Judgement and saving grace
Commentary
Note: This installment was originally published in 2001.
One of the ways to view the decadence that has taken over so much of the media these days is to understand it as an expression of thirsty souls searching for a quenching drink. This is the way it has always been in every age, of course; people pushing the boundaries of social norms out farther and farther in search of something more satisfying. Our age has its own urgency, however, because there is no place we can go without being exposed to the thirst, thanks to our hi-tech development. Also, the failure to quench the thirst leaves the public arena soiled with the signs of the search, most notably corpses strewn from dark alleys to penthouse patios. What the newspapers don't pick up, the tabloids do. Where they leave off, Jerry Springer and Howard Stern take up. And whatever seems marketable will eventually get on prime time and into everyone's coffee break conversations. We end up amusing ourselves to death, hoping to find a shimmer of glory along the way, however brief.
Jeremiah 17:5-10
We know we are on prophetic turf when we hear the words, "Thus says the Lord." Jeremiah had a hard word to speak to the people of God in his day. No one in his right mind would say the things that Jeremiah had to say, especially if they were words that the prophet simply made up and spoke on his own authority. The ridicule and the violent reaction that would ensue would be too much to bear on one's own shoulders. But, if the word was someone else's, an authoritative word that stood above and against the people despite their reaction to it, then the prophet could take heart and speak with boldness. The word has a strength of its own, because it comes from the source of authority itself and does not depend upon the veracity of the prophet. So it is that Jeremiah can proclaim the chilling truth that his fellow citizens will be exiled into a foreign land (17:4).
Jeremiah does not "re-invent the wheel" when it comes to expressing himself and the profound judgments from God. He finds inspiration and the very words themselves in such sources as Isaiah and the Psalms. Verse 5 is reminiscent of Isaiah 30:1-3, where Isaiah chastises Israel for putting too much reliance on their political pact with Egypt. Judah is trying to do the same thing again to counter Babylon's aggression. But, the prophet sees in this a lesson to be learned. Trust in the Lord instead of the creation of political alliances. There is no guarantee that these will work. It is more or less like a shrub in the desert, barely eking out an existence and doomed to die.
Jeremiah continues with a borrowed image from the Psalms. The one who trusts in the Lord is like a tree planted by water. The heat of deteriorating human relationships will not be able to destroy the tree, for it is well sustained by the nourishment of the stream. It is when the tree strays from the stream and seeks to root elsewhere that trouble ensues. The shrub in the desert does not stand much of a chance. But a tree near water -- there is the difference between life and death. Like a tree near water, when the people remain near God, relying on God's care for them instead of making flesh their arm (17:5), there is the fruit of life and prosperity.
If we look a few verses back to 16:18, we will see that God is really angered by the people. Yet, with these few words from our text, we see the movement of God's heart from curse to intended blessing. The human heart may fail and disappoint a person ("deceitful above all things," 17:9), but God is constant in his love and faithful to his promises for those who trust in him.
The description of the heart as desperately corrupt (17:9) is picked up by Jesus when he is addressing the issue of ritual versus real defilement. Jesus contends that it is not external matters that determine the cleanliness of an individual before God, but rather that which comes out of the heart. His list of defilements (Matthew 7:21-22) is enough to make any self-righteous person blush. It is for this reason that God (after all, who can understand the human heart?) must step into the picture and take a decisive role in judging the situation properly. God will "search the mind and try the heart" (17:10). The only recourse for the sinner is to turn to the Lord for refuge (17:17). It will be found. The promise of the ever-bearing fruit tree is given to the one who indeed trusts in the Lord.
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Apparently, there were different ideas cast about Corinth as to just what the resurrection of Jesus meant. Paul speaks directly about a physical, historical event that happened to the crucified Jesus, such that after three days in the grave, he was released from the bonds of death and appeared fully alive, Lord of life and Lord over death. This is what Paul preached. But, there were others who said that Jesus was not raised from the dead in this sense, but in more of a metaphorical sense (a la Willi Marxen in The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth: "For 'Jesus is risen' simply means: today the crucified Jesus is calling us to believe") or even not at all. Paul will have none of this. Either Christ was raised from the dead as he preached, or he was not. If he was not, then all faith in Jesus is misplaced trust, like a beggar going after a beggar for a home mortgage. What is at stake here is the nature of the Christian faith. Will it be the rightful heir of the Judaic articles of faith that puts God right into the stream of history, working out our salvation with hands-on intervention, presence, power and guidance? Or, will the newfound faith be a mental trip, perhaps along gnostic lines, where one only has to "get it straight in your head." The faith becomes a kind of philosophical religion, resting upon one's proper perception of truth and how to arrive at it through mental processes, rather than through a living relationship with the risen Lord.
