The Labor Day Prophet

His stained glass window is found along the Giddings Avenue wall, the fourth arched column from the front, the multi-colored pane on the right hand side of that column.  That’s Jeremiah. One would think he must have been an impressive figure to get immortalized in glass. One can only imagine the success he enjoyed, the accolades received and the acclaim given.

That’s where the story needs revisiting.  Jeremiah was a prophet in the Hebrew tradition.   The biblical book about him is fifty-two chapters long, the longest prophetic book in scripture save for that of Isaiah.  Jeremiah gets a lot of ink. The book of Lamentations, five chapters long, is also attributed to the same.  The fact, though, that one would have a book of lamentations, at all, should tell us something about the life he lived.  According to any standards of worldly measure, Jeremiah was a miserable failure. For forty years, he was God’s spokesperson, telling five administrations of kings what was wrong with the culture, what was wicked about society, and what was wayward with the hearts of the people.  But when Jeremiah spoke, nobody listened.  He urged people to act in ways godly, not nobody changed their ways.  In fact, the people grew so sick of hearing his harangues about their private and public sins that they threw Jeremiah in prison, put him in a stockade, then they lowered him into a well, and finally deported to Egypt. That’s what happens to troublemakers and truth tellers.

He was rejected by his family, scorned by his friends, ridiculed by the false prophets and puppet priests who were preaching a health-and- wealth-God-is-always-on-our-side-everything-is-dandy message. Jeremiah cried so much over the brokenness of society that history has tagged him with the nickname, The Weeping Prophet.  He struggled, he wrestled, at times with the world, at times with God.  He dealt with the hazards of faith and the mysteries of the Holy One.  And through it all, he never gave up.

I invite you on this Labor Day weekend to consider becoming a modern day Jeremiah, emulating his faith, taking on his struggle, and matching his endurance.  In the weeks ahead, we will look at his life and listen to his message to see if we, individually each one of us, and congregationally together, can arrive at a fresh understanding of who God is calling us to be and what God is calling us to do. 

In his study of the life of Jeremiah, Eugene Peterson writes: 

The puzzle is why so many people live so badly.  Not so wickedly, but so inanely.  Not so cruelly, but so stupidly.  There is little to admire and less to imitate in the people who are prominent in our culture.  We have celebrities but not saints.  Famous entertainers amuse a nation of bored insomniacs.  Infamous criminals act out aggressions of timid conformists.  Petulant and spoiled athletes play games vicariously for lazy and apathetic spectators.  People, aimless and bored, amuse themselves with trivia and trash.  Neither the adventure of goodness nor the pursuit of righteousness gets headlines . . .

If, on the other hand, we look around for what it means to be a mature, whole, blessed person, we don’t find much.  These people are around, maybe as many of them as ever, but they aren’t easy to pick out. No journalist interviews them.  No talk show features them.  They are not admired.  They are not looked up to.  They do not set trends.  There is no cash value in them.  No Oscars are given for integrity.  At year’s end no one compiles a list of the ten best-lived  [Run With the Horses, p.11-12]

Jeremiah didn’t start out wanting to be a prophet.  It wasn’t his dream in sixth grade when his teacher gave the assignment to write an essay on “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up.” It was all God’s idea.  God came up with the plan.  Jeremiah took no part in the initiative.  He didn’t fill out an application to get into prophet’s school.  When he was still a boy, with not enough hair on his face to grow stubble, God said, “Jerry, I’ve got you dubbed for a job.  I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.  You’re going to be a prophet to the nations.” 

Once Jeremiah looked up the word prophet in the dictionary, he got back to God and said, “God, I’m not the right person for the job. I think you’ve made a mistake.  Look, I’m just a kid, besides; my speech teacher gave me a C-.”And God says, “I won’t hear of it, Jerry. I’ll give you everything you need.  I’ll tell you what to say.  I’ll show you where to go.  When you get into a jam, and you will, I’ll get you out of it.  Here’s your job description.  Go to the nations and their leaders, go to the power brokers, pluck up, pull down, destroy and overthrow all that which is foul and all that which is false.  Then build up and plant deep, turn the nation back to me. For my people went after worthless things and became worthless themselves. Here are my indictments against them. They have injured and defiled the land.  They have lost any remembrance of their history.  The professional clergy nothing of faithful living.   The people have so many gods they can’t keep track of them.  They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have dug out for themselves cisterns -- cracked wells -- that leak like screen doors.”

The issue, to sum up in a word, was abandonment.  Not God’s abandonment of the people; but the people’s abandonment of their God.  And it was Jeremiah’s work, his ordained task, to call the people back to their God; to call them away from their greed, their indifference, their lack of compassion, their false security, and their deceptive assurances, to call them back to God.The times and seasons may have changed, but the assignment hasn’t.  On a deeply personal level, we all cling with white-knuckled determination to those securities that we hope will make us secure.  We forge our personal allegiances to a host of lesser gods.  We attach dollar amounts to them.  We have deeds and titles to prove our ownership.  We believe that God’s blessing are scarce, so we hoard and protect ourselves, thinking we will never have enough.  We buy into marketing claims that convince us that more and more will lead us further and further down the yellow brick road to the good life.  But does it?  Do we ever get there? And if we get there, is it satisfying? 

Maybe you and I, maybe each of us, needs to take an inventory of our lives, to do some plucking and pulling, some destroying and overthrowing, in order to rebuild and plant again.   Perhaps as a congregation, too, we get complacent with the way the world is. Polar ice caps melting?  Oh well.  Too many fish with mercury? Oh well. The most violent society on the face of the earth?  Oh well.  As an industrialized nation, second to last for infant morality.  Oh well.  Two million in overflowing prisons?  Oh well.  Drug companies inflating prices multiple times for African nations.  Oh well.

What if God were to say, “I appoint you, East Church, as a prophet to the nations. You shall go to all whom I send you. To pluck and pull down.  To destroy and overthrow.  To rebuild and plant again.  Do not be afraid, for I am with you.” What would it mean for our children, our young people, singles, couples, parents, empty-nesters, retirees?  Where would we go?  To whom would we go?  What would we say?  In what ways would this corner of the city, this section of the state, or (think big now) the planet on which we tread be a different and better place because East Church became a prophet to the nations?

This much I can tell you.  Starting next Sunday, and who but God knows for how long, with a full, eager staff and much energy, it’s going to be one glorious adventure, a glorious adventure indeed.  Something, I trust, to ponder on the Labor Day weekend.