Nor will I turn back

Jeremiah 4: 11-28, OT page 702-703 At that time it will be said to the people and to Jerusalem: A hot wind came from me out of the bare heights in the desert toward my poor people, not to winnow or cleanse – a wind too strong for that. Now it is I who speak in judgment against them. Look! He comes up like clouds, his chariots like the whirlwind; his horses are swifter than eagles – woe to us, for we are ruined! O Jerusalem, wash your heart clean of wickedness so that you may be saved. How long shall your evil schemes lodge within you? For a voice declares from Dan and proclaims disaster from Mount Ephraim. Tell the nations, “Here they are!” Proclaim against Jerusalem, “Besiegers come from a distant land; they shout against the cities of Judah. They have closed in around her like watchers of a field, because she has rebelled against me, says the Lord. Your ways and your doings have brought this upon you. This is your doom; how bitter it is! It has reached your very heart. My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the walls of my heart! My heart is beating wildly; I cannot keep silent; for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Disaster overtakes disaster, the whole land is laid waste. Suddenly my tents are destroyed, my curtains in a moment. How long must I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet? For my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good. I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger. For thus says the Lord: The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. Because of this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black; for I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will I turn back. Sermon The book of Jeremiah, like many books in the Bible, uses simile and metaphor to explain concepts that are unfamiliar using concepts that are. This approach works most of the time – for example, take last week’s scripture lesson on Jeremiah and the image of a leaky cistern that the prophet used to illustrate life lived independent from God – but this approach works only so long as you know what a cistern is. Jesus speaks of mustard seeds to explain how the Kingdom of God starts with something very small but becomes something very big, and this metaphor works to explain a new concept, the Kingdom of God, so long as you know about mustard seeds and have an understanding of how small they are. In our first scripture lesson for today Jesus speaks in parables explaining that he welcomes sinners just as a shepherd rejoices when he finds a lost sheep and just as a woman celebrates when she finds a lost coin – both parables serve a purpose, explaining why he welcomes sinners, but if you’re not a shepherd or you’ve never searched and searched for a lost coin you still might not understand what he means. Today’s lesson from the book of Jeremiah uses human relationships to describe God’s relationship to us, but the effectiveness of this metaphor, like all others, depends so much on the human relationships that you’ve experienced which every listener will use to understand. There’s a problem then, as not all human relationships model the kind of relationship that our scripture lesson seeks to help you understand. Last Thursday I was in Harris Foodland, just buying a couple items, and as I was paying I noticed what the man behind me in line was buying, some ground beef, chicken legs, corn on the cob. He began talking to the cashier, a nice looking lady in her early twenties, who told him that she had a headache. “Yea, I had a headache too, and for a long time,” the man said, “then I got a divorce and it went away.” Now does that human relationship illustrate God’s relationship with us? I hope not. But it goes to show that not all human relationships model the divine relationship, though sometimes people imagine that they do. The kind of human relationship that our passage from Jeremiah uses is that of a parent, maybe more specifically, a father, which is a metaphor whose strength is rooted in your experience with your father to some degree or another. Considering the level of judgment and destruction we have read today, the wind that sweeps through, not to winnow or cleans but to blow down, the chariots like a whirlwind, the voice that declares disaster, the land laid waste – is this God acting like a father? If your father was quick to fly off the hinges, to punish without explanation or provocation, than surely your experience shapes your reading of this passage. If God is like a father than we use the father that we know to understand God, and if your father was one who loved his children one minute and then lashed out at them in anger the next, that can shape your understanding of this passage in Jeremiah. Or maybe your experience causes you to imagine a God who, like a father, loved his children back in the beginning when they were newly created, but now that they have grown into disobedience he’s had enough. When they were innocent and cute, before they discovered the opposite sex and became so rebellious – if your father was like that then you might read this passage from Jeremiah and imagine that God used to love the people but just doesn’t love them anymore; that like a father who knew what to do with little ones but just can’t understand teenagers, God loved the people when they were beautiful and young but has nothing to do with them now that they’ve grown so bold and sinful. The metaphor is imperfect, because what you experienced influences your reading and can affect your understand of who God is, what God does, and why God acts the way that God does. If your father never punished you and always let you do whatever you wanted than this passage from Jeremiah must sound so foreign as to not make any sense. If your father walked out and never came back than you may imagine that if God is like a father than he’s about to be gone for good. And if your father punished you indiscriminately and without reason than you must be even more careful as this God is not punishing out of rage but out of love. As though you father’s didn’t have enough to worry about already, you have also to contend with the reality that when your children pray to their Father in Heaven they will wonder about how God is either like you or not like you. Unfortunately, it is for good reason that maternal images for God have been popular through history, as too often fathers fall short and potentially leave children with a false understanding of who God is. Some fathers have disciplined out of anger and not out of love, and so some children have trouble holding God’s love in one hand and God’s justice in the other. Some fathers loved what they thought was beautiful about their children but failed to love who they really were, and many such children grow up imagining that if God is like a father then should I disappoint him than surely he’ll just walk away. But that is not the God that you should see here in scripture. No – this God calls you to see what is wrong, demands that you do something about it, for this God loves you too much to not lead you back to the paths of righteousness. Will he leave your side, will he forsake you, will his love ever end? If you find it easy to believe that he will than I call you to a new model for what a father should be. Here in the book of Jeremiah is a father who has purposed, who will not relent, nor will he turn back – and in doing so God is not just talking about this punishment that is going to happen, God is talking about where he will be while this punishment happens and after it is through. The Lord has a purpose for you that God will not abandon. The Lord will not relent. Nor will God turn back from you ever. The table that is set before you is proof of that. When he came to life in human form, he came not to condemn the world, but to save it. This purpose was nothing new, as our God has been about such saving work from the very beginning. And rather than abandon what he has purposed, rather than relent, rather than turn away, even as we were all turning our back from him and calling for his death, God offered you his body and his blood that you might know exactly what a father’s love should be. If such love does not describe the love that your father had for you, than come to this table and know the love of your father in heaven. We all accept the love that we are used to receiving, some accept the love that they think they deserve, but I call you to this table to come and know what love truly is. Amen.