Sermon: Jeremiah’s Hope
December 1st, 2019 Rev. Betsy Perkins
First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Scripture passage: Jeremiah 33:14-18; Mark 8:27-28
In the week of Thanksgiving in 1983, 3 teenagers were arrested in Baltimore for the murder of a 14 year old boy killed at a city school for his jacket. Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins and Andrew Stewart were tried and convicted to life in prison despite their insistence that they did not commit the crime and despite evidence that pointed to another kid. Over the years, all three men maintained their innocence. In fact, when they had come up for parole, each one declined because it would have required accepting responsibility for the crime. All three despaired their dire and seemingly hopeless situation. Yet one of them, Alfred Chestnut clung to a flicker of improbable, unexplainable hope that eventually the truth would set them free. (washingtonpost.com, 11/25/2019)
The prophet Jeremiah was a man who clung to an improbable hope in a dire situation. He, too, persisted in speaking the truth even though it was rejected by many who heard him. Jeremiah was a spokesman for God in the years following the good King Josiah, when the people of Judah turned away from God once again. Jeremiah had had a vision in which the Lord reached out His hand and touched Jeremiah’s mouth and said to him, “I have put my words in your mouth.”(1:9)
Those words were harsh words, bitter words. Words of judgment against the people of Judah for their disobedience and unfaithfulness to God. Words of a coming disaster in which the Babylonian armies would attack and destroy Jerusalem, dead bodies would litter the streets, including the king’s. Those who survived would be taken away into exile as prisoners of war. The nation of Judah would no longer exist, buildings would be heaps of rubble and the land would be abandoned and unsafe. For the leaders of Jerusalem, the Lord gave Jeremiah these words: Look! Disaster is spreading…, a mighty storm is rising from the ends of the earth… Weep and wail, you shepherds, you leaders of the flock. For your time to be slaughtered has come.”(25:32,34)
As you can imagine, no one wanted to hear Jeremiah’s prophesies of gloom and doom. He was very unpopular. At one point the officials seized him and said, “This man should be sentenced to death because he preached against us!”(26:11) The king had him thrown in prison in Jerusalem, accusing him of betrayal. So Jeremiah wrote God’s words on a scroll and had his assistant read them to the officials and to the king. But the king just threw the scroll in the fire. Of course their refusal to listen did not prevent King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and his armies from advancing toward Jerusalem from the north, nor the Pharaoh and his army approaching from the south. Regardless of whether they paid attention or not, God’s warnings were coming true.
It reminds me of a first time mother I cared for when I worked in a labor and delivery unit of a hospital on the south side of Chicago. She had been so fearful of the coming time of labor pains that she had refused to let anyone talk about it. She just wanted to live in denial. One day her husband brought her to the hospital, clearly in labor, but the woman continued to insist that we let her go back home because it was not time to have the baby yet! But wave after wave of pain came, and no denial could hold back the contractions. The good news is that even in the midst of the difficulty and pain and uncertainty of a labor, it is a situation pregnant with hope (if you’ll forgive the pun). The mother’s round tummy, the thumping of a heartbeat on the monitors, are signs of hope, of the gift of life that will be arriving.
For the nation of Judah, unfortunately, there was little sign of hope. The situation was bleak, annihilation seemed inevitable. In fact, they had already seen it happen to the nation of Israel to the north. They had been conquered and carried away as captives by the Assyrians. The tree of God’s people, Israel and Judah, was rotting and the Israel half had already withered and been cut away. Now the remaining portion of the tree was dying and the axe was raised to take it down.
Just when things looked the most bleak, when the words of the Lord being given to Jeremiah to share with the people were the most gruesome, God gives Jeremiah another word to share – a word of hope. It is a word we often look to at the beginning of the season of Advent, recorded in Jeremiah 33. “Yet the time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill my gracious promise, my good word, to the people of Israel and Judah. In those days and at that time, I will raise up a righteous branch from David’s line, who will do what is just and right in the land. In those days, Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is what he will be called: The Lord is Our Righteousness.”
A word of hope! Israel and Judah may be a rotted out tree, it may become a chopped off, dead stump. But new life would eventually sprout from what would appear to be a dead stump! This time the leader would be a descendant of David who did what was right, what was just, who would save God’s people and be their protector and their peace. This is one of the messianic prophesies recorded in the Old Testament; one of the words of promise that God would send a Messiah, an anointed one.
Unlike the situation of a laboring mother, the hope was not obvious to those who heard this word, perhaps least of all to Jeremiah who was sitting in prison and fearing for his life – with the double threat of the approaching enemy as well the wrath of his own people. So God gave him a sign. God told Jeremiah that someone would come to his prison cell to sell him a field near his hometown – a field in the nation that was going to be attacked and abandoned, land that would soon be absolutely worthless. The Lord told Jeremiah to buy the land and secure the deed, saying, “For in the future my people will once again buy houses and fields and vineyards in this land.”(32:15) Hope was not obvious, but God’s promise was true; it was trustworthy enough to invest in a field and stake your life on it.
This is what we are to practice in the season of Advent. We are to practice holding on to the hope of God’s promises, to the truth of God’s word, even when the days get shorter and darker and colder, even when situations around us looks bleak.
That bleakness for some of you may be health challenges that make you feel like your body is withering and the axe is raised to cut you down. Or perhaps you have a loved one who faces such a health crisis. Last week following worship, we learned about Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias and the facts are pretty grim. Every 60 seconds someone in the US develops Alzheimer’s disease, and the rate will double in the next 30 years!
There are moments when the social ills in our nation seem pretty bleak. The crisis of drug addiction, particularly pain medications, that we just can’t seem to reverse. The problem of homelessness and the discouraging reality that there are so few housing options for those without financial resources. The immigration crisis with thousands of traumatized children. The latest climate data showing that environmental disaster is coming much sooner than expected. The sadness of wrong-doing by national leaders, when so few elected official seems capable of making a decision based on what is true or what is responsible as opposed to what is politically expedient. All around the world people are rising up in protests, trying to have their voices and needs heard – Chile, Bolivia, Iraq, Hong Kong. It is as if another of Jeremiah’s prophesies is still coming true in our day as it did for the refugees of his day in Ramah: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping; mothers weeping for their children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more.”(31:15)
In Matthew’s gospel, that prophesy is connected with the mourning of mothers in Bethlehem when King Herod ordered the cruel slaughter of baby boys in his jealous response to the news that one of them was to be the future king of Jews. The people in those days longed for a just and righteous king, they longed for a life free from the oppression of Rome. They were waiting for God’s promise of a Messiah, a leader who would save them. The leader God had promised to Jeremiah. If you have started the Advent reading of Luke’s gospel, you have read in chapter 2, about a man named Simeon and a woman named Anna, who were watching for this new leader, the Lord’s Christ. I don’t know about you, but as I look for a sign of an up and coming great leader, I’ve got my eye on a young person who is already showing some leadership abilities and promise. But both Simeon and Anna catch sight of an infant, a newborn Jesus being brought to the temple by Mary and Joseph as the law required them. And because they are watching for signs of hope with the eyes of faith, they see in this helpless infant Jesus the promise coming true. They see the Lord’s Messiah.
Thirty-three years later, another sign of hope is given in a situation that is even more grim. Many had great hope that Jesus was the Lord’s Messiah, yet this hope was crushed by his arrest and his death sentence. The sentence is carried out, and Jesus is dead, like the stump of the tree he was killed on. Those who loved him wept and watched as his body is placed in a tomb. Then, 3 days later, those who never imagined that a cross, or a tomb could be a symbol of hope, discover that it is a sign of the greatest hope of all. The tomb was empty and the power of death was defeated. Jesus was indeed the Messiah, but instead of saving one nation from political oppression, he was saving the whole world from the oppression of sin!
We are to be searching for signs of hope with the eyes of faith in this Advent season. We are to look at situations of pain and despair with the faith that God can turn them into places of hope.
Let me share with you one more sign of hope in a situation where it was not at all obvious: on Monday of this past week, at 5:15 pm, the doors of a Baltimore Circuit Court opened and Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins and Andrew Stewart walked out free after 36 years in prison for the crime they did not commit. Alfred Chestnut, who never lost hope that the truth would set him free, discovered new evidence last year implicating the real killer. He submitted it along with his request to have the case reviewed by Baltimore’s Conviction Integrity Unit. The three men had relied on their friendship and on their faith in God to sustain them. Andrew Stewart had even been teaching Bible class while in prison, allowing God to use him in that dark time and place. They mourn the injustice done, but maintain hope that “the Lord is our righteousness” and rejoice in God’s faithfulness in bringing about what was just and right.
Jeremiah spoke the truth when he shared God’s words: For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope. (29:11) This Advent, look for signs of hope, look for Jesus as he continues to work in places and times of discouragement and grief, and shine your hope on those around you.
Communion Song: “My Hope Is Built” # 517
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