There are metaphorical uses of the key word nekroz in the Old and New Testaments. In Psalm 30:1-3, praise is given to God for healing powers that restore the sick, who are like those who have already died ("from among those gone down to the Pit"). In Romans 6:11, Paul explains that one of the consequences of baptism is a life that is lived "dead to sin" and very much alive to God. There are also examples from the intellectual culture of the Stoics, who considered anyone not in tune with the world of philosophy as dead. Jesus also used a metaphorical meaning for nekroz in the same sentence in which he uses a literal meaning. In Matthew 8:22 (also Luke 9:60), Jesus calls those who do not truly believe in him and follow him as dead, who should be left to bury their dead; while for those responding to Jesus' call, it is more urgent for them to follow immediately. Jesus' call to discipleship has a higher priority than any other duty.
Along with the argument about circumcision (Acts 15, Galatians), this matter of properly understanding the resurrection of Jesus and the promised resurrection of the dead is a defining point essential to the message of Christianity. Circumcision deals with the relationship between law and gospel. The resurrection deals with the relationship between time and eternity. Eternal life is an ontological reality, just as much as life in time is an ontological reality. The resurrection is the door from one into the other. That is why Paul can write, "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied" (15:19).
The resurrection is an ontological reality, not just a psychological one. Peter harmonizes with Paul on this theme, when he writes, "By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). The resurrection authenticates what Jesus accomplished on the cross by his sacrificial and atoning death. When Paul gave defense before the Roman governor Festus for his faith in the crucified and risen Lord, Festus declared Paul mad (Acts 26:24). Paul would not back down, even if it meant losing his head over the matter (which it finally did!). He knew what Wolfhart Pannenberg explains in Jesus -- God and Man: "Jesus' resurrection was at first understood, not as an abrogation of the law, but as a confirmation of Jesus' activity in the sense of the New Moses and thus completely in continuity with the Mosaic law." Pannenberg goes on to draw out the importance of the resurrection in the context of understanding the doctrine of the two natures of Christ. The beginning point, he argues, for understanding Jesus as the Christ is not the incarnation and birth narratives, but rather the resurrection, which confirms retroactively "for the entirety of his existence" Jesus' unity with God.
Luke 6:17-26
Matthew is interested in locating Jesus' sermon on a mountain. It is an elevated place and speaks to his authority, just like Moses received the Commandments on Mount Sinai and Elijah dispatched the false prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. When important things take place in the Bible, more often than not, it is on the mountain. (See also Matthew 15:29f for healings and Matthew 17:1f for the Transfiguration and, of course, Mark 10:32f for the literal and figurative sense of "going up to Jerusalem" for his crucifixion.) Luke stresses a little geographical detail that tips his hand as a Gospel writer. Because of this detail, some have referred to Luke's version as the Sermon on the Plain. The description of Jesus standing on a level place with the people gathered about him points out the down-to-earth nature of Jesus' ministry. He was truly with the people in every way; even his birth was lowly (viz. Matthew's royal account of the one who comes as the king of the Jews). Jesus was of the people and for the people.
What makes for being makarioz differs in Luke than what Matthew records. Again, Luke is a bit more down-to-earth in what he describes makes for the blessed life. It is Jesus' promise to counter the practical, day-to-day forces that seek to do us in: poverty, hunger, sorrow, and broken relationships. Matthew's account has a more spiritual spin to it: poor in spirit, hunger and thirst after righteousness; those who mourn shall be comforted, whereas in Luke, they shall laugh! Though there is a similarity in both regarding persecution, Matthew stops with the promised reward in heaven. Luke adds four woes, which shall afflict those who are now rich, full, comedic, and well-spoken of.
For the most part, Jesus' message as reported in the Gospels is positive. It is left to the prophets in particular, most recently John the Baptist, to speak with acid tongue against the sins of the people. But here (as well as with the cleansing of the Temple and then with his extended comments in Matthew 23 against the scribes and Pharisees), Jesus contrasts the spirit of the present age with the spirit that is akin to the kingdom of heaven. Even with Olympian zeal, going for the gold of wealth, satisfaction, pleasure, and reputation will not draw one into the kingdom of heaven. That comes as a gift from God across the great divide which separates heaven from earth, symbolized by the earthly realities of poverty, hunger, sorrow, and oppression. "Woe" to those who spend their life's energies in pursuit of the former, not perceiving their own need and neglecting to see the needs of others!
The teaching and healing ministry of Jesus were not two separate entities, coexisting like two corporations with independent functions, even though they may belong to the same parent company. They were intricately combined one with the other. That is why Luke along with the other Synoptic Gospel writers pairs the teaching and healing ministry together in a single report. Luke 6:17 is an example of this. (See for examples Matthew 4:23-25 which sets up Matthew's placement of the Sermon on the Mount; also, Mark 2:1f.) The gospel of Jesus brings a wholeness to body and mind and spirit. The physical and the mental and the spiritual are all part of the entirety of humanity that needs to be touched by the goodness of God. Jesus is the goodness of God with us, bringing us into the presence of the power of God for us, shaping our bodies and our minds and our wills to his purposes.
Application
Renowned historian Jacques Barzun, in his culminating work From Dawn to Decadence, describes the culture of Western civilization as "old and unraveling." He writes of "a floating hostility to things as they are," manifested by recurrent usage of such "dismissive prefixes anti- and post- (anti-art, post-
modernism)" and by promises "to reinvent this or that institution." The words of Jeremiah, Paul, and Jesus are ever timely, speaking to our era as they did to eras gone by.
Government, education, and self-help initiatives are three icons that are lifted up throughout our society as hope for the future. More and more each seek to stand without substantial reference to deity. This is done either by tacitly denying the existence of God, which is the cry of a vocal minority in the community, or by acknowledging the divine but leaving it up to each person to discover its nature through one of many possible ways. Both leave the individual standing alone to shape whatever meaning there is to be. Fans of Xena: Warrior Princess will recognize in her the heroic person representing the latter perspective, although just as at home in a world in which the gods would no longer exist. (Interestingly enough, in the unfolding storyline, the birth of Xena's daughter, Eve, is bringing about the end of the gods, begun by Hercules' patricide of Zeus and Ares, god of war, yielding up his immortality to pursue his amorous interests on earth with Xena.)
The voice of Jeremiah rails out against this. There is one God over all the cosmos and its history. For individuals to find meaning in their lives, it is necessary to submit to God's rule and authority, just like a tree needs to be planted by a stream of living water. Rather than deny God or treat God as an abstract spirituality toward which one may journey on one of many routes, the individual must come to terms with God as revealed in the historical realities of Israel. There is only one Lord, the God of Israel. Not to put trust in the Lord is to put trust in the self, which "makes flesh his arm" (Jeremiah 17:5). Such attempts, even if they created a pantheon of good (the gods of spirituality), would be futile, like a shrub trying to grow in a salt desert.
There is a resurgent interest today in mummification, not only for people, but also for pets. This, too, is a spit into the winds of change, that indeed threaten to whisk away into oblivion all that we would hope to hold dear. Enter Paul and his bold witness to the resurrection, which many even today consider "mad." Paul is adamant in affirming that the historical particularity of God's revelation (that the law and prophets chronicle) is fulfilled in the crucifixion and resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus. If this is not true, then all we are left with is what Snoopy received from Linus and Charlie Brown. On a cold day, they walk up to a shivering Snoopy, pat him on the head and say, "Be of good cheer." Then, they walk away. Snoopy is left, still shivering, with a big question mark looming over his head, as if to ask, "You mean, that's it?" So, too, as Paul admits, if Christ has not been raised, we are of all people most to be pitied. For we would have no future other than what we experience here on earth, where the winds blow freely and shift the sands to bury the past (at one point someone's future!), only to be studied by those interested in antiquities.
There is a proleptic value in the reality of the resurrection, which is Christ's already and ours yet to come. Jurgen Moltmann expressed this years ago in Theology of Hope, when he wrote about the mission and call from God for man that reveals the disparity between the human and the divine. Yet, God in mercy has shaped a future for his beloved and calls him into it by virtue of Christ's going before. Thus, the mission and call from God to man "reveal and open up to him new possibilities, with the result that he can become what he is not yet and never yet was." A consequence of faith in the crucified and risen Lord Jesus, is that believers do not understand themselves as adherents of a religion which is one among many, but the one which truly reveals the future for all. In Christ alone can one be said to be "on the way to true humanity, to that which is appointed for all men. That is why he cannot present his truth to others as 'his' truth, but only as 'the truth'." So, as one lives in imitation of Jesus, one not only anticipates the future to which one is called, but also lives in the present in a way that is pleasing to God and blessed by God, especially when this way of life is steeped in the context of poverty, hunger, sorrow, or oppression. Paul expresses his version of this in Romans 5:1-5.
As we continue in this season of Epiphany, we see again and again how the glory of God, revealed in Jesus, reaches to the deepest levels of human existence. God's concern is for all -- uplifting the lowly and bringing down the lofty -- so that all are on the same playing field of his mercy. In a society peppered with "feel good" messages which depend upon the arm of flesh to generate, we need someone to speak to us a clear word that pierces through the darkness of our limited vision. Ultimately, the word we need to hear is the one that comes from God and tunes us in to what God is doing in the world. What God is doing is always for those in need, whether that need be of the lowly or of the lofty, whether the tone of the word be encouraging or judgmental, whether the action called forth comes from an individual or from the community.
In sensitive times such as ours, Christians need to be able to perceive the signs of unraveling with hope and find the means to share that hope realistically with a world in need of saving grace.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Jeremiah 17:5-10
This text comes as a distinct surprise in the prophecies of Jeremiah. It probably should include verse 11, and it is made up of Wisdom poetry, but it is not at all like the other pronouncements of the prophet. One cannot help but wonder if it comes from Jeremiah, and the same could be said of the short piece that follows in verses 12 and 13. However, the preceding passage in 17:1-4, that indicts Judah for the sin written on her heart and that forecasts the Babylonian exile, is certainly genuine, as is Jeremiah's following lament in 17:14-18.
Further, the preacher who tries to pair Jeremiah 17:5-10 with the stated Epistle and Gospel lessons will have a difficult time finding a common theme among them, although Luke's version of the Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel reading shares in the Wisdom genre.
Having said all of that, however, our text of Jeremiah 17:5-10 is quite appropriate to the prophet's historical situation during the last years of Judah's existence. The emphasis of 17:5-8 is on the contrast between those who trust in the power of human beings for their welfare and defense and those who trust in the Lord. Interestingly enough, most of the passages in the Old Testament that have a similar thought have to do with military situations. In Isaiah 31:3, that prophet proclaims, "The Egyptians are men, and not God;/ and their horses are flesh and not spirit." In 2 Chronicles 32:8, King Hezekiah says to his soldiers as they face the advancing Assyrian troops of Sennacherib, "With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the Lord our God, to help us and to fight our battles." And the psalmist of 146:3, tells us, "Put not your trust in princes,/ in a son of man in whom there is no help."
That contrast between reliance on the military might of a human army and on the power and defense of the Lord fits Jeremiah's historical situation. From 609 to 605 B.C., Judah, with her king Jehoiakim, was a vassal to Egypt, and Judah relied on Egyptian defense against the advances of Babylonia. Even after Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia defeated Egyptian troops in 605 B.C., Judah felt herself safe. And at the end, after Jehoiachin had succeeded his father to the throne and Nebuchadnezaar was busy elsewhere, Judah still relied on Egyptian aid. The result was the Babylonian defeat of Judah and the first deportation of the inhabitants of Jerusalem in 598 B.C., followed then by the final devastation of Judah and Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile of 587 B.C. As Ezekiel later declared to Egypt, "You have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel; when they grasped you by the hand, you broke" (Ezekiel 29:6).
In the light of those military events, the words of Jeremiah in our text are very appropriate and, indeed, may come from the prophet himself, who uses a familiar Wisdom saying to address his own situation. "Cursed is the man who trusts in man/ and makes flesh his arm,/ whose heart turns away from the Lord." Perhaps those are words appropriate to our American nation that finds its security solely in its military supremacy, while at the same time largely ignoring the rule of the God who is the Lord of all nations and history.
The second part of our text could also reflect Jeremiah's historical circumstances, and it may very well be prompted by the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah. The emphasis of the passage is on the human heart. Three times that word "heart" appears, in verses 5, 9, and 10 (cf. 17:1). The Lord God examines the heart of us humans, and it is with the devotion of our hearts that he is primarily concerned. In the words of Jesus, "For from within, out of the heart of (persons), come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things comes from within, and they defile a (person)."
According to the requirements of the covenant, Judah was to have the words of the Lord written on her heart (Deuteronomy 6:6). But 17:1 says that Judah's sin was written there instead, engraved with a point of diamond and impossible to remove. Earlier Jeremiah had proclaimed to his sinful people, "Circumcise ... the foreskins of your heart" (4:4) and Judah had not. But primary among the sinfulness of the people was that of the despotic King Jehoiakim, who, as verse 11 of our text says, had gotten himself "riches but not by right." It was Jehoiakim who had built himself a splendid house using slave labor (Jeremiah 22:13), who had shed innocent blood and practiced oppression and violence (22:17). And so, in verse 11, Jeremiah foretells the end of the fool Jehoiakim, who may well have been the victim of assassination in 598 B.C.
Such sentence came upon Jehoiakim, declares our text, and upon the sinful people of Judah who had forsaken the Lord, because God is the one who searches our minds and tests our hearts, and renders to each of us according to our ways. Those are thoughts found frequently in the scriptures (cf. 1 Samuel 16:7; Psalm 62:12; Jeremiah 11:20; Romans 8:27; Revelation 2:23). Thus, the Lord declares at the end of the Book of Revelation, "Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense, to repay everyone for what he has done."
I suppose the question for us from our morning's text, therefore, is: What is the condition of our hearts? Are they deceitful and corrupt, as were the hearts of the Judeans and their king in the time of Jeremiah, turned away from the Lord? And so shall we be like that cursed shrub in the desert, mentioned by our text, that finally will see no good from the Lord, but perish in a parched and wasted wilderness? Or are our hearts full of the trust in God that brings life, like the blessed life of a tree planted by streams of water, that never dies but always brings forth fruit? Our prophet and the rest of scripture tell us that God examines our hearts and knows their condition, and recompenses us accordingly.
But those are very fearful words, are they not? For you and I know that our hearts are never wholely pure, but always corrupted by our self-interest, our pride, our acquisitiveness, our failure to depend totally on our God. Are we, then, accursed and without hope in our lives, destined to wither and to die eternally? Or do we worship the God who, knowing the condition of our hearts, has pity on our weakness, and does not deal with us according to our sins, nor requite us according to our iniquities? Indeed, do we worship the God who, through the sacrifice of his Son, removes our transgressions from us, as far as the east is from the west, as far as the heavens are above the earth? That's the question. Do you worship that God? Above all else, do you trust him? If you do, then rejoice, good Christians, and give him thanks, and serve him all your days.
One of the ways to view the decadence that has taken over so much of the media these days is to understand it as an expression of thirsty souls searching for a quenching drink. This is the way it has always been in every age, of course; people pushing the boundaries of social norms out farther and farther in search of something more satisfying. Our age has its own urgency, however, because there is no place we can go without being exposed to the thirst, thanks to our hi-tech development. Also, the failure to quench the thirst leaves the public arena soiled with the signs of the search, most notably corpses strewn from dark alleys to penthouse patios. What the newspapers don't pick up, the tabloids do. Where they leave off, Jerry Springer and Howard Stern take up. And whatever seems marketable will eventually get on prime time and into everyone's coffee break conversations. We end up amusing ourselves to death, hoping to find a shimmer of glory along the way, however brief.
Jeremiah 17:5-10
We know we are on prophetic turf when we hear the words, "Thus says the Lord." Jeremiah had a hard word to speak to the people of God in his day. No one in his right mind would say the things that Jeremiah had to say, especially if they were words that the prophet simply made up and spoke on his own authority. The ridicule and the violent reaction that would ensue would be too much to bear on one's own shoulders. But, if the word was someone else's, an authoritative word that stood above and against the people despite their reaction to it, then the prophet could take heart and speak with boldness. The word has a strength of its own, because it comes from the source of authority itself and does not depend upon the veracity of the prophet. So it is that Jeremiah can proclaim the chilling truth that his fellow citizens will be exiled into a foreign land (17:4).
Jeremiah does not "re-invent the wheel" when it comes to expressing himself and the profound judgments from God. He finds inspiration and the very words themselves in such sources as Isaiah and the Psalms. Verse 5 is reminiscent of Isaiah 30:1-3, where Isaiah chastises Israel for putting too much reliance on their political pact with Egypt. Judah is trying to do the same thing again to counter Babylon's aggression. But, the prophet sees in this a lesson to be learned. Trust in the Lord instead of the creation of political alliances. There is no guarantee that these will work. It is more or less like a shrub in the desert, barely eking out an existence and doomed to die.
Jeremiah continues with a borrowed image from the Psalms. The one who trusts in the Lord is like a tree planted by water. The heat of deteriorating human relationships will not be able to destroy the tree, for it is well sustained by the nourishment of the stream. It is when the tree strays from the stream and seeks to root elsewhere that trouble ensues. The shrub in the desert does not stand much of a chance. But a tree near water -- there is the difference between life and death. Like a tree near water, when the people remain near God, relying on God's care for them instead of making flesh their arm (17:5), there is the fruit of life and prosperity.
If we look a few verses back to 16:18, we will see that God is really angered by the people. Yet, with these few words from our text, we see the movement of God's heart from curse to intended blessing. The human heart may fail and disappoint a person ("deceitful above all things," 17:9), but God is constant in his love and faithful to his promises for those who trust in him.
The description of the heart as desperately corrupt (17:9) is picked up by Jesus when he is addressing the issue of ritual versus real defilement. Jesus contends that it is not external matters that determine the cleanliness of an individual before God, but rather that which comes out of the heart. His list of defilements (Matthew 7:21-22) is enough to make any self-righteous person blush. It is for this reason that God (after all, who can understand the human heart?) must step into the picture and take a decisive role in judging the situation properly. God will "search the mind and try the heart" (17:10). The only recourse for the sinner is to turn to the Lord for refuge (17:17). It will be found. The promise of the ever-bearing fruit tree is given to the one who indeed trusts in the Lord.
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Apparently, there were different ideas cast about Corinth as to just what the resurrection of Jesus meant. Paul speaks directly about a physical, historical event that happened to the crucified Jesus, such that after three days in the grave, he was released from the bonds of death and appeared fully alive, Lord of life and Lord over death. This is what Paul preached. But, there were others who said that Jesus was not raised from the dead in this sense, but in more of a metaphorical sense (a la Willi Marxen in The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth: "For 'Jesus is risen' simply means: today the crucified Jesus is calling us to believe") or even not at all. Paul will have none of this. Either Christ was raised from the dead as he preached, or he was not. If he was not, then all faith in Jesus is misplaced trust, like a beggar going after a beggar for a home mortgage. What is at stake here is the nature of the Christian faith. Will it be the rightful heir of the Judaic articles of faith that puts God right into the stream of history, working out our salvation with hands-on intervention, presence, power and guidance? Or, will the newfound faith be a mental trip, perhaps along gnostic lines, where one only has to "get it straight in your head." The faith becomes a kind of philosophical religion, resting upon one's proper perception of truth and how to arrive at it through mental processes, rather than through a living relationship with the risen Lord.
There are metaphorical uses of the key word nekroz in the Old and New Testaments. In Psalm 30:1-3, praise is given to God for healing powers that restore the sick, who are like those who have already died ("from among those gone down to the Pit"). In Romans 6:11, Paul explains that one of the consequences of baptism is a life that is lived "dead to sin" and very much alive to God. There are also examples from the intellectual culture of the Stoics, who considered anyone not in tune with the world of philosophy as dead. Jesus also used a metaphorical meaning for nekroz in the same sentence in which he uses a literal meaning. In Matthew 8:22 (also Luke 9:60), Jesus calls those who do not truly believe in him and follow him as dead, who should be left to bury their dead; while for those responding to Jesus' call, it is more urgent for them to follow immediately. Jesus' call to discipleship has a higher priority than any other duty.
Along with the argument about circumcision (Acts 15, Galatians), this matter of properly understanding the resurrection of Jesus and the promised resurrection of the dead is a defining point essential to the message of Christianity. Circumcision deals with the relationship between law and gospel. The resurrection deals with the relationship between time and eternity. Eternal life is an ontological reality, just as much as life in time is an ontological reality. The resurrection is the door from one into the other. That is why Paul can write, "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied" (15:19).
The resurrection is an ontological reality, not just a psychological one. Peter harmonizes with Paul on this theme, when he writes, "By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). The resurrection authenticates what Jesus accomplished on the cross by his sacrificial and atoning death. When Paul gave defense before the Roman governor Festus for his faith in the crucified and risen Lord, Festus declared Paul mad (Acts 26:24). Paul would not back down, even if it meant losing his head over the matter (which it finally did!). He knew what Wolfhart Pannenberg explains in Jesus -- God and Man: "Jesus' resurrection was at first understood, not as an abrogation of the law, but as a confirmation of Jesus' activity in the sense of the New Moses and thus completely in continuity with the Mosaic law." Pannenberg goes on to draw out the importance of the resurrection in the context of understanding the doctrine of the two natures of Christ. The beginning point, he argues, for understanding Jesus as the Christ is not the incarnation and birth narratives, but rather the resurrection, which confirms retroactively "for the entirety of his existence" Jesus' unity with God.
Luke 6:17-26
Matthew is interested in locating Jesus' sermon on a mountain. It is an elevated place and speaks to his authority, just like Moses received the Commandments on Mount Sinai and Elijah dispatched the false prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. When important things take place in the Bible, more often than not, it is on the mountain. (See also Matthew 15:29f for healings and Matthew 17:1f for the Transfiguration and, of course, Mark 10:32f for the literal and figurative sense of "going up to Jerusalem" for his crucifixion.) Luke stresses a little geographical detail that tips his hand as a Gospel writer. Because of this detail, some have referred to Luke's version as the Sermon on the Plain. The description of Jesus standing on a level place with the people gathered about him points out the down-to-earth nature of Jesus' ministry. He was truly with the people in every way; even his birth was lowly (viz. Matthew's royal account of the one who comes as the king of the Jews). Jesus was of the people and for the people.
What makes for being makarioz differs in Luke than what Matthew records. Again, Luke is a bit more down-to-earth in what he describes makes for the blessed life. It is Jesus' promise to counter the practical, day-to-day forces that seek to do us in: poverty, hunger, sorrow, and broken relationships. Matthew's account has a more spiritual spin to it: poor in spirit, hunger and thirst after righteousness; those who mourn shall be comforted, whereas in Luke, they shall laugh! Though there is a similarity in both regarding persecution, Matthew stops with the promised reward in heaven. Luke adds four woes, which shall afflict those who are now rich, full, comedic, and well-spoken of.
For the most part, Jesus' message as reported in the Gospels is positive. It is left to the prophets in particular, most recently John the Baptist, to speak with acid tongue against the sins of the people. But here (as well as with the cleansing of the Temple and then with his extended comments in Matthew 23 against the scribes and Pharisees), Jesus contrasts the spirit of the present age with the spirit that is akin to the kingdom of heaven. Even with Olympian zeal, going for the gold of wealth, satisfaction, pleasure, and reputation will not draw one into the kingdom of heaven. That comes as a gift from God across the great divide which separates heaven from earth, symbolized by the earthly realities of poverty, hunger, sorrow, and oppression. "Woe" to those who spend their life's energies in pursuit of the former, not perceiving their own need and neglecting to see the needs of others!
The teaching and healing ministry of Jesus were not two separate entities, coexisting like two corporations with independent functions, even though they may belong to the same parent company. They were intricately combined one with the other. That is why Luke along with the other Synoptic Gospel writers pairs the teaching and healing ministry together in a single report. Luke 6:17 is an example of this. (See for examples Matthew 4:23-25 which sets up Matthew's placement of the Sermon on the Mount; also, Mark 2:1f.) The gospel of Jesus brings a wholeness to body and mind and spirit. The physical and the mental and the spiritual are all part of the entirety of humanity that needs to be touched by the goodness of God. Jesus is the goodness of God with us, bringing us into the presence of the power of God for us, shaping our bodies and our minds and our wills to his purposes.
Application
Renowned historian Jacques Barzun, in his culminating work From Dawn to Decadence, describes the culture of Western civilization as "old and unraveling." He writes of "a floating hostility to things as they are," manifested by recurrent usage of such "dismissive prefixes anti- and post- (anti-art, post-
modernism)" and by promises "to reinvent this or that institution." The words of Jeremiah, Paul, and Jesus are ever timely, speaking to our era as they did to eras gone by.
Government, education, and self-help initiatives are three icons that are lifted up throughout our society as hope for the future. More and more each seek to stand without substantial reference to deity. This is done either by tacitly denying the existence of God, which is the cry of a vocal minority in the community, or by acknowledging the divine but leaving it up to each person to discover its nature through one of many possible ways. Both leave the individual standing alone to shape whatever meaning there is to be. Fans of Xena: Warrior Princess will recognize in her the heroic person representing the latter perspective, although just as at home in a world in which the gods would no longer exist. (Interestingly enough, in the unfolding storyline, the birth of Xena's daughter, Eve, is bringing about the end of the gods, begun by Hercules' patricide of Zeus and Ares, god of war, yielding up his immortality to pursue his amorous interests on earth with Xena.)
The voice of Jeremiah rails out against this. There is one God over all the cosmos and its history. For individuals to find meaning in their lives, it is necessary to submit to God's rule and authority, just like a tree needs to be planted by a stream of living water. Rather than deny God or treat God as an abstract spirituality toward which one may journey on one of many routes, the individual must come to terms with God as revealed in the historical realities of Israel. There is only one Lord, the God of Israel. Not to put trust in the Lord is to put trust in the self, which "makes flesh his arm" (Jeremiah 17:5). Such attempts, even if they created a pantheon of good (the gods of spirituality), would be futile, like a shrub trying to grow in a salt desert.
There is a resurgent interest today in mummification, not only for people, but also for pets. This, too, is a spit into the winds of change, that indeed threaten to whisk away into oblivion all that we would hope to hold dear. Enter Paul and his bold witness to the resurrection, which many even today consider "mad." Paul is adamant in affirming that the historical particularity of God's revelation (that the law and prophets chronicle) is fulfilled in the crucifixion and resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus. If this is not true, then all we are left with is what Snoopy received from Linus and Charlie Brown. On a cold day, they walk up to a shivering Snoopy, pat him on the head and say, "Be of good cheer." Then, they walk away. Snoopy is left, still shivering, with a big question mark looming over his head, as if to ask, "You mean, that's it?" So, too, as Paul admits, if Christ has not been raised, we are of all people most to be pitied. For we would have no future other than what we experience here on earth, where the winds blow freely and shift the sands to bury the past (at one point someone's future!), only to be studied by those interested in antiquities.
There is a proleptic value in the reality of the resurrection, which is Christ's already and ours yet to come. Jurgen Moltmann expressed this years ago in Theology of Hope, when he wrote about the mission and call from God for man that reveals the disparity between the human and the divine. Yet, God in mercy has shaped a future for his beloved and calls him into it by virtue of Christ's going before. Thus, the mission and call from God to man "reveal and open up to him new possibilities, with the result that he can become what he is not yet and never yet was." A consequence of faith in the crucified and risen Lord Jesus, is that believers do not understand themselves as adherents of a religion which is one among many, but the one which truly reveals the future for all. In Christ alone can one be said to be "on the way to true humanity, to that which is appointed for all men. That is why he cannot present his truth to others as 'his' truth, but only as 'the truth'." So, as one lives in imitation of Jesus, one not only anticipates the future to which one is called, but also lives in the present in a way that is pleasing to God and blessed by God, especially when this way of life is steeped in the context of poverty, hunger, sorrow, or oppression. Paul expresses his version of this in Romans 5:1-5.
As we continue in this season of Epiphany, we see again and again how the glory of God, revealed in Jesus, reaches to the deepest levels of human existence. God's concern is for all -- uplifting the lowly and bringing down the lofty -- so that all are on the same playing field of his mercy. In a society peppered with "feel good" messages which depend upon the arm of flesh to generate, we need someone to speak to us a clear word that pierces through the darkness of our limited vision. Ultimately, the word we need to hear is the one that comes from God and tunes us in to what God is doing in the world. What God is doing is always for those in need, whether that need be of the lowly or of the lofty, whether the tone of the word be encouraging or judgmental, whether the action called forth comes from an individual or from the community.
In sensitive times such as ours, Christians need to be able to perceive the signs of unraveling with hope and find the means to share that hope realistically with a world in need of saving grace.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Jeremiah 17:5-10
This text comes as a distinct surprise in the prophecies of Jeremiah. It probably should include verse 11, and it is made up of Wisdom poetry, but it is not at all like the other pronouncements of the prophet. One cannot help but wonder if it comes from Jeremiah, and the same could be said of the short piece that follows in verses 12 and 13. However, the preceding passage in 17:1-4, that indicts Judah for the sin written on her heart and that forecasts the Babylonian exile, is certainly genuine, as is Jeremiah's following lament in 17:14-18.
Further, the preacher who tries to pair Jeremiah 17:5-10 with the stated Epistle and Gospel lessons will have a difficult time finding a common theme among them, although Luke's version of the Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel reading shares in the Wisdom genre.
