Digging Dry Wells

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Jeremiah 2:4-13.

“Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine, I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine, and he always had some mighty fine wine. Sing it with me joy to the world, all the boys and girls now, joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea and joy to you and me.”

That gets my singing portion out early, While Jeremiah might not be a bullfrog, he was a prophet and therefore not understanding a single word he says might is probably right on target. In Christian Bibles there are two categories of prophets, there are major prophets and minor prophets. This categorization, which is not done in Judaism, is not based on importance or even message, but instead is based on length. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel and Ezekiel are the four major prophets; they are much longer than the twelve minor prophets. But, of all of the prophets, the longest is Jeremiah. In fact, only the book of Psalms is longer than Jeremiah. And if the Book of Lamentations was also written by Jeremiah, which is the tradition, then his writings constitute an even bigger portion. So we have one of the largest amounts of the Bible written by just one person but we do not spend a lot of time hearing from Jeremiah. In fact, I suspect that many of you have probably never heard a sermon preached from Jeremiah’s text.

Imagine if we did the same thing and ignored the writings of Paul. We would not only be missing a large chunk of the scripture we use on a regular basis but we would be missing a large piece of God’s message for us. So why don’t we hear a lot from Jeremiah? I believe there are several reasons for this. The first is that except for Isaiah which has the passages which have been interpreted as predicting the coming of Christ we don’t really deal well with the Prophets. In a quick search through the lectionary this week, most of the prophets are only included a few times in the three year lectionary cycle. Jeremiah only appears twelve times, and lamentations only once. Ezekiel has three readings, and Daniel has only one. Of the minor prophets, with only a few exceptions, they all only appear once.

The prophets are hard to hear. We don’t like to come to church and feel like we are being beaten upside the head with a baseball bat, and so preachers don’t want to preach on these subjects and most congregations don’t want to hear about them.

Last week’s passage from Jeremiah would have been a nice and easy one to preach on. You may or may not remember last week’s passage from Jeremiah, but it is his call story. God tells Jeremiah that he is going to be sent out to give the people God’s message, and Jeremiah tries to beg off by saying that he is only a young boy and he doesn’t have the words to speak. This is a common excuse used by people in the bible in order to try and get away from God. Moses also used this ploy, but just like with Moses it didn’t work for Jeremiah either. Instead God tells Jeremiah that God has known him and had a plan for him since he was in his mother’s womb and God will give him the words he needs to say, so all he has to do is follow God’s lead. That is a nice easy passage with a nice easy message: God knows you and has a plan for your life. That is why this is often the one passage chosen be preachers so that they can say they preached on Jeremiah without actually having to preach on the Jeremiah.

But today’s passage is not as touchy feely or as easy as that one.
This was actually not my first choice when I began thinking about today’s service. I had originally settled on doing something on gospel passage, but on my third reading of today’s passages I foolishly decided that we should hear from Jeremiah. Today’s passage is one of those ones that’s tough to hear and in approaching it we either have to say that it only had something to do to those whom Jeremiah was addressing and nothing to do with us, or we must admit that although we stand hear more than 2500 years later that it still speaks to us. I’m sure that you can probably guess what my position is.

There are a lot of questions about Jeremiah, who he was and when he began his work as a prophet. Everything we know about Jeremiah comes to us out of his writings. We are told that he came from a priestly family, who were also landowners and he grew up in a town just to the north of Jerusalem. He begins his ministry early in his life, and we are told that his first prophecy comes in the thirteenth year of king Josiah, which would be the year 627 BCE. While many scholars accept that dating, others say there are significant problems with that date.

Josiah instituted a significant reform in Judah seeking to purify the faith again after the people had strayed away from God. These are known as the Deuteronomic reforms because the Book of Deuteronomy is reported to be found in the temple in Jerusalem during a renovation and Josiah reinstitutes the law, cleanses the Temple and the people and together they recovenant themselves to God. This was a very significant event in the life of Judea, but Jeremiah’s writings shown no signs of this reform taking place. Instead what we hear from Jeremiah is the very same indictments of the people and their leaders that led Josiah to make his reforms. Interestingly, Jeremiah also references both Israel and Judah in his prophecies.

Now we normally think of Israel being synonymous with the promised land including the Jerusalem. However, Israel in the Hebrew scriptures applies almost exclusively to the northern kingdom which contained ten of the twelve tribes. But, Israel had been destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. Judah is the southern kingdom, which contains Jerusalem, so when you hear Israel that is the Northern Kingdom and when you hear Judah that is the Southern Kingdom. So if the dating of Jeremiah is correct, Israel has been gone for more than 100 years. Some have speculated that Jeremiah may have been working while the northern kingdom was still in existence, few accept that. I think the more likely scenario is that Jeremiah is prophesying after Josiah’s reforms have already been tried and failed and he references Israel in order to emphasize the point, by saying “you know what happened to the northern kingdom, and if you don’t repent then the same thing will happen to you.”

