There is both human and divine pain – because of the misguided shrewdness of this age.
This passage shows why Jeremiah,
down through the ages, has been called “a man of tears.”
The prophet’s profound empathy for
both the suffering of the people under judgment and for the rightness of God’s
side of the judgment, made him an agonized man.
Being a powerful poet, he expressed that agony in passionate images and
dialogues.
For example, this passage is a
little drama, with dialogues. The
changes in speaker from verse to verse are fairly clear but recognizing them is
essential to getting the prophet’s message:
the passion is divine as well as human.
The prophet’s agonized feelings of
pity are the outer framework.
“My joy is gone, grief is upon me,
my heart is sick” (verse 18).
This cry at the beginning is linked
at the end with the echoing cry:
“O that my head were a spring of
water,
and my eyes a fountain of tears…” (9:1, NRSV ).
Inside the prophet’s envelope of
agonized lament is heard the astonished disappointment and despair of the
people. From all over the land they cry,
“Is the Lord not in Zion
Is her King not in her?”
When disaster looms on the
horizon, all the outlying people are accustomed to expect Zion Zion Zion 4:30 -31 and the sermon of doom on
Jerusalem
The age of trust-in-Zion as the
ultimate sanctuary, even for the unrighteous, is ending. Zion
The last lament of the people is
total despair:
“The harvest is past, the summer
is ended,
and we are not saved” (verse 20).
But at the center of this
dramatic dialogue a voice is heard separate and above the others. (NRSV
puts it in parentheses, verse 19b, a comment inserted in the midst of the
panicked cries of the people.)
God speaks.
While the rushing and overwhelming
judgment from God is taking place, God also agonizes because it had to come to
this terrible ending – that the people have been so unfaithful, so disloyal to
their loving divine parent.
“Why have they provoked me to
anger with their images,
with their foreign idols?”
And this unintelligible, this
irrational surd of self-defeating behavior by a “chosen” people is the cause of
agony and lament – both human and divine.
But most of all, the agony falls on the passionate prophet, who cries
out,
“Is there no balm in Gilead ?”
Jeremiah cries out for the healing
of the soul wounded by all the transgressions of the people.
Psalm 79:1-9.
The Psalm reading is also a
voice in prophetic dialogue.
Here, however, we are at a later
stage of the drama. This is the voice of
the people around Jerusalem Jerusalem
The early part of the psalm
elaborates on the devastation, on the cruelty that ruthless enemies have
executed upon the city and its population.
Bodies have been strewn over the land as fodder for vultures and wild
beasts; there is no one to bury them.
Blood has been poured out so that it flows down gutters and sewers like
the runoff of a storm. People from the
vicinity who still care about the great city are tormented by the scorn and
taunting of neighboring peoples.
And the psalmist asks, “How long,
O Lord?”
For a moment the lament moves
toward anger and resentment. Let these
mocking peoples receive some of their own medicine! Let them be the recipients of God’s wrath,
especially since they don’t even know this God who has acted in judgment on
God’s own people.
But after this moment of
resentment, the speaker returns to the real problem. How to elicit God’s forgiveness, and let
their great disaster testify to God’s own true character, the righteous God
ruling all the nations.
“Deliver us, and forgive our sins,
for your name’s sake” (verse 9, NRSV ,
emphasis added).
I
Timothy 2:1-7.
(This reading is painfully relevant at this time of crises in urban law-enforcement in our nation.)
The reading from the Epistle also
speaks of peoples round about the community of faith. Basically, the Apostle urges the faithful to
leave the management of the world to God and to pray for those who maintain
order and stability among the peoples.
Timothy is told to have the
Christian assemblies pray for all peoples around them, particularly for the
rulers, from kings on down. These rulers
are not to be looked to for salvation and deliverance; that is not their
business in God’s economy. Rulers are to
provide stability and order, so that “we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in
all godliness and dignity” (verse 2, NRSV ). God’s desire is for everyone to be saved,
which they will be when they come to know the “truth.”
This truth is here
expressed in a liturgical confession (verses 5-6a).
There is one God;
there is also one mediator
between God and humankind.
The good news is that there IS a
“mediator” between God and humankind.
There is one figure reconciling, working things out, between God and
humans. (The Greek word translated
“mediator” here is mesitēs, which is used in the Greek of Job
9:33 NRSV
has the insight to translate the Hebrew as “umpire”!)
This mediator is the human Christ
Jesus, and this human has given himself as a “ransom” for – not “many,” as in Mark
10:45
Everyone in all the nations has
been ransomed from the powers of alienation and evil that have driven them
through the ages. Therefore, all are to
be prayed for – lofty lords of the world as well as the humble and needy –
prayed for as ones saved and entitled to participate in a life of godliness and
dignity (verse 2).
The delegate of the Apostle, and
all the needy and humble in his churches – this is how they are to pray.
In an era of outrageous bonuses
for executives who have led vast corporations into gallons of red ink – and
received government stimulus packages as well! – the Gospel reading presents us with a real
quandary! Talk about “hard” sayings from
Jesus! The parable of the “dishonest
manager” seems to exceed all bounds, given our time in history.
The CEO of a vast enterprise has
been indicted before the Chair of the Board.
Before the charges can be fully processed, the CEO cooks up deals with
all the company’s creditors and gets himself a large golden parachute to keep
his soft hands from hard labor in his later years!
“And the master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light” (verse 8,NRSV ).
Jesus cannot be simply approving this conduct!
“And the master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light” (verse 8,
Jesus cannot be simply approving this conduct!
Nor would any group of later Jesus
followers approve such cheating. It is
apparently the “shrewdness” of the dishonest manager that is being
lifted up. Such shrewdness is to be
admired in “the children of this age.”
They know what they are about, their priorities are very clear, and they
act, even in a drastic crisis (such as a Federal indictment), to follow those
priorities. (Never mind that their
highest priority is Greed!)
What is left implicit is
that there is a different shrewdness for those who belong to the age to
come.
The shrewdness of the age to come
(which is the reign or kingdom of God
Perhaps when the chips are down,
shrewdness for the kingdom followers will be figuring out how to give the most
to the poor! In the context of Jesus’
trip to Jerusalem
[For more on the issue of wealth
in Luke, and this parable in particular, go to
www.JWStudyBibles.com , and
see "LUKE: A Gospel for Progressives?" posted in January 2019.]
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