Daily Prophets
Day 108
“Now, mend your ways and heed the voice of the Lord your God, and God will renounce the punishment he has decreed upon you. As for me, I am in your hands; do to me what seems good and right to you. Know if you put me to death, you will be guilty of shedding innocent blood; for in truth, God has sent me to you to speak all these words to you.”(Jeremiah 26:13-15).
In the verses prior to those quoted above, Jeremiah warned the people of Judah again about the coming destruction. As he does above, earlier in this chapter he calls on the people to repent and turn back to God. What do the people think, especially those in power? Kill the messenger!! How apropos for people unwilling to take responsibility, acknowledge their imperfections, make amends for their errors and change their ways of living. The rich and powerful of Judah and Jerusalem did not want to look at themselves in anything but a positive light, validating each other’s evil ways as good and right. Sound familiar to anyone today?
The prophet is a one-trick pony, he can only call for the people to change and return to God. He is incapable of staying in his own personal anger for too long, in fact, Jeremiah is angry for God, for the way the people have turned from God, for the pain and sorrow that God experiences when God’s children abandon God. Jeremiah’s devotion to God and the people is so complete, even in the face of impending death and/or imprisonment, he is still concerned with the people trying to kill him! This is the greatness of the Prophet that Rabbi Heschel speaks about in his writings and his teachings.
Every time we abandon God, we abandon our soul, our spirit, which gives our emotions and our rational reptile brain much too much power over us. We will not die from a lack of knowledge. We wither and die, much before we stop breathing, when we abandon God, our inner knowledge and our connections. Living a false life, living a life of optics and fauxthencity, as Harriet Rossetto calls this type of living, leads us to die inside and fooling ourselves as to how wonderful we are.
Jeremiah is not afraid to die for spreading the word of God. He knows he is innocent of the charges, sort of, made by some people. He is guilty of speaking truth, of frightening the people, of going against the powerful and the people in charge, all for the sake of Heaven and he is willing to die for God’s word and for living his Divine Need out loud. What a hero, what a warrior and what an example for all of us!
Rabbi Heschel teaches: “An essential feature of anger as proclaimed by the prophets is its contingency and nonfinality. It is man who provokes it and it is many who may revoke it… This is the mysterious paradox of Hebrew faith: The All-wise, Almighty may change a word that He proclaims. Man has the power to modify His design. .. The anger of the Lord is instrumental, hypothetical, conditional and subject to His will.”(The Prophets pg 285,6). These words cause a deep trembling within me, when I think about what is happening in the world, in our country and I want to call God’s wrath down on those I disagree with, Rabbi Heschel is saying, in essence, stop calling on God to punish the people, get off your fanny and make the changes yourself - then you/we can avert the decree. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel say ‘we the people can change the decrees we have caused to be made’. We are not powerless over our environment, over our destiny, we can return to God and begin anew, we are never lost nor abandoned by God, it is our blindness and stubbornness that tells us ‘this is our fate’. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that our fate is in our hands; connection to God and serving God will keep us whole, joyous and part of.
In recovery we have heard the call of Jeremiah and mended our ways. We have averted worse decrees and punishments that we have already suffered by turning back to God and serving God rather than our selfishness. In recovery we experience a serenity (clarity according to the latin) of what is truly important in life: serving God, serving another(s) and staying connected. We know we are not perfect and we no longer hold ourselves to this false standard. We keep growing along spiritual lines and have responses to situations that used to baffle us. All of these ways of being come from our connection to God, our learning from another(s) who travels this path of recovery with us and a return to truth, decency, kindness, justice and compassion. In recovery, we are less afraid of what others think and less controlled by societal demands and more concerned with how we act and the demands of God.
My own experience is one of inner knowledge of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above and never articulating it. I believed that people know my heart, my soul, and any actions that seemed over the top, as Jeremiah is describing above, would be seen for what they are/were: hyperbole and drama to get someone to see the errors of their ways, repent, return and have new responses. Most of the time this is/was true-it just isn’t anymore. Rather than hear the prophetic voice in me, the prophetic voice in another(s), people in power (in all areas of life, work, home, government, media, etc) don’t want to hear truth. I have committed the same error at times. We need to hear truth and embrace it so we can live well. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark