Last week I began preaching
on the prophet Jerimiah and suggested that it is important for us to listen for
what the prophet spoke about because God puts the words into his mouth. The first chapter of Jeremiah is very much
about establishing the importance of this very point – Jeremiah is important and
listening to his voice is important. His
words which are God’s words will include judgement and hope, words that are
uncomfortable to hear because in them we hear God contending with people and
their behaviour.
As we move now into Chapter 2
and through to Chapter 6 of Jeremiah what Jeremiah is doing is setting up the
conditions necessary for repentance. He
begins to outline what it is that the people had done wrong – which largely boils
down to their decision to forget about God.
But here’s the problem when
people are wrong sometimes, and probably a lot of the time, they don’t know
that they are wrong.
Essentially what Jeremiah is
saying is that back there in time you made some bad decisions and now you are
not even aware that they were bad decisions.
Last week I emphasised the
point that when we listen to these ancient stories we are listening to the living
voice of God still speaking through them so in theses chapters of Jeremiah one
of things that I think that we are hearing is the same thing. That at some point in our lives just like the
Israelites we have passed the sign “Wrong way. Go Back”
We do as individuals, we do
it as communities and we probably even do it collectively as humanity. We make bad decisions, wrong decisions.
Now as the author Kathryn
Schulz points out often we don’t realise that we are wrong, we ar3e completely unaware
that we have made a wrong decision and it is only when this is pointed out to
us that we become aware and we might then regret our decision, or in our
context as Christians admit our fault as we confess our sin.
Sometimes our wrong decisions
can have big impacts on ourselves and on others and sometimes they are
smaller. And there can be no doubt that
our decision making have layers of complexity or that sometimes we can
oversimplify the decisions.
Sometimes there is clearly a
right way or a wrong way when we are making a decision.
If we make the wrong decision
though it may be realised immediately or it may be we think we are still right
and it may take us days or months or even years to realise, that is to say if
we ever do! Yet the decisions we make
and our awareness of them can change us.
Let me share a story about a
time I did something wrong. I was at the
National Assembly meeting of the Uniting Church. There were about 400 people in the room and
we had been debating a sensitive issue for a few hours. Now in our meeting we were given the option of
holding up an orange card, for agreement, or a blue card, for disagreement or
concern, and we were coming to the final vote.
The last card I had held up
was blue but now we were to make the final decision and the President of the
Assembly called for us to hold up our cards and there was a sea of orange cards
waving in the air and I thought to myself finally we have arrived. But then the President said wait we still
have one blue card and holding my card aloft still I looked around the room for
the blue card as gradually I saw more and more eyes turning to the corner of
the room I was in. The person next to me
nudge me and pointed at my card, oops – not the orange card I thought I was
holding.
It was at that point I
realised I had accidently grabbed the wrong card and waves of embarrassment washed
over me as I changed my card whilst the whole meeting watched on.
Now this accidental choice
may not have been deliberate but it still had consequences and I still feel a sense
of shame and embarrassment when I think about this simple mistake. Of course, sometimes our decisions are more
intentional but all of us can make decisions that are unknowingly or knowingly
wrong and it is not until they are pointed out that we might feel that sense of
regret and sorrow over the decision.
I would want to say though
often life is more complex than simple right and wrong decisions and when we
are given a decision to make we have multiple options.
Often as Christians we might
think there is only one “right” choice to make from the multiple options but I
am not sure that is the case. We can
seek God’s wisdom and try to make the best choice from the options yet just as
one there is only two options there can be options we take that later on we
might regret.
The prophet Jeremiah is
trying to help the people realise that some of their decisions, especially in
relationship to God have been wrong ones.
They passed the sign!
They forgot about God’s love
and grace and generosity. The made their
own cracked cisterns rather than delighting in the living water of God.
Jeremiah is exposing the need
for repentance and declaring that though they might think they are right the
people have been wrong. They have chosen
a path that leads away from God and into themselves.
As we listen to this story
and we remember our own lives and the history of humanity we confronted to consider
our own journey through life. This is
why we confess our sins each week – even though sometimes we may not even know
what those might be. We confess that we
passed the wrong way go back sign.
We do it in our own lives. We do it as parents, as colleagues, as
spouses, and as friends.
And sometimes we do it as communities,
even as congregations. If we look back
through the history of this congregations there is no doubt that we would find
moments in which we ask, ‘Did we forget God?
Did we take the wrong pathway?’
We certainly have done it as the church through history.
I remember meeting a young Baptist
guy about 20 years ago who was doing his doctorate on the idea of confession
and repentance because he was struggling with the fact his grandparents had
been involved in running aboriginal missions in which children were taken from
their parents. When many of the people
involved were doing what they were they believed they were doing something
right, not wrong.
The reading that we had from
Jeremiah does not resolve the problem that he is naming for the Israelites or
for us. Yet listening to the gospel
reading for the day we do get a sense of how we might respond.
In Jeremiah we find a God who
judges, who contends with the people for forgetting him. A jealous God. But here in Jesus we find a God who is
encouraging humility, encouraging us not to see ourselves as better than
others.
This is not about self-hatred
or self-deprecation, it is about acknowledging that we are people that are like
the Israelites. We pass the sign wrong
way go back and we do not even see it.
Yet in the story we are also
reminded that Jesus took the lowest seat of all on the cross and later was
exalted as he was raised from among the dead and then ascended. The promise of God is that this journey from
the humble seat to the exalted one is promised to you and I as well.
So have we been like God’s
people of every age. Do you and I pass
the wrong way go back sign? Yes. Do we hear the voice of God declaring our
predicament? Yes. Do we find hope in Jeremiah’s promise of the Messiah and the
coming of Jesus? No doubt we can.
Jesus presence in the world
and his presence now through the power the Holy Spirit is a source of hope for
us. Let us then consider our decisions, and the directions we have taken, and
let us find hope in the one who stays with us even when we pass the sign wrong
way go back.
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