The Children Of Promise
Sermon
The Presence In The Promise
First Lesson Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany Cycle C
A serial killer is the object of a serious psychological study in the novel The Alienist by Caleb Carr. The alienist in the nineteenth century was an expert in mental pathology. In this story, set in 1896, the alienist is Llazo Kreizler, hired by Theodore Roosevelt, then Commissioner of the New York City Police Department. Mr. Roosevelt was intent upon apprehending the serial killer of the young boys caught in the web of an unsavory lifestyle. As Kreizler tries to develop a characterization of the nature of the killer, a woman on his handpicked staff suggests that the primary clue to understanding this warped personality is that he had been abused by or totally rejected by his mother. At first Kreizler ignores the suggestion. Later he has good reason to capitulate to the suggestion, and the idea becomes an important factor in discovering the killer. The novel is historical in its setting, and is remarkably well constructed and written.
Mr. Carr has rendered us a service in helping us to understand that the perversity of our generation is not new. Furthermore, the novel strongly suggests that our present struggles to assist and strengthen the family are vital to the health of our society. The Lessons appointed for this Second Sunday after Christmas indicate that, in spite of the universal perversity of humanity, we are capable of being saved and enjoying great security as the children of promise. The Holy Gospel relates how we have power to "become the children of God." In the First Lesson the Prophet Jeremiah explains the blessings of the children of God. What Jeremiah has to say is important for us as the children of promise.
The Context
Jeremiah would appear to be the least likely of the prophets to say anything encouraging about Israel as the people of God. We do not know much about the personal lives of most of the prophets, but we do know enough about Jeremiah to realize just how unpopular he was. He was not understood by his colleagues, and the people in general did not appreciate him. Commonly, he was regarded as being a wild crusader who was not going to serve the welfare of his people. Because Jeremiah sensed that the people of Israel were under judgment for their indifference to the covenant God had made with them, he knew the signs were present which indicated Judah would be overrun by the Babylonians and carried into exile. He preached the warning about Judah's imminent fall. The people believed Jeremiah wanted that to happen. The people suggested Jeremiah must be on the side of the Babylonians. The princes opposed him, and the temple guard Pashur had Jeremiah arrested. However, no legal action or imprisonment could keep the prophet from preaching what needed to be said as a clear revelation from God.
It was not out of hatred or revenge that Jeremiah was teaching what he did. However, the prophet could not deliver what was popular or what the people wanted to hear. The prophet was not called to entertain the crowd or fill them with optimism about their future. Faithful to his calling, Jeremiah consistently called the people to repentance and made the effort to help the people understand the judgment that awaited them. This was not easy for Jeremiah. There were times he himself was bitter towards God and wondered why his people could not get a better break. In those moments he was not disgusted with the civil or ecclesiastical leaders or the people. At those times he was disgusted and discouraged that God could not make the situation right with some kind of fiat. He had believed that God's word would be effective among the people, but he just could not see the good results.
God Does Save
Jeremiah's bitterness resulted from his feeling of being deceived by God. He had thought that when he accepted the office of prophet that things would go well. The people should have responded affirmatively by believing. However, the people did not. Yet why should God be picking on these people when the other nations were even worse that the people of Judah, and they appeared to be prosperous and powerful? How come? The answers were obvious. Other nations also will ultimately suffer the judgment of God. However, for now the people of Judah were the ones who should have known better. They had the covenant of God. They had been chosen of God to be especially blessed. Jeremiah had begun his ministry during the reign of Josiah, a faithful servant of God, who had instituted temple reform. Unfortunately, Josiah had made a bad military judgment and was killed in battle by Pharaoh Necho and his Egyptian army at the Battle of Meggido. Josiah was succeeded by his son Jehoiakim, who ruled as a puppet of Necho.
Jehoiakim was cruel, selfish, sensuous, and totally ineffective as a king. During the reign of Jehoiakim the people suffered from the lack of leadership, and they had become perfunctory and indifferent in their religious life. Jeremiah felt deeply for these people, and he also sensed how God felt about them. God would never give up on them. God would save them. Jeremiah had all these feelings swelling within himself. He was angry with the people for not believing, yet he loved them. He was still bitter towards God for the judgment on Judah, and yet he sympathized with God's predicament. He hated himself for what he had to do, but he knew he had to do it. It was the word, the word of God, that guaranteed it would all come out right. The word said in God's own time and God's own way God would save and redeem God's people. In spite of all of his own feelings, Jeremiah knew God would not renege on God's earlier promises
God Gathers
The prophet could proclaim, "Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, and declare it in the coast lands far away; say 'He who scattered Israel will gather him and will keep him as a shepherd a flock.' " Israel's exile to Babylon should not be regarded as happenstance. Israel would have to pay the price for not having regarded the covenant God had made with Israel. It was God who would scatter Israel and uproot this people from their place among the nations. Israel could not afford to ignore the offer of God's providence and grace. To live apart from the rule and dominion of God, would be to suffer life without the benefit of God's protective arm. That would result in the scattering of Israel. Israel would be scattered because God had not only allowed them to be carried into exile, but had also arranged history so that when people ignore the offers of God's grace they must accept the fate that others will deal them. The enemies can take over.
