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Boy Scout Tr #240

Scripture: Jeremiah 8:18-9.1

Jeremiah was a prophet chosen by God while he was still in the womb of his mother. He was called by God when he was a youth of which he reminded God, “I’m only a youth, in case you haven’t noticed!” And God explained that being a youth was no problem, not knowing what to say wouldn’t be either. Well, it was a problem for Jeremiah, because not much good news came out of his mouth. He did a lot of complaining and denouncing and lamenting… loudly. His complaining and denouncing and lamenting got him nothing but grief. He was thrown in a cistern, put in stocks, in prison, and finally dragged over the border into Egypt.

He lived around the time of the Babylonian invasion and exile in the year 587 BCE. His mission was to warn the rulers and the people that they were about to be destroyed. He told the king that he may as well surrender. That was not what the king wanted to hear, so Jeremiah was thrown in jail as a traitor.

He was doing what God appointed him to do. He said what God told him to say. And what did he get? He became the local joke. Beggars looked down on him. Children mocked him. The adults snickered, his friends deserted him. People were understandably put off by his endless tirades.

“Violence and destruction!” That was the message that God had given him to proclaim. However, he did not have any evidence to back up his message. God didn’t give him evidence. Everything seemed fine to the people to whom Jeremiah was shouting. They were prosperous. Their national defense was strong. They had a comfortable relationship with God which was based the principle that Solomon’s temple was standing. If they needed something-- that’s when they bothered God.

Jeremiah, for his part, was bitterly disappointed, not only in the people, but in God. God who had called him and sent him and given him the words to speak did not, at the very least, arrange a better reception for him. He lamented to God, “O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed.” Scholars of the Hebrew language have explained that the flavor of Jeremiah goes even deeper to the words, “Lord, you have seduced me, and I was seduced: you have forced your will on me and you have won.”

This is uneasy and unsettling language. It sounds blasphemous. Scholars explain it by portraying Jeremiah at a near breaking point. “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no balm in Gilead?”

So, the question I would like to ask Jeremiah is, what did you expect? And that’s the question we need to ask ourselves. Because I am pretty sure that there is a Jeremiah in all of us. Take a good hard look inside and check that out. What did Jeremiah think God had promised him that he did not get? I know about those expectations. I have expectations of God. When I went to seminary, it was after much struggle with my call, and when I finally said, okay, God, I went through the candidacy process, applied for seminary, quit my job, and moved to Berkeley. That was the easy part. Then I took Old Testament. And I studied, and I memorized those important Bible verses, and I took exams, and I only got a B, just barely. I expected to get A’s, I guess, because I was very disappointed in that B.

When I was appointed to my first church in Myrtle Point, Oregon, I thought God would have prepared them and I would be well received, people would think I was wonderful and everything would be smooth sailing. After all, I was doing what God wanted me to do. Well, I made every mistake in the book and then some and the Pastor Parish Relations Committee let me know it.

Where do we get that message? That expectation? What was it that Jeremiah found so enticing? The language Jeremiah uses is intriguing, because he not only says God enticed him, but that he was vulnerable to being enticed. Jeremiah was so hungry, so dreamy, so innocent, that he ignored the warning signs, the signal that blinked on and off—danger, danger, danger. He saw only what he wanted to see. Do we see only what we want to see, too?

For example, did God promise Jeremiah that he would be effective in his role as a prophet? Did God promise me that I would be a straight A student and a super pastor? How many times do we expect to be respected and obeyed when we are doing what we believe is God’s will? I made the mistake at Myrtle Point in taking sides on a really important theological issue once—what color to paint the trim of the church building. We went through a very involved process in deciding and ended up taking a congregational vote. And you know what, my color lost! What was even worse was, I was disappointed! Now, I know it was the best thing that could have happened for me. One of those learning experiences. Especially from a comment I overheard after the vote, “I wouldn’t want to come to a church with trim painted that color!” Did God promise me that I would be listened to, and respected, and obeyed? The answer is no, thank God!

