Daily Prophets
Day 112
“In that day-declares the Lord of Hosts-I will break the yoke from your neck and I will rip off your bonds. Strangers shall no longer make slaves of them, instead they shall serve Adonai, their God. …I did these things to you because your iniquity was so great and your sins so many. But I will bring healing to you and cure you for your wounds declares God.”(Jeremiah 31:8,15,17)
Jeremiah is called on to “write down in a scroll all the words I have spoken to you” and to make sure they are available for when the people are returned to Judah and Jerusalem. The prophet is letting the people know right away that their exile will end and, I believe, this is an eternal promise for all people. Even though we are immigrants and exiles, even though we are wandering from our original land, we will be restored to our proper place both physically, emotionally and spiritually. And we need a record of this promise and our obligations in order for the promise to be fulfilled.
I am understanding the first verse above as the promise of spiritual, emotional and physical freedom. As we saw with the Israelites who left Egypt, physical liberation is the easiest to accomplish, emotional and spiritual slavery is much harder to attain. Yet, God is telling us, through Jeremiah, we will be free to serve God - not our emotions, not someone else and their emotions,-we will be able to serve God and thereby serve true and authentic selves.
Parts of the yoke have been broken for most of us. There is, of course, the physical yoke of slavery because of caste systems, because of class systems, because of racism/anti-semitism/islamaphobia, etc. What I am focused on today is the spiritual yokes we have put on us. It is because of these spiritual yokes, the imprisonment of our souls, that we have to experience the consequences of “your iniquity was so great and your sins so many”. The greatest sin and iniquity, as I read the prophets, is our inability to return to God and Godly actions. God has been calling us since the Garden of Eden, yet we continue to turn a deaf ear and tell ourselves that we are serving God. This mendacity is an affront to God and puts a yoke/imprisons our spirit.
Yet, God still wants us! Again, the eternal promise that God will not leave us, God wants us, God needs us and God will save/redeem/rescue us. We see this over and over again in the Bible and in the fact that Jewish Civilization has survived and, in some times thrived. This promise is, I believe, a promise for all people, not just Jews. It is, however, a call to return to God in truth, trust, justice, righteousness, kindness, and compassion. No one can claim to be a person of faith and use God’s words and ways with mendacity and deception. There are many who have over the millennia and still do today, these people are the enslavers that are talked about in the first verse above, and they will meet their undoing because of their iniquity and sin.
Rabbi Heschel teaches regarding the last verse above: “The prophets proclaimed that he heart of God is on the side of the weaker. God’s special concern is not for the mighty and successful, but for the lowly and downtrodden, for the stranger and the poor…The heart of God goes out to the humble, to the vanquished, to those not cared for.” Oy! When one listens to the charlatans who purport to know Jesus’ words and God’s will by treating the stranger and poor as people who God doesn’t love, treat the downtrodden as people who deserve their fate because God doesn’t love them, herald the rich and powerful as the ones God loves because they are rich and powerful, we see the bastardization of Jeremiah’s words. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling out these people for the false prophets and corrupt priests that they are. I pray that they will have their spiritual yokes lifted and/or be put in exile so they stop spreading poisonous lies in God’s name.
In recovery, we know the exile our iniquity and sins have caused us and our recovery is also a turning back to God/Higher Power/Higher Consciousness/etc. We also are engaged in returning to our spiritual essence and purpose as well as breaking the yoke of physical and emotional enslavement. We are no longer beholden to behaviors and substances which enslave us, we are no longer in need of committing iniquities and sins to “feed our slaveries”. In recovery, we experience God’s grace, kindness, love, through God’s outreach to us, redeeming us, and putting us in our proper places.
I have been blessed to be one of God’s instruments to help break the physical, emotional and spiritual yokes of exile for many people. I am blessed to have had many people help me break my yokes at different times in my life. I am also aware of the charlatans and the “good people” who are on the “right side” of issues and causes all the while putting yokes on another(s) and committing the same iniquities and sins that our ancestors did. I also am guilty at times of these ways as well and I return because I am unwilling to live in mendacity/self-deception. We all have to keep turning to God as the prophets teach us to imbue ourselves with God, not the god of someone else’s understanding, rather God who calls and cares for you and another(s). We get to serve God, liberate and free ourselves through concern for the poor and the stranger. We get to serve God, liberate and free ourselves through living in truth and letting go of mendacity and self-deception. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark