This past week marked for many of us end of summer, and the beginning of a new school year. In this transition time of looking backward and looking ahead, we have likewise paused with others throughout our nation to commemorate the 50th anniversary on the march on Washington for jobs and freedom, when everyday prophets bearing witness to the injustice of the day put one foot in front of the next, with arms linked together, and marched. As The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently wrote, their march for jobs and freedom was that a dream might become a reality – that a way of life fraught with injustice, inequality and oppression – might give way to justice, freedom and opportunity for all. They knew that the scourge of racism and the inequalities it bred were wrong, and that the systems in our nation that fostered such a climate needed to be dismantled, one step at a time.
There are moments in our lives – as individuals and as a community – when we have to do the hard work of looking within and looking around and asking the hard questions. Questions like: “What is really going on?” “What did I do?” and “What went wrong?” We see that life is not as it should be, and something’s got to give. And so we look around to get our bearings in the hopes that we can move ahead – that life moving forward can be different. Erratic weather patterns or erratic shopping habits; conflicts in the Middle East and conflicts at home –send ripples that beg us to stop and ask, quite plainly, “What went wrong? Did I do anything wrong?”
Our text for today opens with an angry God raising a question to the prophet Jeremiah. “What did I do wrong?” God asks. “What did I do that your fathers would turn from me? What fault did they find with me that sent them chasing after other gods?” In a perhaps rhetorical, yet vulnerable, question God laments the brokenness of God’s relationship with God’s chosen, beloved people. God, who acted continually to free Israel from oppression, to establish this people as a nation, to provide for their needs – even in dry and impossible places – sees that something has gone wrong. Those God loves have invested in worthless gods. They’ve pursued shallow dreams, chased after a mirage, exchanging their relationship with the one true God for a lie. “What did I do wrong? Is this all my fault?”
Yet in the face of God’s question, it’s clear that it was Israel who pulled away. And so the prophet recounts the lament of an angry, hurting God – who lists the ways that God’s people have turned away. They have forgotten who they are and from where they’ve come. They’ve forgotten the truth of God’s faithfulness throughout the generations. They’ve defiled the land and squandered their inheritance. Their leaders have turned away, rebelling against God and prophesying in the name of a false god. Over and over, God’s people took matters into their own hands, trying to create their own truth, rather than asking, “Where is God?”
The choices of God’s people will have some natural consequences. As history unfolds, we know that their land will be occupied, their leaders sent away, and the symbols of God’s promised faithfulness destroyed. And so Jeremiah must tell the people what they themselves are wondering too: what went wrong? Life is not as it should be because they tried to take matters into their own hands. Life is not as it should be because they ran away from the God who saved them. Life is not as it should be because when the going got tough, they didn’t even stop to ask, “Where is God”?
God’s indictment of the Israelites is as heartbreaking as it is terrifying. We see so clearly the pain of a loving God who has been forsaken, even as we see the pain of a people who are in the midst of losing every security they have known. We are convicted by the laundry list of offenses of the Israelites, knowing that many of them are our sins too. Yet we stand in defense of the Israelites, knowing how hard it is to be faithful in moments of our lives where we grow weary or when God seems to be silent. We appreciate the connection between the sins of Israel and the devastation that follows – but we can’t help but wonder if the political collapse simply follows the trajectory of Israel’s choices, of if it is the harsh punishment of a sovereign God – and what that says about God, either way.
We hear their story and think of our stories. We think about our struggle to believe and how much we like to be in control. We think about how much security we think we’ll buy with our money, and worry that we’ve gotten it all wrong. We think about the person we passed by on the street who looked hungry, and our neighbor who is undergoing chemotherapy, and everyone we know who might need our help – whether we’ve offered it or not. We think about the harsh word we said to our spouse, how we didn’t look the cashier in the eye, how we didn’t slow down in the school zone. We think about the people who made our clothes in sweatshops overseas and the soldiers at war while we go to the movies, and the hate and pain all around us.
We think about the crisis in Syria. We think about heterosexism in Russia, and then stop to think about heterosexism in our denomination. We think about the statistics that tell us that the unemployment rate for African Americans is still nearly twice that of white Americans. We wonder how we can know so much and have come so far and still have so much farther to go. And we wonder: “What has gone wrong? How did it come to this?”
And when we are lying in bed at night, we sometimes even wonder how we can believe in God when we see so much devastation around us – and we wonder how God can believe in us when God can see the state of our hearts.
We have so many questions. We have so much longing. We desire to be close to God and we desire to follow well – and we hope that our desire will count for something, and that God’s nearness might be felt.
We worry that our questions might be a sign of our weakness – that a friend or even God might look at us with a shaking head and say: “oh, ye of little faith…” We worry that our questions will result in our judgment, that God won’t feel loved, and that we’ll wind up farther away from the God whose existence we were questioning in the first place.
And then we hear these words again.
We hear the word of a God who is angry – but a God who loves. We hear the word of a God who, like a parent, points out the impact of the consequences of our choices so that we might learn from our mistakes – and we know that this same God steps into our choices – the good and the bad – and calls us to new life.
And then we hear these words again.
And we remember that these verses of Jeremiah do not tell the whole story. We know that if we read on, we read a message of hope – of a promised future, of God’s plans for God’s people. We remember that God did not give up on the Israelites, and so, perhaps, God won’t give up on us.
And we dare to think that the God who asks vulnerable questions might just invite us to do the same. We read God’s words to the Israelites, and think that God might just be suggesting that we should ask: “Where is God?” when we feel insecure or alone or misguided. And we find some courage, because it is possible that the questions do not need to distract us from God, or be blasphemous markers of a weak faith as we fear. In fact, the opposite might be true. Our questions might draw us closer in faith, by keeping us ever searching after God in courageous approach. These questions might even help us enter into the truth: of who we are, of who God is, of who we can be with God’s help.
A prophetic word – in the 6th century BCE and in 21st century CE – can be a hard pill to swallow, just as it can be hard to look in the mirror and see our shortcomings alongside our strengths. But the prophetic word is the beginning of change – whether Jeremiah calling for repentance or Jesus calling for love or Bonhoeffer calling for peace or Mother Terese calling for service or King calling for justice. We can’t know where we are called to go if we can’t see, really see, where we have been and where we are. Through the words of the prophets, we have an opportunity to face the truth – the truth of our history, the truth of the impact of our choices, the truth of our fears as well as our hopes – and most of all, the truth of the steadfast love of a God who claims us, in spite of our weaknesses, our sins and our questions – who assures us in love that the truth will set us free.
Thanks be to God.