Jeremiah
2:4-13
She’d hold it
upside down in her left hand, precariously placing the point along the rim of a
can of peaches. Then, she’d raise her right hand just above her hair before
slamming it down with a force that would betray her elderly, feeble appearance.
She’d do this three or four times, and with each blow, the tarnished blade of
that old knife would go a bit deeper in the top of the can, making a wider gash
across the top before she’d wriggle it loose, turn the can a quarter turn, and
repeat the process. I know Grandma had a drawer with at least a few worn-out,
rounded off can openers in it, but she always used that old, wooden-handled
knife.
While it seemed
sufficient for opening cans, she also used it de-bone countless chicken (and
maybe even behead one or two), chop turnip roots and mustard greens, peel the
wax off more than her share of rutabagas, slice hundreds of tomatoes, and even
cut a few slices of butternut cake. While she had enough spoons and forks for
the whole family and plenty of plates and old Country Croc tubs from which to
eat, as best as I can remember Grandma only had the one knife.
So, you can
imagine my heart was in the right place when one afternoon, while visiting with
Grandma in her living room (most likely watching Judge Judy), after
seeing a commercial for some set of miracle kitchen knives that could slice
through Coke cans and saw through bricks without loosing an edge, I suggested
that she might look into buying herself a new set of knives. I guess I figured
the thought had never crossed her mind and that she was continuing to use that
old whittled-down machete out of necessity. She hardly responded to my
suggestion; she just simply said, “What’s wrong with the knife I got?”
She was right,
of course. She didn’t need another knife. For her, the one she
had was the one she wanted, the one she needed, the one that did the job and
hadn’t broke yet. And while I’m sure such a sentiment was born out of a hard-lived
life, of having and needing very little, it was one that served her well. One I
so wish I had inherited more fully, because, you see, I’m not always satisfied
with what I’ve got—especially if there’s something else I can have that
promises to be better, faster, easier…Even if what I’ve got is fine, gets the
job done, and has never let me down, I still find myself checking out the newer
version on Amazon, reading user reviews, trying to convince myself that the old
one just isn’t as good, that this new thing is definitely going to make my life
so much better. To tell the truth, I don’t think I’m completely alone in this
way of thinking, and I think for many people, the allure and empty promises of
what’s next, what’s new, what’s better seems to apply to so much more
than just kitchen utensils.
For the people of Judah, the promise of something better seemed close at
hand. Yes, the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had delivered
them from Egypt, brought them into a plentiful land, and helped them to
establish themselves as a powerful people in that land, and God had even
preserved them while their kinfolks in the northern kingdom had fallen to the Assyrians
well over a century before, but this same God was just a bit too mysterious, a
bit too unpredictable, and this God was most assuredly not easy to control. So
when their were promises of other, different deities that promised fruitful
harvests, plentiful rains, protection, and power of enemies, the people of
Judah couldn’t wait to erect altars to these gods, to set up high places and
make sacrifices to these new, more visible gods. What’s more, since the God of
their ancestors seemed so far away, so aloof to their own ambitions and
desires, they streamlined their religion to hedge their bets. Sacrifices,
offerings, and holy days were observed with minimal effort. The divine call to
justice was spiritualized to the point of being ignored. The material wealth of
the nation grew along with its visibility in the Ancient Near East, but what
was lacking—what was shrinking in the glow of promise, was the fidelity to the
God of their ancestors and their adherence to God’s call to justice.
So, when Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians came and began to cart off
the upper crust of Judah into Babylon, some fled to Egypt, to hear the news of
their homeland and their people from the safety of distance. Two of those who
fled were the prophet Jeremiah and his secretary Baruch. Jeremiah was called by
God to prophecy to the people of his homeland, to call them to account for
their two greatest sins—the two great sins nearly every prophet of the Old
Testament stands to call account for—idolatry and injustice. As Old Testament
scholar, Rolf Jacobson puts it, “Idolatry is a sin against God; injustice is a
sin towards one’s neighbor.”[1]
The people of Judah had turned to idols and forsaken the call to care for their
neighbors. But why?
In this passage before us that plays out like a courtroom scene in Matlock,
the prophet Jeremiah acts as the prosecuting attorney for the Almighty: “Hear the word of the Lord,
O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. Thus says the
Lord: What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and
went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves? They did not say,
‘Where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the
wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep
darkness, in a land that no one passes through, where no one lives?’” Using rhetorical questions, Jeremiah asks the
people of Judah what they found wrong with the God who had delivered them from
Egypt and brought them into such a plentiful place. Why had they turned aside
to these worthless, empty idols and their worthless, empty promises?
Why would a people who had come so far, so
quickly in the grand scheme of things, chase after such things? What is it
within a person, a people, that causes us to take for granted that which has
been given to us without effort or merit? How do we so quickly forget the grace
given to us when it comes to extending it to others? I suppose there’s an
element of absence to it all, the notion that the present generation wasn’t
around when the generations of the past endured hardships and found their
deliverance in God. Maybe there’s some sort of amnesia that takes hold of us,
causing us to forget our former state of need once our bellies are full and our
situations safe. I know I catch myself doing it: in line at the grocery store,
watching the mother with her kids running wild up and down the aisles, only to
come to the register and realize she doesn’t have enough for what she’s placed
on the conveyer, so the cashier sets it aside or the mother sends one of the
children to put the box back on the shelf. Oh yeah, I’ve stood in that line,
thinking to myself, “She ought to know better than that. I mean, she ought to
know what she can and can’t afford.” You know, I forget in those moments about
those times I was the kid, sent on a mission to put the cereal back on the
shelf or the bacon back in the cooler.
It’s as if we tend to forget out own
struggles, our own shortcomings when we witness the faults of others, when we
judge someone else to be “less than.” I don’t doubt that was part of the people
of Judah’s problem, forgetting that they had once been captives, once strangers
in a strange land, forgetting that it was God that had brought them along, that
they would have continued on as mere gears in the great Egyptian machine had it
not been for the intervention of God. They forgot, so they put their faith in
idols and believed that the care for others wasn’t their concern. After all,
the role of a god was to protect them personally, to give them a better life,
and to see their nation prosper; if those on the margins were suffering, it was
either the will of the gods or their own lack of ambition.
Here again, the prophet corrects their ways of
thinking by reminding them that it was God who delivered them, God who called
them, and God who provided more than enough for everyone, yet they still chased
after that which they believed would benefit them: “I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits
and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land, and made my
heritage an abomination. The priests did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’ Those
who handle the law did not know me; the rulers transgressed against me; the
prophets prophesied by Baal, and went after things that do not profit.” It didn’t take long for the people to get that God
had brought them into the land, that God had delivered them. They soon turned
to religious, agricultural, and social practices that led to the benefit of
some, while alienating and abusing others. Even the religious leaders of the
day were in on the whole, wicked thing.
What was so strange about it all, though, was
how willing the people of Judah had been to abandon their God for other idols,
while those who worshipped such false deities never seemed too concerned about
following the gods of others: “Therefore once more I accuse you, says the Lord, and I accuse
your children's children. Cross to the coasts of Cyprus and look, send to Kedar
and examine with care; see if there has ever been such a thing. Has a nation
changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed
their glory for something that does not profit.” “Look around,” God says through the prophet, “Look
around at all the other people with their false gods and how faithful they are
to them though their as divine as the wood and stone from which they’re
carved!” These other false gods, these idols, were nothing, yet those who
worshipped them did not forsake them, yet the people of Judah—whose God had miraculously
delivered them and brought them into this land—turned so easily from their God.
Why? What did the people of Judah do exactly?
The prophet tells us: “Be appalled, O
heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord, for my people
have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water,
and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.” The people committed two
evils: they had forsaken God, and in God’s place the did not simply set the god
of a foreign nation—they set themselves. In other words, the people replaced
their trust in God with their own selfish sense of accomplishment, their own
selfish sense of power.
After all, who
needs God when you can do it on your own? Who needs God when you can pull
yourself up by your bootstraps? Who needs God when you have all the power in
your own hands, in your own mind to accomplish everything you ever hoped to do?
Oh sure, you need God for those religious things—for healing, for heaven, for
fourth-quarter comebacks, but do you really need God when you can just work for
what you want?
Now I know—I
know—you’ll say, “Preacher, we all need the Lord,” and you’re right, but I want
to ask you something, something I think the prophet Jeremiah would have liked
to have asked his kinfolks back in Judah: If God is enough to liberate us from
Egypt, if God is enough to bring us into the Promised Land, if God is enough to
save us from damnation, if God is enough to raise us from the grave and into
glory, then isn’t God enough for us? And if God is enough for us, then why do
we strive so hard to prove to ourselves and everyone else that we are
enough? If God is enough, then why do we fight so hard to prove our worth to
ourselves? If God is enough for us, then isn’t God enough for us all? God is
enough. God has to be enough. Because without God, I’m afraid we’re all
just cracked cisterns, unable to hold water, unable to hold our own self-worth.
But thanks be to God, that God is enough! Amen.
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