For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 3 – Jeremiah 28:5-9 (Related)

I know I sound like a stuck record but once again the lectionary has filleted this passage out of its context so as to make it almost incomprehensible. We really can’t make sense of v.5-9 without knowing what is going on in 1-4, and what is going to go on in 10-17. So let’s look instead at the chapter as a whole.

Just in the very early stages of the exile, when most of Israel was living as a vassal state under Babylonian rule, the prophet Hananiah, who is helpfully described by the heading in my Bible as a ‘false prophet’, goes public in the Temple with his prediction that this will all be over within two years, because God is going to break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon (a phrase which he repeats twice for emphasis). It is interesting to note what this will look like in detail: the Temple will be undesecrated again, the sacred articles nicked by Nebuchadnezzar will be returned, the king will be back on his throne, and those who have been deported will come back. In other words, everything will be back to normal. The brief period of oppression will have been a tiny blip in the fortunes of Israel, but life will soon carry on as before.

I’m writing this in the week when lockdown in the UK is being dramatically eased, and on the morning of a day when new charts demonstrate that the global pandemic of coronavirus is still peaking, even if here in England things are calming down a bit. We all want to get back to normal, even though some of us are wondering what the ‘new normal’ will look like. There is a natural human tendency to avoid pain and discomfort, and so it should be – we have names for people who deliberately go out to seek or inflict pain. So Hananiah represents the voice of this human tendency – don’t worry, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, and like Boris after Cumminsgate, we can all just ‘move on’.

But into this understandable human inclination to avoid hardship comes the voice of God, through the genuine prophet Jeremiah. Again, look closely at what he says. First of all he really wants Hananiah’s words to be true. He’d love it if this was going to pan out like that. Jeremiah has a reputation for being a bit of a misery, but he is no more keen on exile and slavery than the next man. However, he senses that God’s purposes are different – the rest of the chapter spells out his view on things. But he also notes something important. Many prophets in the past spoke the unpopular message of war, disaster and plague, and current events seem to be validating their message. Perhaps that is the job of prophets; that’s why we find them so difficult to cope with, and why so often we silence their voices. But what about those who speak peace instead? Jeremiah’s point is that like their more negative brothers and sisters their message needs to be validated by actual events. It isn’t the case that prophets never say good things or bring comfort: just look at Isaiah 40 – 55. But the test is what actually happens. And most of the time it is the prophets of doom who actually turn out to have been speaking from God.

This chapter, then, gives us a meditation on the nature of the prophetic, but also reminds us of an important biblical principle: suffering, unpleasant though it is, can do us good. It can be used by God to shape our characters, to correct our weaknesses, to reorientate our direction and realign our priorities. Everything within us as humans wants to avoid it, but the Bible constantly tells us of its value, and how we should seek the hand of God through it to draw us closer to him.

How have you been praying for our nation and our world during the pandemic? Like all of us I have, of course, been praying for it to go away and leave us alone, but more often I have found myself praying that we would learn the lessons God wants to teach us through it. To return to normal without that happening would be an even greater disaster, I believe.