Scripture: Jeremiah 4:1-2, 14, 18, 19-28
Sermon: Stand Up For Me (Loving the children)
I have reprinted the Jeremiah reading below, so you can read it easily. It’s so deeply and tragically moving.
Jeremiah speaks as he does because the inequities and corruption of the
kingdom have become too much for the people and for God to bear any
longer. The kingdom will soon be overthrown
with no hope of saving it -- for now. The
crisis is so complete that in verses 19-28 Jeremiah describes the coming
destruction as the reversal and undoing of creation itself, and the return to
chaos of all that God put into good order in Genesis 1.
Can we read this as a lament for our day, for the whole international
order and for all Earth?
A century ago William Butler Yeats wrote “The Second Coming,” which begins
with this vision of chaos engulfing the world:
Turning and turning
in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot
hear the falconer;
Things fall apart;
the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is
loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed
tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of
innocence is drowned;
The best lack all
conviction, while the worst
Are full of
passionate intensity?
An awful vision … sounds like the nightly news … and by the end of the poem
Yeats’ only hope is the dreadful anticipation of a great and terrible figure of judgement rising up finally to bring an end.
But Jeremiah says more, as do the other biblical prophets. He says, for instance, that the God of all
Earth will not allow “a full end” to be made.
And through the rest of his book he offers other hard-won and honest visions
and words of true hope.
Where is hope today? And how are
we part of it?
On Sunday in our worship, we’re baptizing a six-month-old child, second son
born to one of our families. It's always such a wonderful celebration, and this week will be just as joyous.
So what do you
think? In the midst of all the world is
and all it suffers, is this and are we part of holy hope? Hope you can be there, to be part of it.
Jeremiah 4.1-2,
14, 18, 19-28
If you return, O Israel, says
the Lord,
if you return to
me,
if you remove your
abominations from my presence,
and do not waver,
and if you swear,
“As the Lord lives!”
in truth, in
justice, and in uprightness,
then nations shall
be blessed by him,
and by him they
shall boast.
O Jerusalem, wash
your heart clean of wickedness so that you may be saved. How long
shall your evil schemes lodge within
you? … Your ways
and your doings have brought this
upon you. This is your doom; how bitter it is! It has reached your very heart.
My anguish, my
anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the walls of my heart! My heart is beating wildly; I cannot keep
silent; for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Disaster overtakes disaster, the whole land is laid waste. Suddenly my tents are destroyed, my curtains
in a moment. How long must I
see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet? “For my people are
foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have no
understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good.”
I looked on the
earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no
light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were
quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I
looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled.
I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert,
and all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger. For
thus says the Lord: The whole land
shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. Because
of this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black; for I have
spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will I turn back.
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