Having said all of that, however, our text of Jeremiah 17:5-10 is quite appropriate to the prophet's historical situation during the last years of Judah's existence. The emphasis of 17:5-8 is on the contrast between those who trust in the power of human beings for their welfare and defense and those who trust in the Lord. Interestingly enough, most of the passages in the Old Testament that have a similar thought have to do with military situations. In Isaiah 31:3, that prophet proclaims, "The Egyptians are men, and not God;/ and their horses are flesh and not spirit." In 2 Chronicles 32:8, King Hezekiah says to his soldiers as they face the advancing Assyrian troops of Sennacherib, "With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the Lord our God, to help us and to fight our battles." And the psalmist of 146:3, tells us, "Put not your trust in princes,/ in a son of man in whom there is no help."
That contrast between reliance on the military might of a human army and on the power and defense of the Lord fits Jeremiah's historical situation. From 609 to 605 B.C., Judah, with her king Jehoiakim, was a vassal to Egypt, and Judah relied on Egyptian defense against the advances of Babylonia. Even after Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia defeated Egyptian troops in 605 B.C., Judah felt herself safe. And at the end, after Jehoiachin had succeeded his father to the throne and Nebuchadnezaar was busy elsewhere, Judah still relied on Egyptian aid. The result was the Babylonian defeat of Judah and the first deportation of the inhabitants of Jerusalem in 598 B.C., followed then by the final devastation of Judah and Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile of 587 B.C. As Ezekiel later declared to Egypt, "You have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel; when they grasped you by the hand, you broke" (Ezekiel 29:6).
In the light of those military events, the words of Jeremiah in our text are very appropriate and, indeed, may come from the prophet himself, who uses a familiar Wisdom saying to address his own situation. "Cursed is the man who trusts in man/ and makes flesh his arm,/ whose heart turns away from the Lord." Perhaps those are words appropriate to our American nation that finds its security solely in its military supremacy, while at the same time largely ignoring the rule of the God who is the Lord of all nations and history.
The second part of our text could also reflect Jeremiah's historical circumstances, and it may very well be prompted by the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah. The emphasis of the passage is on the human heart. Three times that word "heart" appears, in verses 5, 9, and 10 (cf. 17:1). The Lord God examines the heart of us humans, and it is with the devotion of our hearts that he is primarily concerned. In the words of Jesus, "For from within, out of the heart of (persons), come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things comes from within, and they defile a (person)."
According to the requirements of the covenant, Judah was to have the words of the Lord written on her heart (Deuteronomy 6:6). But 17:1 says that Judah's sin was written there instead, engraved with a point of diamond and impossible to remove. Earlier Jeremiah had proclaimed to his sinful people, "Circumcise ... the foreskins of your heart" (4:4) and Judah had not. But primary among the sinfulness of the people was that of the despotic King Jehoiakim, who, as verse 11 of our text says, had gotten himself "riches but not by right." It was Jehoiakim who had built himself a splendid house using slave labor (Jeremiah 22:13), who had shed innocent blood and practiced oppression and violence (22:17). And so, in verse 11, Jeremiah foretells the end of the fool Jehoiakim, who may well have been the victim of assassination in 598 B.C.
Such sentence came upon Jehoiakim, declares our text, and upon the sinful people of Judah who had forsaken the Lord, because God is the one who searches our minds and tests our hearts, and renders to each of us according to our ways. Those are thoughts found frequently in the scriptures (cf. 1 Samuel 16:7; Psalm 62:12; Jeremiah 11:20; Romans 8:27; Revelation 2:23). Thus, the Lord declares at the end of the Book of Revelation, "Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense, to repay everyone for what he has done."
I suppose the question for us from our morning's text, therefore, is: What is the condition of our hearts? Are they deceitful and corrupt, as were the hearts of the Judeans and their king in the time of Jeremiah, turned away from the Lord? And so shall we be like that cursed shrub in the desert, mentioned by our text, that finally will see no good from the Lord, but perish in a parched and wasted wilderness? Or are our hearts full of the trust in God that brings life, like the blessed life of a tree planted by streams of water, that never dies but always brings forth fruit? Our prophet and the rest of scripture tell us that God examines our hearts and knows their condition, and recompenses us accordingly.
But those are very fearful words, are they not? For you and I know that our hearts are never wholely pure, but always corrupted by our self-interest, our pride, our acquisitiveness, our failure to depend totally on our God. Are we, then, accursed and without hope in our lives, destined to wither and to die eternally? Or do we worship the God who, knowing the condition of our hearts, has pity on our weakness, and does not deal with us according to our sins, nor requite us according to our iniquities? Indeed, do we worship the God who, through the sacrifice of his Son, removes our transgressions from us, as far as the east is from the west, as far as the heavens are above the earth? That's the question. Do you worship that God? Above all else, do you trust him? If you do, then rejoice, good Christians, and give him thanks, and serve him all your days.