At the same time God is not indifferent to the promises and offers God had made in the past. As surely as God had scattered them, God would also gather them. This was the good word the prophet could offer. Not only would God see to it that they would be able to return home, but God would also attend them like a shepherd tends his flock. We know how our Lord Jesus Christ seized on this model of God's care for God's people. Jesus identified himself as the Good Shepherd. When Jesus did that, Jesus was not introducing a new idea. Rather, Jesus drew on the shepherd models in the Psalms, the Prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and the Hebrew tradition that could find comfort in God's behavior toward them as the Shepherd God. The prophet explained briefly what that meant, God "will keep him (Israel) as a shepherd a flock." Jesus explained that further as the Shepherd giving his life for the sheep.
God Ransoms
Shepherding the people of God involved more than bringing them from the far flung corners of the earth to reinstall them in Jerusalem. The prophet continues, "For the Lord has ransomed Jacob and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him." A homecoming is exciting in itself. However, to recover from what has happened in a strange land is not easy. In America we know how painful the process has been when our people in the services have returned home after fighting in war. The social and economic pressures have been difficult enough for servicemen returning home from the wars. Our most recent memory of how difficult that can be was with our people who served in Vietnam. Many returned when their fellow service people were still in 'Nam. Most had seen the worst of the terrors of war. They returned to see their fellow citizens living in protest of the war they had fought. They returned to an economy that did not treat them well and in many cases left them jobless. They returned with an appetite for the drugs that had eased their struggle with an awful war. All of them returned shocked by the kind of inhumanity that war introduced to history. Like the scars of war, Jeremiah knew his people would bring deep wounds from their exile.
Jeremiah knew that some exiles would be maimed by blindness and lameness, but all would be weeping. The tragedy of it all was that they realized that they had been overcome by a world power, the "hands too strong for" them. They had to be humbled in this way to discover their dependence upon the God who had chosen them to be a special and unique demonstration of God's care for people. They would be but a remnant of Israel, a number greatly dwindled from a nation God had sought to make large in the family of nations. They would be but a shadow of their former glory, but they could be sure they were still God's people. "For," God says, "I have become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn." God could never forget the promise God had made and protected from the day God first called Israel in the wilderness.
They Shall Repent
The remnant who experience the return from exile by the hand of God will be repentant. However, their repentance will appear differently than we normally expect. Usually we think of people groveling in the dust and ashes as they mourn over their sinfulness and renounce their stubbornness. This time, however, the repentance obviously would be different. It was not as though the remnant had no sorrow for their sins. This people will have had their days of mourning and sorrow for their rebelliousness and their indifference toward God. They will have paid a price in their exile, but they also will have been brought low to acknowledge their sinfulness. Then followed those days in which they were sorrowful because they were sure that God could not nor would not forgive them for their folly of unbelief. They were to have long periods in which they were sure that they would have to spend the rest of their days in repentance and sorrow for what had happened to them. They could also read the signs of the times as indications they would never gain the strength on their own to break out of their exile and return to their homeland. The prophet, however, saw otherwise.
Though the prophet scored the people for their apostasy, he could also encourage the remnant to look forward to that time when they could sing songs of gladness and raise shouts of joy. Their repentance would take the form of strong assurances of hope and confidence that God was in their midst to work their redemption as the people of God. Now their sorrow will be turned into gladness, their mourning into joy. The sign of their repentance is that they would have hope when there would be no apparent reasons for them to have hope. They will believe that they were going home when there was no announcement of a deliverer on the scene. But they would know who the Deliver is. He who had scattered Israel would gather them and keep them as a shepherd keeps his flock. God would behave toward them as God had acted on behalf of the people of Israel from the beginning.
A Time For Joy
One can understand why this pericope, or lesson, was chosen for this Second Sunday after Christmas. All the prophetic encouragement to engage in songs of joy and gladness fits this season when we recognize what God has done for us in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus took on the role of the Good Shepherd when he came to be our Savior and Redeemer. Jesus referred to himself as the Good Shepherd. He used the illustrations of the work of the Good Shepherd to explain what he would accomplish for our salvation. When God did return the remnant, the exiles in Babylon, to Jerusalem, God used an alien king of Syria to serve as their benefactor. The king not only released them from their captivity but granted them safety on their return and allowed them to take with them the sacred vessels that had been taken from the Temple. However generous Darius proved to be, the role of Good Shepherd belonged to God, who used the king for his purpose, which God continued until the sending of God's Son, who would be the incarnation of this role of Good Shepherd.
We know the role of Good Shepherd cost Jesus of Nazareth his life as he laid down his life for the sheep. However, the prophet did not ask the remnant to count the cost God would have to pay to move them out of exile. What he asked them to do was to look to the word of the Lord, trust what God had promised and know that he would deliver them. That is what we are called to do in this Christmastide. As we look to what God has done in the sending of God's Son in human form to be laid in a manger, we cannot think of the Child without reflecting on the fact that the Christ is destined to be nailed on the cross for our sakes. Yet in this Christmastide we are called to that kind of repentant faith that rejoices and exults in the fact that the Holy Child is the most holy and dearest sign of God's grace and love for us.
We Celebrate
There are times in our lives when we are encouraged to cheer up. Sometimes those times come when it appears as though there is nothing to cheer about. We think of how difficult it is to keep a stiff upper lip, let alone rejoice when the family has suffered the loss of a dear one. We know how hard it is to be cheerful when we have had a bad report from the doctor on the outcome of our checkup. We cannot deny our feelings of grief or pain at those times. However, what the prophet could say in the worst of times and what our observance of Christmastide holds out to us is that we can break out of our hurt and suffering to celebrate the goodness of God. Christmas comes each year when darkness settles so heavily upon the creation. We try to offset that with the blaze and gleam of our Christmas lights. However, the news of the world, local, national, and international, always reflects the trauma of the human condition.
It is important for us to celebrate the goodness of God in the midst of the worst news from the world. Pastors often have difficulty making appointments with shut-ins in order to commune them. A frequent answer is, "Not today, Pastor. I'm not feeling well." At that time the pastor can offer that this is when the shut-in needs the pastor the most. It is then that the pastor can offer the rich consolation of the gospel. We are equipped with the gospel to bring consolation at the darkest of times. The prophet says, "I will give the priests their fill of fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my bounty." The people of God have every reason to sing aloud and to be "radiant over the goodness of the Lord."
Mr. Carr has rendered us a service in helping us to understand that the perversity of our generation is not new. Furthermore, the novel strongly suggests that our present struggles to assist and strengthen the family are vital to the health of our society. The Lessons appointed for this Second Sunday after Christmas indicate that, in spite of the universal perversity of humanity, we are capable of being saved and enjoying great security as the children of promise. The Holy Gospel relates how we have power to "become the children of God." In the First Lesson the Prophet Jeremiah explains the blessings of the children of God. What Jeremiah has to say is important for us as the children of promise.
The Context
Jeremiah would appear to be the least likely of the prophets to say anything encouraging about Israel as the people of God. We do not know much about the personal lives of most of the prophets, but we do know enough about Jeremiah to realize just how unpopular he was. He was not understood by his colleagues, and the people in general did not appreciate him. Commonly, he was regarded as being a wild crusader who was not going to serve the welfare of his people. Because Jeremiah sensed that the people of Israel were under judgment for their indifference to the covenant God had made with them, he knew the signs were present which indicated Judah would be overrun by the Babylonians and carried into exile. He preached the warning about Judah's imminent fall. The people believed Jeremiah wanted that to happen. The people suggested Jeremiah must be on the side of the Babylonians. The princes opposed him, and the temple guard Pashur had Jeremiah arrested. However, no legal action or imprisonment could keep the prophet from preaching what needed to be said as a clear revelation from God.
It was not out of hatred or revenge that Jeremiah was teaching what he did. However, the prophet could not deliver what was popular or what the people wanted to hear. The prophet was not called to entertain the crowd or fill them with optimism about their future. Faithful to his calling, Jeremiah consistently called the people to repentance and made the effort to help the people understand the judgment that awaited them. This was not easy for Jeremiah. There were times he himself was bitter towards God and wondered why his people could not get a better break. In those moments he was not disgusted with the civil or ecclesiastical leaders or the people. At those times he was disgusted and discouraged that God could not make the situation right with some kind of fiat. He had believed that God's word would be effective among the people, but he just could not see the good results.
God Does Save
Jeremiah's bitterness resulted from his feeling of being deceived by God. He had thought that when he accepted the office of prophet that things would go well. The people should have responded affirmatively by believing. However, the people did not. Yet why should God be picking on these people when the other nations were even worse that the people of Judah, and they appeared to be prosperous and powerful? How come? The answers were obvious. Other nations also will ultimately suffer the judgment of God. However, for now the people of Judah were the ones who should have known better. They had the covenant of God. They had been chosen of God to be especially blessed. Jeremiah had begun his ministry during the reign of Josiah, a faithful servant of God, who had instituted temple reform. Unfortunately, Josiah had made a bad military judgment and was killed in battle by Pharaoh Necho and his Egyptian army at the Battle of Meggido. Josiah was succeeded by his son Jehoiakim, who ruled as a puppet of Necho.
Jehoiakim was cruel, selfish, sensuous, and totally ineffective as a king. During the reign of Jehoiakim the people suffered from the lack of leadership, and they had become perfunctory and indifferent in their religious life. Jeremiah felt deeply for these people, and he also sensed how God felt about them. God would never give up on them. God would save them. Jeremiah had all these feelings swelling within himself. He was angry with the people for not believing, yet he loved them. He was still bitter towards God for the judgment on Judah, and yet he sympathized with God's predicament. He hated himself for what he had to do, but he knew he had to do it. It was the word, the word of God, that guaranteed it would all come out right. The word said in God's own time and God's own way God would save and redeem God's people. In spite of all of his own feelings, Jeremiah knew God would not renege on God's earlier promises
God Gathers
The prophet could proclaim, "Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, and declare it in the coast lands far away; say 'He who scattered Israel will gather him and will keep him as a shepherd a flock.' " Israel's exile to Babylon should not be regarded as happenstance. Israel would have to pay the price for not having regarded the covenant God had made with Israel. It was God who would scatter Israel and uproot this people from their place among the nations. Israel could not afford to ignore the offer of God's providence and grace. To live apart from the rule and dominion of God, would be to suffer life without the benefit of God's protective arm. That would result in the scattering of Israel. Israel would be scattered because God had not only allowed them to be carried into exile, but had also arranged history so that when people ignore the offers of God's grace they must accept the fate that others will deal them. The enemies can take over.
At the same time God is not indifferent to the promises and offers God had made in the past. As surely as God had scattered them, God would also gather them. This was the good word the prophet could offer. Not only would God see to it that they would be able to return home, but God would also attend them like a shepherd tends his flock. We know how our Lord Jesus Christ seized on this model of God's care for God's people. Jesus identified himself as the Good Shepherd. When Jesus did that, Jesus was not introducing a new idea. Rather, Jesus drew on the shepherd models in the Psalms, the Prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and the Hebrew tradition that could find comfort in God's behavior toward them as the Shepherd God. The prophet explained briefly what that meant, God "will keep him (Israel) as a shepherd a flock." Jesus explained that further as the Shepherd giving his life for the sheep.
God Ransoms
Shepherding the people of God involved more than bringing them from the far flung corners of the earth to reinstall them in Jerusalem. The prophet continues, "For the Lord has ransomed Jacob and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him." A homecoming is exciting in itself. However, to recover from what has happened in a strange land is not easy. In America we know how painful the process has been when our people in the services have returned home after fighting in war. The social and economic pressures have been difficult enough for servicemen returning home from the wars. Our most recent memory of how difficult that can be was with our people who served in Vietnam. Many returned when their fellow service people were still in 'Nam. Most had seen the worst of the terrors of war. They returned to see their fellow citizens living in protest of the war they had fought. They returned to an economy that did not treat them well and in many cases left them jobless. They returned with an appetite for the drugs that had eased their struggle with an awful war. All of them returned shocked by the kind of inhumanity that war introduced to history. Like the scars of war, Jeremiah knew his people would bring deep wounds from their exile.
Jeremiah knew that some exiles would be maimed by blindness and lameness, but all would be weeping. The tragedy of it all was that they realized that they had been overcome by a world power, the "hands too strong for" them. They had to be humbled in this way to discover their dependence upon the God who had chosen them to be a special and unique demonstration of God's care for people. They would be but a remnant of Israel, a number greatly dwindled from a nation God had sought to make large in the family of nations. They would be but a shadow of their former glory, but they could be sure they were still God's people. "For," God says, "I have become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn." God could never forget the promise God had made and protected from the day God first called Israel in the wilderness.
They Shall Repent
The remnant who experience the return from exile by the hand of God will be repentant. However, their repentance will appear differently than we normally expect. Usually we think of people groveling in the dust and ashes as they mourn over their sinfulness and renounce their stubbornness. This time, however, the repentance obviously would be different. It was not as though the remnant had no sorrow for their sins. This people will have had their days of mourning and sorrow for their rebelliousness and their indifference toward God. They will have paid a price in their exile, but they also will have been brought low to acknowledge their sinfulness. Then followed those days in which they were sorrowful because they were sure that God could not nor would not forgive them for their folly of unbelief. They were to have long periods in which they were sure that they would have to spend the rest of their days in repentance and sorrow for what had happened to them. They could also read the signs of the times as indications they would never gain the strength on their own to break out of their exile and return to their homeland. The prophet, however, saw otherwise.
Though the prophet scored the people for their apostasy, he could also encourage the remnant to look forward to that time when they could sing songs of gladness and raise shouts of joy. Their repentance would take the form of strong assurances of hope and confidence that God was in their midst to work their redemption as the people of God. Now their sorrow will be turned into gladness, their mourning into joy. The sign of their repentance is that they would have hope when there would be no apparent reasons for them to have hope. They will believe that they were going home when there was no announcement of a deliverer on the scene. But they would know who the Deliver is. He who had scattered Israel would gather them and keep them as a shepherd keeps his flock. God would behave toward them as God had acted on behalf of the people of Israel from the beginning.
A Time For Joy
One can understand why this pericope, or lesson, was chosen for this Second Sunday after Christmas. All the prophetic encouragement to engage in songs of joy and gladness fits this season when we recognize what God has done for us in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus took on the role of the Good Shepherd when he came to be our Savior and Redeemer. Jesus referred to himself as the Good Shepherd. He used the illustrations of the work of the Good Shepherd to explain what he would accomplish for our salvation. When God did return the remnant, the exiles in Babylon, to Jerusalem, God used an alien king of Syria to serve as their benefactor. The king not only released them from their captivity but granted them safety on their return and allowed them to take with them the sacred vessels that had been taken from the Temple. However generous Darius proved to be, the role of Good Shepherd belonged to God, who used the king for his purpose, which God continued until the sending of God's Son, who would be the incarnation of this role of Good Shepherd.
We know the role of Good Shepherd cost Jesus of Nazareth his life as he laid down his life for the sheep. However, the prophet did not ask the remnant to count the cost God would have to pay to move them out of exile. What he asked them to do was to look to the word of the Lord, trust what God had promised and know that he would deliver them. That is what we are called to do in this Christmastide. As we look to what God has done in the sending of God's Son in human form to be laid in a manger, we cannot think of the Child without reflecting on the fact that the Christ is destined to be nailed on the cross for our sakes. Yet in this Christmastide we are called to that kind of repentant faith that rejoices and exults in the fact that the Holy Child is the most holy and dearest sign of God's grace and love for us.
We Celebrate
There are times in our lives when we are encouraged to cheer up. Sometimes those times come when it appears as though there is nothing to cheer about. We think of how difficult it is to keep a stiff upper lip, let alone rejoice when the family has suffered the loss of a dear one. We know how hard it is to be cheerful when we have had a bad report from the doctor on the outcome of our checkup. We cannot deny our feelings of grief or pain at those times. However, what the prophet could say in the worst of times and what our observance of Christmastide holds out to us is that we can break out of our hurt and suffering to celebrate the goodness of God. Christmas comes each year when darkness settles so heavily upon the creation. We try to offset that with the blaze and gleam of our Christmas lights. However, the news of the world, local, national, and international, always reflects the trauma of the human condition.
It is important for us to celebrate the goodness of God in the midst of the worst news from the world. Pastors often have difficulty making appointments with shut-ins in order to commune them. A frequent answer is, "Not today, Pastor. I'm not feeling well." At that time the pastor can offer that this is when the shut-in needs the pastor the most. It is then that the pastor can offer the rich consolation of the gospel. We are equipped with the gospel to bring consolation at the darkest of times. The prophet says, "I will give the priests their fill of fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my bounty." The people of God have every reason to sing aloud and to be "radiant over the goodness of the Lord."
