Jeremiah 31:7-14 | Ephesians 1:3-14
Jeremy Richards
Our reading from Jeremiah this morning proclaims a future home to a down and out, exiled people. There’s scholarly debate about the circumstances surrounding this passage, but most agree that the context is the Babylonian exile.
Whatever the particulars, in the midst of what is a strong candidate for the most doom-and-gloom, no-fun, depressing of the prophetic books (which is saying something!) our passage today comes from a hopeful section of 3 chapters, often called the “Book of Consolation.” While Jeremiah spends most of his time predicting the impending defeat to Babylon and the subsequent exile, he promises – or should we say that God promises – hope. Eventually the people will make their way back to Zion, the city of God. And more than that, they won’t just get there, they’ll flourish there. “They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock of the herd; Their life shall become like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again. Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow. I will give the priests their fill of fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my bounty, says the Lord.”
It’s a beautiful picture, right? But to be honest, I don’t find this passage very hopeful, at least this week as I prepared this sermon I didn’t. It’s just too good, too idyllic, too pie-in-the-sky. It’s hard to take it seriously. And, if we look at history, we find that it was, indeed, too good to be true. 2,500 years later, Jeremiah’s vision for the Israelites is yet to be realized.
That’s not to say that there wasn’t an element of truth in this vision. The Israelites did, eventually, return from exile in Babylon. And that certainly, without a doubt, was a cause for celebration. But it wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies as Jeremiah’s prophecy seems to imply. Just read the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and you’ll see that rebuilding the walls and the city was no walk in the park.
Freedom was certainly better than captivity, but the Jerusalem they returned to was hardly a utopia. Life continued to be…life. Just as is true for us today, their existence was a mixed bag of joy and sorrow, laughter and crying, peace and tranquility one moment and anxiety the next. There were weddings and divorces, births and deaths, times of prosperity and times of struggle.
I wonder if we can relate to the same temptation the Israelites faced over 2,500 years ago. Have we also put our faith in a certain sudden change, or a couple of changes, that we think will magically solve all our problems?
Every day, my inbox in inundated with emails from retailers who I, at some point, since I opened my gmail account in college, bought something from and now have my email address. Here are some messages I got over the course of the past few days.
From Pet Pros: Good Riddance 2020, Ring in 2021 (with 21% off)
From Topo Designs: Peace out, 2020
From Edgevale: Like most of you, we’ve been counting down the days…ok, actually seconds, minutes and hours…til the clock strikes midnight on 2021.
The Skimm: Goodbye, 2020. We want to forgive you and we want to forget you.
And maybe the most succinct and to the point, Columbia Sportswear: Forget 2020, it sucked.
We’ve all been looking forward to the end of 2020. We’ve all made jokes about it, myself included. And of course we have! It’s been a brutal year. But we’re 3 days into 2021, and I can’t say that a lot’s changed yet. Our problems didn’t end with 2020. There’s a lot to hope for in 2021, but it hasn’t, as of yet, materialized.
And what is it that we’re looking forward to in 2021? The two most prominent events for 2021 are probably the new president and the Covid vaccine. Now, please don’t misunderstand me, these are both extremely important events. Who governs our country matters, and could make a life and death difference in the lives of not only many people, but even in our environment. And a Covid vaccine will end the fear, isolation, suffering, death, and economic hardship that has plagued the world for nearly a year. So, absolutely, these are reasons to hope. I’m not denying that, not by a long shot.
But I’d like to caution us not to fall into the trap of thinking that once we have a new president and we’ve all received the Covid vaccine our lives will suddenly become “like a watered garden,” to use Jeremiah’s words. Prior to Covid, and prior to the 2016 election, there were many of the same problems that we’re facing today. In many ways, the last year and the last 4 years only revealed what was already present, both good and bad. From systemic racism and global warming on one end of the spectrum, to the tireless, compassionate care of front line workers and the mass uprising for racial justice on the other. Throughout this past year, the good and the bad in individuals and in societies was laid bare.
And many of these things, except Covid (hopefully!), will continue to persist into 2021, 2022, and beyond. The climate crisis, systemic racism, poverty and houselessness, these are problems that can’t be solved by any one leader or administration. Most likely these are battles we’ll never see the end of in our lifetimes, battles we’ll hand off to our children and trust them to continue the good work.
While there is hope in Jeremiah’s vision, and I do ultimately believe that such a day will come to pass in God’s timing, idealized futures like these can be dangerous. They can cause us to put too much hope in one event, one shift in circumstance. They can also make us apathetic in the present, sitting back and waiting for God to swoop in and save the day.
In contrast to Jeremiah’s vision, which is solely about an outward change in circumstance, a shift in fortune, I would like to turn our attention to Paul’s opening words to the Ephesians, which are completely uncircumstantial, about an inward reality that is unchanging no matter what. Paul isn’t concerned with current circumstances or a future hope. Instead, his opening words are a prayer of blessing directed to God, celebrating all that God has done in Christ. And what God has done in Christ transcends any and all circumstances. No matter who you are, no matter when you live, no matter your health, your status, your economic situation, your identity in Christ will not change. It’s eternal.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. 5 He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
These word are true whether you’re a Jew or a Gentile (which is the primary distinction Paul is concerned with overcoming in his letter to the Ephesians), whether you live in the year 70 or the year 2021, whether Covid is running rampant or everyone’s been vaccinated, whether you’re a man, woman, or nonbinary, whether you’re gay or straight, whether you’re a Person of Color or white, whether you’ve lost your job or kept it, whether your young or old, able-bodied or differently abled, and so on and so forth.
There is a reality deeper than circumstance, Paul says. There is an identity we have that exists not in the world but in the very person of Jesus Christ. We are children of God. You are a child of God. As Paul says in Romans, there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. This is the true source of our hope and our joy. This is true no matter the circumstance.
But that isn’t to say that this spiritual reality and our worldly reality, what I’ve been referring to as “circumstance”, are unrelated. In fact, they’re very much related. It’s just a matter of what’s pulling what – what’s the horse and what’s the cart.
On a spiritual level, what Jeremiah predicts for the people of God has taken place in Christ. If we look at Jeremiah’s vision, it’s shockingly inclusive. It includes young and old, men and women (including pregnant and laboring women), the physically able as well as the blind and lame. In other passages throughout scripture like this one, the blind and the lame are healed, but in this specific passage they are accepted for who they are, as they are. They don’t need to be healed to be valued.
On a spiritual level, this same inclusivity has already taken place in Jesus. Galatians 3 says, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” The book of Ephesians, from which our passage comes, is all about Christ’s overcoming the greatest imaginable barrier for 1st century Jews: the barrier between Jew and Gentile. Speaking of Christ, Paul says in chapter 2, “For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.”
The Christian conviction is that there is a truth deeper than what we see in the world. Though we see death, we continue to believe that Christ has already conquered death. Though we see hate all over the news, we continue to believe that love will outlast everything else. Though the world seems divided, we continue to trust that in Christ’s body God has broken down the dividing wall and drawn all people to himself.
The problem is that our circumstances, our worldly reality, is lagging behind the spiritual reality that exists in Christ.
After almost a year of constant Zoom, we’re all familiar with lag. Someone says something and we wait and wait before the audio and the video finally catch up. 2,000 years ago God said something in the person of Jesus Christ, and that is the truest, deepest reality, but our worldly reality has yet to catch up. It’s lagging behind.
But, as Christians, we live out of the deeper, truer reality, and as followers of Jesus, we see it as our responsibility to pull the worldly reality toward the spiritual reality.
Just take the Black Lives Matter movement as an example. If we were to let circumstances dictate our reality, we could not truthfully say that Black Lives Matter, because right now they don’t, at least not as much as white lives. Tamir Rice, a 12 year old with a toy gun gets shot point blank within seconds of police arriving and no one’s convicted, but white men can shoot up a black church or shoot people on the streets of Kenosha and they’re arrested without a scratch. Circumstances, our worldly reality, tells us that Black lives don’t matter.
But we proclaim loudly, as followers of Jesus, that Black Lives do Matter, because there is a deeper reality, a reality spoken by the eternal God in Christ Jesus, who was himself a victim of state-sanctioned violence, that we are all children of God, we all bear the image of God, and so Black Lives do Matter, and we will continue to pull our current, lagging world forward toward the deeper truth that has already been spoken and realized in the crucified and resurrected body of Jesus Christ, who, Paul says, is our peace.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to be a downer about all there is to look forward to this year. There’s a lot to be hopeful for in 2021, and it’s okay to happily say goodbye to 2020, but please don’t root your hope in circumstances. Good times will come and go, as will bad times.
Place your hope instead in the One who is, already, our peace. Who has, already, conquered death. Who has called us to be the bearers of this new reality, to pull a lagging world ahead with us, kicking and screaming if we must, until everyone’s dancing, until everyone’s singing, and no one is left on the fringes. Then we “shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and we shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord…our life shall become like a watered garden, and we will never languish again.”
Amen.