A Stern Warning

Perhaps the most well-known verse of Jeremiah’s writings is from Chapter 29, “11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” But the context of that verse tends to not be as well-known. It is part of a letter that Jeremiah wrote to the exiles from Jerusalem who had been taken into captivity by Babylon. He tells them to settle in…they are going to be there a while. When the time is complete, God has more for you. When will that time be?

“Then,” says God, “you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” That’s when you will be restored; that is when “14 I will be found by you…and will bring you back from captivity.”
Jeremiah would be shocked to learn that his words have been inscribed on baby blankets and wedding rings and tea towels. To the people of his day, his message was not just unwelcome…people hated him. His own family plotted to assassinate him. He endured torture and imprisonment so bad that he cursed the day he was born, but he could not be stopped. One way or another, if it meant that he had to bury his underwear or walk around with an ox’s yoke around his neck, Jeremiah had a message from God to deliver, a warning of doom. It was a message so hard to deliver that Jeremiah is known as the “weeping prophet” because he was so devastated by the message from God that he had to deliver that he cried out that he wished his eyes were fountains of tears.

So what was his message? It helps to understand a little bit about what was going on in the world at the time. About 100 years before Jeremiah was called, the northern kingdom of Israel fell to Assyria, and then the southern kingdom of Judah, along with Jerusalem, was conquered too. The Temple was desecrated, and worship had to be done in secret…but then King Josiah ascended the throne and cleansed and repaired the Temple began to make the Ten Commandments, God’s Covenant with Israel, the law of the land. And during his reign, Jeremiah was called to be a prophet. But after only 12 years, King Josiah was killed in battle with Egypt, and Egyptian forces invaded, and swiftly Babylon swooped in and defeated Egypt and the first deportation took place. Anyone who could be useful to Babylon was taken as slaves – any skilled laborers, professionals, government officials…and when they tried to revolt, Jerusalem was held under siege, starving the city to the point that Lamentations records, “The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; They became food for them.” When they were finally broken to the point of submission, they were forced to leave to live as slaves in Babylon.

As this history is playing out, this is the world, these are the people, who don’t want to hear Jeremiah’s message as he stands at the gate of the Temple, and declares (this is Jeremiah 7:2-11) “‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord. 3 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. 4 Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” 5 If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, 6 if you do not oppress the immigrant, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever. 8 But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.
9 “‘Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and lie, … and follow other gods …, (theologian Paul Tillich defined these other gods as whatever our ultimate concern is – whatever we put first in our lives – work, money, family, a hobby, health and fitness, country, whatever we put first – will you follow ‘other gods’) 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? 11 Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the Lord.”

That last part might sound familiar to you, Jesus quoted it when he threw out the moneychangers and the sacrifice sellers and healed the blind and lame instead of trying to get them to buy sacrifices to pray for healing.

We have a tendency, we preachers, to not want to really get into what was going on when the lectionary brings Jeremiah 18 around every 3 years. It’s a great passage to read and have a potter come and demonstrate how the clay has to be centered on the wheel, and we need to center our lives on Christ and God will form us into a beautiful creation. Sometimes we might get squashed down and need to be reformed, but God is faithful and if we repent we will not be destroyed. And we risk hearing God’s warning that Jeremiah is speaking in exactly the same way they did at the Temple gate. They came in and worshipped and left feeling safe, safe to go right back to their lives just like they were before they came to worship.

We don’t usually read on to Jeremiah 19. It’s not in the lectionary, the 3 year guide for Scripture readings in worship – many of the unsettling sections of Scripture are not. This time, Jeremiah is not sent to the Temple. Instead, he is to go out to the valley of Hinnom, it’s where the king during the Assyrian rule had burned his son as an offering in pagan worship, and now the city was using part of it as a garbage dump and burning their sewage there. And he is to take a baqbuq with him; it’s a particular kind of clay jar, beautiful and expensive, with a bulb at the bottom and a long, narrow neck, so that when you pour from it, it makes the sound baqbuq.

Jeremiah is to take that lovely jar and smash it as he tells the elders of the people and priests he is to take with him, ‘This is what the Lord Almighty says: I will smash this nation and this city just as this potter’s jar is smashed and cannot be repaired. ‘Listen! I am going to bring on this city and all the villages around it every disaster I pronounced against them, because they were stiff-necked and would not listen to my words.’” It was a stern warning, but they didn’t heed it.

It wasn’t until the Babylonian troops were camped around Jerusalem, and they were so hungry that they were actually boiling and eating their own children that they believed him instead of the preachers who assured them that God would make everything all right because they were God’s beloved chosen, Covenant people. The problem was that they had neglected their part of the Covenant and were living without any real concern for the God the Potter’s vision and design for how their lives were to be shaped and formed for particular uses.

We might all do well to chose a clay vessel to place in our homes to remind us to wonder daily how God has formed me to use me today, to remind us to ask ourselves what am I putting first…is it God?, to remind us to pray “God smash in me what does not honor you.”

Or maybe the tea towel or jewelry or baby blanket that says “I know the plans I have for you” will have a little different meaning for us because we know that those words of hope came after the smashing, after the siege, after the starvation, after being marched 900 miles over 4 months, as they are slaves…and then came these words, “the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant…I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

A new covenant poured out as Jesus submitted to be broken, confirmed by his blood, a covenant we enter each time we come to this table and drink this cup, a covenant to be workable clay, to seek God with all our heart.