Daily Prophets
Day 102
“Pashur…the priest who was chief officer of the House of the Lord, heard Jeremiah prophesy these things. Pashur thereupon had Jeremiah flogged and put in the cell… You enticed me O Lord and I was enticed; You overpowered me and You prevailed. I have become a laughingstock every day and everyone jeers at me. I thought, I will not mention Him, no more will I speak in His name-but (His word) was like a raging fire in my heart, shut up in my bones.”(Jeremiah 20:1,2,7,9).
Jeremiah is speaking to the people and letting them know that the ones in charge are leading them down a path of destruction and the only solution is for everyone to repent. The response of the chief officer is, predictably, lock up Jeremiah; lock up the truth sayer so we can go on fooling the people and not have to change our ways. Serving God meant nothing to Pashur, he sounded good, he looked the part and, all the while, he was interested in serving himself and the others in charge for their gain, not the gain of the country nor the people. Sound familiar?
Jeremiah thought about stopping his prophesy, muzzling himself, yet could not. The language he uses is the language of love, at first-enticing is a seductive word and overpowered in this context, could mean the enticement is so strong Jeremiah is unable to resist it. Both words convey a sense of not being able to say No to God, to God’s call, to the lure of God’s love, even in the face of being laughed at, jailed, jeered at, hated by the people he is trying to save, etc. Jeremiah, cannot resist God.
In the last verse above, Jeremiah is telling us of his inner war-part of him wants to stop the disgrace that is heaped upon him, part of him wants to stop warning people and being jailed for it, part of him wants to stop speaking the truth and be hated and injured for it. Yet, the greater part, at least 51%, can’t because God’s words are “a raging fire in my heart”. We have heard people like John Lewis speak from the same “raging fire” and we know it when we hear it. We have heard so many people in our country and in the world speak from the “raging fire” that God put in them, like God put it in Jeremiah; and most of the time we have treated these messengers from God, these modern day prophets just like the people of Judah treated Jeremiah. We have jailed them, scorned them, marginalized them and killed them; Martin Luther King Jr., Yitzhok Rabin, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, etc.
We can only shut down this fire for so long, otherwise it burns us up, as Jeremiah says “shut up in my bones”. Many people know what it means to burn up in our bones, to feel this heat, and do nothing; we become shells of who we are meant to be, we become the Pashurs of our time and space, we retreat into a private hell that impacts us without our awareness. We try to escape it, yet it never leaves us.
Rabbi Heschel teaches: ‘the compulsion to proclaim the word of God to the people is stronger than all attempts to restrain oneself from doing so. Apart from, and often against, his own will the prophet must take over and fulfill his task; he must both apprehend and preach inspired truth. Thus he knows a two-fold necessity-that of accepting and experiencing and that of announcing and preaching.”(The Prophets, pg.445). It is, in my opinion, the same experience Rabbi Heschel, himself, had. Like the prophets, Rabbi Heschel could not stop the compulsion to proclaim God’s word, even if it brought him to be marginalized by mainstream institutions, etc. He was blessed to know his task from God, know the divine need he could fulfill and do it. We all have a divine need to fulfill and we are all capable to do it, yet we continue to deny the compulsion that is shut up in our bones, a raging fire in our hearts. Herein lies the challenge of Rabbi Heschel, of the prophets, of God-will we respond to this challenge or run away from it?
In recovery, we know the scorn that Jeremiah and all truth sayers experience because we heaped it upon those who tried to tell us the truth prior to our recovery. We tried to extinguish the raging fire that was in our heart and shut up in our bones in any number of ways.We also experienced God overpowering us and now we can live free, whole lives. We experienced God’s call and now speak truth to others regardless of how they treat us. We make amends to those people who spoke truth to us that we ignored and express gratitude to them once in recovery. In recovery, we are grateful for those who came before us, have left their imprints upon us, given us a roadmap to follow and a platform to call out to another(s).
My Rabbi and friend, Ed Feinstein, said I am more a prophet than a Rabbi and he was/is correct. While not all of my outbursts are the words that God places in me, most of them come from this fire in my heart and bones. I drank and stole to quiet it and that was a disaster. I continue to discern better between my needs and God’s need for me. I continue to discern between the fire of God, the experience of apprehending and preaching truth, no matter the consequences. I know the dangers in doing this, as I have been shunned and exiled from different spaces and places. It breaks my heart, as it did Jeremiah and all the other people who share this experience and we persevere for. God! Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark