Reading: Jeremiah 4-6, Psalm 14

For about five years I worked in downtown Portland, Oregon. In the middle of the city there is an open square, Pioneer Square, that the city has touted as “Portland’s Living Room.” Fun events happen there- the Christmas Tree lighting, the 200 tubas (Yep. An all tuba performance), an Easter egg hunt, numerous concerts, night markets, etc. The kinds of things that happen in a city to let the residents and workers know everything is working well and to come out and meet one another in a festive atmosphere. However, if you visit Pioneer Square on a day when there is no scheduled event, you will find in some ways an even more fun assortment of persons. There are the street kids and other homeless. There are barefoot mentally deranged persons walking into Starbucks right next to businessmen and women in $1000 shoes. They all order the same sugarmilk with a little coffee. There are well dressed Jehovah’s Witnesses handing out literature. Performance artists of all sorts. If you’re lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it), you’ll see the kilt-clad unipiper blaring away on his bagpipes while expertly navigating the crowds on his unicycle. He sees pretty well through that Darth Vader mask. Anarchist “protestors” in Guy Fawkes masks and black robes holding signs covered with literal gibberish. And invariably, at some point in the day there will be a man with a loudspeaker yelling about hell, damnation, and the end of the world. In my experience this is always a man, usually wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt, and filled with the kind of passion only an angry true believer can muster. I never asked, but now I wonder if any of them are named Jeremiah.

The message that Jeremiah had to carry to his people in Jerusalem must have seemed like those loudspeaker wielding street preachers that appear like genies from a bottle in the downtowns of major cities throughout the world. The Assyrians were gone! The Egyptians were leaving them alone. The northern kingdom and most of the surrounding nations had collapsed under the rule of the Assyrians and were in no position to challenge Judah. Josiah showed promise of being a wise and righteous king like his great-grandfather, Hezekiah, whose dramatic deliverance from Sennacherib was quickly becoming the stuff of legend. This was no time to be a downer about how some people aren’t following the old commandments- we have a chance to seize the moment and make a name for ourselves!

Jeremiah is having none of it. His message is urgently negative: the people of Jerusalem have become sinful in the years of apostasy under Manasseh and Amon, and they refuse to listen to Jeremiah’s warning to worship the God of Israel and turn away from their idols. Jeremiah is dismayed at their lack of response. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to repent. He supposes perhaps he is talking to the wrong crowd. These are only the poor; they have no sense…. I will go to the great, I will speak to them. He gets no better results with the rich and powerful than with the poor and destitute. No one wants to believe that in this time of relative ease, God might care about how and who the people of God are worshiping.

Jeremiah’s message is hard, but not unexpected. He tells of how God looked on the earth, and behold it was formless and void, and to the heavens and they had no light, calling us back to the creation and fall in Genesis 1-11. Recall that the calling of Abraham, and the creation of the people of Israel, was in response to the inability of humans to rule themselves. I looked, and behold, there was no man. There is no one to rule the world God has made. Everyone is independent of God. So God calls Abraham, and teaches him. He makes a people out of him to bear the message of God’s salvation- worship God correctly, and regain access to the garden. Find atonement and forgiveness. Learn who you are. But they are disobedient. When they try to rule themselves, they fail. But instead of turning to the God of Israel, they turn to wood. To rocks. To the sky. Shall I not punish them for these things? In the covenant God made with Israel he swore to punish them, and God is a keeper of promises. Everything Jeremiah says roots back to this: God will do what he said he will do. The promises, good and bad, will be kept.

The closing lines of today’s reading indicate the nature of the human problem in the book of Jeremiah. A terrible and horrifying thing has happened in the land: the prophets speak falsely, and the priests rule at their direction. While there will be much condemnation of the people of Judah in this book, this is the core of the issue: bad leadership. The prophets and priests, the people who should have taught the people the right way to live and worship, have taught falsely. If this sounds like the book of Judges, it is because it is. The kings were the answer to the judges, but they failed. The prophets were the corrective to the kings, but now they are liars. The people do not know who to believe. Jeremiah will be delivering his message of judgment to a people who think they are going to be fine, because other prophets have told them so. This will eventually come to a head in the confrontation of Jeremiah and Hananiah, but the theme persists throughout the book. Jeremiah asks the question: who do we listen to? Where do they get their message? It is no accident that this is the longest book in the Bible. It asks what I think is the most complex and difficult question those who wish to be faithful can ever have.