Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Proper 19 (24) - Year C
Even though it is difficult to break beyond your experience, the values of your community, the paradigms handed to you, to not do so can lead to writhing in soul pain. This is especially true when it comes to major symbols of meaning. Here to proclaim against Jerusalem is to call into question all that is holy. After all, isn’t Jerusalem the sign of religious exceptionalism—our G*D is not only an awesome G*D, but a winning G*D and, did I mention, my G*D.
Those who can only live within current power structures are known as court prophets who tell one another about the way it should be, which is how is currently is, without attending to any cloud on the horizon. A common but ultimately false way to live. We have so many court prophets that we are empty, empty of understanding.
A very neat thing about this passage is that even though all considered holy is abandoned, it is not a full end. Yes, an end, but a necessary beginning point to shed the accretion of lies (especially those mini-truths that go just a tad beyond what can actually be known) that have deafened us to the full range of gifts that can move a community forward. Eventually we will be able to hear all of creation is holy without breaking it into rankings of this is holy, that is less holy, and that isn’t holy at all.
Start mourning now for a next end in your life. It will be as final as final can be. You won’t be able to go back again. Yet (what a wonderful word) Yet this is not a full end, but a final reality that pushes us to journey onward. If you have mourned well, your ears will open to a real and less far-off hymn that hails a new creation.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/09/jeremiah-411-28.html
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28 or Exodus 32:7-14
Jeremiah (v28) "I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will I turn back."
Exodus (v14) "And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people."
What is your sense about today. Is there a "Moses" around (might it be a reluctant and yet forthright "you") that will put our losing actions in a larger context? Are things going to play out the way they are going to play out, "Moses" or no "Moses", "you" or no "you"?
Can a vote and participation in a democratic process be seen as an appeal to avoid utter disaster? Was Dick Chaney accurate that a vote for anyone other than himself and his party is a vote for guaranteed disaster and thus playing the role of the Lord in the passage from Jeremiah?
Can speaking to folks and writing letters to the editor bring a new perspective on how our decisions and behaviors will be seen by the "Egyptians" (or the "enemy" of the day)?
The way we envision the movement of history, able to change or immutable, shapes our responses to the opportunities we have. If we claim to be in the presence of a living and loving (therefore, changing?) G*D this will guide our responses in a way different from the opposite claim of an unchanging God (who "lives" and "loves" attending only to their own prior and internal determinations).
So, which G*D would you want to find you or your loved one when you have strayed? Which would you want to find an enemy of yours? Are they the same G*D? Does this explain our reluctance to repent or urge to revenge?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/september2004.html
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28 or Exodus 32:7-14
Play these two back and forth -- G*D, in Jeremiah's mouth, comes out as destruction - once decided always decided; G*D, in relation to Moses, comes out as remover of destruction - twice thought, a different decision.
Now we need to wonder whether one of these models is standard or if they are contextually driven. As I look over the breadth of G*D's story as it comes through the Bible, thinking twice is more often the case. This seems to be because of a prior decision never finally gone back on - steadfast love. Sometimes the rethinking of this takes more time than people have in their lives, but the rethinking does occur.
Whether Moses or Jeremiah in their settings, or you and I in ours, it is appropriate to ask for a second thought in light of a first thought to experience and enact steadfast love. Imagine what would happen if the church institutional or any congregation were to re-ask every question they have been faced with in the last 10 years in light of imitating G*D's steadfast love in their context.
- - -
one messenger reports
Moses tried to calm his God down
think twice was the call
and this great God
backed off angry threats
deciding not to destroy
as messengers report
about my life and tries
is God calmer for my presence
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html
For what have you "purposed" and refused to turn back?
For those who are reformers and reformers of reformers in a later day, we have moments of putting all our eggs in one basket and claiming that a given decision or action will make all the difference, for eternity. Each time we have done so, we have found we were incorrect. Things can still get much worse than what we take to be the worst. Conversely, in the midst of the most darkness there are sparks being nurtured into flames and new illumination to guide us out of our present trap.
This process of making a particular, or series of particulars, into a universal pronouncement is so familiar to us that we project it on to whatever is our god of the moment. Yes, we would disclaim ever being be tricked by a momentary god, but when tracking our lives (individual and corporate) we find we talk a better game than we live.
It is important to hear, "...yet I will not make a full end." Even as we heighten our present insight into eternal pronouncement, we are called to remember that "this, too, shall pass."
Now, back to work - hold firmly to your current wisdom while also holding it lightly, that it might better inform.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/09/jeremiah-411-12-22-28.html