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Jeremiah 15.15-21, Matt 16.21-28
Poor Jeremiah. I guess that
most of us at some point have felt the world was against us, as he seems to do
in our first reading. Right now, I am guessing that’s a pretty common feeling,
as this Covid epidemic grinds on. The challenge Jeremiah faced was different,
but just as tough. God had called him to speak truth to power back in the 6th
century BC, when Jerusalem was about to be destroyed by the Babylonians. His
job was to warn the people of Judah, and its leaders, that this disaster was
coming, so that even if it were too late to avert it, they could at least be
better equipped for the challenges it would bring.
It ought to have been
obvious that there was trouble coming. The Babylonians had already conquered
large swathes of the Middle East. But then again, it ought to have been obvious
that Covid 19 was going to be massively disruptive and demanding and it ought
to be obvious that climate change will be even more devastating, but who wants
to listen to bad news, even if doing so would help us cope with it? Most of us
prefer to shut our eyes and try to convince ourselves that if we can’t see the
monster, it isn’t there. It all feels like too much. It is too frightening, too
complicated. And when the inevitable happens, we’re baffled, and often angry
too. We fall out with each other, kicking out at anyone within kicking
distance.
Jeremiah’s audience were no different. They thought of
themselves as God’s chosen people. God had brought them out of slavery in Egypt
many generations before and given them this Promised Land. Why would he let it
be taken away? They thought that no matter what they did, God would protect
them. Prophets like Jeremiah warned them they couldn’t treat God like a lucky charm, to be pulled
out of the bag and deployed when trouble threatened, but ignored the rest of
the time. But they didn’t want to hear that message. First, they ignored him.
And when they couldn’t ignore him any longer, they persecuted him, arrested him,
even threw him into a dry well to die – anything to shut him up.
He hadn’t wanted the job of
prophet, and in today’s reading, he’s starting to think that God is
pulling a fast one on him. “Why is my
pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? Truly you are to me
like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail.” He’s exhausted, feeling
like he’s on a hiding to nothing, and who can blame him.
It would have been easy for him to give up, to think
that his ministry was a waste, but it wasn’t. The fact that his words were
preserved through the cataclysm of the Exile, that we still have them, shows
that people did – eventually – see the truth and the wisdom in what he said.
Eventually they that his call to them to face reality was a message of hope,
not despair, the gateway to a new beginning. They just needed to learn to see
it.
“If you turn back,” says God
through Jeremiah,” I will take you back, and you shall stand before me… I am
with you to save you and deliver you.” It was during the Exile, pondering
words like those of Jeremiah, that the Jewish people began to draw together the
stories of their people, stories of God’s faithfulness, his constant presence
with them, through thick and thin. They learned to see anew that however many
times they had failed him, he’d never failed them. But to discover that, they had
to take their fingers out of their ears and open their eyes to the truth.
Seeing afresh is key to the Gospel story today as
well. Peter refuses to accept that Jesus will be arrested and crucified. Jesus
is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God! Peter has just said so in the
previous passage, which we thought about last week. How can God let his Messiah
die? What would be the point of that?
Jesus’ response to him is sharp. Peter’s mind, says
Jesus, is fixed on human things, not divine things, and as long as that’s the
case, he’ll never understand what God is doing. Jesus isn’t saying Peter should
go about with his head in the clouds – too heavenly minded to be any earthly
use, as they say. This isn’t about cultivating an air of otherworldly piety. In
fact it is quite the opposite. It’s the human tendency to wishful thinking
which Jesus is warning Peter against, those delusions we have about ourselves,
about others, about the world around us, the idea that we can be in control, that
we are entitled to have things the way we want them, that there is a pain-free,
cost-free fix for everything, that if things go wrong it’s always someone
else’s fault. Instead, Peter needs to learn to focus on the heavenly truths -
the unchanging faithfulness of God, his presence with us in the darkness as much
as the light. As the Psalmist put it in today’s Psalm “Your love is before
my eyes. That’s what enables him to “walk faithfully” with God. It’s
easy to be distracted by our anxious, angry, divisive impulses in times of
trouble, but that’s when it most matters that we learn to look for God’s love
around us and within us.
Covid 19 is presenting us all with challenges we’d
rather not face. How wonderful it would be if all this stuff we’re going
through would just go away. I’d love to press a cosmic “reboot” button that
would start this year all over again without it. But we can’t. What is, is, and
it will be for some time to come. And as time goes on, that gets tougher to
deal with. The heroic impulse to help, or applaud others who do, fades away.
That initial surge of energy, which fuelled our ingenuity, kindness and generosity
to others starts to run out. Disillusion and scapegoating set in - trauma can just
as easily corrode trust, hope, and love as it can inspire them. We discover
that our own resources are shallow, soon exhausted. If we’re going to find the
strength for the long haul, it will be because we deliberately, daily, look for
God’s presence, reorient ourselves towards what is good, set his love before
our eyes, through prayer, through reflection, through sharing the truth about
how we feel and what we face through loving others, and through loving
ourselves too.
Working with God to create a world in which all can
thrive, especially in challenging times like these, doesn’t come without pain
and cost. Often the right thing is not the easy thing, and each day we have to
make choices. We can respond to the troubles around us with hope or with despair,
with love or with anger, with faith or with fear, with generosity or anxious
selfishness. God’s promise to Jeremiah, his promise to Peter, his promise to
that Psalmist who “walked faithfully” with him is that, as we do so, he
will walk just as faithfully with us, and that the path he guides us on will be
one that leads to life and hope.
Amen
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