Readings (click here for full text of the readings):
   Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 84; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a; Matthew 2:13-15,19-23
 

I.       When people learn that I’m a priest, they’ll often ask me how I decide what Bible verses to preach on each week

A.  Chances are those folks aren’t Episcopalians, or else they’d realize that the lectionary doesn’t give you free reign

1.    Four assigned readings

B.  But the lectionary does give you options

1.    You can pick and choose to suit the occasion

C.  And sometimes the lectionary hits you square between the eyes

1.    But sometimes it doesn’t

D.  At first glance, today might seem like one of those “doesn’t” times

1.    All of today’s readings seem to be joyous

a)    Matthew tells the famous story of the wise men and the baby Jesus

b)    Ephesians describes our divine destiny

c)     The Psalm talks about how happy you are if you dwell in the house of the Lord

d)    And Jeremiah is perhaps the most upbeat of all

They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord,

Over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd;

Their life shall become like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again.

Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry.

E.  So what do we do with those readings of joy and promise today, when this week people who were already pretty poor off to begin with, suffered the worst natural disaster in recent history?

1.    I know that Pam and I can see some of the areas hardest hit, because we spent two weeks sailing in the Bay of Thailand a few years ago, with a couple of buddies of mine

2.    One night we were in a rough, exposed anchorage

3.    I couldn’t sleep

4.    So I woke Pam up around 3 AM and suggested we get an early start, since we had 4-5 hours of sailing until we reached a sheltered port

5.    We didn’t wake up our other two friends

6.    We sailed by the light of the near-full moon, and we made great time, because the wind was picking up

7.    We made too good time, as it turns out, because we reached the next island before sunrise

8.    By that time the moon had dropped below the horizon, and so we’d lost our only source of light, and so we were sailing in darkness, waiting, hoping

9.    More than once Pam asked if I wanted her to wake the other guys, and I said, “No, we’ll be fine.”

10.Eventually the sun did rise, and we woke the rest of the crew, and we dropped anchor in a protected bay

11.That was about 2 hours before the typhoon hit

a)    Even the 150 foot ferries wouldn’t go out in it, let alone our little 35 foot sailboat

b)    We’d gotten to the right place by the right time

12.It was blind luck

a)    The kind that tens of thousands of innocent people didn’t have last week

b)    The numbers this week are numbing

c)     All in the wrong place at the wrong time, and none to blame

II.    So reading lessons that are full of light and happiness doesn’t make sense today

A.  It actually feels profoundly wrong

1.    Because the events of this week are the kind that lead many people to doubt God’s existence in the first place

a)    We can’t blame this on human beings, as we have some of the other horrific events in recent memory

(1)  Like September 11^th, which was perpetrated by God’s children

b)    This time, though, it was God’s natural world that did this.

c)     How could God let this happen?

(1)  Let alone be happy about everything just a few days later

B.  We need to look closer at the context of today’s lessons, though, especially of Jeremiah, because it might not be as Pollyannaish as you’d think

1.    Because if you judged Jeremiah by today’s reading, you’d think he was a light-hearted optimist

2.    But he was anything but

a)    He was a bold and often bitter prophet

b)    He had no tolerance for ungodliness

c)     Instead of being the life of the party, he put a damper on everybody’s fun

d)    His nickname is “the prophet or wrath”

(1)  In fact, he’s the first prophet to talk about God’s anger, and he talks about it a lot

Behold, the storm of the Lord!

Wrath has gone forth, a whirling tempest;

It will burst upon the head of the wicked.

The anger of the Lord will not turn back until He has executed and accomplished the intents of His mind.

In the latter days you will understand it clearly …

A lion has gone up from his thicket,

A destroyer of nations has set out;

He has gone forth from his place to make your land a waste;

Your cities will be ruins without inhabitants.

3.    Jeremiah lived around 600 years before Christ, at a time when the nation of Israel had split into two, and the northern half had already been overthrown by the Assyrians, who had the most powerful empire at that time

4.    Still nobody learned any lessons, because the southern half was doing everything they weren’t supposed to do

a)    Acting selfishly

b)    Worshipping other gods

c)     Not caring for the poor and widow

5.    Jeremiah knew that bad things were in store

a)    The first half of the book he tells people they need to shape up or ship out

b)    He predicts disaster to come if they don’t

c)     And, sure enough, in 587 BC, the Babylonians – who had taken the place of the Assyrians as the worst kids on the block – took Jerusalem, and the Jews became slaves once again

6.    The second half of Jeremiah offers more concrete advice

a)    He’s talking to people who’ve already screwed up, who’ve already made their mistakes

b)    Beating them up about it won’t do any good

c)     Now he’s just trying to give them practical advice

(1)  Don’t fight the Babylonians, he says, because it’s God’s will that you be slaves for 70 years

(2)  Don’t give up, either, because God hasn’t given up on you

7.    But smack dab in the middle of his book, there’s a unique section

a)    It’s directed to the people who have just lost everything

b)    Who have no hope

c)     Who don’t know where to turn

d)    Those two chapters in the middle of Jeremiah are called “The Letter of Consolation,” and we read part of it this morning

III.  So perhaps there is something there for us today, in this time of worldwide mourning

A.  Because Jeremiah wasn’t telling the rich and already-blessed that everything was just fine

B.  He was consoling the people who had nothing

C.  Look how this section begins

See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth,

Among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together;

A great company, they shall return there.

1.    So when Jeremiah talks about a “great company,” he’s not talking about kings and generals and the other beautiful people of the world

2.    He’s talking about the poor, the vulnerable, the people who don’t know where their next meal is coming from or if they’ll have a place to sleep tonight

With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I shall lead them back.

3.    Is there a better way to express the devastation we saw this past week?

a)    Weeping

b)    A desire to go home

c)     But no idea what awaits us there

4.    Then he says

I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble.

5.    Then he goes on to say those wonderful words I read earlier – the stuff about singing and feasting and dancing – which take on a whole new meaning in light of the context

6.    That’s very clear from the end of the reading

I will turn their mourning into joy,

I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.

7.    Jeremiah is specifically talking to mourners in need of comfort

IV.So what does that mean for us?

A.  It means that God’s promises don’t apply just to the rich, if they apply to them at all.

1.    It means that God’s promises don’t apply just to the people who do His will, if there are any of them around.

2.    It means that God’s promises are meant for the people who need what He promises the most.

a)    The poor

b)    The hungry

c)     The thirsty

d)    The homeless

B.  It calls us to be bold in asserting that God does have something to do with the events of the past week

1.    People have been arguing about that

a)    Some people see the tragedy of the past week as a sign that God, if there even is a god, doesn’t care

b)    Others see the tragedy as a sign of God’s wrath against a sinful world

c)     And still others don’t see God in it at all – it’s the luck of the draw, or the effects of global warming, or just the way things are

2.    But if Jeremiah were here today, he would call us to boldly proclaim that God is not absent from this tragedy

a)    Quite the opposite: God is right in the middle of it

b)    His promises are directed to the people who suffered in it

3.    And we must be bold in holding out hope that God’s promises will come true

a)    Despite everything that we see on the news

b)    Despite the death and destruction and hopelessness

c)     It takes courage to believe those promises will come true when it seems like there’s no chance they ever will

(1)  But those are precisely the times that Jeremiah was writing in

(2)  And the words that he offered us 2600 years ago are still among the most hopeful and that have ever been written

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house ofIsrael and the house of Judah. ³²It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt--a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. ³³But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

4.    That is what Jeremiah proclaimed then, and what we must proclaim now, to the people of the world who need to hear it most.

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