Author Archives: Neil

More than Mothers

Guido Reni (1575-1642)-The Penitent Magdalene

I first want to say that I think Mother’s Day is a fine holiday and that mothers often play one of the most important roles in the lives of their children. That being said, I do think that Mother’s Day can become a time when we see the expectations of women limited to child bearing and child raising and women are more than that. What got me thinking about this was an exchange I overheard between a mother and her grown daughter with another woman. After wishing a happy Mother’s Day to the mother, this woman turned to the daughter wishing her the same, and when the daughter replied that she isn’t a mother the woman’s response was, “Oh, but you will be someday.” I have no idea if being a mother is a part of this young woman’s hopes and dreams for her future, but she is very successful and gifted in her own right. In her late twenties she is both working and working towards and advanced degree in the medical field, continues to remain active within the church and I am sure is active in many other things. I would hope that we can value her, and many other women for who they are as individuals.

There was a time when a woman’s value was tied to her ability to bear children. Countless stories in the Bible rotate around the struggle of women who are barren and have their shame removed through an intervention of God: think of Sarah who in her 90s finally bears Isaac, or the struggles between Rachael and Leah, or Hannah, or Elizabeth just to name a few. Yet even in each of these ancient stories, with a worldview over two millennia old, these women did have value both to God and the people most important in their lives well before they bore children. It was society that placed the expectation upon them that their worth was tied to the future they ensured through children (and in particular male children). I chose the image of Mary Magdalene to start this post because she is one of the women in scripture and tradition never mention bearing children and yet she is valued as one of Jesus followers and becomes one of the first witnesses of the resurrection. One of the gifts of our time has been the greater opportunities afforded to women to define themselves in ways that wouldn’t have been allowed a couple generations ago. I look forward to my own daughter being able to make choices that will help define the life she will live as she grows and to carve out her own role within the world.

One of the gifts of my vocations is getting to know and be a part of people’s stories and valuing people as individuals, for who they are. I do think it is important to value mothers, but I also think it is important to value the 97 year old woman who never had any children of her own, or the fromer teacher in her late 80s that never had a family of any type, the women I know who never wanted to get married or have children, those who may want to have children but infertility or miscarriages have prevented this from becoming a reality, those who at this point in their lives are dedicating themselves to their education or their career, or those who gave a child up for adoption for whatever reason or lost custody of their children. I do think this is an issue where we still treat men and women a little differently, but my plea in the midst of all of this is can we value people first and foremost for who they are, and on days like Mother’s day if they happen to be a mother then celebrate that and if not please don’t make them feel guilty for not being one.

Are we willing to ask the difficult questions?

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As the world continues to change at a dynamic pace and the church continues to attempt to minister faithfully in that changing world it will force us to ask difficult questions, questions that reach right to the heart of our identity. One of the earliest questions we learn as toddlers is “why?” and I think that as the church continues to evaluate what we are called to do going forward we need to be willing to go back and ask that question of why are we doing the things we are doing. Do we even understand why we do many of the actions and say many of the things we do? I am convinced that there is a lot of wisdom in the actions that have been passed down from generation to generation-but if we are unable to ask the why questions what was passed down as a tradition, which to use Jaroslav Pelikan’s famous way of talking about it is the living faith of the dead, can calcify into traditionalism, which Pelikan referred to as the dead faith of the living. Our actions do have meanings but if we find ourselves going through the motions do we have a dead faith? What is the end that we are seeking?
Even Protestant Christians rested for a long time on Cyprian of Carthage’s( a 3rd Century Catholic Bishop) famous dictum “extra Ecclesiam nulla salus” (No salvation outside the church) if not in theology in practice. People came to church because it was a way of earning their salvation (and what people mean by salvation may differ widely, but that is a topic for another time). Attendance in worship was something that people were expected to do, now certainly not everyone attended all the time but there was a societal expectation to attend worship. I remember one of my instructors in Marriage and Family Dynamics at the University of Central Oklahoma whose father had been a minister and who had members of the mob in his community who were at worship every Sunday. That expectation is no longer there in society, and officially in most protestant churches it has not been theologically there since the time of Luther, and so in a time of change maybe we need to be willing to ask the difficult questions of what are people getting out of the time they spend in worship. Reggie McNeal, who I have referred to in other posts, tells of a time when he had to confront the question:

I remember it as if it were yesterday, even though it was over twenty years ago. We had just comleted a midweek leader luncheon at the two-year-old church where I served as founding pastor. Everyone else had left the building. I sat alone in the fellowship hall And the Lord spoke to me. It was in the form of a question: “Are people better off for being a part of this church, or are they just tireder and poorer?” …The question bothered me. A lot. Not only did I not know the answer, I feared knowing! (McNeal 2009, 89)
I am convinced that worship has meaning, that the church as an organization has a purpose and meaning, that we have a mission and things that God calls us to be a part of in the world. Yet, I am also aware that sometimes it is so easy to become distracted by things that are not important. Working my way through Jeremiah, like I am currently, you can’t help but see the disconnect between the cultic practice of the people of Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s time and the ways in which they were not living out of God’s vision of shalom (peace, harmony). If we are merely coming to worship out of a sense of duty, doing the same things we have always done then perhaps we are just tireder and poorer, perhaps it is a traditionalism, a dead faith of the living and God is doing what God does in the midst of death. God is creating new life!
There is meaning in the things that we do, the words that we say, but ultimately our work should be an expression of love. The two great commandments, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” should be at least one of the ends of our worship-to help us to learn to love. In a world where spirituality and our religious lives have become one segment of our increasingly busy lives perhaps we as church leaders and members need to be asking questions on how our worship and our investment of time and resources are helping us integrate who we are as people of faith into the rest of our lives. It will not be an easy transition, but the bible itself is concerned with life much more than it is with afterlife. We may be the people who to use Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s language from his Letters and Papers from Prison are keeping the archane disciplines-these ancient practices that help us make sense of our faith and our lives-in a world that has come of age. As faithful people and congregations we will continue to wrestle with the difficult questions of how to be faithful in our time and place, and hopefully in the midst of that wrestling we will be shaped by the love of the one we come together to worship so that we may be a blessing to the world we are called to serve.

Peace, Peace When There Is No Peace: Jeremiah 6: 9-14

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The Door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg where Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses. The Theses are now engraved in the metal doors.

9 Thus says the LORD of hosts: Glean thoroughly as a vine the remnant of Israel;
like a grape-gatherer, pass your hand again over its branches.
10 To whom shall I speak and give warning, that they may hear?
See, their ears are closed, they cannot listen.
The word of the LORD is to them an object of scorn; they take no pleasure in it.
11 But I am full of the wrath of the LORD; I am weary of holding it in.
Pour it out on the children in the street,
and on the gatherings of young men as well;
both husband and wife shall be taken, the old folk and the very aged.
12 Their houses shall be turned over to others,
their fields and wives together;
for I will stretch out my hand against the inhabitants of the land, says the LORD.
13 For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.
14 They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying,
“Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.
The posting of the 95 Theses by Martin Luther for debate in Wittenberg touched off a firestorm in Europe that would rage for a century, and most people think of the beginning of the reformation as a theological movement, which it was, but the 95 theses gained the immediate attention they did because they addressed an economic reality. I think it is telling that thesis 92 (which sets up the final three theses) explicitly refers to Jeremiah 6: 14:
92. Away then with the prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Peace, peace,” and there is no peace! [Jer. 6:14]
93. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Cross, cross,” and there is no cross!
94. Christians should be exhorted to be diligent in following Christ, their head, through penalties, death, and hell;
95. And thus be confident of entering into heaven through many tribulations rather than through the false security of peace [Acts 14: 22] (Luther 1989, 29)

Luther felt that the people had placed their trust in the wrong place; in the reformation context they had placed their faith in the church and not in Christ. In Jeremiah’s context the people have trusted the rulers and the temple, but not God- and the consequences of that misplaced trust are devastating. Rather than making a single pass over the grapevine of Israel, Jeremiah is told to make a second pass so there is very little remaining for the people do not hear the prophet’s warning-others have told them a more pleasant message. The prophet is at the point where he has been the bearer of this message that has fallen on deaf ears, and he feels ready to break, even though he knows the result will be devastation. The litany of children, husband and wives, old and aged, least to greatest, prophet and priest, everyone is to be caught up in the tide of wrath.
We live in a culture that doesn’t deal with God’s wrath very well. Churches in the United States that tend to talk about God’s wrath tend to direct it towards primarily moralistic (and particularly sexual) behaviors. But in the Bible God’s wrath is a function of God’s grief over the turning of the people away from their vocation as the people of God and the ways in which injustice and greed have taken over the narrative of who they are.

The World Turned Upside Down: Jeremiah 6: 1-8

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Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem by Rembrandt van Rijn 1630

Flee for safety, O children of Benjamin, from the midst of Jerusalem!
Blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and raise a signal on Beth-haccherem;
for evil looms out of the north, and great destruction.
2 I have likened daughter Zion to the loveliest pasture.
3 Shepherds with their flocks shall come against her.
They shall pitch their tents around her; they shall pasture, all in their places.
4 “Prepare war against her; up, and let us attack at noon!”
“Woe to us, for the day declines, the shadows of evening lengthen!”
5 “Up, and let us attack by night, and destroy her palaces!”
6 For thus says the LORD of hosts:
Cut down her trees; cast up a siege ramp against Jerusalem.
This is the city that must be punished; there is nothing but oppression within her.
7 As a well keeps its water fresh, so she keeps fresh her wickedness;
violence and destruction are heard within her; sickness and wounds are ever before me.
8 Take warning, O Jerusalem, or I shall turn from you in disgust,
and make you a desolation, an uninhabited land.

Things have gone so wrong in the relationship between God and God’s people, and the poetry of pain continues. Things are so bad that a city will become a field again, the urban elite will give way to the poorest of shepherds. There is an undertone of severe economic injustice that it finally coming to its head, and in the coming crisis the poor rather than standing with the leadership will set up their tent against them. Things are so dire that the daytime is not enough for the building of siege works and prosecuting the attack. For unlike the modern U.S. military which does a great deal of its fighting at night, throughout history the setting of the sun meant an end to the day’s hostility. Not so here, “up and let us attack by night and destroy her” says the enemy from the north. Their world has been turned upside down. The Lord is no longer the strength and shield for people of Judah, in fact Psalm 46 is turned on its head for the Lord of hosts is no longer on their side and the God of Jacob is no longer their refuge. God no longer can dwell in the midst of the betrayal of the city.The prophet sounds the alarm in the hope that the people will turn, and yet God still seems to want to avoid this path, this still seems to be a warning, “take warning, O Jerusalem, or I shall turn from you in disgust, and make you a desolation, an uninhabited land.”

There are many who may not know what to do with the picture of the wounded God that Jeremiah presents us with, a God who doesn’t want to turn his people over to the desolation that is coming but can no longer abide with the way things are. God is in the midst of God’s own process of grief, and in one way it seems trivial to anthropomorphize (assign human characteristics) to God-yet the picture of God in the Bible displays a wide range of emotions and has little to do with the Greek philosophical God who is the unmoved mover who is purely rational, nor does the Hebrew mindset trivialize emotions the way modern society does.

Longing for Sabbath-A Poem

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When the city never sleeps and more is never enough
In a world where busyness is substituted for happiness
When the days become weeks and weeks become months
And the joy is drained from vocation making it merely labor
We are longing for Sabbath

When the cruel gods of capitalism
Cast images of a life that cannot be attained
When possessions become objects of our bondage
And we find ourselves bondservants of mammon
We are longing for Sabbath

When we construct prisons of grey concrete and glass
And permanently chain ourselves to our offices
Connected by wireless umbilical cords to the necessity of availability
And there is nowhere we can go to break away
We are longing for Sabbath

Where we can accept the gift of rest
Where we can learn to give rather than to grasp
When labor becomes recaptured as vocation
We are once again stewards of the mysteries of faith
As the world rests with its creator
Accepting the gift of Sabbath

A Love Song for My Muse- A Poem

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Gustav Moreau, Hesiod and the Muse (1891)

She dances at the edges of my dreams
Singing her songs, delighting in the bright corners of imagination
Celebrating the springtime of the mind and shining brightly
She laughs as I reach out for her, knowing once again
I’ll hear her diaphanous voice haunting me
But she’ll not be held or confined
She’ll not come when beckoned
She heeds no time but her own
But she can be enticed
For she loves beauty and laughter
And sometimes in the midst of loss and despair
Her compassionate hand is felt upon my shoulder
Making sense of the sadness and miracle from madness
And sometimes she’ll abide for a time
While pen and paper record the embrace
Of her creativity and my words
Ah, she is an evanescent sprite, but I adore her
She is the playful counterpart to my own diligence
And so to the muse, that spirit of my inspiration
I send out a love song, I read her poetry
I search for beauty and I dwell in the darkness
Waiting again to celebrate her dance, her laugh, her voice
The angel in my mind holding the keys to creativity
And lighting up the corners of my mind’s eye with her smile

Composed Neil White, 2013

At the Century Mark-Post 100 looking back and looking forward

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Fire and Rose by Kondratj on deviantart.com

Back on June 19, 2012 I began Sign of the Rose as a creative space for me to think through many of the changes I was seeing in the church and the world. As I look back I’m pretty proud of the previous 99 posts, there is some pretty cool stuff in the midst of the last 9 months of work. I’ve certainly learned from the process of writing.

