Let’s be honest folks: sometimes our behavior needs to be modified. Sometimes
something happens in our life which changes our whole perspective on the way
we’ve been living.
A week ago Friday there was gentleman in Cincinnati who found himself in the
middle of a big reality check. The poor guy’s name, I know you’re going to be
surprised, was Forrest Frankenstein. And by the end of his experience he had the
laceration across his forehead which reminded people of the stitched head of the
movie monster.
Forrest was attending a concert by an artist named Toby Keith. Toby Keith is
well known for songs that engender a little bit of swagger in listeners and
frequently reference the consumption of alcohol. One of Keith’s latest songs
declares, “You ain't much fun since I quit drinkin'."
Unfortunately for Mr. Frankenstein, he had not quit drinking. Instead, he was so
lit up that he told a judge didn’t even remember what happened. He got unruly at
the concert and was confronted by the police.
He threatened to assault them, which of course never is a good idea. They
handcuffed him and threw him into a squad car. At that point he kicked out the
passenger window of the cruiser and was escorted to another cruiser. He
proceeded to dash his head against the Plexiglas partition between the back and
front seats, thus earning himself the Frankenstein-like stitches you see in the
picture.
He is being held on $80,000 bond and has been charged with menacing, disorderly
conduct and vandalism. He’ll have plenty of time now to ask himself whether or
not he wants his life to take a different shape. Life may not be much fun if he
quits drinkin’, but it may help him avoid squad cars and stitches.
It’s easy for us to look down on someone who lost control like that, but the
truth is that all of us go through periods when we aren’t the kind of people we
want to be, or the type of people we believe we should be.
And when you’re in a situation like that in your own life, it can seem
impossible to stop, reflect on your life, and change the way you’ve been living.
Sometimes it takes a tragic event or a serious life change to spur you to be the
person you should be.
People have always looked at certain events in their lives which changed
everything. Many times they interpret those events to be God’s intervention in
the world, sometimes to punish them, sometimes to teach them, sometimes to give
them an opportunity that they might never have had.
The Bible was written during a time in human history where the larger events of
history were interpreted in terms of what God was doing. This passage dates back
to a time when the people of Judah were facing the prospect of an invasion by a
neighboring army, the Babylonians.
They had previously been ruled by King Josiah, who is described as a godly king,
one who insisted that the people follow the laws that God had given to Moses.
Josiah was a reformer. He ruled at a time when people had been following all
variety of religions in Judah.
But he made everyone stop. He got rid of all the altars to other gods and all
the religious practices from other lands. People believed that since Josiah had
put the nation back on the straight and narrow, God would now protect them from
their enemies.
That theory was put to rest when the Egyptians killed Josiah in battle. The
Egyptians later invaded Judah and forced the Jews to pay them a huge amount of
tax. Josiah’s son Jehoiakim ruled Judah as king, but he had to answer to the
Egyptians.
During Jehoiakim’s reign he allowed many of his father’s reforms to go by the
wayside. People again started to practice other religions. Some people said it
was ok to let this happen because God had promised king David that one of his
descendants would always rule on the throne of Israel. They thought God would
never allow their nation to be ruled by someone else.
But prophets like Jeremiah, whose oracle we read this morning, said that the
people had a false hope. He said that God’s promise to David would only be valid
if people followed God’s laws. If they started following other religions, the
deal was off.
Jeremiah gave them that message in many different ways, but in this passage God
tells Jeremiah to go down to the shop of a local potter. Potters were skilled at
the craft of taking clay and turning it into jars and pots and cups and bowls
and all kind of utensils that people used for a variety of purposes.
Jeremiah watched as the potter molded a hunk of clay wit his hands. One
particular hunk seemed to be defective. The potter shaped it in a particular
way, but it would not hold the shape that the potter wanted. So the potter
remolded the clay and made it into another kind of pottery.
God said to Jeremiah, “See that clay? I can do the same thing with Judah that
the potter did to the spoiled clay. If I’m unhappy with the way people are
conducting themselves, then I can just smoosh them like clay and build something
else.”
“But if Judah decides to straighten up, I can also choose not to flatten them as
I had planned. I am shaping up evil against Judah like a potter shapes the clay.
Stop all these pagan religious practices and turn back to me.”
To put that oracle another way, God was planning to send the Babylonians through
their land with a vengeance after they destroyed the Egyptians in 605. That
invasion was God’s punishment on Judah for following other religions. But God
was still willing to change God’s mind if Judah resumed those reforms that
Josiah had instituted years earlier.
But Jeremiah was sure the people would never change after all he had seen. He
knew they would do whatever they wanted. So Jeremiah told them that they had
sealed their doom. And because he said this, the leaders in Judah persecuted and
imprisoned Jeremiah, almost killing him.
As Jeremiah prophesied, the nation was invaded in 597, Jehoiakim was killed, and
his son Jehoiachin was forced to surrender to the Babylonians. He and the queen,
along with the leading officials of Judah were marched off to Babylon, along
with all kind of royal property. All Jeremiah could say was “I told you so.”
Now as I read this story and read up on the history, I thought to myself, “Man,
this is depressing. How can I turn this mess into some kind of uplifting
sermon?” I don’t know if I can be all that uplifting today, but I do think this
passage raises some important issues that people still wrestle with today.
When people suffer tragedies in their lives, they often try to make sense out of
those tragedies. People need to have meaning in their lives. The reason why
people will never get rid of religion is because we innately need to make sense
of our existence and the things that go on around us.
