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Most weeks, you can expect two posts. Each Sunday, there’s a post called “Sunday Musings” based on a text from the Bible (usually from the Revised Common Lectionary), a poem, or an inspirational reading. On either Wednesday or Thursday, you’ll receive a midweek post on some issue in the news related to religion. There’s additional content and surprises for paid subscribers a few times a month.
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The conventional interpretation of this Sunday’s readings from the Revised Common Lectionary is repentance. All of the stories lend themselves to thinking about sin and punishment — and an angry God. In some ways, these texts bring the Christian calendar in line with the Jewish one, marking early autumn as a time to consider what we humans are harvesting in our lives and works and to put things right with God and our neighbors.
Today, I invite you into a stark text from Jeremiah that asks us to consider the consequences of our actions.
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem: A hot wind comes from me out of the bare heights in the desert toward my poor people, not to winnow or cleanse — a wind too strong for that. Now it is I who speak in judgment against them.
"For my people are foolish,
they do not know me;they are stupid children,
they have no understanding.They are skilled in doing evil,
but do not know how to do good."I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void;
and to the heavens, and they had no light.I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking,
and all the hills moved to and fro.I looked, and lo, there was no one at all,
and all the birds of the air had fled.I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert,
and all its cities were laid in ruins
before the Lord, before his fierce anger.
For thus says the Lord: The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end.
Because of this the earth shall mourn,
and the heavens above grow black;for I have spoken, I have purposed;
I have not relented nor will I turn back.
When I first read these texts last Monday, I groaned. The last thing I wanted to muse about this week was sin and an angry God. But oddly enough, I kept thinking about the verses from Jeremiah. When listening to the news and, most especially, reading Bill McKibben’s recent essay on the climate crisis “How Bad Is It?,” my mind returned to the words:
I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void;
and to the heavens, and they had no light.
I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking,
and all the hills moved to and fro.
I looked, and lo, there was no one at all,
and all the birds of the air had fled.
Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann refers to this text as Jeremiah’s “dangerous poem.”
The poem is dangerous because of the conventional way many Christians have interpreted it as threat — Israel has sinned, God is angry, the people have not repented, and now God will destroy the land. The stress has been on God’s wrath against human wickedness and how He wants his holiness avenged.
Dangerous, indeed.
Breuggemann, however, explains:
We must stress that it is a poem. It is not a blueprint for the future. It is not a prediction. It is not an act of theology that seeks to scare into repentance. It is, rather, a rhetorical attempt to engage this numbed, unaware community in an imaginative embrace of what is happening. The world is becoming unglued. The poet has the awesome burden of helping his people sense that their presumed world is in jeopardy.
Jeremiah does want to scare his listeners — not to fear some eternal punishment in Hell, but to understand what is happening around them and see the peril in the world.
In the book of Jeremiah, the poetic apocalypse is the result of a war. There were no climate crisis or nuclear bombs to end the world. Thus, the poet sees an invading army as the instrument of divine judgement. Jeremiah warns the people that they should not be complacent — and their leaders had deluded them into believing that they were safe. Their peace and prosperity were an illusion. Danger was at hand, both from injustice in their own society and enemies at their gates.
God isn’t angry at some generalized sin of regular folks. God is fuming against (what Brueggemann calls) the “Jerusalem establishment” that have led the people astray. Verses 9 and 10 (not part of the lectionary selection) make this clear:
On that day, says the Lord, courage shall fail the king and the officials; the priests shall be appalled and the prophets astounded. Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God, how utterly you have deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, “It shall be well with you,” even while the sword is at the throat!’
The people can’t prepare for or avert the coming disaster because they are being lied to by their political and religious leaders.
The specific sins behind the poem aren’t named, but the prophets consistently condemn Israel for not trusting God, failing to do justice, and not acting with mercy toward one another. Here, the complaint is that they are foolish and ignorant — “skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good” — presumably, at least in part, because of the failure of their leaders.
In this case, the poem alludes to what the failure might be — the neglect of God’s original directive in Genesis to tend and care for the earth. In effect, Jeremiah runs the creation account backward toward chaos. The earth once again becomes a “formless void,” light fades and stars go dark, the mountains give way, plants and animals die, and human beings and our cities disappear. It is terrifying: we humans — through ignorance and injustice — can de-create the world.
However vague the particular sins, the outcome is undeniable: Human failures result in the utter destruction of the land. There is an absolute link between human action and the environment in which we live.
The emphasis in the poem isn’t a vengeful God. It is about our failure to live justly toward one another and toward creation. It is about a failure of leadership to be honest, a dereliction to guide a nation and steward a land. It speaks to the power of deception and deceit, and to the connections between ignorance and evil. Indeed, this poem is about the consequences of human activity on the world. Human action — or inaction — undoes the creation itself. When we choose poorly or fail to do justice, creation suffers. And the earth mourns — the earth mourns. As the New Testament will later put it, “all creation groans.”
Jeremiah’s poem is an extinction event — an apocalypse brought on by untrustworthy leadership and a failure of people to not care for and tend to the earth and its peoples.
In other words, it like reading the front page of the New York Times.
Somehow, I find that oddly comforting. These ancient words probably make more sense now than when they were written. This poem has been waiting for us — opening a deep wisdom from the past relevant to understanding how we need to live in our pained present.
If we defang this text as being about personal salvation or eternal judgement, Jeremiah’s poem speaks directly to this moment. He saw what we don’t often see — that everything is connected, that the whole of the cosmos is of a piece, and that all we human beings do has the capacity to either participate in God’s ongoing creation or destroy it. What we do matters.
If our politicians or preachers won’t tell the truth of this, we must. We shouldn’t console ourselves when leaders insist that all is well and that our future is secure. We can’t hide behind their deceptions and feign ignorance about what is occurring around us. We know that the hot winds of warning are blowing. Seeing the threat is the first step toward changing, and we are called to repent of the injustices we’ve done to creation. Even if we were lied to, even if we had bad leaders.
A bit of hope is found in a few, short words: “Yet I will not make a full end.” Complete destruction is not yet at hand. That is a promise from God.
So let’s get to work remembering that what we do matters and our choices matter. I’m with Bill McKibben: “Despair is not an option yet, at least if it’s that kind of despair that leads to inaction. But desperation is an option — indeed, it’s required. We have to move hard and fast.”
Perhaps desperation is just another word for repentance. I think Jeremiah might agree.
INSPIRATION
At least there was a
song timorous of
wing-beat snowdrift ash
of red horizon
then somewhere calling
as under one’s breath
(I did not hope you
would find me wanting)
and the next extinction
on every wing—
— David Baker, “As a Portent”
Let them not say: we did not see it.
We saw.
Let them not say: we did not hear it.
We heard.
Let them not say: they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.
Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands. . .
— Jane Hirshfield, from “Let Them Not Say.” Please read the entire poem HERE.
Most likely, you think we hated the elephant,
the golden toad, the thylacine and all variations
of whale harpooned or hacked into extinction.
It must seem like we sought to leave you nothing
but benzene, mercury, the stomachs
of seagulls rippled with jet fuel and plastic.
You probably doubt that we were capable of joy,
but I assure you we were. . .
— Matthew Olzmann, from “Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now.” Please read the entire poem HERE.
When things are not right among humans, the whole earth groans. We are answerable not just to ourselves as individuals, but we are accountable to all our fellow human beings and to the earth from which we came. When we inflict violence on each other, we hurt the earth. When we abuse God’s good creation, we damage ourselves. Knowing God, by the prophetic definition, means that we act justly with each other and live responsibly in relationship to all of God’s creation.
— Frank Yamada
BOOKING FOR SPRING 2023 and BEYOND
Event planners: Lent is coming! (at least Lent planning is at hand!) I’ll be talking about Freeing Jesus and the spiritual practice of memoir this spring on the road.
As always, I’m delighted to speak to issues in the news, religious trends, church history, and other spiritual practices.
You can book me for your college event, book group gathering, conference, or church weekend by contacting JIM CHAFFEE of Chaffee Management. Spring dates are filling up fast — so reach out soon. I’d love to see you in person.
well it took me a few days of pause to go back and read this. It is sharper than any two edged sword. thank you for your intelligence and insistent effort to get underneath and expose
Thank you for sharing a wise interpretation of the Scripture.