Another expectation Jeremiah probably had was the expectation of a reward. Do you have somewhere in you the belief that if you are faithful to God, you will be protected, rescued, defended, or upheld? I hear this belief a lot. “She was such a good person, why did that happen to her, of all people?” Or, “he didn’t deserve that, he is one of God’s saints. We human beings have this strange, built-in sense that haunts us from time to time. It is this belief that we who love God will find flowers thrown in our path, or a red carpet laid out for us, or people will stand back when we pass by and say, “My, aren’t you something.” Expectations. Unrealized expectations.

Barbara Brown Taylor tells a story, (I borrow stories from her from time to time, you’ll notice) about a couple of friends who decided to do a good deed for the elderly of a housing project high rise building. They fixed up incredible Christmas baskets with the works: ham, sweet potatoes, Florida oranges, candy. They made them beautiful, two dozen of them. They loaded them in one of their cars and went to deliver them, feeling really good about it. When they got to the high rise, they took over one of the four elevators and started working their way to the top. They worked out a system where one of them would deliver the baskets while the other would stay and hold the doors of the elevator open. One of them was a lawyer and the other was probably an engineer. Everything went perfectly as planned until the fourth floor. At the fourth floor a gnarled old man stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the fifteenth floor.

The two guys on their mission looked at each other over the stack of baskets left to deliver and one of them asked with great sensitivity, “Sir, we are using this elevator to deliver these Christmas baskets. Would you mind using one of the other elevators?”

“This here is MY elevator,” the old man muttered. The two people chuckled, it was a friendly chuckle and said, “I see, well, just for today, could you use one of the others.”

The old man persisted, “I told you this is my elevator. You boys go get yourselves one of the others.” And he turned into an immovable rock on the spot. So, they unloaded all the baskets into the hallway, seething with righteous indignation. After the elevator doors closed, one said, “We were doing the Lord’s work!” They were outraged. They didn’t have to be there on Christmas Eve, riding a smelly elevator putting themselves at risk! Why, they had even left a Mercedes convertible parked on the street! Later, the incident became a pretty funny memory. Further along in their growth as a disciple of Christ, one of them commented, “I guess, no good deed goes unpunished.”

We have that longing to be appreciated. We are enticed by the idea if we do God’s work, it will make us, well, glow in the dark so everyone will know how special we are. It is a seductive idea, and a lot of people fall for it. But it is fiction; it is a figment of our imaginations.

What the Bible tells us over and over again and what our lives tell us is the only reward for doing God’s work is doing God’s work. Period. Furthermore, if we do it really well, we are likely to get ourselves killed; or in the United Methodist Church—clergy get moved. Or, we might end up in the doghouse. That is what success looks like in the upside-down kingdom of God, and so far as I know no one has ever liked it.

Even Saint Teresa of Avila of the 16th century, after a particularly difficult day, used to shake her fist at God and say, “It’s no wonder you have so few friends if this is how you treat them!”

And then there is Jesus whose reward for perfect obedience was death on a cross. How—with a God like this—did we ever get the idea that our faith should win us respect, or influence, or protection? When did we hear God saying, that is the way the gospel works?

Either we have been seduced, or else we have a glimpse of something in God that eclipses all our self-seeking fantasies. I will try to describe it, but my words will probably end up sounding like all the other rewards we look for. Remember, there is no reward. There is no reward. There is only the unconditional, grace upon grace upon grace, and self-sacrificing love of God, who calls us out of our expectations, our self-made tombs, and raises us from the dead. That’s all there is—no matter what—all we have is God’s love.

So, Jeremiah was almost all doom and gloom. Pretty depressing reading. So depressing that it is easy to miss the one thing that Jeremiah did that was full of hope. When he was in prison, he bought a plot of land from his cousin, just a few miles from Jerusalem. The legal transaction is written in detail. For 17 shekels, Jeremiah signed the deed, put it in an earthen vessel—a symbol of Israel’s future at the brink of Jerusalem’s destruction. In the midst of Jeremiah’s despair, hopelessness, doom, and gloom, he bought a plot of land, his hope for a new Israel. It was his balm in Gilead.

Amen.