Sermon: Hard Truths

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

Hard Truths

James Sledge                                                                  September 22, 2019

One would have to have been asleep for the last decade or so to be unaware of our nation’s epidemic of gun violence. While I was on sabbatical during July and August, I was often without internet or TV. Even so, I could not avoid reports on the carnage that took place during that brief time. In the span of barely more than a month, shootings in Gilroy, California, El Paso, Texas, Dayton, Ohio, and Odessa and Midland, Texas, left 44 people dead and 88 wounded.

The term “mass shooting” has no precise definition, but according to a Wikipedia article, there have been 297 mass shootings this year in America, killing 335 people and leaving 1219 more wounded. Seven occurred at a school or university and two in worship spaces, and I’m sure these statistics aren’t already out of date.

In, nearly 40,000 Americans died from gunshot wounds. About 24,000 of those were suicides, a number that is sickening all by itself. And of course that means that 16,000 people were killed by someone else. This last number alone amounts for more than forty people killed every single day.

Perhaps you are already familiar with these numbers, but I share them with you this morning to help explain why I reacted the way I did to our scripture reading. Before I ever did any of the things we preachers are supposed to do for writing a sermon – look at the original Greek or Hebrew, do word studies on important terms, consult various commentaries, and so on – I quickly glanced at the different passages listed for this Sunday. As I skimmed our passage from Jeremiah, I was suddenly caught up by the final verse. O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!

The slain of my poor people… Every night on the news, more people are added to the list. Of course the prophet Jeremiah is not talking about gun violence in America, but surely he would use the very same words if he were alive today.

My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. Hark, the cry of my poor people from far and wide in the land: "Is the LORD not in Zion? …For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?

Careful readers of Jeremiah debate just who is speaking in this passage. At times it seems to be the prophet. At times it seems to be God. Perhaps this ambiguity is intentional, allowing us to hear how heavily the burden of prophetic ministry weighed on Jeremiah and, at the same time, giving us a glimpse of the sorrow and distress in the heart of God.

Life is unraveling for the people of Jeremiah’s day. The Babylonian Empire invaded several times, eventually destroying Jerusalem and carrying most of the non-peasant population into exile. Jeremiah and other prophets have seen the day coming. Not in the magical, crystal ball sort of way that people often imagine when they hear the word “prophet.” Jeremiah and others simply knew that Judah can only go on so long living by lies. The priests and false prophets and the royal house kept reassuring everyone that all would be okay. God will protect us, they said, even as they abused the poor and failed to live as God’s covenant people. Everything will be fine.

Our day is not so different. Magical thinking that denies the truth is still popular. Somehow the answer to gun violence is more guns and not less. Climate change isn’t real. It’s a lie. Keep living as you always have. Consume more and more. Don’t worry, all will be fine. And the death toll mounts and the hurricanes grow more deadly and the temperatures climb and the floods grow larger and more frequent.

I was born in the latter part of the post-World War II baby boom, when belief in progress and American ingenuity was at an all-time high. There was nothing we couldn’t do if we put our minds to it. The moon landing when I was twelve years old was a perfect example.

The optimism of those days is deeply ingrained in me, and in many others. Such optimism often finds the voices of those like Jeremiah jarring and annoying. People did not like Jeremiah in his day either. He was largely ignored or ridiculed, imprisoned, and at one point left to die in a cistern. Optimism often prefers the voices that say, “Everything will be fine.”

Double down on the Second Amendment. Keep driving SUVs and building more and more roads. Don’t worry about growing income disparity. Keep buying more and more things. Never mind that 16% of the world’s population consumes 80% of its resources.

Of course I’m a progressive. I believe in climate change, diligently recycle, and wear a Black Lives Matter wristband. But I don’t want to hear Jeremiah or those who sound like him. I like politicians who tell me how they’ll fix things, not difficult, hard truths.

American Christianity often shares in this aversion to truth telling. In Joel Osteen’s Christianity, God just wants you to have your best life now, no worries about climate or gun violence or systemic racism. Progressive churches have little use for Osteen’s prosperity gospel, but we are often willing to make spirituality into one more consumer item that will make our lives better. And I doubt that either sort of Christianity would invite Jeremiah to lead worship. What a downer that would be.

Jesus might disagree. His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel begins with, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek,  for they will  inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

At least three of those describe Jeremiah to a T. He is poor, miserable in spirit. He is in mourning. And he yearns, he longs for the world to be set right, which is what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness. Like Jesus, Jeremiah trusted that God would set things right in the end, but he had no expectation that it would come quickly or easily or without great cost. Surely he would have understood the cross.

I wonder if our faith, our various spiritualties, don’t have much to learn from Jeremiah. We need to hunger and thirst for a world set right, and to weep at the depths of its brokenness. We need to speak the truth about our own participation in systems of privilege and oppression, the ease with which we ignore the plight of others, and our captivity to a consumer culture that both threatens the planet and requires others to live in poverty. We need to learn and practice the biblical language of lament, to cry out in anguish to God. And then, perhaps, we might be ready to learn what it means to take up a cross and follow after Jesus. Then, perhaps, we might understand what it means to live in hope of resurrection, and of God’s new day.