Justice and Righteousness

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

December 3, 2006

Jeremiah 33:14-16 and 31:31-34

QUESTIONS

A friend of mine is fond of saying, “Everybody changes, but not much.”

I wish I had a steak dinner for every “futures” planning session I have attended. The butcher paper we used to record our brainstorms, rolled up real tight, would be a good Yule log. Most often, we could not see much past our noses.

I ask: what can we expect? And the answer I hear more often than not is: more of the same.

SONGS OF HOPE?

So what do we do when confronted by the prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah and their passionate, hard-won songs of hope?

The word “jeremiad” has come to mean a word of gloom and doom, bad people getting what’s coming to them, etc. But then Jeremiah sees a glimmer of hope for a people who are not quite wiped out. He sings of God’s “promise of happiness” fulfilled in coming days. He even goes out and buys real estate as a signal of survival.

Jeremiah is able, somehow, to rise above the misery of his people--- who are or have been defeated, their leaders carted off into exile---- to see a new day coming, a day when a Branch will grow from the felled tree of David; and this King will “do what is upright and just” so that Israel can live in safety. The change will be so dramatic that the city of Jerusalem will get a new name, “Yahweh is our saving justice.” It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming! (Tony Campolo) Hope for a distant, better world, instead of diverting us from present problems, gives us heart to work and not give up.

Jeremiah knew that the people needed hope for the future. Langston Hughes has expressed this need in a poem:

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go,
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

The people are called upon to wait in hope for this new day, when the “earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” Yes, Israel has been judged for their idolatry and their oppression of the poor. But they will survive to live another, better day. This hope will keep them going through the years of exile ahead.

God will make possible that which they thought was impossible.

HOPE FOR US?

Even though we live in a situation of affluence and security, we are aware of our vulnerability to the emptiness of life. Having much does not protect us from personal sadness and a sense of the futility of hoping for a better future. If affluence were a sign of happiness, we should be giddy. And yet we struggle with despair and hopelessness. Melancholy is no respecter of economic class.
When we look at the larger world outside our bubble, we stand aghast that so many people live in abject poverty, with little hope for the basic necessities of life. We wonder if we will ever be able to build a world in which children do not die of malnutrition. (We have enough food on this planet, but not the delivery systems.)

We gain wisdom from Jeremiah, however, about what to do in the face of hopelessness. Though Jeremiah was aware of the unrighteousness, injustice and oppression in all of the nations, his words were spoken to a particular group: to the people of God, his tribe. He was concerned, first of all, that Judah preserve their faithfulness to God. Would there be a community of faith through whom all the nations of the world would be blessed? Would there be witnesses to the God who will not give up on the world?

OUR HOPE IN GOD

The church of Jesus Christ is concerned about the whole world, but we have to start asking questions about ourselves. Will we believe our own message? Will we live before a God who is faithful and strong in bringing a new day? Do we believe that God is involved in the affairs of the world and the affairs of the hearts of us mortals? Do we trust and live in hope that this is so?

 Do we trust in God’s providence, “the assurance that, whatever the circumstances, God does not lose his grip” on us?” Can we believe that, even when leaders in the world may ignore justice and righteousness, “history and humanity cannot ultimately defy God’s righteous and gracious purpose?” (Rogers in Interpretation)

Is there resistance to God? Of course! The Bible is filled with the stories of peoples’ resistance to God. Jeremiah was certainly aware of it in his day. And yet he dares to speak a word of hope, not based on the inherent goodness of people, but based on the faithfulness of God. Yes, there will be judgment for us, too. We are just as prone to lose our way as God’s people as the people of Jeremiah’s day.

 Yet the judgment that he forecasts is not simply God getting even. Judgment is always an aspect of faithful love. It’s aim is change of heart, not extinction. “To bear with the world and God’s wayward children often seems to stretch God’s patience to the breaking point….” Yet God never gives up on his people altogether. And, whatever they do, they “cannot do things that will dethrone God or nullify God’s purposes for them.”

And, no matter how much we decide to fall into the pattern of hatred and seek scapegoats to blame for the inhumanity of morals to each other and brother earth, God’s ways are not our ways. Even a God who brings judgment to us still has compassion for us. God yearns to gather up his children and comfort them.

As a parent or a relative, if we have “ever hurt with and for a child,” or, as a son or daughter, if we “have ever caused a parent  grief and heartache, then we begin in a small way to know something of the pain and persistence of God’s love for his children.”

 As Jeremiah testifies, God will:
“Restore
Bring them back
Break the yoke
Save
Gather
Lead
Turn mourning into joy
Make a new covenant
Be their God.”

We are frail. We don’t measure up to God’s expectations. And we are hopelessly unable to earn or merit God’s favor. We are thrown back on God’s mercy, God’s pure, unbounded love for us.

Can we believe that God believes in us. Even when we face impossible problems, God is resolved for us to find a way through. The ways through the troubles of our times will not come without our participation; God doesn’t just ask us to sit on the sidelines and watch the world be redeemed. Jeremiah believed in God’s steadfast love. “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34) And he believed that God’s people were called be signs of God’s steadfast love in the world.

SO WHAT CAN WE EXPECT?

Karl Rahner wrote that the people of God, by the very fact of their existence, are “an oasis in a world that is always infused with the mystery of God’s grace, but which, outwardly, is very profane…Through this community [the church] God says, “I am here in the world with my grace….I cannot give the world up because of the love I…have for my only begotten, incarnate Son….” (Karl Rahner in an article by John B. Rogers, in Interpretation, July, 1988)

For Jeremiah, the dominant theme is judgment and upheaval. But the light breaks through with these songs of hope, such as the ones read today. Jeremiah points “beyond tragedy to the triumph of the one who is our Judge and our Redeemer, and who determines both the fate and the future of his people.” (Rogers)

So, the good news really is “more of the same.” There will be suffering and struggle. We are under judgment for our sins. And yet, God is faithful. God is the “freedom giver, the exile ender, and the life bringer.” Who knows what the future holds, but God will act to bring the world more fully to the Shalom of new creation. We are “knee deep in the past, looking to the future.” (Frederick Buechner) “Even now, in big and little ways, [God] freed, brings home and gives life.” We are invited to believe this is true, to stake our lives on it, and to be, by reflection, the light of the world. (Matthew 5) (Walter Brueggemann, The Bible Makes Sense.)

We remember Jesus. We live by his promises. We invite him to live in us, as we await his coming in glory. Will you invite him to live in you as we, together, await his coming in glory?