Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7A) – Jeremiah 20:7-13
A few weeks ago, I had the doubtful pleasure of a meal with some people I don’t know at an event I didn’t care much about. I’ve never really liked meeting masses of new people, to be honest; I hide it well at church functions, but I’m really a big introvert. My idea of a good vacation is a cabin in the woods where I don’t see anybody for days on end.
But now that I’m a pastor, I find that I dread these sort of occasions even more, because there’s always that question that goes around at these sort of things: “So, what do you do?” Oh, if only people could hear my answer as an indication that I am a rather uninteresting person with a peculiar job. No, the news that I am a pastor transforms the people who hear it in rather fascinating, altogether uncomfortable ways.
There is the guy who suddenly is announcing frequently and nervously that he’d better watch his language now that a priest is at the table. And the woman whose disgust of religion is so great that she’ll no longer acknowledge my presence. These people aren’t so bad; they’ve both been hurt or at least mistreated in some way by the church, or they wouldn’t react that way. I can understand their response, feel compassion for them, wish I could do something to heal their hurts. I can handle them, sad as they make me.
But the one I dislike the most was there that day. It’s the person who suddenly feels she has to end every sentence with “God is SO good,” or some other platitude. Like she wants to prove to me how passionate she is about her faith. There’s something it tweaks in me that drives me up the wall. There is no need for that. I’m not judging her–well, I wasn’t until she started this–and I don’t need to know that God cured her cataracts or that she has this terrible rash right HERE let me SHOW you but God is so GOOD that it will go away she is SURE, and I’m just trying to get through a simple meal without making some major social faux pas and could we please have a normal conversation about something that is less distressing like politics or something, and then–
And then I get to hear Jeremiah’s complaint in today’s lesson. And I feel guilty and convicted for reacting to her that way. Because maybe she really does feel that God is so good, and doesn’t have anywhere else to say so. The Word of the Lord has come to Jeremiah, too, and he cannot help but proclaim it, much to the chagrin of his listeners.
Granted, Jeremiah’s message isn’t all that great to hear. One of my friends, a Bible scholar, Dr. Bridget Illian, was doing some research in the book of Jeremiah a few years ago, and she was very frustrated one day with her reading. She said, “This guy never has anything good to say! It’s all bad news.” And so it is. Jeremiah’s long book of prophecy is filled with the message that God’s people have turned away from him, and so the kingdom will be coming to an end and its people will be carted off into exile. It’s no wonder people don’t want to hear his message.
And he knows it. Jeremiah describes the reaction he receives by saying he’s become a laughingstock, that he is mocked, that even his closest friends are watching for him to stumble. So he tries not to prophesy anymore. He knows his message is one that nobody wants to hear. He tries to stop speaking. But he can’t do it. “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak anymore in his name,’ then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.”
Jeremiah has heard the Lord speak and he can’t hold back, no matter how much he tries.
And the same should happen to us when we hear the word of the Lord. When God comes into our lives, he comes crashing in with all the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of wind and flame, the power to change our lives. If we’re really honest about what God has done for us, we shouldn’t be able to keep silent about it either.
Sometimes that message is like Jeremiah’s, a proclamation of doom and destruction, as God tears down those structures and systems that keep us captive. God looks at our culture of economic inequity and says it cannot last. God sees our prejudices, racism and sexism and ageism and more, and says they must be destroyed. God takes our sin and violence and hatred and removes them from our lives.
And sometimes the message is one of hope and joy, as God replaces all those evils in our lives and in the world with healing and new life. After all, that same prophet Jeremiah, after the promised destruction and exile has come, tells us that God “will make a new covenant…I will put my law in their hearts…and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” I don’t know of a better expression of the Good News in the Old Testament than this.
Before that unpleasant dinner was over, a woman came and sat down next to me, and she led with the words, “so, I hear you’re a pastor.” So with a sigh, I turned to her and smiled, and said that, yes, I am, and it’s a job that brings me a lot of joy.
Over the next ten or fifteen minutes, she described to me her son’s illness, the pain he experiences, and the way that, as a mother, it breaks her heart to watch, unable to do anything. And she wanted to know, what was it she had done to be punished like this?
This unpleasant meal turned into an opportunity to comfort this woman, to help her begin to see that God is not a punishing, vengeful God, but a loving, creative one, a God whose heart breaks at her son’s suffering along with hers. A God who has surrounded her with people who love her and can help her bear their pain. A God whose own son suffered on the cross for love of us, so that one day we might not have to suffer anymore.
I was surprised, then, at the chance to proclaim the Good News there, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been. Jesus tells us that everything lurking in the dark must come out into the light, that the message of hope and healing he has given to us must be spoken to everyone and everywhere in our hurting world. And the truth is, that other woman had it right. How can we, who have been so changed by the love of Jesus Christ, keep from saying how very much that God is so good?
Amen.