VillagePastor

Where Are The Jeremiahs When We Need Them?

This past week, Alistair Begg, a noted preacher from Parkside Church, spoke to nearly 300 pastors at Western. I had the privilege of having lunch with him on Tuesday. Given that I was speaking with one of the great contemporary preachers, I couldn’t help but ask if he had ever preached Jeremiah. His answer was immediate and concise: “Why would I do that?” After letting him know I was into my third week of this study, his simple counsel was to get out now!!

I can understand. Jeremiah is an unnerving book. There are homiletical challenges at every corner. It has taken me 28 years to finally preach it. But here is what I am discovering early on. Jeremiah’s words are as centering as any for our times (and I am certain Begg would agree [I think]). The disturbing scenes out of the turbulent Middle East, the failure of leadership at the highest levels, the endless empty rhetoric, as well the continued economic meltdown, all give a sense that this world is coming apart at the seams. For the first time that I can remember, I do not feel the optimism that my parents had for me and my peers. I do not have the confidence that my kids will have it as good as my generation. And much of the reason for this parallels what was going on in Jeremiah’s time.

Like Jeremiah’s time, we have come to believe the present is decided by the policies of a nation rather than the will of a holy and compassionate God. We continue to buy into the myth that our hope is in Washington or on Wall Street. People track the polls and numbers on a daily basis, as if it all rides on an election, or falls on what the Federal Reserve announces, or what the latest employment numbers indicate.

This would be familiar territory for Jeremiah. His was a world of profound spiritual neglect, one that relied on people rather than God.  Israel, just prior to its dismantling, made some disastrous choices—choices similar to the ones our present culture is making—choices that were suicidal.  But then, as Plantinga put it, any time we choose sin it is like pulling the plug on your own resuscitator.

With the passion of a poet, the grief of a spurned lover, and the trembling of a man who knew the fear of God, Jeremiah defined his age and explained the impending judgment—

-they lived in denial—primping for a party when they should have been putting on sackcloth and ashes

-they lost their senses—which is what happens when you choose to worship idols and not the living God. You become what you worship

-they went after leaders who pandered to their wishes—empty chested men who tickled ears. They gave candy to the diabetic, fast food to those with heart disease, entitlements out of exhausted reserves, and quantitative easing to please the wealthy

-they listened to voices who gave superficial diagnoses—the nation was terminally ill, but her shepherds assured her it was all minor wounds

-they took neither God nor His word with any degree of seriousness—there was no fear nor awe, no unsettledness that they stood before a fierce and holy God who will not be mocked

-they were consumers defined by their consuming—using the system to line their pockets, abusing and oppressing the weak to get the latest deals

And no one seemed to notice, take any of this seriously. It was an uncaring, unnoticing culture on its uncaring way to ruin. It was as if a spirit of deception and delusion had descended upon the land. Are we on a similar course? Are we allowing the same spirit to descend upon us? Are we pulling the plug on our own resuscitator?

It will take a prophetic voice like Jeremiah’s, calling our culture to face reality, asking God to give us leaders who will lead, and passionately persuading people to fear God.  Walter Brueggemann, one of the most insightful OT scholars I have read, delivered a sermon in April of 1992, making this very point:

“We are, I imagine, like old Jerusalem. The very poetry we dread and want to silence is the poetry we must hear—and utter (we are after all God’s present day prophets). We must utter it, because the God of Moses has no other access point in the unglued city, except to haunt with trembling by poetic lips. Those lips do indeed cause a deep trembling, for the one who utters and for those who hear.”

Going For It

So Fall is here, and for many, it represents one more step in the journey. I have always associated the coming of Fall with the classroom, maybe because I have either been a student or an educator all of my life. And no matter what stage we are in, it is good to reflect on this—that we never finish our education. The journey always has a next step.  It is not something that is completed at the end of high school, college, nor graduate school.  It does not end when one has completed a doctorate, nor a post doctorate. Dr. Pentecost gave some of the most centering words I have ever heard, when entering my doctoral program: “Men, you are simply moving from unconscious to conscious ignorance.” And the older I get, the more I simply realize how much I do not know. As Max DePree notes, we are always in a state of becoming. Who we are is fluid.

Walter Wright, in his wonderful little book, The Third Third: Preparing for Your Future, got me to thinking about all of this. It is all about finishing well.  But the key to this is starting and progressing well, and staying at it. As my pastor used to say to me in seminary—“Keep on Keeping On.”  He hand scribbled it on the inside cover of a book he had just written, and it came to me amidst my second year of theological training. These words were timely, as I was becoming weary in the journey. Greek and Hebrew and Theology and living on twenty dollars a week can do this.

Wright’s book is written for those who assume life preparation is largely for the first or second third of life. Rather, we have to approach each of our three stages of life this way. Too many stop preparing in their mid-years, when they are focused on sustaining things, holding on to a job, keeping a marriage together, and providing for the kids. Most, when it comes to their final third, make no preparations at all (at least beyond aiming for a retirement income and a paid off mortgage).

What happens when the day comes you leave the work you have poured yourself into? It may seem an irrelevant question for students preparing for their life work. But how you approach life now will go a long way towards how you answer this. If we avoid risk and unfamiliar terrain in our early years, we will most likely play it safe in our latter years. But if we are willing to step out of our comfort zone at each phase of life, we will find that risk always offers both fear and hope. And hope energizes calling and invites us to become. Quoting from DePree, Wright notes: “In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.”

In one sense, every fall should be a venture into the wilderness. We should aim to go somewhere we haven’t been, experiencing something we haven’t encountered, learning something we have never known.  We must live as if tomorrow might be the most important day. We must not die with anything in the reserves. If we don’t live this way, it doesn’t matter what age we are—we are already old.