Lenten blog | March 22, 2024

God's power is not always the answer

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 22nd:  Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Jeremiah 33:1-9; and Philippians 2:12-18.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

It is hard to imagine the complexity of emotions Jeremiah must have faced.  Jeremiah is God’s prophet to the people of Judah as their nation is facing imminent destruction.  The prophet had advised Jerusalem to surrender to the Babylonians in order to prevent massacre and destruction.  Understandably, this was viewed as subversive and traitorous, and Jeremiah was imprisoned.

At the same time, buildings within the walls of Jerusalem were being destroyed so that the materials could be used to bolster the defenses of the city.  Siege works were being constructed to breech or surmount Jerusalem’s walls.  The military outlook was not good.  This is the environment in which Jeremiah must prophesy.  He must tell his fellow Jews that Jerusalem will be filled with dead bodies. 

This coming reality would be difficult enough, but Jeremiah must also share Yahweh’s words that these are the corpses “of those whom I shall strike down in my anger and my wrath, for I have hidden my face from this city because of all their wickedness.”  It is God who sanctions this bloodbath in the unrestrained release of divine anger because of the people’s wickedness.  Jeremiah is allowed to prophesy a future restoration:  “This city shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and a glory before all the nations of the earth who shall hear of all the good that I do for them; they shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the prosperity I provide for it.” 

Maybe you remember the story of Job.  As a test before a supernatural audience, Job loses his health, his wealth and even his children.  At the end of the book, all of these are restored abundantly.  However, can one set of children be replaced by another?  Is suffering forgotten because blessings follow?  Wouldn’t Job carry the lasting scars of the test no matter how richly they were bandaged?

Jeremiah is a suffering prophet.  He writes of the pain he bears in conveying the prophecies of judgment.  It is a pain borne of the idea that God must be held responsible for everything that happens in the world.  Read the accounts found in the Books of Kings and you will see that there is no real world correlation between the reign of faithful kings and prosperity and vice versa.  Israel and Judah were small nations on contested lands between powerful empires.  This was of real consequence.

It is one thing for the people of Jerusalem to be slaughtered by the Babylonians.  It is another to insist that God was responsible for it and condoned it, and promises of future restoration do not erase this misrepresentation.  However, people of faith tend toward holding God always responsible.  They do so to protect God’s power, but they sacrifice God’s justice.  And so in the fullness of time God enters the world in Jesus of Nazareth, who ministers to all but especially the suffering and ostracized, and dies as one suffering and ostracized.  To reject the theology foisted upon God of responsibility and complicity in atrocities, God acts definitively in Jesus’ gospel, ministry and most emphatically in His death.  God does not cause suffering, and God endures suffering to make this point as strongly as possible.  The world can be a mean place.  Let’s not let that meanness infect God as well.
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.