Daily Prophets
Day 107
“These 23 years the word of God has come to me. I have spoken to you persistently, but you would not listen. Turn back, everyone, from you evil ways and your wicked acts… But you would not listen to Me, declares God, rather vexed Me with what your hands made, to your own hurt.”(Jeremiah 25:3,5,7).
Jeremiah is recounting for the people how long he has been speaking to them about their actions against God, against the needy and the poor, against justice, love, kindness, truth, etc. He is reminding all the people they have been warned, cajoled, yelled at, constantly and consistently by him, by God. I am in awe of Jeremiah’s persistence and perseverance to fulfill his mission, knowing that the real goal; getting the people to return to God, to fulfilling the covenant; will not happen and yet he continues. I know it is because he has made God his Employer.
When God is our employer, we continue with our work no matter what humans throw in our path to stop us. We may not stay in one place, one position, yet we continue to engage in the work that God has called us to do. It is rare for people to stay at the same company for 25+ years anymore, we are a mobile society, and it is our obligation to continue to work for God no matter where we get a paycheck from. This is the message I get from the opening of Jeremiah’s words quoted above.
Jeremiah is a broken record and the people have stopped listening. He has gone from speaking to the king and the priests to speaking to all the people. “Turn back, every one” is called out to all the people and, still, they cannot/will not listen and take this action. God, through Jeremiah, is continually trying to save the people from the negative consequences of their own behaviors and the people turn a deaf ear.
God has not stopped calling us home, God has not stopped calling for our return and, like our ancestors, many do not listen and some believe they are above God’s words. These are the people that God is speaking to in the last verse, “you would not listen…to your own hurt.” We humans are willing to go to ruin, rather than listen to the prophets speaking to us today, we are willing to destroy the work of our ancestors rather than treat the poor and needy with dignity and respect. We are engaged in a zero-sum game and call it life. Jeremiah is telling us that this type of thinking is the BIG LIE we are telling ourselves. We have to return to Truth, to God, not pervert all the foundational values of spirituality, of religion, of God to do evil.
Rabbi Heschel teaches: “Jeremiah has often been called a prophet of wrath. However, it would be more significant to say that Jeremiah lived in an age of wrath. His contemporaries had no understanding of the portent of their times… They did not care for time…To Jeremiah his time was an emergency, one instant away from a cataclysmic event.”(The Prophets pg. 106). How easy it is to swat away the words of Jeremiah and all of the prophets who have spoken to us throughout the ages by saying; ‘they are just angry men/women’. It is easy to write a person off because they channel the wrath of God, they channel the pain of those to whom justice, kindness, love, truth, compassion and caring is denied over and over again. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling to all of us to recognize the time we are in, the times that have been prevalent and constant throughout our history and stand up with Jeremiah, instead of against Jeremiah. Let us all stand up with God and God’s messengers, and take the actions they are calling us to.
In recovery, we are constantly following Jeremiah’s words to turn back for our negativity and our actions that miss the mark. We are engaged in a daily conversation with God and another(s) to seek out the path that God has laid out for us as an individual and carry the word of God that was given to us. We seek to serve God in all of our affairs, in all of our doings and, when we are in God’s world, being God’s employee, we can sleep well at night, wake refreshed in the morning and excited to communicate with and learn more about God and God’s plan for us, as individuals and as a community. In recovery, we carry a message from God to all the people we encounter and continue to spread the word of God, no matter how it is received by anyone.
I have been called wrathful and angry. Sometimes I have been-more often I have been angry for God, I see what is happening, I understand the dire consequences awaiting an individual, a family, a community and my words match the calamity of the moment. This is the way God has given me to meet the portent of the times I have been in, it is like screaming when someone is about to fall off the cliff to warn them. Doesn’t work for everyone, I just understand Jeremiah very well. I also needed this morning’s reading to remind me to keep serving my true employer, God. While the community I have served for years has ‘exiled me’, God never has and I have to continue to spread the word of God that I keep being given in new and different places. We all need to take stock of how we are spreading the word of God inside of us without regard to the scorn of another(s). Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark