More often than not the Bible can feel like a bit of a glass
half empty experience. A downer. A depression.
We have been dwelling over the past
four weeks on the prophecy of Jeremiah and from today’s reading we hear these
words of condemnation.
21How long must I see the standard, and hear the sound of
the trumpet? 22“For my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid
children, they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do
not know how to do good.”
As if to twist the knife in the wound the people who chose
the readings for today pair up this saying of Jeremiah with a parallel from
Psalm 14.
2The Lord looks down from heaven on humankind to see if
there are any who are wise, who seek after God. 3They have all gone astray,
they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.
There is no one who does good, not one! Not you, not me, not
mother Theresa, not Martin Luther King Junior, not anyone.
Now a central conviction that came out of reformed theology which
developed through the 1500s was the notion of the “total depravity” of humanity. It is based on passages just like these – as human
beings we are constantly turning away.
Turning from god and each other.
This week I read yet another “dear church” letter. A letter explaining why the pews are empty
and people are leaving the church. “Dear church this is why I am leaving you.” Amongst all of its rantings the letter only
briefly touched on the issue of the confronting images of the scriptures that
tell us we are doing living in the world wrong: that we lack wisdom; that we
are skilled in doing evil; that we are sinners.
Speaking about sin is both jargon and unpopular these days.
Yet as a student of history and society I have not needed
the scriptures to know of the depravity of humanity.
Even within my life I know my own failings and if you are
honest with yourself you know this to be true too. On a personal level we all
know that we have limitations and fallibility. We know that there are some people
we cannot love no matter how hard we try.
But more than this individual conundrum in Jeremiah, the Psalms, and the
scriptures generally, the movement and the judgement that comes is also about
who we are collectively: as communities, as ancient Israel, as the church, and
as humanity. It is not just about whether
I can be right with God but how the very society in which I am embedded is
behaving.
Now the author of the dear church letter did say that we tend
to speak in a dead and dusty language that has no relevance to our lives. Words that have no bearing on our reality. So, let us think on this notion of the evil
of humanity for a moment or two, the heavy handed judgement that the scriptures
seem to bringing, and let us bring it into a more contemporary picture.
Today is the 15th anniversary of the attack on the twin towers
in New York. It doesn’t feel like 15
years has passed but there it is. 15
years of what has become known as the war on terror. A conflict that still rages in the Middle
East and in different ways across the globe.
The atrocities continue and just this week we heard about the dropping
of barrel bombs containing chlorine in Syria. In Australia this conflict is
expressed daily in our anxiety, suspicion and prejudice against particular people
within our community and by our treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.
Of course this conflict is not the only game in town when it
comes to violence and hatred and hurt but it has flow on consequences around
the globe especially in raising the question how do we as humanity really care
for one another. The response of
humanity to those who are fleeing these regions beset by terror is suspicion
and anxiety at best and full blown fear and rejection at its worst.
It is so easy to be inoculated against the travesties that
are occurring in the world by our wealth and our access to entertainment but
this inoculation of affluence may just be part of the problem.
In the book Affluenza
Clive Hamilton explores our obsession as culture with consumption and owning
more. He suggests that “We have grown
fat but we persist in the belief that we are thin and must consume more.” And whilst we live in a society in which we
constantly seek to express our identity through what we own other cultures inadvertently
become the prop for our idol of wealth and affluence. The consequences as we should know are insidious. A colleague of mine is the CEO of the
organisation Stop the Traffik which seeks to intervene in the culture of the
exploitation and trade of human lives so that in some cases goods might be
produced cheaply for us.
More disturbing is the notion that the overpopulation of the
planet is leading us towards a dire future.
Julian Cribb’s book “The Coming Famine” which was written just after the
Global Financial Crisis indicates the disparity between rich and poor, the
pressures on food systems and the availability of clean drinking water and
points at the connection between famine and war. There has been scholarly work done on the
idea that drought was a key influence in the current Syrian crisis. Cribb’s book sits alongside Paul Gildings more
disturbing book “The Great Disruption” and Clive Hamilton’s depressingly titled
“Requiem for a Species” as harbingers of doom.
The ancient and dusty words of Jeremiah tell us that God’s
contention with Israel is not only that they have forgotten their God but that
in forgetting God they have marginalised the poor and the widow, they have
shown scant regard for those in need.
The poor are not to be blamed for their predicament by the rich, they
are to be helped!
Do any have the wisdom to attend the problems of our
era? Did any have the wisdom in Jeremiah’s
time? Yes occasionally we see prophets
and people who shine as examples swimming against the stream of what we are told
is the norm but ultimately when it comes down to it I suspect most of us often
feel lost. The problems are too big. Changing
ourselves personally is too hard. And, even when we do make changes, how can we
know now that the changes will have desired outcomes?
We are lost. John
Carroll declares our humanist culture dead. But we are not without hope. We are
not left with a dark nihilism. As
Christians the beginning and ending of our understanding of our lives in this
world is not simply within who humanity is.
For look and see that across the hillsides of life, through
the dark ravines and dangerous places we go comes a shepherd searching and seeking
us. Coming down to be one of us, walking
among us, sharing with us in our lostness – Jesus comes.
This is the promise and this is the hope as we name: amidst the
reality of our brokenness, and as we come to the realisation that we are lost Jesus
comes to bring us home.
Here in this place week by week we share a story that is the
counterpoint of the suffering of life and the wayward ways of humanity. In the midst our folly God does not despair. God continues to love us, to seek us out and
to give us new hope. God gives us life.
The hope of the gospel expressed so distinctly and yet surprisingly
in the letter to Timothy: But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly
in unbelief, 14and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and
love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full
acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am
the foremost.
I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief.
Beyond the systems and communities in which we find
ourselves embedded God, the good shepherd, finds us and bears us up and brings
us home even when we are unaware of just how lost we are.
In the face of the tragedy, the evil, the folly and the sin
God makes space for the celebration of life to be reignited. We live.
We see glimmers of life and light. We gather here Sunday by Sunday joining
in the celebration of the lost sheep. We
come remembering the one who has carried us here and who invites us to live
again as part of his flock.
More than that we are given the audacious task of carrying
the invitation to come and celebrate out to others.
This is what strikes me most out of the readings today. Whilst we cannot ignore the heavy and hard
reality of the pervasiveness of our evil as humanity we know that God, who is
the author of all things, has sought us out in Jesus and desires us to join in
a celebration grounded in new life and hope.
It is a celebration bigger than our individual existence and experience
but at the same time remains intensely and entirely personal.
Yes there are passages the rightly remind us to know that we
as human beings fail miserably and the consequences can be dire. Yet that is not the heart of the message of
the scriptures. The message is of God
loving, seeking, finding, forgiving, saving, inviting and celebrating. And life goes on, the creation continues
because of God’s immense and immeasurable love for us and all things.
I began with the image of a half empty glass but by now we
should know better for the glass is not half empty or half full but the cup of
life which we are offered overflows with God’s love.
Peter - you may find of interest my observations about the role of religious belief in the question of whether or not humans can survive the 21st century: http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319412696
ReplyDeleteJulian Cribb
Thanks Julian I will have a look into this book. Peter
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