People of faith tend to understand the meaning of an illness or a car crash or a
death or a flood or a terrorist attack in terms of their faith. These things
don’t just happen, people say; God must be behind them. God must be doing
something.
And if what happened is bad, we want to figure out how to make God happy again
so that we can get the bad things to stop. But the problem we face is the same
one the people of Judah faced when their very godly leader who had brought
reform to Judah’s religion was killed in battle.
If Josiah had done so many good things and if the people had stopped worshipping
other gods and if they had started doing what they were supposed to do, then why
did God allow Josiah to be killed?
The problem with taking Jeremiah’s words at face value is that, as the author of
Ecclesiastes points out, sometimes really horrible things happen to very godly
people. And sometimes really wicked people go through life without getting what
they have coming to them.
So when Jeremiah says to the people, “God will destroy you if you do bad and
protect you if you do good,” you’d have to reply to him, “Yeah? Tell that to
King Josiah’s widow”
But then again, if we believe there is no justice, then God isn’t really God, or
God really isn’t good. And there isn’t any rhyme or reason to the world and God
may as well not exist.
But we have record of God’s action in the world and we have our own experience
that tells us that God does exist and that God is working in the world. So we
can’t say that either. There are a couple of points that I think we can take
this passage and from Judah’s struggle with question of God’s salvation and
justice.
First, we can’t get around the fact that in some indefinable way God is working
in this world. Jeremiah tells us that, Jesus told us that, and our own lives
show evidence of it. Out attempts to do as Jeremiah did and say, “God is doing
this thing for that reason” often blow up in our faces.
You may feel that’s the case when something happens to you, but be open to the
idea that somewhere down the line you may see things very differently.
Secondly, human history has shown that while God may not be the cause of bad
things happening, God is always working to bring good out of a bad situation.
And sometimes bad situations turn out to be good situations after all.
Ever since the end of April I had been having nightmares about not being able to
find a renter for our space and the financial problems we would be having each
month that we didn’t have that rent coming in because things are so tight around
here.
Now I look back and realize that God did work in that situation to make things
better than they were before. Michelle always chides me because I always expect
the worst to happen. And I’m usually wrong about it.
Most of the really bad things and the really difficult things I’ve experienced
have been the birth pangs of something much better. I would imagine that many of
you will say the same thing. Life is never the same, but most of the time it’s
infinitely better.
The thing is, most people have a hard time envisioning this being the case. We
been so used to looking at even the smallest thing in our life that doesn’t go
our way and saying to ourselves, “God’s got it in for me. I’ve made my bed and
now I have to lie in it. I have earned God’s wrath and I’ve just going to have
to suffer through it.”
We do the same thing to other people; we look at their misfortunes and pronounce
judgments on them, blaming them for what happens to them. I remember reading a
posting by one of my college friends on Facebook where he basically said that
most of the bad things that happen to people are the result of bad choices they
have made.
Some of us tried to disagree, citing things like illness that eventually strikes
everyone. But he insisted that most of peoples’ misfortunes are their own fault
because they crewed up somewhere.
At least he’s honest about how he feels. Most of us think that, but we don’t
always come out and say it. And that kind of theological blame game doesn’t do
anyone any good. The vengeful God Jeremiah speaks of has to be held in tension
with the merciful, forgiving God we find spoken of elsewhere in the Bible.
It’s just easier sometimes to bring ourselves and others down than it is to
admit that we don’t really understand how things work and we don’t know just
what God is doing.
A preacher by the name of Todd Wier illustrates this fact by telling his
experience of trapping crabs while on vacation. He writes, “Every day we would
throw a cage and bait off the dock to catch crabs. There is a big hole for the
crabs to crawl in to get the food, but they don’t crawl out because other crabs
in the cage will pull down any optimist attempting a jail break.
Only a few strong and brave crabs will escape. Most will succumb to their peers,
sink to the bottom and pull down any other crab trying to get out. That puts a
new twist on saying people are “crabby”, doesn’t it? Negative, crabby people
have a tendency to pull everyone else down with them.
That’s kind of how we sound when we look at our lives and see only
disillusionment and hopelessness. And while Jeremiah’s message sounded pretty
hopeless, we also know that the kinds of tragedies he saw can also be avenues
for the kinds of transformation that only God can bring about.
Just remember that sometimes stuff happens. Blaming ourselves when stuff happens
that’s out of our control can be self defeating and harmful. It brings everyone
down because people see you do it and then start doing it themselves.
When things happen that may be the result of our actions, we have to remember
that the most godly thing you can do is to have a healthy amount of guilt. Take
responsibility for your part, but don’t take responsibility for someone else’s
part. That’s not what we mean by bearing one another’s burdens.
Learn from your mistakes, forgive yourself, and go on. Life is too short to
spend beating ourselves up for mistakes we’ve made when we’ve tried to correct
them or can’t correct them. God’s grace can overpower our guilt complexes any
day of the week if we allow ourselves to experience grace.
And finally, remember that God has a penchant for turning disasters into
blessings, even if we don’t understand it right away. Even Jeremiah, who
predicted doom for the people of Judah, later prophesied that they would be
allowed to return and rebuild their temple and their homes.
Someday we’ve all probably going to do like those crabs and inadvertently climb
into some kind of mess. But rather than playing the blame game and keeping each
other embroiled in misery, let’s lift each other out and celebrate the many ways
that God uses those experiences to make us healthier, godlier people.