Daily Prophets
Day 103
“House of David, thus said God: Render just verdicts morning by morning; rescue one who is robbed from the one who defrauded him. Else my wrath will break forth like fire and burn, with none to quench it, because of your wicked actions. I will punish you according to your deeds, I will set fire to your palaces and it shall consume everything around it.”(Jeremiah 21:12,14).
Even though the fate of Judah seems set in stone, Babylon is at their gates and Egypt can’t help, the prophet is giving the king and the people of Judah a way to return and be saved. Jeremiah is asking the people in power to render fair verdicts for the poor and the needy, he is asking the people to stop defending the defrauder and help the ones that continually are being robbed. To do what Jeremiah is proposing in the first verse above, however, the people in power would have to take stock of themselves and stop defrauding the poor and the needy themselves. Yet, it is too difficult for the people in power to give up their “wicked actions”. It is too hard for the people in power to see the need for them to repent in any way; it ruins the self-deception they have honed over their lives.
Jeremiah tells them that the wrath of God will “break forth like fire” and this still doesn’t create a change in the people. Jeremiah is also telling us, I believe, that fire serves a purifying purpose here. Without fire, the people will not have a change of heart, a change of spirit and a change of actions, so the only way to purify them is through the wrath of God, which includes anger, fire and, eventually redemption.
Jeremiah’s anger is also on display here, he is angry for God and he demonstrates the divine anger as pathos, a way to help the people see what is real and the self-deception they are buying into. “I will punish you according to your deeds” is a message to all of us, stop being a victim and complaining-be responsible for your actions, repent and be redeemed. Otherwise, the fire that you set in motion will consume you and everything around you. Rather than blame God and make God an ‘angry God, a vengeful God’ as many people have done over the millennia, Jeremiah is pointing out to us our responsibility in creating God’s wrath, it is not for want of love that the fire consumes everything, it is precisely because of love that God’s wrath is a purifying agent after all else has failed.
Rabbi Heschel teaches: “The prophet was filled with a passion which demanded release; if he tried to contain it, its flame burned within him like a fever…Jeremiah felt the divine wrath as springing up from within.”(The Prophets pg.116-7). Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of Jeremiah’s deep love for God and the people, his ability to hold both in one moment and at one time. Jeremiah could not contain his own anger when he was filled with the anger of God, because his identification with God was so complete. Jeremiah’s wrath matched the pathos that God was experiencing and, unfortunately still experiences, because of the actions of the people/us. Rabbi Heschel’s words and teachings have a powerful identification with divine pathos and experience also, which is why many of us believe him to be a modern-day prophet.
In recovery, we have to follow God’s command for justice and decency and truth. We cannot live in recovery any other way. In fact, living any other way led us to experience the fire and destruction of our lives by our own actions and with God’s help we both fell to our bottoms and were picked up and redeemed. In recovery, we are passionate to help others and passionate to stay in truth-letting go of our own mendacity and self-deception so we do not deceive others and render unfair decisions. In recovery, we are aware that every decision we make impacts another(s) as we are connected to so many other people. We are responsible to be an example for the newcomer to recovery, we get to be guides for people of all ages in how to live in truth, decency, compassion and justice. We have experienced the wrath and the glory of God and we choose the glory today.
I know Jeremiah’s inner life, his wrestling with his inner compassion for God and for the people, his fear for what is going to unfold for the people. I am guilty of outbursts of anger when I see something that is wrong, when I have attempted to help someone change and they continue their “wicked acts” and others applaud them for their evil ways. I have been cast as the enemy by the very people I have helped and/or tried to. I have ‘lost it’ as Jeremiah and fire was come forth from me and consumed many innocent bystanders and I am remorseful for this. I know my inner sympathy has been for both God and another(s) and my attempts at redeeming people through my anger has not always worked. It is, as with Jeremiah, an inability to control the divine anger I feel inside of me. This is the conundrum, controlling the divine anger at evil deeds, saying nothing and let the anger burn us up inside, or allow for the outbursts and the fallout afterwards. The first is the obvious choice and it says easy and does hard. Discerning when the anger is divine pathos and personal pride is a challenge as well. We all have this inside of us, we all are descendants of the prophets, maybe it is time to honor the inheritance from them and stop being ‘politically correct’ so we can save ourselves and each other. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark