Sunday Reflection: Discernment for the Undiscerning

Sunday Reflection: Discernment for the Undiscerning February 7, 2016

I’m well into the book of Jeremiah, being constantly shocked awake by the practically rhythmic cadence of, “and God said to Jeremiah” and “the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah”. This morning he got into a dust up in the temple. He was given a word in what seemed like the usual way, and so he goes in and says it, and instead of it falling onto the gathered assembly as an unheard stone, they hear it, for what seems like the first time. And they become mightily enraged.

What was he given to tell them? That Jerusalem would be utterly destroyed, ‘like Shilo’, the land laid waste. They get busy right away to kill Jeremiah, because how dare he, but then someone remembers that some other prophet, a long while ago, prophesied the same thing and nobody killed him. So they back off, for now.

As a reward for his faithfulness, right away, God gives Jeremiah another word, even more particular, that Nebuchadnezzar will come and wreck everything, that all the nations of the world will be under his yoke. And some lying prophet named Hananiah comes and said, No, it’s going to be fine. And then it is Jeremiah’s task to go back to Hananiah, after what amounts to a public humiliation, and say that he, Hananiah, is going to die for having lied about what God said. And in the next verse Hananiah keels over.

And I wondered about all the people standing around in the temple, listening on, ready to kill, but then wandering away, about to fall into judgment, but not willing to listen to the warnings.

They seem to me to be entirely modern–desperately wicked, lost, looking for anyone who will tell them what they want to hear, angry beyond imagining when confronted with the truth. In other words, the usual person, the sinner, the one who is in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing.

And I wondered about the cacophony of voices. There is Jeremiah, the mighty voice of God ringing in his ears, compelling him to a desperate and life destroying faithfulness, his whole existence a mishmash of offensive performance art. And there is Hananiah, lying. And there are all the people, trying to listen but unable to. If they had been able, they could have examined their own lives and then looked at the scriptures available up to that moment, and seen that they were very much in peril. Moses himself warned that such an exile would surely come to a people doing exactly what they were doing. And then there had been many more prophets along the way, all saying the same thing. But Hananiah stands up, and he is the one they listen to. They don’t examine the wickedness that has become the substance of who they are. They don’t know the scriptures. They are offended by Jeremiah. And so they are completely unable and unwilling to exercise any discernment to judge which voice they should really listen to, who is really speaking for God and who is lying.

And so they perish. They are carried away captive. And a reasonable person would despair utterly. Except that God promised that it would be so. God knew that they wouldn’t listen. God himself was using Nebuchadnezzar to do the thing that he was doing. Nothing, in that chaotic, loud, cacophonous temple was actually out of his grasp. In that judgement were the seeds of our own redemption. Though they were carried away, they were brought back. Though their sins were like scarlet, he was preparing a salvation to make them as white as snow. When we don’t rightly discern who is speaking for God, he is not broken and destroyed by our ignorance and sin.

Earlier Jeremiah was having to wander around with a cup, making all the nations drink down the wrath of God, pouring out a sentence of judgment for everyone everywhere. I always like to fix my eyes on that cup, on the blood in the cup, as I’m struggling to listen, struggling to discern, trying to face my own sin and fathom my own deafness. The wrath of God is poured out and I drink it to the very dregs. But the cup of wrath has been filled with salvation. The tongue, the ear, the eye all loosed to see that God did not leave me to perish, but that I, perversely, should attain to eternal life.

May God give you a really good Sunday.


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