refused to believe
him, and chose rather to plot his destruction in order to silence him. And
if this were not enough, he also had the misfortune to live through the
destruction of Jerusalem and the beginning of the exile of the Hebrews in
Babylon. Literally no thing in his life was stable enough to provide him any
comfort or security.
But what makes Jeremiah different from Paul, and what inspires such fear and
trembling in me when I read his story, is his sensitivity to the horrors of
his life. While I love Paul for his emphasis on grace and his humility
regarding his weakness and sin, I can't quite sympathize with his calmness
in the face of disaster. Jeremiah, on the other hand, cries out -- quite
loudly! He holds back nothing in his reaction to the events around him. His
lamentations over the destruction of Jerusalem show a soul deeply afflicted
by the suffering of the very people who refused to listen to his warnings.
Even though he had foretold all of it, he was still deeply grieved by
Jerusalem's fall. Where we might expect him to say "I told you so", we get
rather a series of well-crafted verses filled with horror, fear, sorrow,
and, surprisingly, hope.
But the Book of Lamentations is only one side of Jeremiah's sensitivity to
suffering. The other side is found in the book which bears his name, in
which his prophecies to his people are interlaced with his complaints to God
over his situation. I can think of no Biblical author whose personal misery
is so well-recorded; only the agonies of the Passion narratives come to mind
as comparable depictions of one person's agony in following the will of God.
To give an example of his suffering, at the height of his misery, having
been framed and thrown into a dungeon, Jeremiah is convinced that he will
die (37.20). He wins a reprieve from the king, but this does not do him much
good, as the king almost immediately hands him over to the Jews to be put to
death; he is imprisoned in the muddy pit of a cistern until he is rescued
from certain death by an Ethiopian eunuch. Certainly it is Jeremiah who
offers up the most frightening prayer in Scripture. His prayer in chapter 20
opens with the lines "O Lord, thou hast deceived me and I was deceived" and
concludes with what must be the only pro-abortion passage in the Bible:
"Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, saying, 'A baby boy
has been born to you!'...Because he did not kill me before birth, so that my
mother would have been my grave...Why did I ever come forth from the womb to
look on trouble and sorrow, so that my days have been spent in shame?"
As much as I wish Jeremiah did not have to endure such suffering, I love his
outspoken honesty regarding how miserable his life is. His prayer in chapter
20 comforts me because it shows me that I can be completely honest with God.
I do not have to pretend that everything is great just because I am saved.
God is big enough to handle my bitterest complaints, and God's love for me
is so great that my cursing and swearing cannot separate me from it.
Jeremiah's honesty to God is as inspiring in these days of feel-good
Christianity as it is frightening. We in the church have not been taught to
admit how hard our walks are, much less that we are anything less than
satisfied with what God is doing with us.
To illustrate this attitude, let me recount an exchange that occurred in my
Sunday School class' series on the Book of Lamentations. While we were
discussing how miserable Jeremiah's life was and how unhappy he was, one of
my classmates said, "Well, when you go against God's will, you can expect to
be unhappy." "But Jeremiah wasn't disobeying God," I shot back, "he was
doing everything exactly as he was told. Jeremiah was miserable because he
obeyed God!" Perhaps it is merely coincidence, but I don't recall ever
seeing my classmate in Sunday School again.
Jeremiah's honesty is indeed comforting and inspiring, but this does not
make his life less frightening. I am truly amazed that someone as sensitive
as he was survived (physically) as long as he did; I take this to be a sure
sign of God's presence as the strength of Jeremiah's life. How else could
someone so apparently unsuited to his calling remain so faithful? I am
convinced it was only because it was God who called him to the task. In the
modern American church, we hear from well-meaning encouragers that God never
gives us more than we can bear. In fact, we are told this so often that we
have actually begun to believe it! But the uncomfortable truth is, God often
and deliberately gives us more than we can bear. Why would God do this? So
that the world may see that there is something more-than-human in our
ability to withstand life's horrors. God uses us to reveal God's own power
and God's own love, to reveal that God is both capable of and willing to see
us through every challenge we face.
