Delivered Sunday, September 22, 2019, at Hope Presbyterian Church, Mitchelville, MD
Text: Jeremiah 8:18 – 9:1
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Hello and good morning. I’m so glad that all of you are here today in worship and I am very grateful to Pastor Yi for inviting me to share her pulpit today.
Pastor Yi told me that you have been working though Jeremiah together over the past several weeks, so I won’t spend too much time introducing this prophet. I’ll just say that Jeremiah is one of my favorite texts, because I think we’ve all felt like Jeremiah.
Have you ever been watching a movie or reading a book where you know someone is about to make a mistake, and wished you could warn them? Maybe it’s a scary movie, and the main group of characters is just about to split up, or one person is about to go out alone to find out just what caused that noise…
Or maybe it’s a romantic comedy and it’s so clear to you which two characters are supposed to end up together, but one or both just keep making the wrong choices?
Or perhaps a tragedy, where we in the audience can see so clearly the inevitable end of the path a character sets out on, how bad choices will compound each other, piling on more and more weight until they form a trap with no escape.
We’ve all had those moments where we wish we could communicate with these characters, where we wish we could help them avoid something that we know is coming but that they can’t yet see. Writers and directors sometimes create this feeling deliberately by making sure that the audience knows more than the characters do. Even when they don’t, we might know because of experience, but the screen or the page acts as an impenetrable barrier: no matter what we do, those characters can’t hear us. We can’t change what’s already been written.
Or maybe you have experienced this with your friends, or children. Those times where, thanks to your greater experience, or even just greater distance from the situation or different perspective you can see more than the people involved. This summer, two of my nephews were fishing by a canal. Before I tell this story, I just want to say they’re both fine. The younger one thought he saw a better spot, so he walked out to the end of a board, part of an old sea wall that was poking out over the water, nailed in on the other side. It seemed secure, but as his older brother was watching, the nails holding the other end in place started to give way. It was one of those moments where time seems to slow down. My older nephew saw the nails coming close, the structure starting to collapse, and know what was about to happen to his younger brother, but couldn’t warn him in time. So he watched as the board swung loose, dumping his younger brother in the canal on a patch of sharp shells. He didn’t want his brother to get hurt, but by the time he saw the danger, it was too late.
Other times, we have the time to say something, but can’t find the words, or they just won’t be heard. I know some of you have felt that frustration, where you just know if that other person would only listen to you they could avoid so much trouble, but they won’t.
This is how Jeremiah feels.
God is the writer and director of our world, and just like writers and directors of books and movies sometimes choose to give the audience more information than they give the characters, God gave Jeremiah more knowledge of what was to come than God gave to most. God gave Jeremiah the wisdom to see what was coming if the people did not change their ways, and God gave Jeremiah the power to speak about it, to warn them all and try to get them to change. God also gave Jeremiah the knowledge that Jeremiah’s warnings would not work, the knowledge that Babylon was coming.
Just like us, when we want to shout at the screen or the page knowing we can’t change what is written, just like my nephew who shouted out a warning knowing it was already too late to keep his brother from falling, just like those of us who have given the warnings that people who hear but do not listen, Jeremiah tried to warn Judah, even though it was already too late, and even though he knew Judah would not listen. When some people tried to kill Jeremiah because they didn’t want to hear the message, God told Jeremiah that it’s only going to get worse.
And so, Jeremiah’s heart broke for the people of Judah.
Jeremiah’s heart broke as God’s heart already had.
In our passage today, I do not think we hear Jeremiah speaking alone. I think God is speaking through Jeremiah, which is why we have that aside in verse 19, “Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols.” The New Revised Standard Version puts that in parentheses, but it’s not so explicitly set off in the Hebrew. I think in this passage, we are hearing the words of Jeremiah and God together the whole way through. God and Jeremiah both weep over the fate of the people.
Jeremiah because he cannot save them.
God because they will not allow themselves to be saved.
God has brought them out of Egypt and equipped them with the leadership of the judges and the kings and the wisdom of the prophets, but they would not listen. God has remained faithful and shown the path again and again, through the prophets pleading with the people to stay on it, knowing and seeing the dangers so clearly, only to witness time and time again the people stepping off the path toward wilderness.
God knows what’s around that corner, God, through Jeremiah and other prophets is shouting at the people to stop, but they do not, cannot listen, and so God mourns alongside those who would not be saved.
And then, God, through Jeremiah, asks “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then, has the health of my people not been restored?”
This is one of those classic and central turning points in scripture, one that has been brought out time and time again in literature and song, often those that point to the New Testament and the New Covenant, that declare that Jesus is the Balm in Gilead, that Jesus is the physician there.
I want us to keep that collective wisdom of the Church in mind, but I want us to think a bit more.
God asks three question: 1. “Is there no balm in Gilead?” 2. “Is there no physician there?” and then 3. “Why then, has the health of my people not been restored.?” The third question answers the first two.
There is balm in Gilead. There is a physician there. They just aren’t being used.
This reminds me of a now famous, maybe even cliché, story about a man in a flood. Not Noah…the other one. The one who didn’t listen.
This is the story of the man who lived by the river. One day, he heard a weather report that there was going to be a big storm soon, with a lot of rain. He thought, I’m religious, God will protect me, and did nothing. The next day, the rains started, and he saw the river start to rise. A warning went out over the radio that it was even worse up in the mountains where the river began, and that a flood was coming. He thought, I’m religious, God will protect me. The man’s neighbors packed up their car, but saw he was still there, and so emptied out enough to give him space and offer him a ride with them, and he said “I’m religious, God will protect me” and made them leave without him. The water rose, and the man climbed to his roof when a helicopter came by and lowered him a ladder, but he said “I’m religious, God will protect me.”
The man drowned, and, when he arrived in heaven, had a bone to pick with God. The man asked how God could have done this to him. God said, “I sent you a weather report, your neighbors car and strangers in a helicopter. What more could you want?”
I think sometimes we all fall into the same trap as that man. We want God to act to protect us with some grand display, or for God to protect us by completely clearing whatever path we choose so that there is no sign of any danger. We want a miraculous parting of the water around our homes or for there to be no flood at all.
We don’t want to think that God might act through other people. It’s frightening because it means that maybe we need to listen to some people, like Jeremiah, or Jesus, when it might be much simpler, and even appear safer, to ignore, or silence them. It means that even now we need to think about the messages that we are trying to ignore whether they come from people or from God through our planet.
It’s frightening for us to accept that, because that means God might choose to act through us, and that’s a lot of responsibility to bear.
But it’s also a place for us to find some hope. That third question has the answer. There is balm in Gilead, there is a physician there. God has given us the tools, God has sent the prophets and Jesus to equip us and to guide us. If we can overcome our fear, if we can overcome the inertia of our inaction, if we can overcome the sinful barriers we have created, God will guide our hand, and Jesus will help us to stand with each other.
After my younger nephew got dropped in the water and was badly cut by the shells, his brother was ready to help him. There wasn’t enough time to prevent him from falling, but he could respond, helping his brother out of the water and to medical care ensuring that none of the cuts became infected.
And even if we don’t know what’s coming, even when we are the ones who are caught by surprise, falling into some trap so obvious to everyone around us but ourselves there are usually others around us who are ready to help us if we can only see it, if we can only let go of our pride and be honest with ourselves, with God, and with others about where we are and how we got there.
Through the gifts of God, we can be the balm for each other.