Scripture: Jeremiah 31:15-17, 31-34
For those of you who weren’t here last week, I devoted the sermon to Jeremiah, the book of Jeremiah and the man we know through the book. I was trying to give a sort of overview of what the book and the man, the prophet, are all about, with the intention of doing one or two or even several more sermons on Jeremiah, dealing with specific passages or issues that Jeremiah presents us with.
I did that knowing that we would be having Carter’s baptism this morning, and thinking that having just started in on Jeremiah I would probably have to put him aside this Sunday since the words “baptism” and “Jeremiah” don’t really go together very well—at all. I won’t try to repeat all of last week’s sermon, but just quickly, I was trying to paint a picture of Jeremiah as a kind of a sorry figure. Not sorry in the sense of pitiful, but sorry in the sense of literally being sorry about all sorts of things. Jeremiah was sorry about the state of affairs in the state of Judah, sorry that the values of the society seemed so messed up, sorry that there was so little attention being paid to the most vulnerable members of society, sorry there was so much attention being paid to military matters, sorry that the political leadership was not offering any moral leadership, sorry about the disasters that were about to befall his people because God was so unhappy about the way things were going, sorry that God had chosen him to communicate God’s displeasure and predict the coming destruction, sorry that no one seemed to be listening and that when they did listen it was not good news for Jeremiah.
In pretty much every respect, Jeremiah was in this sense a sorry character. He was filled to the brim with the spirit of God, but in this case that didn’t mean that he was filled with love, kindness, warmth, serenity, and contagious good cheer. In this case it meant that he was filled with woe, anger, sadness, judgment, grief and lamentation. In the book of Jeremiah we have a picture of a God who was not happy, and when God was not happy, Jeremiah was not happy. In short, I tried last week to offer a portrait of Jeremiah as a gloomy sort of a man, wanting the world to be a better place, but not interested particularly in making anyone feel good, and not at all well-rounded but single-minded, intense, humorless, and burdened with the weight of the world and with the responsibility to represent God’s perspective in a world where it was not likely to be welcome.
I think I succeeded in portraying Jeremiah as the kind of bleak spirit I do in fact understand him to be. Several of you told me afterwards that he didn’t seem to be a very attractive person, certainly no one you would want to just hang out with, and also not someone who offered a very appealing image of what it means to be a person of faith, not a great role model, not someone God would want us to be like. And since I read Jeremiah that way, you can see why I thought maybe it would be a good idea to put him aside for this week, why he just doesn’t fit in very well with the occasion of baptism. Baptisms, after all, are meant to be joyful times, and Jeremiah is not very joyful. Baptisms are times of gratitude and thanksgiving, and Jeremiah was more sorry than grateful. Baptisms are times to celebrate love, the love of God and loving human relationships, and although I would not want to say that Jeremiah was completely lacking in love, love is not just right there on the surface in Jeremiah. You have to dig for it. So you can see why I might want to put Jeremiah aside for today.
You also know by now, since I’ve already spent some time reviewing Jeremiah, that I decided not to put Jeremiah aside after all, and here’s my thinking on this. It may not be good thinking, but it’s my story and I’m sticking with it. My thinking is that maybe Jeremiah doesn’t so much detract from the spirit of baptism but in a weird sort of way helps us to understand baptism in a deeper sort of way, helps the positive, thankful, life-affirming aspects of baptism stand out in clearer relief against the background of Jeremiah’s grief and gloom, offers in fact a helpful perspective on the sacrament we have just celebrated. I’m not sure I’m going to be very good at explaining what I’m talking about here, but let me try.
It has to do with a point I think I was just getting around to and didn’t quite make explicitly last week. None of us wants to be Jeremiah. No one in his or her right mind would want to be Jeremiah. Jeremiah didn’t want to be Jeremiah, didn’t set out to be Jeremiah, tried to get out of being the Jeremiah I have been describing. But this Jeremiah that no one, not even Jeremiah, wants to be does confront us with some important questions, such as:
Does our ability to put aside the moral outrage of a Jeremiah mean that we are in effect watering down our concern about such things as poverty and militarism, that sure we are opposed to such things but not really outraged by them?
Does it mean that we are willing to do our part in fighting against injustice just so long as it doesn’t interfere too much with other parts of our lives?
Does our tendency to resist the intensity and single-mindedness of a Jeremiah mean that we are trivializing a concern such as poverty, willing to take it somewhat seriously but only when we feel like it, or if it fits in that portion of time we have set aside to deal with such things, or when it is convenient to do so?
You and I may have answers to such questions. But they are questions that Jeremiah does ask us. Or rather they are questions that Jeremiah reminds us we need to ask ourselves—honestly and without defensiveness. They are serious questions and deserving of answers.
One of the passages from Jeremiah that I figured I would get around to talking about at some point is the one I ended up including in today’s reading. “A voice is heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children…” Rachel, one of the mothers of the Jewish people, is pictured as rising from her grave to mourn for her children. It’s a sentence that is quoted in the gospel of Matthew in the account of Jesus’ birth, when Herod in a fit of paranoia has all the Hebrew children under the age of two slaughtered. Again, recalling the words of Jeremiah, Rachel is pictured as weeping for her children.
There is a part of this quote that has always caught my attention. She refuses to be consoled. Her grief is of such a kind that it cannot be made to go away with a few kind words, should not be allowed to go away with a few kind words. Whether we are talking about the slaughter of the children after the birth of Jesus or the situation Judah found itself in in 600 B.C. or any number of other situations in this troubled world of ours, there are those situations where it would seem like the best, the most human response would be to refuse to be consoled, where words should not be allowed to put our souls at rest, where we don’t deal with the grief our world may fill us with by turning away and finding something more pleasant to occupy ourselves with, where we don’t just engage in a few moments of empathy and offer a fleeting prayer before going on to something else. There are all sorts of things where it would be good if Rachel’s truth were our own, where we refuse to be consoled. Maybe another way of putting it is refusing to be distracted. Yet, of course, the reality is and will always be that we do all those things I just mentioned. We want to be comforted. We do look for more pleasant things to occupy ourselves with. We do think about Darfur for a few moments, maybe say a prayer, and then go shopping. And we do all those things because we can’t carry the weight, the grief of the world around with us all the time.
This is the dilemma that Jeremiah presents us with. The image of Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be consoled is one way it is presented. The trick, it seems to me, is for us human beings, us non-superhuman human beings, to try as best we can to do both: to refuse to be consoled while at the same time turning out hearts to what there is in this God-given life that is to be celebrated and cherished. That we try not to trivialize the parts of our world that afflict us with grief only means that Carter’s baptism is all the more significant. Very much aware, and unconsoled, that we live in a world that is very often life denying rather than life affirming, we celebrate the gift of life and the gift of this child of God. Very much aware, and unconsoled, that in our world human life is very often treated as disposable, we celebrate that life as sacred and precious. Very much aware, and unconsoled, that in our world love sometimes has a hard time finding a place, we lift up the love of God and of human families. Very much aware, and unconsoled, that there is so much in our world and in our lives that is profane, we nevertheless dare to know ourselves blessed. In all these ways, and of course in many others, baptism pretty much gets to the heart of things. That’s why we call it a sacrament, more than just a ceremony, a sacrament, having to do with the holiness of things.
One more thing before we leave Jeremiah for the day. I also chose as a kind of a second reading a short passage from the same chapter as the one about Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be consoled. This also is a rather often quoted passage because it speaks of the coming of a new covenant, and Christians have often understood this as a prediction of the coming of Christ where the law of God will not be something external to us but will be written on our hearts. “This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it upon their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…”
Jeremiah did have his moments, his hopeful moments. To be authentic to Jeremiah, this is not a passage predicting the coming of Jesus (Christians can read into it that way if they want to), but it is a passage about Jeremiah’s vision of a future in which the closeness of the relationship between God and God’s people will be restored, symbolized by the image of God’s law being written not on stone tablets but on the hearts of the people.
This brings two things to mind for me on a day of baptism. For one thing, those grief-filled realities that stand in the background as we engage in baptism, those realities we refuse to let ourselves be consoled about and refuse to pretend aren’t there yet that we also refuse to let prevent us from celebrating the gift of life, those realities remind us, as does baptism itself in a quiet sort of way that beyond the immediate occasion, filled as it is with both grief and blessing, is the hope for the future that Carter will grow up into, so that implicit in baptism is a rededication to that more just, more loving future that we pray for Carter to be a part of. In that sense the spirit of baptism and the spirit of Jeremiah are perhaps not so distant after all.
And secondly, the image of God writing on our hearts does not need to be reserved for the future. What baptism says, symbolizes for us, is that God has already written on Carter’s heart, as God has already written on the heart of each of us. God has touched our lives. It is not a matter of our choice. And Jeremiah reminds us that that touch of God is not always a welcome one, not always experienced that way by us. But baptism reminds us that that touch of God is in fact a loving one. We don’t know where it may lead us. We don’t know what it may one day call us to do. But it is a loving touch. In the midst of a world that gives more than enough cause to grieve, we nevertheless give thanks that God has touched us, and we trust ourselves to that blessing. Amen.
Jim Bundy
July 27, 2008