This is the text of the message I prepared for KSSM for proclamation on Sunday 11th September 2022, the fourteenth Sunday in Pentecost.
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14
This is a bit of a departure for me this morning, and in case you were wondering it is a brand-new sermon which I wrote on Monday. There’s a lot of ecology going on in today’s readings from the Jewish Traditions, and as someone who is not a farmer in a room full of people who either are farmers or whom have had farming neighbours for decades that’s a place for me to stay in my lane. Fortunately, my lane is preaching the Kingdom, and there’s scope for me there too. Nonetheless this is a new passage for me, I’ve never preached from these chapters before, so let’s see how I go.
Today we have been directed to look at the words of Jeremiah the prophet, and it seems at first reading from Jeremiah 4:11-12 that God, with insatiable wrath, is tracking to send a hot and strong wind to blow judgement upon Jerusalem. Actually that is not true because if we look back a few verses we find that God is not sending destruction, rather God is observing destruction. From Jeremiah 4:23 onward we read that God looked and found only desolation, nothing was growing, no one was there, everything was a wasteland. God has not caused this; human negligence and poor leadership has caused this, but God is naming this and telling the truth where the king and the court have been telling lies. “You are in a mess,” is the Word of The LORD in Jeremiah 4:22, “war is coming and you have been too stupid to see it or plan for it, too busy doing stupid things to prepare yourself for the consequences of your stupidity”.
This seems like a great passage to back up a strong sermon on climate change; I am sure that that has occurred to many preachers this week, regardless of how rural their congregations might be. Because of their blindness and arrogance, because of the evil and the corruption of government and business leaders in the Global West and North, the beauty of Creation is returning to a wasteland. Eden is reverting to the chaos of Genesis 1:2. Ecological disaster is at hand, the void is unavoidable, all life will end and there is nothing Humankind can do about it and there is nothing God will do about it. Where once the Spirit brooded over the expanse of water now The LORD seethes over boundless planes of destruction, with nothing left to share.
Is that it then? Are we doomed? Well, clearly we are not, but that is not clear yet. Two points at this point, two lights of hope:
1. It reads in Jeremiah 4:27, For thus says The LORD, the whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. An end, but not “The End”.
2. It’s Sunday 11th September 2022 today in the Wimmera, which is 15th Elul 5782 according to the Jewish calendar. The world was not destroyed in the days of Jeremiah. This prophecy, like every prophecy in scripture, was first for the people who heard it from the prophet’s mouth: Judah would (and did) go into exile, Jerusalem would be (and was) returned to rubble, and there would be (and was) devastation and desolation and destruction, and the land would be (and was) empty of life following the defeat and exile of the Judahites. The prophecy of Jeremiah did eventuate; but this is not a prophecy of the “end of the world”. It is not a prophecy “for now and not then” when a Jewish man living in Jerusalem five hundred and ninety years before the birth of Jesus accurately described the events of life in Australia two thousand and one years after the death of Jesus. Prophets always spoke to their day, just as preachers always speak to theirs. However a preacher quoting a prophet can cite patterns and point to the wisdom of God the Eternal Word, and we must hear from scripture what God is saying to the Church.
Twenty-five centuries ago the People of God were selfish and stupid and they all lost their livelihoods. Many lost their lives, and the land which had been promised to them through Abraham, Moses, and David was left for dead. Are we willing to allow such a thing to happen again, or will we heed the warning? Will we read the case study; will we learn the lessons of history? Jeremiah did not even think about fossil fuels and over-fishing; but stupid is as stupid does, and stupid is stupiding and corrupting all over the planet right now, in many places and ways, none of them pleasing to God. Corrupt and arrogant leaders are not a new thing, even if CO2 emissions are.
Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God”. They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good says David in Psalm 14:1, and he would know. The LORD looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God. Psalm 14:2 echoes a lot of what Jeremiah has just told us about God’s activity, even if this psalm was probably written first. People are stupid, but God is hopeful; surely not everyone is an idiot. Yeah, nah, they have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no not one reads Psalm 14:3. This really is a sermon for the optimists this morning, isn’t it? Even God appears to be losing hope; I mean, what is occurring, what is actually going on here? The later verses of Psalm 14 tell us more.
What these later verses tell us is that God is not actually in a complete huff, but that there is a specific group of people and a specific set of acts that God is currently finding displeasing. In Psalm 14:4 the stupid crew is labelled as the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread. Such people have no knowledge, and they do not call upon the LORD. Ignorant and oblivious, just like the later Judahites they are stumbling into destruction, and in the psalm we are given a further insight into their mistakes; these people are maliciously unjust. So look at Psalm 14:5b where God is with the company of the righteous. All is not lost and it is not the entire planet which has failed so specifically and so spectacularly; there is a crew that God has found to side with, there is a company which is made up of the righteous.
In previous sermons and devotional talks and essays for you I have defined “righteousness” as “being in right relationship”. I think the same is true here: where all are sinners against God (the story of life in a fallen world) some are sinners against their fellow humans. Inter-personal relationships have been broken where some people have been abusive or violent or cheating or corrupt or greedy or…you get the picture. In both of our readings today God has shown particular displeasure toward people who are senseless when it comes to other people, and God has desired to show favour for people who are sensitive to the needs of others and/or who have been trespassed against. Stepping aside for a moment from where all have fallen short of God in our relationship with God, God has focussed the attention of the prophet and the king (and perhaps more pointedly the preacher and the leader of worship) on the horizontal relationships between people, the sisters and brothers we heard about last week on Father’s Day. You would confound the plans of the poor, accuses David in Psalm 14:6, but The LORD is their refuge.
So what does this mean for us: I’m confused Damien, so am I meant to buy a Tesla? Well, whether you opt to buy a fleet of electric vehicles and charge them from newly installed rooftop solar panels, or not, opt to live in harmony with each and all of your neighbours, be he or she animal, vegetable, or mineral. That much is clear.
What else does it mean for us? Well, live as if your whole life is accountable to God. Where we read in Psalm 14:1 about what fools say in their heart we are hearing about the muddle-headedness of people who ignore the consequences of their actions. To say there is no God is not about atheism as much as it is about not believing yourself to be accountable to anyone. It’s not a religious question, it’s a moral one. “You’re not the boss of me, no-one is the boss of me!” Yes, thank you for that piece of advice, you toddler, but The LORD begs to differ. If you aren’t willing to hear words of accountability then you probably aren’t willing to hear words of advice either: if you don’t seek wisdom, have they no knowledge all the evildoers, then you will make a mess of things. In David’s mind you’re messing up the neighbourliness of your suburb, in Jeremiah’s mind you’re tracking towards ecological catastrophe on a global scale. In both cases the wise will listen for God’s word, act with kindness and consideration, and seek to be answerable to the wise ones that you know. (And if you don’t know any wise ones, go and find some.)
Everyone falls away at some point. If you aren’t falling away now, genuinely and because you are living daily wit the wisdom of God, you likely used to fall away before you listened for God. Paul describes that situation of himself in 1 Timothy 1:12-14, which is our epistle set for today. No-one is perfect, but all are saved by the free gift of grace; and the righteous live by faith, which is to say trust and dependence upon the one you seek and to whom you listen. Whether you need to be “more of an environmentalist Greenie” because you are “a Christian” is debatable; but you probably shouldn’t be less of a responsible inhabitant, especially if you are “a Creationist”. What you should be more of, with God’s help, is honourable and considerate and humble and trustworthy. You should be righteous, living in right relationship with God, humanity and planet: this is the evidence of your hope in God that you are an example of stewardship in neighbourliness.
To the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen. (1 Timothy 1:17).
damienwrites 