How do you respond to illness, to injury, disease?
Emotional, physical, or spiritual? Either yours or someone else’s?
How do you respond to sin? Either you’re own or someone else’s?
I have a collection of first aid kits, not an extensive collection, nothing distinguishing, nothing to take to ‘antique roadshow’; more like ‘one for every room in the house’ kind of collection. Before going on a trip one of my purchases will undoubtedly be a new first aid kit, sized for both the length and type of journey. I have palm sized ones for my backpack, medium sized one for the car and I even have a waterproof one for our kayaks!
Some of us can’t read today’s text without immediately humming the tune and thinking of the words of the spiritual ‘there is a balm in Gilead’. And unfortunately that gives us an assumed familiarity with this text, that I’m not sure is helpful. While the term ‘balm’ does refer to an ointment, a salve- perhaps there is another message from Jeremiah for us today.
What might Jeremiah say to us today? We’ll come back to the first aids kits in a moment.
Two important concepts to keep in mind:
For the earliest audience the chief value in the prophetic message was not predictive, but historical. How did we get here from there?
For Jeremiah, how the Hebrew people got from ‘here’ to ‘there’ was directly tied to their ability to repent and with that repentance God’s presence in history.
Commentators on the text of Jeremiah point to poetic devices embedded in the narrative. This section is one such occurrence and I will read it in the way commentators suggest it was read to early listeners.
Jeremiah: My joy is gone; my sorrow is beyond healing, my heart is sick! Listen! The cry of the daughter of my people throughout the land! (vv. 18-19a)
People: Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her king not in her? (v. 19b)
God: Why have they provoked me with their idols and foreign gods? (v. 19c)
People: Harvest is past, summer is ended and we have not been delivered. (v. 20)
Jeremiah: For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken. I mourn and dismay has seized me! Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Then why has there been no healing of the daughter of my people? O, that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! (vv. 22-9:1)
(see http://www.cresourcei.org/lectionary/YearC/Cproper20ot.html)
Let’s look at their conversation:
Jeremiah starts: My joy is gone, my sorrow is beyond healing, my heart is sick! Listen! The cry of the daughter of my people throughout the land! This is someone who seems to have a grasp on the events in front of him. Someone who is deeply in touch with his pain and the sorrow of others. Before we pick up with the people’s response- how do you respond to someone expressing this depth of sorrow?
In our own discomfort with someone else’s pain are we tempted to reach for a balm? A band-aid? Do we give advice? When you are expressing such intense emotions how do you want to be listened to?
Are we as listeners able to do what Jeremiah asks us to do? ‘Listen!”
This is where the cross talk begins-
The people respond: Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her king not in her?
"What are you talking about Jeremiah? Does not God dwell in Zion? Then, what is there to worry about?" It is a way to discount Jeremiah’s message. It is actually more telling than that- it shows their assumptions about and their expectations of God.
God’s place is in Zion- Jerusalem’s security rests solely in the Lord’s protection of the city, the temple and the people. The people were confident based on the idea that God’s presence in the Temple would guarantee their survival.
God is responsible and accountable to God’s people.
The people's covenant with God only flows in one direction- from God to God’s people.
What do your phrases about God, your statements of belief, say about your understanding of God?
How do you fill in the sentence, ‘If God…, then…” What does your sentence say about God, what does it say about you?
And God responds with a covenantal reference:
God: Why have they provoked me with their idols and foreign gods? (v. 19c)
Which is of course recalling the first commandment:
Exodus 20: 2.
I am the LORD (YHWH) your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”
Does this phrase affirm or challenge your belief sentence about God?
Have you had your assumptions, your beliefs about how church should be/ Christians should act and God behave ever challenged? Have sacred texts, wise council or God’s spirit challenged you? How did you respond?
How did the people respond? More cross talk- in fact, they completely ignore God’s statement- they don’t deny it, they don’t dispute it, and they simply don’t respond but pick up where they left off. They do however respond with a heightened emotional statement, a blaming, and an accusation of God.
People: Harvest is past, summer is ended and we have not been delivered. (v. 20)
This is more than likely a challenge thrown back at God.
The metaphor of harvest (8:20) was a common prophetic way of talking about accountability to God. Isaiah had made the most direct use of this metaphor when he had compared Israel to a choice vine planted by God, who had then expected a harvest of fine grapes. Jeremiah had picked up this same metaphor earlier in the chapter (v. 13). He even took it one step further, and noted that not only had they failed to produce fruit at harvest time, they had even lost what they were given. (http://www.cresourcei.org/lectionary/YearC/Cproper20ot.html)
Yet, in an interesting twist to the harvest metaphor, the people demanded that God get with the program and do what God was supposed to do. God had not acted on schedule according to when and how and where they thought God should act, and they are becoming a little impatient with God’s delay of deliverance. It is similar to the metaphor of tapping their watches to remind God that God is running behind schedule. http://www.cresourcei.org/lectionary/YearC/Cproper20ot.html)
At this point Jeremiah steps back in:
Jeremiah: For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken. I mourn and dismay has seized me! Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Then why has there been no healing of the daughter of my people? O, that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! (vv. 22-9:1)
Interesting to note he picks right up where he left off. He neither responds to the people’s accusation and challenge towards God, he doesn’t respond to God’s call to covenantal relationship,
Commentators point out that it is difficult to distinguish the narrator’s voice, that of Jeremiah from God’s voice.
Jeremiah’s pain and God’s pain are one and the same.
Honesty with one’s self and others about one’s brokenness, one’s pain can offer the first steps towards healing and reconciliation. Honesty that speaks of my accountability, my actions, my involvement- not in blame language or directing responsibility outside of myself.
Where do you find yourself in today’s conversation in this text? Do you sit with Jeremiah, intensively sorrowful about how we as a people of faith, a nation, and a world have broken our covenantal relationship with God?
Do you hear echoes of the people’s abdication of responsibility in your own conversations? ‘He/she should have known this was going to happen, it’s not my fault, and it’s not my responsibility? The government needs to…, our mayor, our teachers, our preacher…”
Are you calling yourself and others back into covenantal relationship with God? Perhaps starting with the words, ‘I’m sorry.”
Do we need balm, band aids, and first aid kits in our relationships with each other? Absolutely! We need to have words, phrases and gestures that speak of forgiveness, accountability and reconciliation sprinkled liberally throughout our conversations.
How about in our relationship with God? Jeremiah’s passage today gives us a lens through which to discern our own relationship with God- Why have they provoked me with their idols and foreign gods?
This is the word I hear Jeremiah speaking to us today-
~Are you loving God with all your heart, your soul, your mind?
~Are your thoughts and actions provoking God?
We’ve eavesdropped on a curious conversation this morning haven’t we?
May God guide our discernment and our response to God’s word today.