Sign of the Rose began with the question of authority and how to approach it, and so last summer I spent a lot of time working with history, what would end up being a much longer series than I anticipated and which I plan to return to. As it stands if you look at the Place of Authority series (under Historical Reflections) it runs from the time of the Judges in Ancient Israel (prior to 1000 BCE) through the time of the early Catholic and Byzantine churches, a span of approximately 3000 years. I still plan to pick up with the time of the emergence of Islam (some of the reading coming up soon on my reading list deals with this) but at the end of July my posts slowed to a crawl, since I had both of my kids for the end of the summer and then the school year started and I needed to refocus some of my energies back into the congregation I served. I also had a lot of other interests that I was neglecting.

In September and October my sporadic posts moved to Philosophy and Psychology. I had been reading a number of things influenced by Postmodern Philosophy, but I wanted to take a little bit of time and try to understand some of the basics of the philosophy itself. Then in one of the most helpful books I have read, Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly I spent a little time on the issues of shame and living courageously. I hit a dry patch as I continued to try to press ahead with the Place of Authority, knowing that I needed to take a break and rethink the direction I was going but like most writers encounter at some point I had a bit of writers block.

In February I rethought and recommitted to the process of writing, and part of that was expanding the horizons of creativity. I began to include my own personal study in going through the bible as a part of my own learning. So beginning with Haggai and Esther (which were chosen because I was going to preach on each of them) and currently Jeremiah I tried to share with you in my discovery process. In this time I also shared some of my poetry I had been writing. I have written poetry for years, but most of it ended up in trashcans somewhere, and I decided to put it out there. I also was at a time, during lent, where I was preaching more frequently and I began including my sermons as well for people to see.

What I am left with after 99 posts is a hodgepodge of interesting work, some more parable like trying to re-imagine what church could be, some historical, some biblical, some sermons, philosophy, culture, music, people who were important to me, but all in all some interesting pieces. There is more to come because I enjoy the process but sometimes it is just nice to look back before moving forward. I’ve got a lot of bits and pieces of things that I want to go back to and spend some time with and we shall see together what ends up finding its way on here in the next 100 posts.

Corrupted Justice: Jeremiah 5:18-31

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Icon of Jeremiah

Jeremiah 5: 18-31

¹⁸ But even in those days, says the LORD, I will not make a full end of you. ¹⁹ And when your people say, “Why has the LORD our God done all these things to us?” you shall say to them, “As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve strangers in a land that is not yours.”
²⁰ Declare this in the house of Jacob, proclaim it in Judah:
²¹ Hear this, O foolish and senseless people,
who have eyes, but do not see,
who have ears, but do not hear.
²² Do you not fear me? says the LORD;
Do you not tremble before me?
I placed the sand as a boundary for the sea, a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass;
though the waves toss, they cannot prevail, though they roar, they cannot pass over it.
²³ But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart;
they have turned aside and gone away.
²⁴ They do not say in their hearts,
“Let us fear the LORD our God, who gives the rain in its season,
the autumn rain and the spring rain, and keeps for us the weeks appointed for the harvest.”
²⁵ Your iniquities have turned these away, and your sins have deprived you of good.
²⁶ For scoundrels are found among my people; they take over the goods of others.
Like fowlers they set a trap; they catch human beings.
²⁷ Like a cage full of birds, their houses are full of treachery;
therefore they have become great and rich, ²⁸ they have grown fat and sleek.
They know no limits in deeds of wickedness;
they do not judge with justice the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper,
and they do not defend the rights of the needy.
²⁹ Shall I not punish them for these things? says the LORD,
and shall I not bring retribution on a nation such as this?
³⁰ An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land:
³¹ the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule as the prophets direct;
my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?

In a brief interlude in the poetry (v. 18-19) we see some hope in the future, it is a dim hope, but it is a hope nonetheless when people after all the destruction ask ‘why has this happened’ and the answer is simply you chose to serve strange gods, so you have gone to serve strangers in another land. In a broken home sometimes someone has to leave, but God has not closed the door to a return, in fact it seems to be God’s continual hope through all the pain, yet God will not be tame or mocked. The relationship will not be one where God will bend to whatever the people think is right. God has not given up on God’s vision of justice and shalom. Yet the people are not in a place where their eyes can see or their ears can hear yet because their heart is in the wrong place and one the wrong things. Literally they are heart-less or empty hearted (NRSV senseless) and their heart is no longer in the relationship with God.

Justice has been so corrupted towards the wealthy that the cause of the orphan and the needy are neglected. The way things are remain irreconcilable with God’s vision of justice, and yet the very mouthpieces that should be calling for faithfulness and correction are behind the corruption. Prophets and priests rule and direct falsely and the people love the falseness. Patrick Miller speaks truth about this passage when he states:

This is a strong indictment of a community in which the politically powerful and the well-to-do amass possessions and wealth at the expense of the marginal and those in society who do not have the protection and power, in which flagrant manipulation of the socioeconomic system to the advantage of the advantaged is simply ignored. The picture is as familiar at the beginning of the third millennium CE as it was in the first millennium BCE. (NIB 6:621)

The Bible often has harsh words for those who are wealthy and in power, especially among the prophets. Most people assume wealth in the Bible is primarily viewed as a source of blessing, and that is one theology present within the Bible, but more commonly in the prophets and throughout most of the New Testament power and wealth are temptations and things that may distort one’s relationship with God. This is difficult for most people to accept, and I struggle with it myself but God does have a vision of a society that all can live in justice and peace and everyone has enough. Perhaps it is a utopian dream, perhaps it is naïve, and perhaps looking at the world through a dream like this opens a person to see the dystopia within the reality they live in, but at the same point just because the way that the people love and the prophets and priests in Jeremiah’s time proclaim may be easier, it doesn’t mean it is the right way.

The End Of The World As They Know It: Jeremiah 5 : 7-17

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Icon of Jeremiah

Jeremiah 5: 7-17

⁷ How can I pardon you?
Your children have forsaken me, and have sworn by those who are no gods. When I fed them to the full, they committed adultery and trooped to the houses of prostitutes.
⁸ They were well-fed lusty stallions, each neighing for his neighbor’s wife.
⁹ Shall I not punish them for these things? says the LORD;
and shall I not bring retribution on a nation such as this?
¹⁰ Go up through her vine-rows and destroy, but do not make a full end;
strip away her branches, for they are not the LORD’s.
¹¹ For the house of Israel and the house of Judah have been utterly faithless to me, says the LORD.
¹² They have spoken falsely of the LORD, and have said,
“He will do nothing. No evil will come upon us, and we shall not see sword or famine.”
¹³ The prophets are nothing but wind, for the word is not in them. Thus shall it be done to them!
¹⁴ Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of hosts:
Because they have spoken this word, I am now making my words in your mouth a fire,
and this people wood, and the fire shall devour them.
¹⁵ I am going to bring upon you a nation from far away,
O house of Israel, says the LORD.
It is an enduring nation,
it is an ancient nation,
a nation whose language you do not know,
nor can you understand what they say.
¹⁶ Their quiver is like an open tomb;
all of them are mighty warriors.
¹⁷ They shall eat up your harvest and your food;
they shall eat up your sons and your daughters;
they shall eat up your flocks and your herds;
they shall eat up your vines and your fig trees;
they shall destroy with the sword your fortified cities in which you trust.

R.E.M.’s song It’s the End of the World as We Know it fits well here:

That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and
snakes, an aeroplane and Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn – world
serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs. Feed
it off an aux speak, grunt, no, strength, the Ladder
start to clatter with fear fight down height. Wire
in a fire, representing seven games, and a government
for hire at a combat site. Left of west and coming in
a hurry with the furys breathing down your neck. Team
by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered cropped.
Look at that low playing. Fine, then. Uh oh,
overflow, population, common food, but it’ll do to Save
yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs,
listen to your heart bleed dummy with the rapture and
the revered and the right, right. You vitriolic,
patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty
psyched.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Six o’clock – TV hour. Don’t get caught in foreign
towers. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself
churn. Lock it in, uniforming, book burning, blood
letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate.
Light a candle, light a motive. Step down, step down.
Watch your heel crush, crushed, uh-oh, this means no
fear cavalier. Renegade steer clear! A tournament,
tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions,
offer me alternatives and I decline.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

The prophetic poetry of death continues, as does the language of God’s woundedness. This will continue through much of Jeremiah, for the prophet points to the end of a world. These are words designed to rend the world apart, to point to an end that is coming. This has nothing to do with the frenzy some people get wrapped around thoughts of the end of the world people would talk about in Revelation (and most people fundamentally misunderstand most of Revelation—especially as it has been twisted around in the interpretations in the movies or literature like the Left Behind series). No this is about the end of the world as the people know it. Temple and priest, prophet and king, Jerusalem and Judah, wealth and prosperity, home and heart are all approaching a time when they will all be consumed by war. God seems to still be looking for a way to pardon, but sees no way and so the end of the relationship is coming so that perhaps out of the death of the relationship something new might evolve. The root is to be left, so that perhaps something new might grow. The prophets words burn and consume, these are words that point to destruction and they are indeed painful for the prophet and their eventual result will consume the people. They point poetically to the future that is on the horizon and the on the horizon is the smoke of an approaching army.

The nation that will eventually come is Babylon, although the prophet may not know who they are at this point. As an American, we are very blessed to not have had a war take place on our soil since the Civil War (1861-1865) and except for those who have served in conflict overseas the utter destruction of warfare has been lost. In an invasion the invading army takes the harvest to feed their soldiers, sons and daughters would be killed, raped or enslaved, flocks become feasts for the invading army, herd become spoils, the fruit of vines and fig trees may be taken, then as in the earlier image in this part of the poem the branches may be stripped away-used in fires or simply burned to deny the food to the residents of the land under siege. Walled cities were the places where people would flee to, but a siege is a horrific experience once food or water becomes short. We will have ample time to deal with the horrors of a siege later in Jeremiah. The future is dark, the words are painful, and the prophet tries to point to a reality that the world as they know it is ending, but apparently the people feel fine.

Searching for the Righteous One: Jeremiah 5: 1-6

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Icon of Jeremiah

Jeremiah 5: 1-6

Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look around and take note!
Search its squares and see if you can find one person who acts justly and seeks truth—
so that I may pardon Jerusalem.
² Although they say, “As the LORD lives,” yet they swear falsely.
³ O LORD, do your eyes not look for truth?
You have struck them, but they felt no anguish;
you have consumed them, but they refused to take correction.
They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to turn back.
⁴ Then I said, “These are only the poor, they have no sense;
for they do not know the way of the LORD, the law of their God.
⁵ Let me go to the rich and speak to them; surely they know the way of the LORD, the law of their God.
” But they all alike had broken the yoke, they had burst the bonds.
⁶ Therefore a lion from the forest shall kill them,
a wolf from the desert shall destroy them.
A leopard is watching against their cities;
everyone who goes out of them shall be torn in pieces—
because their transgressions are many, their apostasies are great.

Where is the righteous person, show me the person who I can look at and say all this pain it really is worth it. Yet the vision, the hope seems dashed. God is so deeply wounded that God that God’s pain seems to be overwhelming God’s love. Such is the risk of caring deeply. You can say many things about the picture of God we see in Jeremiah, but you can never make the claim that this God does not care and is uninvolved. In an intentional echo of Genesis 18 when Abraham intercedes before God for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and bargains with God down to ten righteous people, now God tells Jeremiah ‘just find one.’ Things have become so bad that the people are living in a lie and the lie has become their reality. It is as if they have told themselves over and over again a falsehood until they believe it is true. Beyond that they have begun to believe that the lie has divine sanction. Something is so horribly wrong in the relationship of the people with God that it appears irreconcilable.

Jeremiah seems to say back to God, do you not want to see the truth. You have sought and believed the best possible in these people. God seems to have, in Jeremiah’s mind, done everything to interpret the peoples actions in the best possible light and the divine trust has been met with increased recalcitrance. Yet, Jeremiah too seems reluctant to give up hope. These are his people, his family as well and so he goes first among the poor, and then assuming it is ignorance (remember this is a pre-literate society where the poor would have been unable to read and this is a time where most people would have made it to the temple primarily for festivals if they were able) Jeremiah goes to the elite. Those who have no excuse, who can read and would have been taught the law of God which contains the vision of peace and justice God desired for them to live in, and they too have refused to live within it.

In a relationship we see a God who doesn’t want to believe that things have reached this point, but has seen the hopes and dreams of the relationship dashed by the people and we hear the wounded words go forth. The very animals of nature begin to represent the destruction that is coming, the people have become like sheep without a shepherd and their fence has been taken away. It is almost as if the shepherd walks away with tears in his eyes, exhausted from trying to lead and protect them surrendering them to the natural consequences of the world they live in.