471 - Jeremiah's Little Book of Comfort

Jeremiah's Little Book of Comfort
By David Steele

"Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…. I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. "
Jeremiah 31:31, 33.

They say a preacher's job
Is to comfort the afflicted
And to afflict the comfortable.
With that in mind, we focus
On four chapters in the middle of Jeremiah's book.
They are Chapters 30 through 33.
One scholar calls them
"The Little Book of Comfort."
An interesting title!

It is a little book;
Four chapters of comfort
Tucked inside 52 chapters of affliction.
There's a lot more afflicting than comforting
Going on with Jeremiah.
We could hardly call his ministry balanced,
Or his life, for that matter.
It is far from the golden mean.

Let's review that life.
Born into a professional family,
Raised in a wholesome small town,
Jeremiah has every expectation
Of a prosperous career
And a fulfilling life.
When in his late teens
He is gripped by what he calls
"The Word of Yahweh."
That Word radically alters his life script.
It sets him off on 41 years
Of prophetic ministry
That we can verify.

David Steele is the minister of Christ Presbyterian Church, Terra Linda, San Rafael, California. A graduate of Westminster College (Utah), Princeton Theological Seminary, and San Francisco Theological Seminary where he received the doctorate, he has also served as chaplain at Punahou School in Honolulu. His prose-poem on Moses and the Exodus appeared in the October 1984 issue of THEOLOGY TODAY, and several of his pieces have been published under the titles God Must Have a Sense of Humor (1983) and Our Story (1984).

472 - Jeremiah's Little Book of Comfort

(Plus a few years at the end
Which are harder to pin down.)
In those years he preaches,
In word and action,
An increasingly alarmist message
Of judgment and doom.

He is deeply critical of the morality of his peers,
The thinking of the intelligentsia,
The domestic and foreign policies of his government,
And the leaders of his faith.
He flaunts both conventional wisdom and public opinion.
In the process
He loses the support of relatives and friends,
Is considered a kook by the public,
And labeled a traitor by the government.
He lives through the terrible siege of Jerusalem,
Witnesses the destruction of that city.
Turning down a generous offer of Babylonian resettlement,
He elects to remain with his beaten countrymen.
Eventually he is forced to flee to Egypt
Accompanying the survivors of an aborted coup.
He dies in the land of the Pharaohs.

Jeremiah's life story is filled
With much pain and suffering.
But the outer pain,
Difficult as it is,
Does not match his inner pain.
His preaching loses friends
And creates enemies.
The loneliness gets him down--
Causes Jeremiah to curse his birth.
He longs to be free of the terrible burden
The Word of Yahweh places upon him.
But that burden is not removed.
There is much affliction for Jeremiah.
Much more affliction than comfort.

But comfort appears at last.
A little book, to be sure,
Within a larger book,
But there nonetheless.
The prophet of doom
Is at last a man of hope.
The bearer of bad news
Speaks of gospel (good news).

Now, to get at this comfort
We need to be clear
About the essence of Jeremiah's message.
The subject of all the prophet's preaching
Is one key idea-Covenant.
Since we don't use the word much today
Let's remind ourselves:
A covenant is an agreement … a relationship.

473 - Jeremiah's Little Book of Comfort

God has made a covenant with us.
We have made a covenant with Yahweh.
That is the heart of Jeremiah.
On this point, Jeremiah and his contemporaries
Are in complete agreement.
Everyone knows about the covenant
With Noah, with Abraham,
The covenant on Sinai with Moses.
The nation knows they are a covenant people.
"I will be your God," says Yahweh,
"You shall be my people."
Everyone agrees about that.

But, where Jeremiah parts company with folks
Is on what that covenant is all about.
The people assume the covenant
Is about being privileged.
Jeremiah claims the covenant
Is about being responsible.
The way Jeremiah sees it,
Those folks are acting
Just like some spoiled rich kid
Who's doing 90 in his Mercedes
And figures the world better get out of the way.
He'll do just what he wants; and
Daddy's prominence,
Daddy's checkbook,
Daddy's lawyers,
Will handle any difficulties.

That's covenant for those folks.
"Yahweh has agreed to be our God;
That means God's committed
To taking good care of us,
No matter what.
We'll just do as we damn well please,
Thank you!"

It is this attitude
That drives Jeremiah to distraction.
It is a travesty, a mockery
Of the sacred covenant.
It misses the point by 180 degrees.
Jeremiah knows the covenant
Is for responsibility … not privilege.
It was clear from the beginning
That Yahweh did not choose these people
For their looks,
Or their intelligence,
Or their perfection.
Yahweh chose them to become a people
Who would live out God's own idea for human life.
These people are intended
To model human community and justice,
To be a light to the nations,
A beacon for humanity.

474 - Jeremiah's Little Book of Comfort

Now, as Jeremiah sees it,
That's a heavy responsibility
Worthy of the best that is in folks.
And what people are giving is their worst.

Now, it is clear to Jeremiah
That if Yahweh has a job to be done,
And the people who agreed to take on that job
Are lolly-gagging around
Telling one another how wonderful they are,
Then God is going to do something about that.
The job will get done,
One way or another.

That's why Jeremiah pleads with folk:
"Come on, shape up,
Put justice and honor back into life,
Be a covenant people once more."
But that doesn't interest anyone very much.
Yahweh has promised to be their God,
So they have first dibs on Yahweh's checkbook.

Later on, Jeremiah realizes folk Aren't about to shape up.
It is then the image of the potter and the clay grabs him.
When the clay is not taking shape As the potter intends,
The solution is quick and simple.
The potter smashes the clay
And starts all over.
That's when Jeremiah begins to talk
About the forthcoming smashing.
Folks laugh at the smashing business!
"God has promised.
Yahweh is our God,
We are God's people.
Yahweh promised-so he can't smash us."

Jeremiah's response is direct:
"Folks, the smashing
Is part of God's promise.
When the clay gets out of shape,
One has to smash.
There's no alternative."

So that terrible time of smashing comes.
The smashing about destroys popular faith.
Folk can't understand it.
"God promised to be our God.
Yahweh certainly went back on that promise.
Guess all this religion stuff is useless!"
That's the sort of thing Jeremiah hears at the end.
And now, Jeremiah starts talking about hope.
This is the context of his little book … on comfort.

475 - Jeremiah's Little Book of Comfort

It may be appropriate here
For us to get some chapter and verse numbers in our head.
To be sure,
Most of the time they are confusing or maddening.
Someone casualty drops "Romans 8:28" into the conversation
And expects us to know what he's talking about.
Or we see John 5:17
On some license plate;
And it sort of bugs us,
Smacks of super righteousness or something.

But, Jeremiah 31:31 is worth our attention.
That's Jeremiah, Chapter 31,
Verse 31.
Double 31 … easy to remember.
And it is one of the most significant parts
Of the whole danged Bible
'Cause that's where Jeremiah
Talks about the New Covenant.
It happens this way:
Just when things are blackest,
When the smashing has reached its peak,
That Word of Yahweh
Touches the prophet with hope.
Jeremiah realizes that smashing is not the end.
God has not finished with the clay.
A new work of God begins
When the smashing is completed.
And that work is called "The New Covenant."

It is not completely clear to the prophet
How it happens or
When it happens,
But some things stand out.
The New Covenant will touch the heart of folks.
God's law, God's ideas, God's intentions
Will somehow get inside of people.
In the Old Covenant, the concerns of God
Have stayed sort of outside
Or alongside human beings.
They've been on tablets, on scrolls, or sermons;
But in the New Covenant
God is going to somehow get inside folks.
The relationship will be more simple, more natural.
Of that Jeremiah is certain.

And in that New Covenant
God will not seem so distant.
Folk will not feel God is watching them
From heaven or a lofty mountain.
No, somehow folk are going to realize
That God is right there with them.
They are going to say:
"God with us,

476 - Jeremiah's Little Book of Comfort

God beside us,
God within us."
"They shall all know me," Yahweh says,
"From the least of them to the greatest."

Jeremiah is an actor, of course,
As well as a preacher.
We recall how he acts on this insight.
In the midst of the chaos and carnage
That accompanies the siege of Jerusalem,
Jeremiah buys a farm outside the city,
Land now occupied by Babylonian troops.
It is foolish in terms of dollars
For the land has no economic value.
But as a sign of Jeremiah's hope in the New Covenant,
The action makes great sense.
The prophet puts his money
Where his mouth is. Jeremiah's little book of comfort
Brings a great lot of hope
To his beaten, discouraged compatriots.
To know God is not yet finished with them
In spite of all the smashing
Is a great comfort to them all.
Those folk begin to believe
God has something more for them ahead,
And they await the New Covenant
With great anticipation.

The story does not end with Jeremiah.
A baby is born in a barn,
And folk refer to him as Emmanuel
(God is with us).
He grows up to teach and preach
To die and to live!
His close friend whispers:
"You are the Messiah!"
He shares a final meal with his friends,
Pours out wine for them and says
"This is the new covenant in my blood."
A people arise who understand themselves
As the people of the covenant,
The new covenant sometimes called the church.
Hearts are opened,
God dwells with human beings,
Love spreads.

Now, we want to end our story by saying:
"And human beings understood themselves as family.
Human community prospered;
Justice ruled the land;
Every person knew she was valued and significant.
The New Covenant changed everything!"
We want the story to end that way.
But it doesn't; it hasn't …
At least, not yet.

477 - Jeremiah's Little Book of Comfort

For those sneaky human qualities
That in Jeremiah's time
Messed up the Old Covenant
Hang around today in us
Fouling up the New.
We human beings are still capable
Of forgetting how to blush!

The story ends. What can we say
Of Jeremiah's place today?
Our pulpits do not tend to feature
One who's such a doleful preacher.
But can we say it is his fate
To be completely out of date?
Don't we, with all our brains and cash,
Live seconds from a holo-smash?

Oh, Prophet, while we have a chance,
Teach us of God and Covenants!