Fifth Sunday of Lent (B) — Jeremiah 31:31–34
We’re trying to live more like Jesus this Lent, imperfectly but joyfully. God was lovingly powerful with Noah. God was radically generous with Sarah and Abraham. God was relational with Moses. God was imaginative in the desert. And today, we hear my favorite passage from the entire Bible, from the prophet named Jeremiah.
One reason I love it so much is that Jeremiah is so unloved—and for that matter, unloving—and yet this prophecy is so beautiful that it almost doesn’t fit him. Jeremiah is a bringer of bad news, not a fun job in any context. He was called to his unhappy ministry as a young boy, and back then, he protested: I’m just a kid. I can’t do this. But God insisted Jeremiah was born for this job; God knew him while in his mother’s womb. And when Jeremiah spoke, everything would be torn down—and everything would grow up again.
But Jeremiah only got to see destruction. He preached at the end of the 600s B.C. and the beginning of the next century. These were the last years of Judah, and really, it didn’t take a prophet to see the end coming. The kings had been paying the Assyrians, the great and terrible northern enemy, to keep their army away from Jerusalem. It emptied the nation’s treasury, and left everyone hungry and poor—but alive. Then Assyria was defeated by an even greater and more terrible enemy, the empire of Babylon. They tried to pay the Babylonians off, but they were much more expensive, so the kings of Judah decided ask their old enemy, Egypt, for help. Egypt took their money, but help never came.
So when the armies came to Jerusalem, God’s people should have been prepared. Jeremiah had been talking about it for years. “Turn back to God,” he said. “Treat people with kindness, give voice to the voiceless, share what you have with those who have nothing, trust that God will take care of us. If you don’t, you won’t trust him in the coming disaster either. You’ll only trust yourselves, and destruction is certain.”
But nobody listened. Jeremiah preached, but the only result was that Jeremiah ended up under house arrest—mostly to protect him from people who wanted to kill him. “We are God’s people,” they said. “God will take care of us no matter what we do.”
Jeremiah gives us more than thirty chapters of bad news. So when the armies started destroying the city and killing its people, he would have been right to say, “I told you so.” Instead, he bought some land, to show that even destroyed now, it would have value again soon. He refused to leave and travel to safety, so his friends had to pick him up physically and drag him away; he knew God would restore Israel and he wanted to be there to see it. Not just with words, but with his actions, with everything in him, he proclaimed, “You were right. God WILL take care of us no matter what. Our lives would be a lot better if we acted like that was true all the time. But it’s true nevertheless.”
The Israelites were stubborn people, just like us. Over and over again they forgot God, and relied on themselves. Over and over again, that turned out badly for them. And over and over again, God rescued them. Joseph’s brothers tried to kill him, and God saved them from starvation through Joseph anyway. He brought them out of Egypt. He gave the Law of Love. He provided in the desert. He brought them to a new land. Whenever other nations rose up, he’d raise up a leader for them. When they asked for a king, they got the one they wanted—and when that was a disaster, they got the one they needed. And God would do it again. Everything was destroyed. But Jeremiah promised that wasn’t the end of the story. It never is. God is too faithful, too determined, too persistent.
In one of my congregations in Massachusetts, there was a man named Andy. He was under five foot tall, and had a constant, terrible cough from years of smoking. His family was poor, and sometimes it showed. He was estranged from one of his children. While I knew him, he lost a job due to cutbacks, and his wife developed dementia.
Andy would have been easy to ignore or dismiss, especially in that faith community. There were other people who demanded attention, powerful leaders with hopes and dreams (and sometimes foolish worries) about their church. This small, unassuming man could be overlooked. Except… he didn’t let that happen. He wasn’t pushy, loud, forceful. He was just persistent.
His hometown had a significant homeless population. He wanted us connect with a food ministry there. But the “stronger” leaders felt our little church couldn’t take on one more thing. Still, he mentioned it at every single mission team meeting. Three years, I listened to people make excuses. Honestly, I was one of them. And then one day, he brought a box to collect surplus vegetables from people’s gardens. And suddenly we were feeding hungry people.
Andy and his wife had been trained to visit nursing homes, and put on a brief worship service for the residents. It was “his” ministry. Except occasionally, he’d ask if the congregation could buy large print songbooks for them to use. Eventually the memorial committee did it, just to keep him quiet. It didn’t work. He started telling me about the services each month, how many people we served (he always said “we” as if the whole congregation were involved), and how nice it would be to have communion. By the time I left, we had communion quarterly, and a few members of the congregation went to help lead singing.
Only two examples, but there were lots more. Andy was small, but persistent. And because he kept pushing, kept pestering, eventually he got his way. No, eventually, God got his way through this relentless prophet.
God is relentless. He never gives up. His people kept turning away from him, and God should have abandoned us. But instead, God proclaimed he was married to us, committed in a loving relationship that wouldn’t let go. We had written evil on our hearts, but he would scratch it out, and write his Law in its place, put his very self within us. We refuse to let him be our God, but he will be our God anyway, and we will be his people. We don’t have a choice in the matter. God has chosen us, and is willing to go to the cross to show us this is true.
Are we persistent about God’s love? Do we reach out to others, not just with words, but with our actions, with everything in ourselves, to carry Love into world? Do we abhor the evil we perpetuate, call our society and our church to trust God instead of ourselves, level the playing field so all people have access to the resources God lavishes upon us?
God will take care of us no matter what. Of course, our lives would be a lot better if we acted like that was true all the time. But God is persistent. He won’t give up. Let’s not give up either. Amen.