3/15/21
JEREMIAH 6: 10-13 NRSV
10 To whom shall I speak and give warning, that they may hear? See, their ears are closed, they cannot listen. The word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn; they take no pleasure in it.
11 But I am full of the wrath of the Lord; I am weary of holding it in. Pour it out on the children in the street, and on the gatherings of young men as well; both husband and wife shall be taken, the old folk and the very aged.
12 Their houses shall be turned over to others, their fields and wives together; for I will stretch out my hand against the inhabitants of the land, says the Lord. ’
13 For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.. †
FLOUNDERS
When I was 12, my father took me deep sea fishing off the coast of Long Beach. One of my persistent memories from that trip was an object lesson involving a flounder. A man on the boat had hauled up a big flounder from the depths and swung it onto the deck. It flopped helplessly with bulbous, wonky eyes—gasping for breath.
A man explained to me about flounders. In their larval youth, they look like normal fish, but as they grow, an eye migrates around to the other side of its head, and it swims flat, dwelling on the bottom of the ocean.
My Dad explained to me as I watched this ugly fish flapping there that the word flounder is also a verb which means, in short, to flop around helplessly, exactly like that flounder.
Jeremiah's message to Israel and Judah is that the people of God were floundering—helplessly gasping for breath and life, and it was as much as they deserved.
JEREMIAH
Jeremiah delivers his prophecies before the fall of Jerusalem, after its fall is all but inevitable. His voice is the end of a long line of prophets who time and again called Israel to remember the Lord, the one who called them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. The refrain of the prophets was a broken record: turn from idols, serve the Lord. Let me remind you again, and again, and again, but now it was too late.
Jeremiah was reclusive, analytical, and self-critical. He’s called the “weeping prophet,” because grief underlaid his proclamations. He is famously long-winded, but very elegant. His style has given us the word Jeremiad: a prolonged lamentation or harangue.
Through this series we have seen how prophets confronted the various powers—kings, princes, the rich, the popular—but Jeremiah speaks God’s truth to the people—the whole people of God. He did so solo—without a supportive group or movement. Jeremiah’s word cut across everyone, but he, the weeping prophet, grieved as he delivered the hard news.
He prophesied in brokenness, against the pride of Israel.
It is wrong to think of prophets as bold revolutionary types—extremely headstrong and proud of their ideas. Revolutionary leaders are surrounded by followers of their movement, and they feed off the energy of their hot cause. You might even say that such leaders completely depend upon having a throng of frothy-blooded followers, all intent on changing the world as they see fit.
The revolutionary leader’s m.o. is agitating the masses—getting people riled up to join in with their cause. Behind the facade of the bold justice warrior is—more often than not—self-interest and self-care. What poses as concern for others tends to benefit the leader and his cause.
The difference between prophets and revolutionary leaders is pridefulness. Prophets have none; they speak from humility. It is out of emptiness, brokenness, and unworthiness that the prophets speak.
They’re not giving people fiery opinions forged in indignant passion over injustice—they’re not giving their own opinions at all—but they bear the Word of God to the people. People hate this. They’d rather hear from prophets who tell them that God will only bless them and tell them how special they are.
Most math problems have one right answer. One right answer and dozens—if not hundreds and thousands—of wrong answers. Just as there are many wrong answers to a math equation, there are many kinds false prophecy. Anything other than God’s Word is false prophecy.
We see it in the self-serving revolutionaries and the messengers of sloppy grace—good news only, nothing is required of you; you are completely and utterly wonderful just as you are with nothing to add.
FALSE PROPHECIES
As far as I can tell, behind most false prophecy is self-interest and the drive for self-empowerment. Now it might not be terribly obvious because one can be greedy for others as well as oneself. This allows one to rant away at will with a paper halo: "But this isn't about me; this is about all of Israel and Judah's diplomatic relations with our foreign neighbors!" Or, "This isn't about me; this is about racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, immigrants, our children, our neighborhood, America! etc." To be clear, America suffers all of those things, but the solutions proposed by radicals—or just politicians—are all cheap substitutes for love, which is what we are called to live out.
Most causes are a form of veiled self-love. Love of self, love of one's own family, tribe, or nation. So the love of family has virtue in it, but our own family's love is self-love once-removed—ditto for our tribe, nation, or identified cause.
Now I'll be careful here: there's nothing wrong with loving yourself, your family, and your people (however you should define them). It is a noble life to raise a family. Culture depends upon families for its moral structure—which is equally true for pagan or atheist societies as well as Christian ones. Look at history: wherever families flourish, so the culture flourishes. Wherever the family flounders, so the culture flounders as well.
And there we have that word: floundering. It stands at the opposite pole from flourishing. One doing well, the other flopping helplessly on the deck, gasping for air which it cannot breathe.
Jeremiah's message is that Israel and Judah have floundered past the tipping point—beyond hope of return. It grieves him terribly.
He is not proposing solutions or offering last chance rescue scenarios; he's telling the people the truth: in effect, we have brought this about ourselves, and it is all we deserve.
COMFORT AND WORTH
We must distinguish between false comfort and God’s comfort.
False comforts are the ones we fashion for ourselves, and they include all the means of this world: among them wealth, health, safety, and the political bubbles we choose to ease our minds over ongoing conflicts.
Contrast these with God’s comfort—which is comfort only God can bring. How does that differ from the comforts we shape for ourselves? Entirely. The life of faith in God does not place trust in the goods and mechanisms of this world. Jesus says we aren’t to worry about what we’re going to eat or wear because our real comfort comes from trusting in our Loving, Heavenly Father, who will provide for us all that we need.
That doesn’t mean sitting back and doing nothing, but it means we pursue our work and life’s adventures trusting God to provide what we need for both body and soul. That is a far cry from storing up earthly treasures for ourselves.
In the same way, we must distinguish between false worth and God’s worth. People driven by pride and pridefulness are secretly insecure and unsure of their value, so they have to prove it to themselves and everybody else by any means necessary. False worth is the kind we fashion for ourselves, made up of achievements, acquisitions, and measuring ourselves against the Smiths and Jones families next door.
Contrast that with our worth in God’s eyes. We cannot begin to imagine how beloved and valuable we are to God. We don’t see ourselves with the same scale as God sees us. He made us. He loves us in Spirit and Truth. And it is precisely because we don’t see how God values us that we try to construct value for ourselves and live by false value rather than God’s value.
This is behind all idolatry—our entire Old Testament narrative--that people do not trust God either to provide or to value them, so they invent false worth for themselves and false comforts for the soul.
WORTH AND PRIDE
We all live on a polarity—an unresolved tension—between unworthiness and pride. Living too much at either end is a problem. Few things break my pastoral heart so much as those living too much in one of these extremes.
I’ve counseled dozens of intensely devout Christians who—in their heart of hearts—live with a constant crushing sense of unworthiness. Because they feel they have let God down by their sins (usually nothing much at all), they feel they are unworthy of His love and therefore unworthy of anything good in this world. They stop trying to do anything because they feel they deserve no more and no better.
If you’ve ever lived at that end of the spectrum—oppressed by feelings of unworthiness—I tell you it is YOU Jesus is speaking to in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, “Blessed are you who are spiritually poor, depressed, defeated, discouraged, and without hope—rejoice and be glad: God is for you, not against you.” He’s on your side. He loves you and gave His Son for you so that you would know wholeness, peace, and power to live in abundance. Your healing comes by finding the right kind of pride: you must know and receive that God loves you immeasurably. So rise up, fret no more, live in the strength and abundance God intends for you. You are His son, His daughter.
If you live at the unworthy end of the spectrum, you need to be singing “Who You Say I Am” every day. “I am chosen, not forsaken, I am who You say I am; He is for me, not against me; I am who you say I am.” That would be a good daily dose.
If you live at the unworthy end of the spectrum, you should with each Lent NOT focus on your petty sins but rather on your divine inheritance. You want something to feel bad about, kick yourself for not cashing the winning lottery number God has provided you in Christ. Rise up, be strong—God means for you to know that He has made you worthy!
The unworthy live in repentance—it is their whole heart and life—but the prideful can never seem to find it.
Humility is a virtue; pride the number one deadly sin. It is the prideful—those living at the other end of the spectrum—that are the toughest nuts to crack. Surrounded by false comforts and false worth, they feel they have little to nothing to repent over. Sitting pretty! Doing great! It’s all good!
The problem is that they’ve so satisfied themselves with falseness that there is no reason for them to seek what is real—the soul’s comfort in faith and their true value in God’s eyes.
Ever tried to compliment an arrogant person? It’s like throwing a penny into a pot of gold. They so value themselves that they become incapable of receiving—let alone giving—authentic love.
When Scripture criticizes the rich, it has nothing to do with stuff, money, or politics and everything to do with the place of those things in the rich person’s soul.
Whenever Israel was peaceful and prosperous, what happened? They became proud, and they forgot God. It’s the same with our pride. If we’re sitting pretty and got all we need (and plenty stored up for winter), then what do we need God for? Who needs to trust? Who needs His comfort when we’re perfectly comfortable in this world?
It is for the prideful that Lent has healing power. Lent means sloughing off the false comforts and the false sense of self-worth so that the proud would return to repentance--that they should awaken to their shallowness and be broken before God, who alone gives worth and comfort.
Though outwardly comfortable and secure, the prideful soul flounders. It is the humble soul that flourishes.
To be humble does not mean to feel unworthy, but to find one's worthiness in God alone. †
QUESTIONS
- How do the prophets of Scripture differ from revolutionary leaders?
- How is the self-serving nature of popular movements revealed?
- How do we rightly distinguish false comforts from the comfort that only God can give?
- How do we rightly distinguish false self-worth from the worthiness we receive from God?
- On the prideful/unworthiness polarity, we can get stuck at either end. How do we rightly travel between these poles in our walk with God?
- How should we advise those who are trapped in feeling unworthy?
- How should we advise the prideful and comfortable?
- How can one surrounded by comforts be led to seeking their comfort in God alone?