Meditation for 18 March 2009
From The Rev. Peter A. Munson
Jeremiah 8:22-9:6
22 Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?
1 O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears,
so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!
2 O that I had in the desert a traveler's lodging place,
that I might leave my people and go away from them!
For they are all adulterers, a band of traitors.
3 They bend their tongues like bows;
they have grown strong in the land for falsehood, and not for truth;
for they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know me, says the Lord.
4 Beware of your neighbors, and put no trust in a brother;
for every brother is a supplanter, and every neighbor goes around like a slanderer.
5 They all deceive their neighbors, and no one speaks the truth;
they have taught their tongues to speak lies;
they weary themselves with iniquity.
6 Oppression upon oppression, deceit upon deceit!
They refuse to know me, says the Lord.
God's Longing for Love
There are some passages in the Old Testament where someone - often a prophet - speaks out on behalf of God's anguish. This little passage from Jeremiah strikes me as one of those passages. Jeremiah's call as prophet of the Lord began in 627 B.C.E., thirty years prior to the first Jews being exiled to Babylon, and forty years prior to Jerusalem and the temple being destroyed (587 B.C.E.). The Lord (Yahweh) saw this destruction coming, and so did Jeremiah, as Yahweh's spokesman.
As I read this passage, there is a certain anguish that comes over me. I feel it in my gut and in my heart. God comes across like a parent who is having his heart broken because of what his children are doing. He sees the error of their ways, but they won't turn back. Not only do they not know the Lord (verse 3), but they refuse to know the Lord (verse 6). This is seen in the ways that they are bent on destruction, based on lying, deceitful actions (verses 3-6) with respect to how neighbor treats neighbor, and unfaithfulness when it comes to their relationship with God (verses 2-3, 6). In a nutshell, they have forgotten how to love. There is no evidence of love in their actions, and Jeremiah - or is this a reference to God? - doesn't have enough tears to express the depths of his pain and anquish (verse 1).
If you get beyond all the references to the people's deceitfulness, unfaithfulness, and oppressive actions, what remains is a depiction of how much Yahweh loves his people, and how much God longs for us to be people of love.
God weeps when we do things to hurt others. God weeps when we lie or when we slander our neighbor. God weeps when we take advantage of or ignore the plight of the poor. God weeps when we use our power to roll over other people. God weeps when we "weary ourselves with iniquity", and still don't come to our senses and repent, and turn back to him. Mostly, God weeps when we don't do all the good that we could do, when we take the easy way out and go down the road marked "striving to always beat you and be superior to you", rather than following our Lord along the "narrow way" of love and cooperation and trying to give life to each other.
In these challenging times, will we be tempted to "get mine" - or rejoice in the fact that I still have mine - and not care about the plight of our brothers and sisters who suddenly are without?
In our scramble for security, will we be tempted to trample on anyone who we perceive is getting in our way?
Will our anger and frustration at the very difficult and even unjust things that are happening turn us into people who are resentful, bitter, stingy, and even more isolated from and less cooperative with our neighbor?
Or... will we remember our Father in heaven, who, Jesus reminds us, "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous"? (Matthew 5:45) In the midst of tough times, will we remember that we are called not only to love our neighbor, but to "love [our] enemies and pray for those who persecute [us]? (Matthew 5:44) This is what it means to be children of our Father in heaven, Jesus says.
In the midst of tough times, will we remember and rejoice that God did send us, as the famous hymn says, "a balm in Gilead, that makes the wounded whole; there is a balm in Gilead, to heal the sin-sick soul"? (African-American Spiritual)
Finally, in the midst of tough times, will we remember how deep and how wide and how high and how steadfast and how never-ending is our God's love for us? The Hebrew word is "chesed"... God's covenant love, often translated as "steadfast love" - a love that never ends, and a Love that longs for us to love in the way that God does. And when we don't, God doesn't abandon us or stop loving us. No. Never. God just feels like crying a river of tears.