Thus the Lord said...
When the Lord speaks, things happen.
“You don’t really believe that stuff, do you?” he said.
“Excuse me? I didn’t hear you,” as I took off my noise canceling headphones (I guess they are more noise than cancel).
“You don’t really believe the stuff in there, do you?” he repeated over the sound of lousy indie music and clanging espresso cups.
“What stuff, in where?”
I was more confused than irritated at this point, but I could feel the irritation coming.
It was Saturday morning, my flight was leaving in five hours, and I needed a sermon before I landed at Reagan. Writing a sermon on Saturday night or early Sunday morning is akin to homiletical malpractice, and in a congregation full of attorneys, I try to avoid accusations of malpractice.
I had forgotten where I was. In Arlington, placing a Bible on the table at a coffee shop or bar, even on a plane flying out of Reagan, usually keeps noisy or opinionated people at bay. People around here, you people, know better than to stir up a conversation with anyone bold enough to openly carry a Bible in public. But I wasn’t in DC. I was in Nashville. I was in the middle of the Bible belt, that part of the country where the line between religion and public discourse intersects to the glee of many, and I had found the skeptic.
“The stuff in the Bible. You don’t really believe that stuff, do you?”
“I do,” I replied. “And, I’m quite busy right now, so if you wouldn’t mind, I need to finish my work before I head to the airport.”
“What are you working on? Where are you headed?”
If I had outed myself as a professional Christian, not only would I have not finished my sermon, but I might have missed my flight.
“Well, I’m writing a “position paper” that will be shared with a large organization tomorrow morning. I’m headed to DC.”
My new friend got up to get his drink. Maybe I would be lucky, and he would leave to pester someone else, I thought. After adding a healthy dose of sugar and cream to his coffee, it was clear it was not my lucky day.
“Position paper?” he asked as he sat down, “Then what’s with the Bible?”
“Thus says the Lord: What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves? They did not say, ‘Where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that no one passes through, where no one lives?’”[i]
We are continuing our journey with the prophets and find ourselves in 626 BC, during the reign of King Josiah. The prophet Jeremiah is beginning the second chapter of his ministry. The prophet addresses a people in exile, trying to make sense of their situation, why things were happening, and when the glory of the kingdom of Israel would return.
Living in exile in Babylon, the concern for Jeremiah and the people of Israel is that their behavior has cost them everything the Lord had given them – a nation, land, and freedom. The national security of Israel hinged on obedience to God’s Law.
The recipients of Jeremiah’s prophecy, the recipients of the Lord’s message, had moved from faithful living – following the Law given to them on Mount Saini – and were now living more like the Baals – worshiping false idols, not following God’s Law, and forgetting their set-apartness.
The Lord is less concerned with what is happening. The Lord’s chief concern is what went wrong. The Lord questions how the devotion of Israel in the early years after escaping from Egypt lost its appeal.
Like a self-assured attorney, the Lord began the line of questioning with a series of rhetorical questions.
The answer is more than obvious. The Lord committed no wrong in the relationship. The Lord was faithful; the Lord is faithful.
Beginning with, “I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things,” the Lord moves from rhetorical questions to declaratory statements; making clear what the Lord had done for Israel and what Israel was now doing in return.
The Lord declares that Israel had become as worthless as the false gods they worshiped, even the priests didn’t know the Lord. [ii] Israel could not hold the stagnant water they were attempting to survive on, let alone be filled with the life-giving water of the Lord. Instead of filling themselves with the living water of God, they turned to false sources of life and, in turn, were no better than a leaking cistern.
“What’s the Bible for?” I replied.
At this point, I didn’t have a choice. My new friend was going to linger until he was satisfied with my response.
“Well, I’m a pastor and the “position paper” I’m writing is my sermon for tomorrow morning. The Bible is so that I can write a sermon more focused on what God has said and is saying, and less on what I want to say.”
“You think God is still speaking through that book? Because it seems to me that we’ve moved on from the Bible. It’s old and out of touch, plus with how things are going in the world, I think God has moved on, forgotten about us, maybe even given up.”
I hadn’t answered the first question, and now there was a stack before me that would take more time than I was willing to give up on the last day of my trip before heading home.
“Listen, I get it,” I bluntly said, “it is easy to think that God has abandoned us. We have turned so far away from God, putting our hope in our abilities to ‘fix the world’ or make things turn out the way we think things should, that we’ve left little room for God. But to your first question, yes, I believe the stuff written in that book, and that God continues to speak to us through that stuff.”
Each scripture reading from the prophets over the past few weeks has begun with, “Thus the Lord said,” or, “The Lord said.” The Lord had something to say, found a mouthpiece to communicate to the people through, and then let the people hear what was on the Lord’s mind. Most of the time, the word coming from the Lord sounded like bad news. Being the bearer of bad news is part of the prophetic task.
No one wants to be the bearer of bad news, not even the prophets. But that is the task to which the prophets are called,
Remember back to Genesis 1. The Lord spoke, and creation occurred.
When the Lord speaks, things happen. “God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”[iii]
“And God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so.”[iv]
“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image.’ So God created humankind, in the image of God he created them.”[v]
The Lord spoke, and Israel escaped from bondage in Egypt, escaping to freedom through the Red Sea.
Jesus, the Word Made Flesh, spoke, and the seas were calmed, the sick were healed, and the dead were raised.
The Lord spoke to Adam and Eve.
The Lord spoke to Noah.
The Lord spoke to Abraham, Moses, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah.
When the Lord speaks, things happen.
According to Swiss theologian Karl Barth, all scripture and the entire Christian faith hang on the integrity of four little words from our text today: “Thus the Lord said….”
Everything we believe as Christians stems from these four words. “Thus the Lord said….”
God said creation would happen, and it did.
God said Israel would be the shining star to the nations, and it is. God did not forsake or abandon Israel when they turned to the gods of Baal or ignored their set-apartness.
God has spoken a promise, and, in the church, we believe that promise is fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The loquacious God took on human flesh and showed us what faithful life to the Lord looks like to the point of death, and then showed us that even death cannot separate us from the Lord.
“If God is still speaking to us, what is God saying?”
“Well, we believe sermons, our “position papers,” are the Word of God, so judging from the word count I’ve accumulated so far, not much,” I said with a bit of snark.
“But generally,” I continued, “I believe God is telling us, through God’s holy word and preachers, poets, and songwriters, through the saints of the church, and skeptics and cynics, that God has not given up on us. When the world appears to be coming apart at the seams, when it seems like God has gone AWOL, the Lord is still speaking a word of Grace to us. Grace means there is nothing we can do to undo what God has spoken over creation, no matter how often we fail to love God and love our neighbor.
“Yeah, what has the Lord spoken over creation?”
“That we are forgiven and free from our sins, that the Lord doesn’t hold an accounting of the tearing apart that we do, and that the tearing apart will not have the final word.”
“I don’t know if I can believe that preacher.”
“It’s not that God has left us, but we have left God - we don't listen, we don't care, we're too self-involved. We ignore or worse distort God's Word, making Jesus who we want him to be or disregarding him completely because he isn't doing what we expect. So, when you say you don't know if you can believe the Good News of God, that's okay. Because God still believes in you and waits for you to get your life together."
“Your lack of belief or skepticism doesn’t make it any less true in the same way that my belief makes God’s continued work in the world any truer. In fact, I think God is saying something by sticking you alongside me.”
I took a breath and hoped I’d ended the conversation.
“Well,” he replied, “if God is speaking, I wish he’d speak a bit louder.”
“Me too,” I said.
“But in the meantime, God’s grace speaks louder than any silence or echoing boom. Now, my Uber is here, and I need to catch my flight.”
[i] Jeremiah 2:5-6, NRSV
[ii] Jeremiah 2:7-8, NRSV
[iii] Genesis 1:3
[iv] Genesis 1:9
[v] Genesis 1:26-27