Let us be honest for a minute: how many of us, as gay, bisexual, or
transgendered men and women following Christ, have not at some point
understood Jeremiah's prayer in chapter 20? How many of us have not wished
never to have been born rather than to struggle with our sexuality on the
one side and our church on the other? Even after God has reconciled us to
our sexuality, how many of us have never felt that our calling to proclaim
God's salvation to the queer community is a burden? Do we not get tired of
having to refute the same arguments with every person we meet? Do we not see
our friends and loved ones turn against us for proclaiming a pro-gay
theology? Do we not feel that, no matter how much we want not to enter into
the fray again, the truth of God's gospel simply will not stay silent within
us? Do we not find ourselves shaking one fist at God for our situation and
lifting the other in praise to God's faithfulness? Jeremiah's prayer in
chapter 20 easily covers the entire span of emotions we face as queer
believers. And like Jeremiah, God will use our weakness to reveal God's
power and love.
But if Jeremiah was obedient, then why was his life so miserable? It was
because of the content of God's message to Judah: God would no longer
protect their beloved nation. Jerusalem would fall. They must go to Babylon
and pray for the well-being of their enemies. And lest the people
misunderstand, chapter 24 makes the message clear: the people God finds
favor with are the ones who go into exile; being spared the agony of
captivity is not a sign of God's favor! This must have challenged
everything the Hebrews thought they understood about the nation of Israel.
Can you imagine if the Christian church in America was told by its prophets
that America would be conquered, Washington destroyed, and that we would be
taken into exile in Russia? How would we react if we were to learn that
losing everything we have is a sign of God's favor? It's no wonder the
people of Judah refused to believe Jeremiah! God's word to them contradicted
everything they thought they knew about God's work in their history.
This is exactly where we as queer disciples of Christ fit in today: We are
proclaiming a message from God that goes counter to everything the church
and society have understood for centuries. We are the outsiders proclaiming
to have found God's favor, and this threatens the church's view of itself.
Our message forces it to question whether is has greatly misunderstood
scripture. Our calling by God raises the threat of changes that will force
our culture to let go of some of its most cherished tenets. Our presence
forces people to consider their deepest prejudices about what is acceptable
to God. But we must not forget that Jeremiah's message went unheeded, and
that unfortunately, we have no guarantee that ours won't follow suit. We
hope not, but with each new referendum and election our hope takes a
beating. Still, God has brought us a long way, and if God is willing, we
will have the success that Peter and Paul had in bringing the Greeks into
the kingdom rather than the rejection Jeremiah had in getting his people to
repent.
But the final result is not for us to worry about. We have been given a
message of hope and restoration, and we must be faithful to proclaim it. It
will not be easy, and we can be certain that at times our lives will be
miserable and our suffering unbearable almost to the point of death. But if
we are living in obedience to God, then we are in the safest place
imaginable. For God will be our strength, our peace, our hope, and our
glory; these are not things we will have to find within ourselves. We will
find them in God's presence in our lives, in God's whispers of love which
wash over us and refresh us, and in God's faithfulness to keep the promises
we have received through scripture and through the Holy Spirit. In the midst
of our suffering, God is with us, closer to us than we are to ourselves, and
God's concern for us is even greater than our anxiety for ourselves. In the
midst of our suffering as a result of our faithfulness to God, there truly
is no better place for us to be.
Jeremiah, with God's help, endured the worst of lives in order to deliver
one of the most challenging prophecies in scripture. Likewise, we are
delivering a challenge to our church regarding what God is doing, and we too
can count on God to sustain us. And let us not forget that Jeremiah was also
given a message of hope and of restoration, including one of the most
comforting passages found in scripture: "For I know the plans that I have
for you ... plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and
a hope." God is good, and God is faithful. We are not guaranteed that our
obedience will prevent us from suffering, but we can rest assured that God
will bring us into safety and into joy, and that the time will soon come
when all the nations shall hear our song of praise and see our dance of
victory and shall rejoice with us in the fellowship of believers.
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A Commentary on Jeremiah : Exile and Homecoming Walter Brueggemann Jeremiah : The World, the Wound of God Daniel Berrigan
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With Feeling
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