The responsible generation

 16 February 2022

By Reverend Shirley DeWolf

Today’s readings:

Psalm 120

Jeremiah 22:11-17

Luke 11:37-52

Verse for the day:

“A beautiful cedar palace does not make a great king.” (Jeremiah 22: 15)

Meditating on today’s 3 scripture readings I am sure we have immediately recognized some common threads that tie them together.  At the very least, all 3 of them leave us feeling uncomfortable and they are uncomfortable because they feel so familiar to us.   

The first reading comes from the Songs of Ascent, a ritual remembrance of the Israelite people’s painful past when time and again their small nation, located as it was between aggressive super powers, was overrun and the people found themselves forced into foreign lands.  Meshech and Kedar appear to be metaphors for the various foreign peoples into whose territories Palestinian exiles were driven and whose cultures they found hostile.  The psalm expresses the personal frustration of someone who is exhausted from living in a harsh environment where their integrity is continually undermined and they cannot put down their roots for growth, someone who tries to call for peace, but finds the surrounding community so engrossed in conflict, injustice and impunity that they are unable to see anything beyond it. 

 Geneviève Jacques, whose book Beyond Impunity is a guide to the witness of the ecumenical movement in situations of entrenched corruption and violence, describes this phenomenon as creating a culture where “the silence imposed through impunity locks all the victims, both direct and indirect, into their suffering and despair… In the absence of any form of justice, victims cannot break free of their hatred and desire for revenge.  At the same time, the perpetrators too – whether they remain unaware of, or unrepentant for, or unburdened by their crimes – cannot recover their human dignity by acknowledging their guilt and paying their debt to society.” Locked in -  this psalmist is tired of being locked in. 

And yet even before the psalmist begins to outline these frustrations, he or she gives us this firm testimony of faith: “I took my troubles to the Lord; I cried out...  and he answered my prayer.”  The cries of the psalmist to those among whom he or she was living went unheard, it was like crying alone and hopelessly in the wilderness.  And yet as we remember from the story of Hagar, God hears, Ishma-el, even in that place where nothing appears to be growing and where the future seems to be doomed, where running away is the easier option as Hagar was trying to do (Genesis 16:7-14).  

 Indeed throughout the scriptures we see the wilderness as a place where God answers need, lives are turned around, and God’s plan takes root.  Psalm 120 was in those ancient days and still is today a reminder to God’s people that there is never a need for despair even when we cannot not see how things are turning out, and never a reason to stop calling the community to peace.   

Our second reading comes from the Book of Jeremiah, the man who is often called The Weeping Prophet, for he carried the burdens of his people on his heart. 

Jeremiah lived during one of Israel’s most painful periods of history: the nation had split into two kingdoms and was so weakened by spiritual and social corruption that a nearby superpower had no difficult moving in to destroy, pillage and take the people captive.  From chapter 22 we get a clear picture of how this crisis of corruption impacted the ordinary people of the land.  They were ruthlessly disrespected, their dignity as producers and builders exploited and diverted to feed the greed-driven interests of those in power.  The burden of poverty imposed on them was made all the heavier by an entrenched leadership that had lost its sense of righteous purpose and commitment to justice.  

At a key moment in this crisis God entrusted his Word to a boy named Jeremiah and appointed him His spokesperson.   Quite understandably Jeremiah’s first reaction when he was called was to say: But this is an impossible assignment for me Lord!  God assured Jeremiah that he would put into his mouth the words he would need to speak so that when Jeremiah announced “Thus says the Lord”, his words would uphold a truth that would shed light into dark corners and would enliven the vision of the people and they would see through the present painful confusion with hope and remain steadfast in their commitment.  But God did not tell Jeremiah how much he would suffer as his prophet.  Jeremiah would find himself rejected by his family, mocked, whipped and beaten, imprisoned, thrown into a well to starve, uprooted and driven into exile, his life constantly threatened. Worst of all, the Word he was entrusted by God to deliver would be misinterpreted and ignored, surely leaving him at times wondering whether he was a total failure as a prophet.  And yet the Word of the Lord that he spoke so faithfully had a great impact on the suffering population and one day would be recorded, as was this passage we have read today, as a heritage to remind them of their identity and worth in the eyes of God.  The same words remind us many centuries later that working for justice is an integral part of our discipleship and give us courage to take Jeremiah’s prophetic work further.

In our third reading we see Jesus taking up this theme of injustice and holding it up as a mirror to the hypocrisy of the religious leadership of the day.  Injustice cannot be hidden, Jesus tells them - it comes out openly in the contradiction between what you preach and the impact of your message on the people.  No matter how brightly you polish the outside of the pot, it does not make the contents edible.  No matter how large and ornate the monuments you build to memorialize the prophets of old, they are not an indication of commitment to their message. (“A beautiful cedar palace does not make a great king,” said Jeremiah.)  True cleansing, he says, true respect for the Word of God spoken by the prophets, will be evident when you undermine the very systems you have built to serve your own group interests and you invest instead in raising up the poor.  This is what we mean when we speak of Jesus’ “option for the poor”, a phrase introduced by Father Pedro Arrupe who, after working with victims of the Hiroshima bombing, used it to describe the position from which Jesus views and approaches the world.    

In Luke’s account Jesus admonishes the Pharisees and keepers of the religious law about two specific aspects of oppression.  Firstly, he says, you keep the people ignorant so that they will not know how deeply lies the corruption you have developed under the surface they walk upon.  By removing the key to knowledge, the right to know, you attempt to bar their participation and their entry into the kingdom God is building among them.  Secondly, you crush the people under a burden of small things that they must run after in order to survive in your system, keeping the focus off of what is of major importance – the justice and the love of God. These are methods used throughout history and across cultures to maintain positions of privilege and Jesus makes it very clear that they stand contrary to God’s will. These sins have accumulated over generations, Jesus says, but it is this current generation that will be held responsible for them as they continue to bear fruits. 

God so loved this world that he gave us his son Jesus who spoke these intensely direct accusations - not to condemn the world, but in order to offer us abundant Life. God continues through Jesus to be Creator, not destroyer; to build Life, not death; to offer love, not alienation.  And therefore the prophetic message even today is always a Word of grace, and the message that vigorously tears down injustice replaces it with a new vision of what God is doing to heal and transform that which is violated. 

So, as the Psalmist wrote, we preach peace even when nobody seems to be listening, because we know God is at work in places of wilderness.  And when God calls us to speak His Word as he did Jeremiah and it seems an impossible task, we seek the faith and trust to do it anyway, for how will the people of this world know justice if they do not hear God’s Word?  And as Jesus made clear, when we see the truth deliberately concealed so that God’s people stumble aimlessly in enforced ignorance, we are awakened to the fact that it is our own generation of God’s servants who have the responsibility to proclaim liberty for the oppressed. 

The call to serve our Lord in a time of confusion and suffering is a call to reveal God’s love and grace for a broken world.  God does not condemn us, but through his son Jesus Christ he offers life abundant.

Prayer:

We thank you God for your continued siding with those struggling. You have set an example for us. We welcome your invitation to participate in the kingdom of grace. In Jesus' name we pray. AMEN