Winners and Losers

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We’ve created a culture of antagonism and agitation, of winners and losers

Where words can cut deeper than spears and pierce our enemy’s armor

We refine and polish our arguments like swords to gut our opposition

Trained in a culture of savage warfare to transform opponents into enemies

One who was once a brother or sister now becomes something less than human

A demon in my eyes to be cast out and slain, their bodies and reputations annihilated

Rather than walking a mile in their shoes I doggedly pursue their retreat

Hunting them down in their refuge and taking captive their allies and families

Dividing the world into camps and erecting walls of dogmatic certainty

Turning plowshares into swords and pruning hooks into spears

We ignore the costs and the civilian casualties incurred in the onslaught

As we raise our standards and blow the bugle to assemble the amassed armies

There to fight a war that never needed to be waged if we could learn a different way

In a world of winners and losers there is no need for reconciliation and healing

History belongs to the victors and the losers are a part of the casualties of time

Or become the terrorists of tomorrow fighting a lost battle because it is all they know

But maybe there is another way where the conflict never evolves into combat

Where swords can be returned to the forge to become the instruments of harvest

Where the enemy becomes my brother and my opponent my sister

And I walk in their shoes and begin to see the world through their eyes

Where instead of tracking my enemy down in their home I welcome them into mine

My righteous indignation can be set aside at the mote in my neighbor’s eye

And there can be a future together in the dawning light of forgiveness

And the world gasps a sigh of relief that its forests are no longer consumed

Building walls and siege engines to fuel a conflict which never ends

And perhaps in our culture of agitation and antagonism we are all losers

Caught in perpetual cycles of conflict, continually training for the next fight

Unable to be at rest under our own vine feasting with our friends and companions

Perhaps in our string of victories we may ignore the tremors of our own trauma

We may justify our own unending nightmares of the past or the wounds we carry

For in a world of harsh justice where wound cried out for wound, scar for scar

And eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a heart for a heart, a life for a life

We all come out broken and hurting too tired to focus on the fields of harvest

Perhaps there is a time to end the pouring out of our neighbors and our own blood

As some sort of sick libation to the cruel gods of conflict we choose to serve

And it is a time to live, a time to be born, a time of peace

A time when brothers can live together in harmony if only we can learn another way

Let us Beat Swords Into Plowshares, a sculpture by Evgeniy Vuchetich, given by the Soviet Union to the United Nations in 1959

Jeremiah 45 The Scribe and The Word Endure the Ending

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Baruch ben Neriah from Promptuerri Iconum Insigniorum, Published by Guillaume Rouille 1553

The word that the prophet Jeremiah spoke to Baruch son of Neriah, when he wrote these words in a scroll at the dictation of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah: ² Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, to you, O Baruch: ³ You said, “Woe is me! The LORD has added sorrow to my pain; I am weary with my groaning, and I find no rest.” ⁴ Thus you shall say to him, “Thus says the LORD: I am going to break down what I have built, and pluck up what I have planted– that is, the whole land. ⁵ And you, do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them; for I am going to bring disaster upon all flesh, says the LORD; but I will give you your life as a prize of war in every place to which you may go.”

This little chapter which marks a closing of this part of the story, after all the desolation there is a small word of hope to Baruch. Like Jeremiah’s offer in the time of Zedekiah and the promise to Ebed-Melech, now Baruch also receives this consolation prize. There is no promise of wealth, riches, power or prosperity, greatness and good fortune-do not seek that in this book, in this time, in this story. This is a story of endings, of pain, of collapse and relationships that come to an end, and death. Yet in the midst of the death there is life for those who hear, who work with God, who are willing to take the more difficult path. It is perhaps important to notice that the opening line takes us way back in the story, to the time of chapter 36 and not in sequence with what has come before, and yet here at the dark end with the people in Egypt turning away from God and God’s prophet, perhaps it is the only way to end this part-to go back to the promise to Baruch, the one who took the spoken word and recorded them and to allow us to know that the words of the LORD, the life of the prophet and the scribe who stood by him will endure beyond the ending of this tragic story. That in the midst of all the harshness that Jeremiah and Baruch go through in being caught between God and the people that there is life in their path. Perhaps the mere existence of this book in all its dark and painful story do indeed bring hope in the midst of hopelessness. The book of Jeremiah is not complete, even though this is culmination of the words to Judah and Israel, there are still words to be spoken to the nations and a final attempt at this book which cannot end with a happily ever after. With the collapse of the world that the people of Judah knew there are no easy answers in their relationship with their God and as Kathleen O’Connor states:

By not settling matters prematurely, by refusing to reduce disaster to one final, settled interpretation. Jeremiah’s three endings honor victims of the Babylonian disaster. They acknowledge the difficulties of closing matters, at least not quickly, not clearly, not finally. The endings leave readers with a set of questions about justice, about Judah’s relationship with God, and about whether or not the nation will have a future. (O’Conner, 2011, p. 116)

Or to end in a more poetic way I will close this section with the words of the poet Uri Zvi Greenberg

Like chapters of prophecy my days burn, in all the revelations,

And my body between them’s a block of metal for smelting,

And over me stands my god, the Smith, who hits hard:

Each wound that Time has opened in me opens its mouth to him

And pours forth in a shower of sparks the intrinsic fire.

This is my just lot—until dusk on the road.

And when I return to throw my beaten block on a bed,

My mouth is an open wound,

And naked I speak with my god: You worked hard.

Now it is night; come let us both rest. (Lau, 2013, p. 98.)

Jeremiah 44 Plummeting to the End

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Athur Kacker, By the Waters of Babylon (1888)

Jeremiah 44: 1-14 Forty Years and Nothing Changed

The word that came to Jeremiah for all the Judeans living in the land of Egypt, at Migdol, at Tahpanhes, at Memphis, and in the land of Pathros, ² Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: You yourselves have seen all the disaster that I have brought on Jerusalem and on all the towns of Judah. Look at them; today they are a desolation, without an inhabitant in them, ³ because of the wickedness that they committed, provoking me to anger, in that they went to make offerings and serve other gods that they had not known, neither they, nor you, nor your ancestors. ⁴ Yet I persistently sent to you all my servants the prophets, saying, “I beg you not to do this abominable thing that I hate!” ⁵ But they did not listen or incline their ear, to turn from their wickedness and make no offerings to other gods. ⁶ So my wrath and my anger were poured out and kindled in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; and they became a waste and a desolation, as they still are today.

⁷ And now thus says the LORD God of hosts, the God of Israel: Why are you doing such great harm to yourselves, to cut off man and woman, child and infant, from the midst of Judah, leaving yourselves without a remnant? ⁸ Why do you provoke me to anger with the works of your hands, making offerings to other gods in the land of Egypt where you have come to settle? Will you be cut off and become an object of cursing and ridicule among all the nations of the earth? ⁹ Have you forgotten the crimes of your ancestors, of the kings of Judah, of their wives, your own crimes and those of your wives, which they committed in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? ¹⁰ They have shown no contrition or fear to this day, nor have they walked in my law and my statutes that I set before you and before your ancestors.The word that came to Jeremiah for all the Judeans living in the land of Egypt, at Migdol, at Tahpanhes, at Memphis, and in the land of Pathros, ² Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: You yourselves have seen all the disaster that I have brought on Jerusalem and on all the towns of Judah. Look at them; today they are a desolation, without an inhabitant in them, ³ because of the wickedness that they committed, provoking me to anger, in that they went to make offerings and serve other gods that they had not known, neither they, nor you, nor your ancestors. ⁴ Yet I persistently sent to you all my servants the prophets, saying, “I beg you not to do this abominable thing that I hate!” ⁵ But they did not listen or incline their ear, to turn from their wickedness and make no offerings to other gods. ⁶ So my wrath and my anger were poured out and kindled in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; and they became a waste and a desolation, as they still are today.

¹¹ Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: I am determined to bring disaster on you, to bring all Judah to an end. ¹² I will take the remnant of Judah who are determined to come to the land of Egypt to settle, and they shall perish, everyone; in the land of Egypt they shall fall; by the sword and by famine they shall perish; from the least to the greatest, they shall die by the sword and by famine; and they shall become an object of execration and horror, of cursing and ridicule. ¹³ I will punish those who live in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem, with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence, ¹⁴ so that none of the remnant of Judah who have come to settle in the land of Egypt shall escape or survive or return to the land of Judah. Although they long to go back to live there, they shall not go back, except some fugitives.

The book of Jeremiah really doesn’t have just one ending but three, one coming in chapter 45, one at the end of 51 at the conclusion of the judgments on the nations and then chapter 52 gives a final ending narrating what happens back in Babylon. Maybe this reflect the unresolved nature of the people and their relationship with God in the light of the disaster of the destruction of Jerusalem, the kingdom of Judea, the Davidic line of kings, the temple and all these markers of identity that made them the people of the LORD. But as we plummet towards the end of the story of the last remaining group not in Babylon, a group that once sought Jeremiah’s word and now rather than a small remnant we find settlements in three cities and perhaps a larger emigration to Egypt after the confusion of the last several years. It is a group that has already heard and ignored Jeremiah’s words that their actions of turning to Egypt will mean famine, the sword and pestilence. In the midst of this refugee group in Egypt we see Jeremiah dealing with some of the same issues as the beginning of his ministry.

Forty years earlier, when Josiah was king and led a reformation of the temple and worship in Jerusalem and turned the people back to the LORD and away from the practices of adopting the customs and worship of the Assyrians now returns again as they encounter Egypt and its lifestyle, culture and religions. As Benyamin Lau describes it:

Jeremiah wanders around his people in shock. All the reformations of his beloved Josiah are instantly forgotten. The idolatry he had witnessed in his childhood, the legacy of Manasseh, has been resurrected in a different form. He finds himself back where he started forty years earlier, only now he is weary, broken, and drained of all hope. For the last time he summons the strength to warn the people against going astray in Egypt to learn from the sins of their forefathers. (Lau, 2013, p. 216)

At stake are different readings of history and the times. Jeremiah reads the events of the past in light of the LORD’s judgment on the people for turning away from the covenant, law, decrees and worship of the LORD. The group of people who are gathered together one last time to hear the prophet’s final recorded words to them read the events of the last several years in a different light.

Jeremiah 44: 15-23 Different Readings of Reality

¹⁵ Then all the men who were aware that their wives had been making offerings to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, all the people who lived in Pathros in the land of Egypt, answered Jeremiah: ¹⁶ “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we are not going to listen to you. ¹⁷ Instead, we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her, just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. We used to have plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no misfortune. ¹⁸ But from the time we stopped making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her, we have lacked everything and have perished by the sword and by famine.” ¹⁹ And the women said, “Indeed we will go on making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her; do you think that we made cakes for her, marked with her image, and poured out libations to her without our husbands’ being involved?”

²⁰ Then Jeremiah said to all the people, men and women, all the people who were giving him this answer: ²¹ “As for the offerings that you made in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your ancestors, your kings and your officials, and the people of the land, did not the LORD remember them? Did it not come into his mind? ²² The LORD could no longer bear the sight of your evil doings, the abominations that you committed; therefore your land became a desolation and a waste and a curse, without inhabitant, as it is to this day. ²³ It is because you burned offerings, and because you sinned against the LORD and did not obey the voice of the LORD or walk in his law and in his statutes and in his decrees, that this disaster has befallen you, as is still evident today.”

The people answer Jeremiah’s prophecy with a very different reading of reality. From their perspective, prior to Jeremiah’s prophecies, prior to the reformation of Josiah and under the reign of Manasseh forty years ago things were pretty good. The people had adopted a pro-Assyrian policy, adopted their customs and practices and along with that portions of their religious practice. Until that time, in the memory of the people, things went well for Judah. After Josiah’s death at the hands of Egypt and the rise of the Babylonian empire, while they had ceased worshipping the Assyrian gods/goddesses (although apparently the remembrance of the practice and probably the practices themselves lingered). The queen of heaven probably referred to Astarte, a fertility goddess but could also refer here in Egypt to Isis, but somehow there is an amalgamation between the worship of the LORD the God of Israel and this other deity. The people defiantly resist Jeremiah, claiming ‘we will go on making offerings.’

It is easy to imagine the allure of the culture and worship in Egypt as well as the practices from the past when times seemed easier and more secure being very attractive to the people. It’s also not hard to imagine the allure of a fertility cult at any point in society. Yet, in the midst of these final words between the people and Jeremiah we see the people interpreting reality in light of their prosperity of the past while doing these practices and Jeremiah seeing the judgment of the recent past in light of these practices. Judaism probably was not as monotheistic throughout its history prior to the exile as it became when it emerged again from the exile in Babylon. Yet in the book of Jeremiah this is a new low point, the people feel no need to apologize for their actions or cover them up. They are claiming a new identity in the new land, they are choosing to no longer be the people of the LORD. Perhaps this is that moment where something so drastic has happened that the parent has disowned the child and this is the counter story to the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. Regardless for this portion of the exiles, who disobeyed Jeremiah’s prophetic words against going to Egypt and now are adopting new practices in this new land the dissolution in nearly complete.

Byzantine Fresca of Joshua from Hosias Loukas Monastery in Boetian, Greece

Jeremiah 44: 24-30: Choose This Day Who You Will Serve

²⁴ Jeremiah said to all the people and all the women, “Hear the word of the LORD, all you Judeans who are in the land of Egypt, ²⁵ Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: You and your wives have accomplished in deeds what you declared in words, saying, ‘We are determined to perform the vows that we have made, to make offerings to the queen of heaven and to pour out libations to her.’ By all means, keep your vows and make your libations! ²⁶ Therefore hear the word of the LORD, all you Judeans who live in the land of Egypt: Lo, I swear by my great name, says the LORD, that my name shall no longer be pronounced on the lips of any of the people of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying, ‘As the Lord GOD lives.’ ²⁷ I am going to watch over them for harm and not for good; all the people of Judah who are in the land of Egypt shall perish by the sword and by famine, until not one is left. ²⁸ And those who escape the sword shall return from the land of Egypt to the land of Judah, few in number; and all the remnant of Judah, who have come to the land of Egypt to settle, shall know whose words will stand, mine or theirs! ²⁹ This shall be the sign to you, says the LORD, that I am going to punish you in this place, in order that you may know that my words against you will surely be carried out: ³⁰ Thus says the LORD, I am going to give Pharaoh Hophra, king of Egypt, into the hands of his enemies, those who seek his life, just as I gave King Zedekiah of Judah into the hand of King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon, his enemy who sought his life.”

At the end of a very different story in the book of Joshua, Joshua presents the people with a choice:

Now therefore revere the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. (Joshua 24: 14f)

At the end of Jeremiah the people have made a choice, and it is a different choice. Every action has consequences in the world of Jeremiah, but Jeremiah has played his part and done his job. Jeremiah is finished with this people. “By all means, keep your vows and make your libations!” but the consequence of this choice is that the people are no longer to use the name of the LORD. They are no longer Israel, or Judah without their relationship to the God of Israel. Once again the words come prophesying the war, famine, and disease that will reduce the people in Egypt greatly. These words are followed up by a series of events that unfold in the near future when Pharoah Hophra is killed in a rebellion in 569 BCE and then Nebuchadrezzar invades in 568/67 BCE shattering the illusion of the safety of the Egyptian empire. (Elizabeth Actemeir, et. al., 1994, p. VI: 874) From the brokenhearted prophet there is one more word of promise not for the people but for Baruch as the story closes and then inhales for a final scream of judgment against the nations. Light will re-emerge, there will be a hope for the future but it will not be seen by those in Egypt, nor quickly by those in Babylon. The Judean refugees in Babylon will go through a long process of reconstructing their identity as a people no longer identified by land, the temple and its worship or the Davidic king. Now they must begin the long process of gathering their stories, figuring out who they are and imagining a new future for themselves and their LORD.

Forgiveness

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There is no better future without letting go of the sins of the past

Without being willing to see others not as a summation of debt unpaid

For we all walk around carrying the burdens and baggage of our lives

Fearing that someone might see the scarlet letter we cover with a coat

Or the identity we hide behind the masks we wear for the world to see

Pinned within boxes far too small to fit our frames constricting our freedom

And our shame is a garment that makes it too hard to breathe the thin air of life

For until we learn to forgive and love ourselves we will be enslaved to shame

Unable to feel the love we desire or the compassion we seek

Forgiveness is such a simple word to say and a hard life to live

Love would be so easy if only it didn’t involve letting down my walls

And when one has pierced my heart to let them close again

To offer peace to one who acted in war, to offer friendship to an enemy

To love one who I would rather label as unloveable, unforgiveable

And yet rather than picking up the blade that pierced my heart

Turning once again to use it on its previous wielder,

To demand an eye for an eye and a heart for a heart

Perhaps I can learn to see the wounds they already carry

And in my own healing begin to point the way to a new future

Where swords are put aside in favor of the surgeon’s needle

As lives become stitched back together and hearts are make whole again.

Neil White, 2014

The Prodigal Son, Marble Statue by Joseph Mozier (1857)

Playful

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As children we danced through the daisies and gazed at the clouds

We built castles of blankets and pillows defended by imagined armies

The world revolved around us and we delighted in the gifts of each day

We ran and played and laughed and enjoyed the moments of life

Then we got older and forgot the steps to the dance and how to smile

The blankets and pillows were replaced by brick and mortar

And life became consumed by maintaining the walls that surround us

We closed ourselves within our own cages where we no longer looked up

The clouds replaced by the dust that we stir up as we shuffle through the day

And maybe we aren’t too old to relearn the steps to the dance and smile

Maybe we aren’t too old to run and play and laugh and enjoy life

To, just for the day, to ignore when the world around us frowns

Breathing in the fresh air and singing out at the top of our lungs

To let go of the carefully choreographed lives we live in

And remember that in our youth we didn’t need the steps to dance and smile

Jeremiah 43 The Flight to Egypt

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Cry Of Prophet Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem by Ilya Repin 1870

When Jeremiah finished speaking to all the people all these words of the LORD their God, with which the LORD their God had sent him to them, ² Azariah son of Hoshaiah and Johanan son of Kareah and all the other insolent men said to Jeremiah, “You are telling a lie. The LORD our God did not send you to say, ‘Do not go to Egypt to settle there’; ³ but Baruch son of Neriah is inciting you against us, to hand us over to the Chaldeans, in order that they may kill us or take us into exile in Babylon.” ⁴ So Johanan son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces and all the people did not obey the voice of the LORD, to stay in the land of Judah. ⁵ But Johanan son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces took all the remnant of Judah who had returned to settle in the land of Judah from all the nations to which they had been driven– ⁶ the men, the women, the children, the princesses, and everyone whom Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had left with Gedaliah son of Ahikam son of Shaphan; also the prophet Jeremiah and Baruch son of Neriah.

⁷ And they came into the land of Egypt, for they did not obey the voice of the LORD. And they arrived at Tahpanhes. ⁸ Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah in Tahpanhes: ⁹ Take some large stones in your hands, and bury them in the clay pavement that is at the entrance to Pharaoh’s palace in Tahpanhes. Let the Judeans see you do it, ¹⁰ and say to them, Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to send and take my servant King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon, and he will set his throne above these stones that I have buried, and he will spread his royal canopy over them. ¹¹ He shall come and ravage the land of Egypt,

giving those who are destined for pestilence, to pestilence,

and those who are destined for captivity, to captivity,

and those who are destined for the sword, to the sword.

¹² He shall kindle a fire in the temples of the gods of Egypt; and he shall burn them and carry them away captive; and he shall pick clean the land of Egypt, as a shepherd picks his cloak clean of vermin; and he shall depart from there safely. ¹³ He shall break the obelisks of Heliopolis, which is in the land of Egypt; and the temples of the gods of Egypt he shall burn with fire.

Everything in the book of Jeremiah seems to work against the hope that the people will hear and listen and be obedient. Every time Jeremiah has spoken before the listeners have not responded, and yet there was perhaps a small hope that this time, since the leaders and the people had sought him out that the response might be different. Yet, the response by Azariah and Johanan (and I find the fact that Azariah son of Hoshaiah is mentioned first intriguing since in the chapters that proceed Johanan is apparently the dominant leader and when Azariah is mentioned, which isn’t often, it is after Johanan) is not only negative but accusatory. First is the accusation that Jeremiah’s prophecy is a lie, that in Jeremiah’s persistence in telling the people what they do not want to hear that somehow the inconvenient truth is shouted down as the lie. Second, interestingly, is the accusation that Baruch son of Neriah is behind this believed subversion. Other than his role as the scribe of Jeremiah we know very little about Baruch, but in this interconnected and politically charged world it isn’t surprising that Baruch is probably more than a mere scribe and that he (like Gedeliah and his father and grandfather) probably represented the present opposition to the policy of the officials in Jerusalem that led to the cities overthrow by Babylon. Perhaps he, and probably others as well, had been public voices critical of the pro-Egyptian policies of the past and as the people look to flee for safety in Egypt, perhaps Baruch makes a convenient scapegoat. Now the remnant who escaped exile by hiding away in foreign lands is now entering into a self-chosen exile in the land of Egypt. The land is left deserted since the text gives the impression that everyone left is taken away by Johanan and the forces remaining. Interesting that we see that the princesses are also left in Jerusalem and they along with the rest of the people, including Jeremiah and Baruch are carried off into to Tahpanhes (also known as Daphanae by the Greeks).

Once in Egypt, the LORD again calls on Jeremiah to perform a visual representation of the coming judgment in the sight of the people. Taking large stones and burying them in the front of the entrance of the palace of the pharaoh at Tahpanhes (Tahpanhes is not the capitol but this is probably one of many palaces throughout the nation) symbolically marking a place where the feared king of Babylon will again set up his court in the front yard of his biggest challenger in the region. The prophecy points out again that Egypt will not bring safety, that captivity, sword and pestilence will not be avoided and that the Chaldeans are instruments of the LORD of hosts, and that the Egyptians are no more a threat to them than a rat or insect on a shepherd’s robe. This tragic part of the story is approaching its end and not only do the people bring judgment upon themselves, but also upon Egypt and her gods for being the place they have come to for security.

Drawn in the Current

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Adrift by Locopelli at deviantart.com

So much of my life I have tried to set my own course

To sail to destinations of my own choosing, charting my path

Powering through the waves ignoring the push and the draw

But now I sit aimlessly enjoying the wind and the current

That draw me to places I never before imagined

And perhaps before it was all about the illusion of control

The continual application of power and steering

Trying to capture the wind and waves and use them for my purpose

Yet, perhaps the underlying rhythms of the deep knew all along

Where my ship was sailing and slowly but surely exerted its pull

To a new world beyond the edges of my dreams

Neil White, 2014

Soft Hearted

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love me forever by syntheses on deviantart.com

We enter into a world full of broken people and shattered stories

Am I my brother’s keeper? Who is my neighbor and who can I ignore?

Can’t I just send the crowds away with their insatiable appetite and needs?

Or ignore the foreigner on my doorstep who cries out for her daughter?

Who can I, in my mental and physical fatigue, exclude so I don’t see?

Where can I go to escape the cries of creation that fill my ears?

In the highest heaven they ascend to God rending the creator’s heart

And they echo from the walls of the endless abyss creating a hell of brokenness

I don’t want to see, I don’t want to care, I want to block it out

To plug my ears, cover my eyes, harden my heart and distract my mind

To hear no evil, see no evil and to feel no compulsion to speak back to evil

To wall my broken heart away behind immense walls of cold stone

Some safe shelter where I can isolate myself from the needs of the world

To buy in to the promise of despair, that in giving up hope I can save myself

That the promises of the kingdom of God are not worth the birth pangs of creation

And that by pulling away and shutting out the world that the pain may simply cease

From a young child I was taught to hide the feelings, the emotions, the pain

That to be a man was to be like some distant unloving picture of a god

Who was unaffected and unattached to the world around him

Whose heart did not break, but rather this deistic god was unmoved

And to live a life in that stoic god’s image was not to feel, not to love

For in feeling there was fault and in love there was weakness

And to be weak was to fail and to fail was to be worthless

It was a god that seemed to demand nothing and to give nothing

But its sacrifice was the very marrow of life, it sucked dry the bones

Exchanging the risk of love for the a hollow security of disconnection

For in love there is joy and pain, in losing there is loss and gain

And I could never exchange the fleshy heart in my breast for a stone one

Yet, from a young child I was taught to hide the feelings, the emotions, the pain

As a man I began to realize the pain and cries of a loving God

Foolish enough to love the world, to cry for its hurts, to enter its rejection

A God of crazy dreams of new creation that emerges out of the brokenness

Where shattered shields and broken spears become the instruments of harvest time

Where even in the midst of death, life can emerge from an unending well of love

That the world in all its broken people and shattered stories can be taken in

That it can be loved, not because it is loveable but because that is what the softhearted do

And that perhaps, in a company of bumbling fools who dare to hope and dream

Who put aside the false promise of despair and have the courage to love God’s beloved

That perhaps in those moments where stones slowly removed change mountains

We see the hope that the creation has long been waiting for

The instruments of God’s work being those who can take up the sensitivity of a child

To see the world as it is and to dare to believe that it can be better

And that the discomfort I feel is not weakness, but the strength of a soft heart

A heart not content to be locked behind walls of stone separate from the world

But rather that sees the evil, hears the evil and dares to speak and name the evil

And perhaps to do my small part in the struggle, for the dream of a better world

A world of compassion and justice and joy and love, the world that could be

To dream and speak that world into being one small act of love at a time

A world where hearts of stone are replaced by soft fleshy hearts

That dare to love, the courage to hope and the audacity to dream

Of a time where tears are wiped away, where pains are healed

And we can enter into a world of healed people and mended lives

Neil White, 2014

Jeremiah 42 A Final Prayer And A Final Response

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Cry Of Prophet Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem by Ilya Repin 1870

Then all the commanders of the forces, and Johanan son of Kareah and Azariah son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the least to the greatest, approached ² the prophet Jeremiah and said, “Be good enough to listen to our plea, and pray to the LORD your God for us– for all this remnant. For there are only a few of us left out of many, as your eyes can see. ³ Let the LORD your God show us where we should go and what we should do.” ⁴ The prophet Jeremiah said to them, “Very well: I am going to pray to the LORD your God as you request, and whatever the LORD answers you I will tell you; I will keep nothing back from you.” ⁵ They in their turn said to Jeremiah, “May the LORD be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act according to everything that the LORD your God sends us through you. ⁶ Whether it is good or bad, we will obey the voice of the LORD our God to whom we are sending you, in order that it may go well with us when we obey the voice of the LORD our God.”

⁷ At the end of ten days the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah. ⁸ Then he summoned Johanan son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces who were with him, and all the people from the least to the greatest, ⁹ and said to them, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your plea before him: ¹⁰ If you will only remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you, and not pluck you up; for I am sorry for the disaster that I have brought upon you. ¹¹ Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, as you have been; do not be afraid of him, says the LORD, for I am with you, to save you and to rescue you from his hand. ¹² I will grant you mercy, and he will have mercy on you and restore you to your native soil.

¹³ But if you continue to say, ‘We will not stay in this land,’ thus disobeying the voice of the LORD your God ¹⁴ and saying, ‘No, we will go to the land of Egypt, where we shall not see war, or hear the sound of the trumpet, or be hungry for bread, and there we will stay,’ ¹⁵ then hear the word of the LORD, O remnant of Judah. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: If you are determined to enter Egypt and go to settle there, ¹⁶ then the sword that you fear shall overtake you there, in the land of Egypt; and the famine that you dread shall follow close after you into Egypt; and there you shall die. ¹⁷ All the people who have determined to go to Egypt to settle there shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; they shall have no remnant or survivor from the disaster that I am bringing upon them.

¹⁸ “For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Just as my anger and my wrath were poured out on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so my wrath will be poured out on you when you go to Egypt. You shall become an object of execration and horror, of cursing and ridicule. You shall see this place no more. ¹⁹ The LORD has said to you, O remnant of Judah, Do not go to Egypt. Be well aware that I have warned you today ²⁰ that you have made a fatal mistake. For you yourselves sent me to the LORD your God, saying, ‘Pray for us to the LORD our God, and whatever the LORD our God says, tell us and we will do it.’ ²¹ So I have told you today, but you have not obeyed the voice of the LORD your God in anything that he sent me to tell you. ²² Be well aware, then, that you shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence in the place where you desire to go and settle.”

Into the space and confusion following the assassination of Gedaliah, the governor appointed by Babylon to rule in Judea over the remnant, the interim leaders, Johanan and Azariah come with the people to Jeremiah asking for a word from the LORD. Based on previous times when kings and leaders have asked for a word from the LORD there is little expectation for the reader that it will be heard and obeyed, yet here in desperation the people come and finally they come to Jeremiah who they have ignored so many times before asking his prayer to God. It is very possible that Jeremiah is tired at this point and yet he consents and goes once again in prayer to the LORD. In contrast to Jeremiah’s reluctance (Very well: I am going to pray to the LORD your God as you request, and whatever the LORD answers you I will tell you, I will keep nothing back from you) and the peoples’ insistence (Whether it is good or bad, we will obey the voice of the LORD our God.) Yet, in the space and time of waiting the people probably don’t sit idle. Why does it take ten days to answer? We will never know the answer, but ultimately God doesn’t work on our time tables, but in that time when Jeremiah returns to give the answer it is clear he knows which way the peoples’ hearts are leaning.

The LORD’s answer presents two choices, one in obedience with an accompanied blessing and on in disobedience with an accompanying curse. Much as the end of Deuteronomy ends with blessings if the people keeps the commandments of the LORD and curses if they do not. If the people listens and stays within the land the LORD promises an end to their disaster. The LORD will build and not tear down, plant and not pluck up, that in the midst of the present threat of Babylon’s retaliation the LORD promises to protect them and to give them mercy. In the response we hear that the LORD is sorry for the pain that God’s people have endured and that this remnant finds themselves within and so if they will obey they will have the opportunity to begin anew. Yet, if they do not obey, if they seek security in Egypt then the very things they fear here in Judah will find them in Egypt. Sword, famine and pestilence will follow them, their name will become dishonored and an object of not only shame but horror. Jeremiah tries desperately to convince the people not to go to Egypt, and it is quite possible that he knows that is the journey the people are preparing for, and yet once again he tries to get the people to see something which seems to run counter to their own intuition.

In the face of the destruction of Jerusalem, the temple, and the taking on much of the people of Judah into exile this small remnant has seen ample reason to fear Babylon. It may be very difficult for the people to trust God at this point, and at points they seem to distance themselves from the LORD (your God) and at other points want to claim God (our God). Egypt being the other major power in the region from a military/political standpoint makes sense as a place to flee to when fleeing the Babylonian empire, but here they are asked to trust the LORD, something they have failed to do to this point, and to listen to the LORD’s prophet, something else they have failed to do.

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I took my words, my thoughts confined to the ink on a page

I took them and bound them within the comforting wrapping

An envelope which contained an address and a flowered stamp

And from its home in one box it vanished, swept away

Carried by mechanisms unseen and unknown from me to you

And in this time between times, this passage of days

Where the words from the past meet you in the future

They wait for removal from their slumber to awake in your mind

In this age of digital where electrons travel in an instant

Across the nodes on the map, bearing their message without fail

There is still something to the deliberate and slow method

Where the words must wait until their parole comes

And they can break free from their prison and embrace their love

To risk that in the time of transition that the words don’t lose their meaning

And that like a good wine they get better with the time.

Neil White, 2014

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Searchings: Sacred and Secular

Winners and Losers

Jeremiah 45 The Scribe and The Word Endure the Ending

Jeremiah 44 Plummeting to the End

Jeremiah 44: 1-14 Forty Years and Nothing Changed

Jeremiah 44: 15-23 Different Readings of Reality

Jeremiah 44: 24-30: Choose This Day Who You Will Serve

Forgiveness

Playful

Jeremiah 43 The Flight to Egypt

Drawn in the Current

Soft Hearted

Jeremiah 42 A Final Prayer And A Final Response

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