Daily Prophets
Day 115
“The word which came to Jeremiah from God after King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to proclaim a release among them-that everyone should free his Hebrew slaves…Everyone…agreed to set their male and female slaves free…afterward they turned about and brought back the men and women they set fee and forced them into slavery again. Thus said the Lord…now you have turned back and have profaned My name.”(Jeremiah 34:8,9,10,11,13,16).
The word is what Jeremiah exists for and is graced to bring to the people. He has been gifted the opportunity and ability to orate the will of God to and for the people. Yet, as we see above, even when they begin to follow it, they do it in name only, just for show.
The first verse above is a little strange to me as this release was part of the Torah already, it was inscribed into law by Moses and the Israelites after leaving Egypt, so why do we need a covenant? Because they had stopped observing the year of release. They made the decision that it was okay to own another person and force them to remain enslaved. These people, whose ancestors had been slaves in Egypt, made the decision to go against God’s commandment to “proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein.” They had to make a covenant with the King, not God, in order to honor this commandment. They were more likely to follow a human sovereign than honor and obey the Sovereignty of God.
Because of their choice to honor the human king/sovereign, they could then decide to go back on their covenant. Because a covenant made without God as a party to it, is just a contract and can be broken. A covenant with God as a party to it cannot be broken; we may stray from it, we may run away from it as Jonah does, we just can’t break it without agreement of both parties, us and God. We see in the second verse above, how the people kept trying to look good and do wrong. They set them free and then reneged and “forced them into slavery again”.
This is the bane of our existence, seeming to follow the letter of the law and not the spirit of it, so we can come up with legal fictions to overturn/bastardize the law itself. It happens with the Rabbis also, when Rabbi Hillel comes up with a formula to overturn the release of debts. What we are not cognizant of is the anger, sadness this behavior engenders in God. This two-faced way of being has continued to this day. We continue to try and find ways around the spirit of the law as well as the letter so we continue to “profane My name”. We continue to turn back from God thinking we can get over the rules and/or bend them to suit us, instead of bending to the will of God.
Rabbi Heschel teaches: “Kind and compassionate in all His ways, the God of Israel chooses to bind His people in a covenant, in a reciprocal relation with Himself of rights and obligations. He will, if their deeds disturb the covenant, plead with them and go to all lengths to restore them to their loyalty.”(The Prophets pg. 287-288). Rabbi Heschel is calling all of us to return to the covenant not as a burden, rather as a reciprocity for God’s kindness and compassion. We forget our part of the covenant and only want/expect the benefits without doing the work. We believe we can phone it in and rationalize our turning our backs to God and profaning the Covenant and God’s name. I am not sure what gives us this belief, I only know that our lack of immersing ourselves in the prophets and allowing their message and the history of the Jewish people to sink in, means we will continually do the same errors as our ancestors. How sad it is to have the answer to the problems of today and not be able to implement them.
In recovery, we know the consequences of profaning God’s name and turning our backs on God. We are the beneficiaries of God never breaking the covenant and wanting our return. We know the kindness and compassion of God in a visceral manner. We know that we are in a reciprocal relation with God and we are honored to be in this covenant with God. We no longer try to look good and do wrong. We no longer need to enslave anyone to our whims and desires. We are excited to do God’s will and we see the obligations as gifts and know our rights to be presents beyond our deserving. In recovery, we live each day knowing we are here by the Grace of God and we get to honor God through our actions, not just our words. We have been restored to our loyalty by God and we recommit each and every day to stay loyal through our actions.
I am joyous that I am able to be yoked to God through the covenant and the rights and obligations therein. I am grateful to experience the freedom that God has given me and the ability to grow that freedom each time I enslave myself to old ideas and ways. I am grateful to have the passion and sensitivity that Jeremiah and the prophets willed to all of us. I am grateful I get to do God’s will today and everyday. I am grateful that God continues to bring me back through a myriad of ways when I falter and stumble. I am grateful to be blessed with the understanding that God’s ‘anger’ is really a momentary experience and the consequences of my stubbornness and defiance. I am grateful that it is used to bring me back, not throw me away. I am grateful to have turned back. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark