SETTING THE CONTEXT FOR THE SCRIPTURES

God rescued the Hebrew people from their enslavement in Egypt. Their joy and relief changed to fear as they faced an unknown future. With much grumbling and a mixture of faithfulness and betrayal, the people of God journeyed through the wilderness to the Promised Land. On the way they experienced God’s grace and faithfulness and formed into a people. Initially the tribes were loosely connected and then in the time of David they became a nation. Under King David’s rule the United Kingdom prospered. Under David’s son, King Solomon, pressure between the north and south began to build and after Solomon’s death the Kingdom split into Israel to the north and Judah to the south. Israel emphasized the traditions of Moses while Judah emphasized God’s covenant with David. The prophet, Jeremiah, spoke to both sides at a low point in their history. They warred with each other and they were caught in a power struggle between the great empires of the ancient Near East. But even more devastating these people of the covenant had turned away from God.

Read Jeremiah 2:4-13, 31:27-28, 31-34

THE SERMON

Let’s review the unfolding drama we have heard so far. The great Biblical drama opened with original blessing as God created the wonder of our universe from the formless void. We heard of the joy, beauty, and goodness of God’s creation and saw God’s original intention of harmony, peace and blessing. Generations passed and we saw God begin to form a people through Abraham, a people blessed to be a blessing. In scene two, we saw the people of God suffering as slaves in Egypt and God’s response when they cried out for help. The Exodus story is the key story for the Jewish people; for them it is God’s great redemptive act, the rescue of Israel from the bonds of slavery. Today the drama continues to unfold as our story takes a tragic turn.

After King Solomon died and the kingdom split there was a succession of kings in both countries over the next 400 years more or less. The chart below shows who obeyed God and who disobeyed God.

I went through 1 and 2 Kings and made these notations as the Bible states it very clearly. As you can see, every king of Israel over a 426-year span was disobedient to God, worshipping gods from other nations. The kings of Judah didn’t do much better. There were a few obedient kings; Hezekiah and Josiah were the most faithful. There were several others who were obedient, but who did not tear down the shrines to the other gods, which means people were still allowed to worship the foreign gods. And there were two kings who were particularly disobedient, Ahaz and Manasseh sacrificing their sons to foreign gods and doing other terrible things. Now some scholars say that 1 & 2 Kings was written by someone from Judah, which is why Israel is painted so badly. Whether or not that is true the point is still very clear that Israel and Judah both turned their backs on God not just for one generation but for many generations. We hear God’s agony in the first reading from Jeremiah, “What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things and became worthless themselves? … My people have changed their glory for something that does not profit.” (Jer 2:6, 11) The betrayal of God is much more than “breaking the rules;” it is a betrayal of trust and a breaking of a relationship. A covenant is a serious promise or commitment, marriage is a covenant; to be a people in covenant with God means that they are bound to God not by a contract but by a committed relationship. Many times the image of adultery is used to describe their idolatry. They gave their hearts to others after they had pledged their hearts to God. Anyone who has been betrayed by a loved one can relate I think to this anguish Jeremiah describes. The people deliberately turned their backs on God and the original blessing that God intended and through the prophet Jeremiah we hear the howl of God’s grief.

What is stunning to me is God’s patience and faithfulness; for the Creator to take that kind of rejection for generations and still stay faithful is truly a sign of God’s amazing grace.  The Great Thanksgiving Communion prayer in our hymnals says, “God Almighty you formed us in your image and breathed into us the breath of life. When we turned away, and our love failed, your love remained steadfast.”^[i]  After looking at the different generations of kings, I think the prayer is a bit of an understatement. As Old Testament scholar Elizabeth Achtemeier said, “The people repeatedly broke the covenant … and yet claimed that God was on their side and would always be gracious to them. That’s not an unknown phenomenon in our time too.”^[ii] The ancient people of God are not the only ones who turn away and disobey.

