Two Truths

These past few weeks, the lectionary readings have included some rather difficult passages to listen to. Have you noticed?

We have been in the book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament.

Jeremiah is one of the most important and one of the most challenging prophets in the Bible.

We have been treated to such gems as God calling God’s people “fools” and “stupid children” today;

last week’s reading said that God was devising evil against God’s

people as a punishment for their sins;

and the week before that,

God accused God’s people and their children’s children, of evil themselves.

When I teach the Bible to eighth graders,

they generally don’t know very much about the text at all.

They come with preconceived notions about what we find there

and are often not only surprised,

but scandalized by the biblical stories.

While I understand where their surprise comes from,

I am also reminded of Jesus’s question to the crowds

who had come out to see John the Baptist’s crazy exploits in the book of Matthew:

“What did you come here to see?” or,

as the Message translation puts it,

“What were you expecting?”

What are we expecting to see, or to hear,

when we hear the Bible, especially the prophets?

After all, the prophets themselves did not please people,

especially people in power.

They had difficult lives and suffered greatly at times.

It must have been difficult for Jeremiah, too.

He had been receiving this calling from God

since he was a boy, and he was afraid,

we learned a few weeks ago,

when he learned that he was meant to be a prophet.

But, at the same time, Jeremiah came to believe with a fire in his bones

that everything about the way people in his society gained and maintained power was wrong;

that the world had become upside-down;

that good was called evil and evil was called good;

that everything was so bad that

God must truly be on the verge of abandoning God’s people.

Do we expect Bible stories to be sanitized and clean?

Do we expect the characters to always act “good”?

Do we expect the stories never to touch on the thorny questions

of the human condition?

And, perhaps most of all, do we expect the voice of God,

speaking through the text,

never to be angry,

or upset,

or jealous,

or passionate,

or hurt,

or sad,

or confused?

When we read the Bible,

we are eavesdropping.

We are overhearing a conversation within communities

that had a relationship with God.

We are watching as they themselves struggle

with who God is

and what God wants for their lives

and for their people.

Another way to think of it is this:

even in our closest relationships—

especially in our closest relationships—

we don’t always speak in the same tone of voice,

with the same words,

all the time.

We don’t always have the same message.

If you were to take one day at random out of the

fifteen and a half years I have been married to Patty

and published everything we said on that day,

it wouldn’t necessarily be a very good reflection of

our relationship as a whole.

The relationship has ups and downs,

and at different times,

different things need to be said,

depending on our circumstances,

and our moods,

and our changing understandings of each other and ourselves.

Reading through the book of Jeremiah, then, is like seeing snapshots

rather than watching video.

We are seeing bits and pieces of the record

of how God’s people understood themselves and God,

not a seamless view of the entire story.

These snapshots are not always pretty.

When bad things happened,

sometimes they blamed themselves.

Sometimes they blamed their enemies.

Sometimes they blamed God.

Sometimes it seemed like hope was lost,

and sometimes hope came shining through even the most difficult of

circumstances.

Jeremiah himself speaks with different voices. Yes, he is quite angry in today’s passage.

But he weeps for his people in chapter 8,

giving us the question that inspired the beautiful spiritual,

as he asks, despondently: “is there no balm in Gilead?

Is there no physician there?”

And in chapter 31, he is hopeful,

speaking of God consoling the people:

“there is hope for your future, says the LORD . . . I will

write my law on the people’s hearts, and I will be their

God, and they shall be my people.”

The snapshots we have today, from both Jeremiah and the Psalm,

remind us that our closest relationships are based on honesty.

I think all of us can recall a time when a loved one told us

something about ourselves that was hard to hear.

“You hurt me when you said that.”

“I don’t like how you handled that situation.”

“You could have stood up for me, you but chose not to.”

As difficult as these things are to hear in the moment, later,

with some time and space for reflection,

we may realize we absolutely needed to hear those things.

Foolish? Stupid? Selfish? Pursuing my ways rather than God’s ways? Yes, I have been all of those things.

And yes, we, as the people of God,

have sometimes been those things as well.

And sometimes we need to hear that message.

In fact, I think it seems easy at times to imagine that,

as the Psalmist cries out, no one is following after God’s way, or taking God seriously enough, including ourselves.

Yet in the same breath, just as Jeremiah does, we can imagine

the hope of God’s love working in and through us

and enabling us to accomplish more for God’s kingdom

than we could possibly imagine.

And we need to hear that message, too.

I’ve been reading a fascinating book recently

about a young woman’s journey from secular Jew

to dedicated rabbi.

A saying from the Hasidic tradition that helped her on her own spiritual journey is this:

“Keep two truths in your pocket,

and take them out according to the needs of the moment.

Let one be, ‘for my sake the world was created,’

and let the other one be, ‘I am but dust and ashes.’”

At times we need to be humbled;

and at other times we need to know

that we are the crowning joy of God’s creation.

Perhaps sometimes we need Jeremiah

to pop out of the lectionary readings,

to stare at us, wild-eyed and a little bit scary,

from this lectern and say,

“Hey! Wake up!

Y’all have messed up and need a reboot! Start over and do better this time!”

And sometimes,

probably many more times,

we also need to hear Jeremiah’s words of comfort,

“I will satisfy the weary,

and all who are faint I will replenish.”

Jesus knew the prophets well, of course.

His cousin John had styled himself as one of them,

wild-eyed and a little bit scary just like Jeremiah.

And Jesus himself says plenty of things in the Gospels

to give us pause.

But our Gospel reading for today definitely reminds us

that for our sakes the world was created.

Last week,

our readings were more in the “dust and ashes” camp.

Jesus talked about the cost of discipleship last week.

He encouraged his listeners to forsake anything

and everything

that would hinder them from pursuing the kingdom with their whole being,

including “hating” their families in order to

devote their total energy, their complete focus,

to God.

So it’s very strange that Luke would say,

in the very next breath,

that the tax collectors and sinners

were all gathering around to hear Jesus.

Who would want to hear more of this kind of preaching?

Why would these rejects from polite society gravitate toward one of Jesus’s most “difficult” sayings?

Maybe it’s because, to those with nothing to lose,

no social status to give up,

no sacrifice to make,

Jesus’s words don’t actually seem difficult at all.

Leave all that you have and follow you, Jesus?

Of course! I have nothing else to call my own, Jesus!

All I have to leave behind are my doubts, my fears,

my failures;

of course I will leave them behind and follow you!

After all, when Jesus invites these sinners to eat with him,

he is really telling them that they are

the crowning joy of God’s creation.

And it’s right at this moment

that the ones who do have something to lose

start grumbling and criticizing Jesus—

based precisely on their higher social status.

They do have a lot to lose by following Jesus,

so from their perspective,

this crowd that Jesus is attracting is proof that

he’s not of God.

No one from God would lower themselves to table fellowship with

those losers!

It’s a big deal,

to eat and drink with someone,

in Jesus’s culture.

It means that you honor the people you’re eating with.

It means you see them on the same level as you,

with the same social status

and the same type of relationship to God.

Maybe this crowd needs to be reminded that they are

but dust and ashes.

Which story do you need to hear today?

Which truth will you pull out of your pocket this week?

We are blessed to serve a God who will give us exactly what we need,

whether that is the honesty of an uncomfortable truth,

or the blessing of the knowledge that we are the crowning

jewel of God’s creation.

Some weeks,

we may feel like we are safely in the crowd of the ninety-nine

sheep,

and others—probably the majority of the time—

we are so, so, grateful that Jesus is looking for us,

and that he will continue to look for us,

until we have been found.

At this table, at his table—

he continues to invite us

to eat with him and each other,

week after week.

Here, he finds his wandering lost sheep.

Here, he finds his precious lost coin.

Here, he blesses us with amazing grace, always.

Thanks be to God. AMEN.