This is a time of enormous stress and strain in Judah. They are being pushed by the Babylonians to the north and the Egyptians to the south, and they sit right in the middle of this power struggle of empires. Under the leadership of king Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonians put on siege on Jerusalem and take the capital city in 597. While the people try and hold out, relying upon their cisterns to provide them with their water supply, are you hearing the connections, they cannot hold and the Babylonians breach the walls and take many of the leaders into exile. After several smaller revolts, the Babylonians get tired of having to deal with the Jews and in 586 they again take Jerusalem, destroy the temple and take a much larger group into exile.

Now it’s hard for us to understand what this meant for Judaism. The temple was the cultural, political, religious and economic center of the society. Now 9/11 obviously has deep resonance for us, and that was what these events where like for Judah, only greatly magnified. Now imagine if instead of just losing the world trade center, instead 9/11 destroyed all of new York city, as the economic center, and all of Washington DC as the political center, and all of Hollywood as the cultural center, along with every church, and you can begin to understand the magnitude of what is taking place. That is the background under which Jeremiah is prophesying.

“Thus says the Lord” begins Jeremiah’s prophecy, and marks the beginning of all prophetic words. In scripture it is what separates God’s words from the words of mere mortals and it is the indication that a prophet is speaking. “Thus says the Lord,” says Jeremiah, God remembers the early days when everything was good, but then you went astray. You began to believe that you were responsible for the good things happening and you began to put your reliance and trust in things other than God, you began to rely on worthless things and as a result became worthless yourselves. You tried to draw your resources from worthless sources, and instead of drawing water from the source of life you have been trying to drink from broken cisterns. Because you are not seeking God, you are digging dry wells, and in the desert without water there is only death. “Therefore I accuse you says the Lord.”

What we are hearing from Jeremiah is a legal charge being made against the people and, most importantly, their leaders including the priests. This is the indictment being read and it follows the pattern of the ancient near east where there has been a violation of a covenant, especially between a sovereign and the people. Remember that I said that under Josiah he had had the people renew their covenant relationship with God. God is saying the covenant I had made with you has been violated, but not by me. Instead it is you who have not held up your end of the agreement. God has fulfilled what God has promised and God has been faithful, but the people have not, and as a result consequences will come. God is making it very clear that no one can say “we didn’t know” or “our pastor didn’t tell us this,” or “our pastor was more concerned with other things God, he had us sing BINGO in worship service, it’s not our fault, blame him.” God is making it clear that everyone should know what was expected and to know about God.

But although we are told in chapter one that Jeremiah is being sent, “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow,” he is also being sent “to build and to plant.” God’s indictment does not say “you have done all these things wrong, so to hell with you I’m going to punish you and then go find someone else.” Instead God is saying you have transgressed, but here is the simple remedy, repent, turn around and come back, stop trying to get water out of broken cisterns, stop digging your own wells which will always be dry, instead return to me, come back to the living water, come back to God. While the word of grace is not the first thing they hear from Jeremiah, because they have strayed too far, it is the word of grace that comes, and one of the easy solutions is for them to again start asking one simple question: “Where is the Lord?” That, we are told, is what the people had stopped asking, and as a result they stopped telling the story to their children and they were led astray.

Jeremiah’s message is just as relevant for us today as it was for the people who first heard it. If you remember nothing else from today’s sermon or worship service, I want you to remember this, so you can write this down in your sermon notes, the question to ask is “Where is God?” Individually we should be asking “Where is God in my career?” “Where is God in my family?” “Where is God in my school work?” “Where is God in my needs and wants?” When we lose this question, when we stop seeking and looking for where God is and what God is guiding us towards then we are bound to start looking for other things to replace God, and we are told when we replace God with worthless things then we too become worthless. But we also need to make sure we are asking the same thing in the church. “Where is God in the church?” “Where is God in this program?” and even “Where is God in this worship service and sermon?” When we start digging our own wells instead of relying on the living water then we will invariably come up dry.

The church universal is facing some serious issues in this country, and there are lots of people looking for the magic bullet which will solve all of our problems. In regards to the Methodist church, one recent book said “restoration is the answer because it is unthinkable that God would abandon the institutionalized churches in America as they compromise the vast majority – up to 90% -- of the Christians in this country.” In hearing God’s words as spoken to us through Jeremiah I don’t think it is unthinkable at all, because if we have abandoned God, if we have stopped asking the question “Where is the lord?”

If we have stopped giving our allegiance to God, if we have stopped teaching our children, if we have begun trying to dig our own wells because we think we can do it alone, then God will look for those who will be loyal. As Dietrich Bonheoffer said there is no cheap grace, grace comes with responsibilities and obligations. God will uphold the promises made to us, but in return we must also uphold our promises, promises we take and remember every time we celebrate the sacrament of baptism, and a promise to drink from the living water, not from the dry wells we try and dig with our own hands because we will find no water there, and in the desert without water there is only death.

God sends Jeremiah with a message that is to both pull down and to build up, to destroy and to plant. That is God’s justice and mercy. God does not say “you have violated the covenant, so go to hell,” both literally and figuratively. Instead God says, “You have violated the covenant, so come back. Come back to me. Come back to the living water. Stop trying to dig your own wells, stop trying to drink from empty festering cisterns, and come back to me. I will give you water; I will quench your thirst. Come back to me and be my people and I will be your God. Come back to me, come back to me.” May it be so. Amen.