All we have to do is look at the injustice and violence of our world to see the evidence of our turning away. If we lived our covenant “you are blessed to be a blessing” domestic violence would not exist, greed would not be the god of so many people, violence in any form would not be sanctioned and dictators would not be savage to their people. Some of God’s children would not be dying of malnutrition while others of God’s children are dying of obesity. There is much evidence of our turning away and much evidence of the damage it has caused.

I know the pain for watching a loved one turn away and walk down a destructive path. I know the feeling of desperate helplessness, of wanting to stop my beloved from hurting him or herself, but knowing that there is nothing I can do to turn them around. They have free will and they are using it! Then I think about what God must experience as One who loves infinitely more than I can and who loves everyone ever created with that intense love, the grief must be excruciating. God’s love however does not mean that there are not consequences for our choices. As Bernhard Anderson says in his book The Unfolding Drama of the Bible, “People are free to choose their course of action, but they are not free to escape the consequences of that action as long as God is actively present “with us” in judgment and mercy.”^[iii] I guess you could say that God is the first one to use “tough love.”

Jeremiah paints God as the disciplinarian. Loving responsible parents discipline their children with appropriate consequences for their misbehavior to try and get them to repent or turn back to the right path. They use discipline to help their children learn to choose wisely. God is far greater than a loving human parent and so even though I sometimes struggle with the image; it makes sense that God would discipline us to help us learn to choose life. If talking doesn’t work, applying or just allowing logical consequences to happen is the best way I can think of to help encourage people to turn from their destructive paths. God sent not one, but many prophets to warn the people and call them to turn back to God. The people just abused the prophets and refused to change. Finally the people of God experienced the full brunt of their rebellious choices. In 722 BCE, Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians. Judah and the Temple in Jerusalem, their most sacred place where they believe God resided on earth, were destroyed in 587 BCE. The people were certain that God would never allow the Temple to be destroyed, but it was. An entire layer of their society were captured and carried off to Babylon and the Babylonian Exile began. The people of God later understood this political calamity as God’s decision to abandon the kingdoms to their own chosen destruction.^[iv] As Anderson says, “… the end of this shock treatment is that human beings may be brought to their senses, may become more fully human in their relationships, and at last may find their true community in new covenant with God.” ^[v] As the later passage in Jeremiah shows us God’s faithfulness remained steadfast; even in judgment God’s desire was for restoration.

DC Talk, a Christian rock band, has a song that I think captures this part of our unfolding drama. It’s called the Hard Way. It goes, “Some people gotta learn the hard way. I guess I’m the kinda guy who has to find out for myself. I had to learn the hard way, Father I’m on my knees and I’m crying for help.”^[vi] It is a painful way to learn, indeed. Some never learn and continue to choose death. Some don’t learn until they have lost everything but then I have seen them turn and use their experiences to try to help others. The founder of the money management seminars Financial Peace University is a good example of this. Because of God’s steadfast love we do not have to be trapped by our bad choices, we don’t have to stay imprisoned by our disobedience. God is faithful ready to help us change, rebuild, plant, grow, and be reborn if we are willing to repent, if we are willing to have a change of heart and direction. God who watches over us will embrace us if we turn back. I have a hard time understanding the much too common human bent to destructiveness. I believe a lot of it comes from unresolved festering wounds, some from sheer self-centeredness, and some times because the destructive behavior seems easier than the path to healing. But it tears me up that so many people live in such chaos and brokenness when there is a path to wholeness. I have the greatest respect for people who walk the path toward healing. So many times that path requires heroic courage and stamina. In doing that hard work too, especially if the person is going to have children or has children they can break destructive cycles that have cursed their families for generations. Now that is a real hero in my book.

The Hard Way doesn’t have to prevent us from finding the Way, the Truth and the Life. We, as Christians, believe that the new covenant that Jeremiah described is available to us through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior and that the Holy Spirit puts God’s law within us and changes our hearts to be like God’s heart.

Where have you turned away from God? Is there some part of your life where you have a cracked cistern where you have pushed the Living Water out of your life? Turn back; turn back to God for you will receive not only forgiveness, but new life and a new future. Amen.

Sermon delived by Rev. Nancy Cushman on March 19, 2006.