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Jeremiah 38: 1 - 13
1 Now Shephatiah son of Mattan, Gedaliah son of Pashhur, Jucal son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur son of Malchiah heard the words that Jeremiah was saying to all the people, 2 Thus says the LORD, Those who stay in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; but those who go out to the Chaldeans shall live; they shall have their lives as a prize of war, and live. 3 Thus says the LORD, This city shall surely be handed over to the army of the king of Babylon and be taken. 4 Then the officials said to the king, “This man ought to be put to death, because he is discouraging the soldiers who are left in this city, and all the people, by speaking such words to them. For this man is not seeking the welfare of this people, but their harm.” 5 King Zedekiah said, “Here he is; he is in your hands; for the king is powerless against you.” 6 So they took Jeremiah and threw him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king’s son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes. Now there was no water in the cistern, but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud.
7 Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, a eunuch in the king’s house, heard that they had put Jeremiah into the cistern. The king happened to be sitting at the Benjamin Gate, 8 So Ebed-melech left the king’s house and spoke to the king, 9 “My lord king, these men have acted wickedly in all they did to the prophet Jeremiah by throwing him into the cistern to die there of hunger, for there is no bread left in the city.” 10 Then the king commanded Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, “Take three men with you from here, and pull the prophet Jeremiah up from the cistern before he dies.” 11 So Ebed-melech took the men with him and went to the house of the king, to a wardrobe of the storehouse, and took from there old rags and worn-out clothes, which he let down to Jeremiah in the cistern by ropes. 12 Then Ebed-melech the Ethiopian said to Jeremiah, “Just put the rags and clothes between your armpits and the ropes.” Jeremiah did so. 13 Then they drew Jeremiah up by the ropes and pulled him out of the cistern. And Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard.
The book of Jeremiah.
Fifty-two chapters of truth-telling and cajoling.
Jeremiah diligently worked to point out the errors of the ways of his people. And there were lots of errors…[1]
As Frederick Buechner has written:[2] “There was nothing in need of denunciation that Jeremiah didn’t denounce. He denounced the king and the clergy. He denounced the rich for exploiting the poor and he denounced the poor for deserving no better…. He appeared with a clay pot which he smashed into smithereens to show them what God planned to do to them as soon as he got around to it. He even denounced God himself for saddling him with the job of trying to reform such a pack of hyenas, degenerates, ninnies.”
Jeremiah, this 6th or 7th century BCE prophet who is explosive in his ministry…
It makes the beginning in chapter 1 all the more noticeable.
Because it isn’t the loud, brash prophet we will get to know,
but a boy,
unsure he even has enough voice to speak
so that people will hear.
A boy, called by God, by a knowing God.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.”
“I have consecrated you”
“I am with you.”
I don’t know what Jeremiah had in mind for his life,
what he had expected his life to be like, but
based on the way that he responds
when God talks to him,
I’m pretty sure “prophet” wasn’t on the list.
It seems as though the call was unexpected.
God called him to speak the truth. To warn the people. And so Jeremiah was a shouter. A condemner. He preached. He cajoled. He painted a picture of what was ahead. He tried to get them to change their ways.
But they didn’t. They didn’t listen. It didn’t matter that he was right. They didn’t listen. In fact, to thank him for trying to save them, the people in charge threw Jeremiah in an empty cistern for his efforts and he sunk deep into the mud.
Being called by God can be messy. Very messy.
Today’s story of Jeremiah is for anyone who has had a bad day. A bad month. A bad year.
And maybe that’s you today. But if it’s not you today, I imagine you know someone who is in the metaphorical cistern. And you likely remember a time when you were knee-deep in mud and weren’t sure what was next.
So you had a bad day. What do we do? How do we respond?
First is that we don’t ignore that someone is knee-deep in mud in the pit.
We should speak our sorrows. Acknowledge our fears. It had to be pretty miserable in the pit.
And where do we do that? Well, the church is a pretty good place.
I can’t tell you how many people have apologized across the years for crying in church, which makes me love the words of professor Mallory McDuff all the more. She says that church, and worship is exactly the place we should feel comfortable shedding tears.
She writes:
Throughout the service, tears welled in my eyes, as if I had been holding back grief for weeks, waiting for this opening, this invitation. I felt like the entire congregation was holding our collective vulnerabilities before something larger than ourselves.
But what was I grieving? And why was church such a safe place for me to cry?
Skeptics might say that as a perimenopausal [woman of a certain age] woman with a teenage daughter, I’m apt to cry at the slightest provocation, which may be true. But I believe something different happens when we expose our vulnerabilities in a community of faith.
A close friend told me her theory that we are being “seasoned” in church each week, preparing to be broken open in ways we cannot anticipate. So we pray the liturgy, sing the hymns, and go through the motions. Yet this seasoning of our spirits prepares us to be tender-hearted, open to prayer working on us.
This makes sense to me. There are so few places where we can bring our raw emotions without a self-conscious need to explain or escape to the nearest bathroom, which happens when we get teary-eyed at work or in line at Home Depot. Perhaps the church is one of those last safe havens, where we can cry in public for no reason.
When we are in the cistern or love someone who is, the first thing we can do is not try and pretend or gloss over that something really hard is happening.
But alongside that, we can also rest the greater truth of Jeremiah - one of the great truths he was sent to share- that this – this present reality- this current moment- is not all that there is. Jeremiah, in the cistern, could not see beyond it. But there was more beyond it. There is always more than what we can see in the present moment.
Jeremiah not only told the truth of where the people were, he told the people of the larger picture, of God’s love that would not go away, that would not ever fully leave them, a love that would continue to create a space for them. A God who would create a way where there was no way. Maybe not the way we want. The way our minds imagine, but a true way. A faithful way.
This makes me think of the story told a couple of years ago by a minister in Texas, Michael Geinger. He wrote:
I ordered butterflies for a special release during Central's outdoor Easter celebration yesterday. Butterflies have long been a Christian symbol of new life and transformation. I thought this would make for the perfect resurrection sermon illustration. So good, right?
The ordering/delivery process was straightforward: the butterflies are carefully overnighted to you the day before your event so they stay cool, comfortable, and healthy. Unfortunately, the company forgot to request a Saturday delivery, so "overnight" on a Friday meant that the butterflies weren't scheduled to arrive until Monday... the day after Easter. Cool, cool, cool.
It was no big deal to tweak my sermon that morning - flexibility is… [somethingthing that] we value at Central - but I couldn't shake the sad thought of all those butterflies dying in a box at a UPS distribution center because of a labeling mistake.
He is risen, but they are definitely dead. Dead, indeed. Happy Easter.
So when the UPS driver rang my doorbell this morning, my heart dropped. There was now a box full of murdered butterflies on my doorstep. (My internal anxiety and self-talk had elevated the severity of what was happening. They were no longer just dead. They were MURDERED.) I was sure PETA has already been notified.
And the worst part is that I had requested for the butterflies to be individually packaged so each person at our service could release one - which would have been beautiful on Easter Sunday. But on Monday, this meant that I had the task of exhuming hundreds of little butterfly graves by myself, searching for any unlikely survivors.
I carefully opened the first butterfly container. The small Painted Lady lay there with its wings folded upright, unmoving. It was a dull grey color, not the vibrant orange and black that I had expected. I set the container down in front of me and went to grab the next one. As I began to open the second package, the first Painted Lady slowly began to stretch her wings, revealing the rich orange and black coloring that had been covered up. She took a few minutes and eventually flew away. I was shocked. The next one did the same thing. And the next one. And the next one. They were alive.
Every. Single. One.
And suddenly my yard was filled with a couple of hundred butterflies, flitting and flicking about.
For so many, this last year has felt like a box of dead butterflies. [like being planted in a cistern, and not knowing when – or if- a rescue will happen. And if that’s not you right now, I suspect you can remember a time when it was] we all know what it’s like for our very souls to become a box of dead butterflies. Grief, despair, and hopelessness have ways of taking up residence in your spirit, telling you that tomorrow is destined to be just like today.
Our God is a God who says “You didn’t see that coming. What else might be possible?”
The butterflies didn’t miraculously arrive in time for Sunday.
It wasn’t the vision Greg had.
But it was the vision he was given for what can be.
And it was a vision of life and hope that did not seem possible.
And so it is with Jeremiah. A prophet whose life was no doubt not what he expected. But a prophet who was faithful to God, and a prophet who knew God’s grace. A prophet who spent time stuck in the mud at the bottom of a cistern. But he didn’t stay there.
May it be the same for us. May it be the same for us.
Let us hear, words from Jeremiah. (Jeremiah 3)
See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north,
and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth,
among them the blind and the lame,
those with child and those in labor, together;
a great company, they shall return here.
With weeping, they shall come,
and with consolations, I will lead them back,
I will let them walk by brooks of water,
in a straight path in which they shall not stumble.
Words to remember when we are knee-deep in mud.
Alleluia.
Amen.
[1] Patrick Miller, New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary Volume VI, Leander Keck, editor.
Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001. Pages 573-583.
[2] Frederick Buechner Peculiar Treasures, (New York: Harper Collins, 1979), pages 66-67.
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