EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2017 I began a new venture as a synodically authorized minister at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. The ride over the past 3 years has been an amazing journey of learning, growing and a deepening of my theological mind. This sermon took place on Aug. 25, 2020. This was the 21st digital service we performed after our church was shuttered because of the COVID pandemic.
Recently, and sadly, while reviewing my Facebook account I was disheartened to learn of the death of a friend's husband. It actually happened a few months. But we don't see each other all that often because we met through Big Brothers Big Sisters, and I no longer go to the same school that she worked at. When I came across it, I hadn't seen this news before. So I felt compelled to reach out.
I dropped her a note on Facebook and prayed that she was in the care of the Holy Spirit, and wished her family the best, and all of my condolences. Because I guess that feels like it is all we can do these days. Well, she wrote back the next day and thanked me, and added these really raw, emotional words, "It goes in waves. I have been angry with God, and then drawn closer to him. And it kind of comes and goes. I never planned to raise three kids alone."
And man, that last sentence really hit me hard. Just in her few short sentences, I could feel the raw emotions pouring out even months later after the death of her husband. Those raw emotions in her words, sharing with me that she both sought to not only shake her fists at God because she was so angry over the death of her husband. But also at the same time, welcoming the soothing, healing words that we hear from our God. The promises that He will not leave us alone even in the midst of our troubles.
After reading and thinking about her emotions pouring out on that page, I was struck by how much they reminded me of this week's reading in Jeremiah. Because Jeremiah, as you may know, is most certainly someone who knows about wanting to shake his fists at God, but also wanting to welcome His soothing words, God's healing words.
You might remember that Jeremiah was a prophet in the Hebrew Bible, what we would call the Old Testament. And it was the job of prophets to speak God's words to the people. And, as you can imagine, often is the case, that is not a message that we want to hear. Jeremiah's career, his prophetic career, began several decades before even Christ was born, several hundred years before Christ was born. Some experts put him in the 626 B.C. range, and in the 13th year of King Josiah's reign.
He famously told God when he approached him and anointed him this prophetic soothsayer for His people, Jeremiah famously said, "No, God, not me! I'm just a boy. I can't speak your words. I can't lead a people." ... But God assure him, and told him not to worry. Told him, "I'll put my words in your mouth, and you speak them. And you'll become a prophet to all nations."
Jeremiah obeyed, and he took up his mantle as God's prophet. And some might say that he took his job really seriously because even in his earliest messages to his people were condemnations for their false worships and their social injustices. You could say that Jeremiah started off with a bang! And, so, really goes the rest of Jeremiah's career as a prophet. He continuously rebukes his people for their for their continued disobedience of the Lord and their stubborn unwillingness to repent. Time and time again he lays into them, one of his most famous rebukes being after the fall of his people, after the invasion of the Babylonians, and the capture of the Jewish people, and the time when the Jewish were abducted into exile back to Babylonia, Jeremiah actually told his people that this was God's will. ... Can you imagine how well that went over?
I can't imagine the throes, and the fits, and the fights that Jeremiah went through on behalf of serving as His God's prophet. We get a bit of wink at that in tonight's reading in which he laments the fact that on behalf of God, he's speaking His words and people revile him for it. ... And this goes on for years, and even decades in Jeremiah's life. But despite the abuse and the revilement by his own people, Jeremiah kept prophesizing. He keeps doing his job that God called him to do. He's faithful to it, and ultimately, Jeremiah's prophesizing lands him in jail. This is late in his career now; decades after telling people to repent and turn back to God, suffering their punishment and their ostracism and his people's dislike.
Even worse, after landing in jail, his fellow people, take it one step further, and they throw him down an empty cistern. For those of here in this country, we probably would have called it well. For some of us who grew up on a homestead in the country, you may still have those wells where we drew water. ... Anyway, they threw him down this empty well, and most likely he would have died if it were not for the fact that the king intervenes and sends someone to pull him out.
But even then, Jeremiah's struggles don't end. Later, after he is freed and appointed a caretaker among his people so that he may be protected by his Babylonian captors, not his own people, his caretaker dies. And his own people abduct him from their lands and shoo him off to Egypt. So even in his older age, even at the end of his career, Jeremiah's troubles do not cease.
So when you read tonight's Jeremiah reading, and you hear the words, those really strong words, "Why is my pain unceasing? My wound incurable, refusing to be healed?" ... You might get some sense of his despair. Jeremiah's was not an easy life on behalf of his God. Jeremiah's call did not lead him down the path of wealth and recognition and fame and easy living. ... Anything but.
Jeremiah pours out so much despair that in this particular reading tonight, he shouts at God, "Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail." That's an astounding castigation of our God. I mean that's really taking God to task, now isn't it! But it kind of sounds familiar to me, kind of like the same words that my friend wrote in her message back to me: "I have been angry with God."
Now, I wonder who among us hasn't felt this way? Who among us hasn't been mad enough to shake our fist at God? It's OK, because I know I have, and to be frank, I have a lot lately. This past five months, not only personally, but in our family's lives, and on a community level, and a level of our church, and a level of our country ... it's felt like we've taken blow, after blow, after blow. The isolation that I referred to earlier. The numbers of the sick continue to climb. The numbers who have passed from this incurable disease at this point continue to rise. Our economy continues to falter; people are out of work and needing unemployment. There's increased tension and unrest in our cities.
And like in Jeremiah's story, sometimes I've wondered both to myself and out loud when I've dared, "When is enough? ... God, when is enough?"
Certainly, Jeremiah's 40 years is a prime example for those of us who walk this path as Jesus followers, and willing to be the first ones willing to profess our anger with our God. There are examples that are littered throughout our Bible, including Jeremiah. But thankfully for all of us ... myself, my friend who recently lost her husband and is still very angry, and of course for Jeremiah's sake, we are all fortunate that we have a God who's is big enough to take that anger. ... Big enough to hold onto my anger, and your anger, our nation's anger, our global anger. ... And big enough yet to forgive us.
Just look at God's words tonight in Jeremiah, "If you turn back ...," ... he was speaking to Jeremiah, and hence us, "If you turn back, I will take you back." In other words, God is staring at us, looking at us with love, and saying, "Go ahead and shout at me! Go ahead and shake your fist at me! ... And when you're ready, I'll still be waiting here for you. And I will always be with you. I will still defend you against all of these things that afflict you."
Whether it's Jeremiah's persecutors. Whether it's the troubles that we suffer in our lives, the lost loved ones, those that get sick, the injustices that we see in the world. ... God tells us that through our faith, he will turn us into walls to defend against these afflictions. He will not abandon us, and aren't we lucky enough to have such a God, Faith Family!
So, if tonight, if on this Sunday morning, you are suffering in anyway right now, as so many are, not only in our congregation, but in our communities, across the state, across the country, please know that it is OK to get angry with our God. It is OK to lament your situation, and cry out to God with your needs. It is OK to ask, "When is enough, enough?" ... Because fortunately for us our God is big enough to take it all.
And that is the Good News for this evening, and this Sunday morning, Faith Family. ... Amen.
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