Rev. Kevin M. Pleas

Jeremiah 33:14-16 November 29, 2009 - First Advent

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: "The Lord is our righteousness."

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This is the first Sunday in the season of Advent. It is the beginning of the church year. I don't know if all of you know this, but the church year is understood, theologically, to be an illustration of the whole of human history. We begin in Advent with the long period of history before the coming of Christ. It is a period of waiting, of longing for a savior; and Jesus' birth into the world at Christmas represents to us the fulfillment of that longing. The light is born into the world and revealed at Epiphany; a season through which Jesus grows and matures. Then, beginning with Ash Wednesday, the season of Lent symbolically represents his public ministry, which is fulfilled during the passion of Holy Week through the crucifixion and resurrection.

Appearing to the disciples after Easter, Jesus tells them to wait until they receive the Holy Spirit. Pentecost comes seven weeks later, when the church is born in the flames of the Spirit. The Sundays after Pentecost are understood to be the times in which we live. We are in the time between the times. That is, the time between the first and second comings of Christ. Pentecost ends when that second coming is celebrated. The last Sunday of the year is referred to as "The Reign of Christ." It often lands on top of Thanksgiving Sunday, but that isn't a bad thing considering the two themes fit so well together. The Reign of Christ represents the fulfillment of all human history, the culmination of God's will for the whole universe, the establishment of the new heaven and the new earth. And then, one week later, the whole cycle begins all over again with the first Sunday of Advent.

This symbolic way of understanding of the church year allows us to set the whole of human history, as well as our own individual lives, in a Christian context. It gives us a way of connecting everything we do with the life of faith. The seasons of the church and the seasons of our lives are interwoven with one another. It's a nice way of making everything fit together.

Today, as we begin again with the season of Advent, we again turn to the prophets. That's often the case in Advent. A fair number of the Old Testament prophecies easily capture that sense of longing and waiting which is so much the spirit of the season. Prophesy leads us naturally to Christmas. When Jeremiah says to the people of Israel that the days are surely coming when God will fulfill the promise made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah, we easily see Jesus in his words. God, speaking through the voice of the prophet, promises us a savior, and we have named that savior Christ.

I have to say though, my heart aches for Jeremiah. He had a very painful life. Even though his story comes to us across something like 2600 years, it is so filled with pathos and heartache that even from all this great distance, I find it hard to read. Jeremiah, as a young boy, was called out by God to be a prophet of doom to the nation of Israel. The armies of Babylon were gathering on the horizon. Ultimately, they would descend on Jerusalem without mercy, utterly destroying both the city and the nation of Israel, and carrying off into exile those few who survived. Jeremiah's job, his calling, his destiny, was to spend his life ranting and raving, begging and pleading, trying to get the people to return to God; to live just and faithful lives, and thereby save themselves from the wrath to come. Needless to say, it didn't work.

My heart aches for Jeremiah. He was the bearer of a message no one wanted to hear. He spent his entire life alienating the very people he hoped to save, and for his efforts he was beaten, thrown in jail and tossed down a well. No one appreciates the bearer of bad tidings. I don't imagine he took any satisfaction when events proved he had been right all along. I can't believe he felt any sense of vindication as he stood on a wall and watched the city he loved turned to dust and ashes. I remember in seminary doing a paper on the first chapter of Lamentations, which some have attributed to Jeremiah. Lamentations gives an eyewitness account, in poetic form, of the destruction of Jerusalem. "How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!" it says. "How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a [slave]." If Jeremiah didn't actually write those words, he at least understood how the writer felt.

From this great distance in time, it can be hard to get a feel for how devastating some of our history has been. When we talk about the "Exilic Period" of Israel's history from a scholarly remove of centuries, it's easy to forget just how violent and tragic it all was. Can you imagine being Jeremiah; the one person who could see it all coming in vivid color and detail? Can you picture yourself trying with every fiber of your being to get someone - anyone - to listen, only to be ignored, scorned and abused at every turn? It's not a life I would wish on anyone. But it is the life Jeremiah was called to, and to his credit, against all odds, he persevered.

If you read Jeremiah's book for yourself though, you will no doubt discover something interesting. Right in the middle of what begins to feel like an endless litany of doom and gloom, all at once you stumble upon the Book of Consolation. Four chapters, right in the middle of Jeremiah, that are filled with hope and promise. It's almost like suddenly finding yourself in the eye of the hurricane. Surprisingly, the prophetic tone changes from judgment to mercy, from destruction to hope. Beyond the gathering storm, he says, the days are surely coming when there will be calm and peace.

There is hope for your future, says the Lord (31:17)

With consolations I will lead them back (31:9)

I will restore the fortunes of my people (30:3)

I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David (33:15)

Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. (33:16)

These verses all come from the Book of Consolation. That's what the theologians call it; these four chapters in the middle of Jeremiah. Most of you know the old saying that a minister's job is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. If you apply that to Jeremiah's prophesies, you can't help but notice that he came down heavily on the side of afflicting those he thought had become altogether too comfortable. I think he would have said that's what the times called for. I think he would have said that the affliction of his words was nothing compared to the affliction that was coming, and he would have been right. But then, right in the middle of all that affliction, we find an unexpected parting of the clouds that allowed the sun to shine through; we find an uncharacteristic assurance that beyond the affliction there would be comfort and grace. Jeremiah's little book of consolation, we discover, is all the more meaningful, all the more powerful, precisely because it comes out of the midst of all that terrible affliction.

That's the nature of grace, in my experience. Grace never feels real until we are crying out for it. It never feels solid until it comes from a divine presence and love we had all but given up on. Grace never seems to emerge until we have exhausted all our own resources and thrown ourselves on the mercy of the fates. That doesn't mean we can make it happen by falling on our face. It comes when it comes, in God's good time. But that's not to say it hasn't been there all along. Part of being people of faith is clinging to the idea that God is right there with us even, or especially, when all we really feel is a sense of absence or abandonment. God is right there with us, when our health is failing. God is right there with us, when our children are in trouble. God is right there with us, when the stock market stumbles. When we are hungry, lost, lonely, confused, grieving … God is right there with us. It isn't that God hasn't been there all along. It is simply that God is easier to ignore when we are comfortable than when we are afflicted.

That is pretty much the idea behind the whole season of Advent. We know that, theologically speaking, God comes into the world as a child on Christmas day. But how much that means to us, or whether it means anything at all, depends almost entirely on our own need, our own longing. When, out of our affliction, we know we need God, that is when the birth of Christ can come to us as God's little book of consolation.

Amen.