The Peripatetic Preacher
(Lectionary Reading for September 11, 2016)
This Sunday marks the 15th anniversary of an unforgettable Tuesday in American history. For on that blue-skied day, September 11, 2001, airplane hijackers brought down two giant and gleaming towers, gutted the symbol of American military power, and crashed in a barren Pennsylvania field, their ultimate goal of (perhaps?) the White House thwarted by some brave passengers on that fourth flight. The day also happens to be the birthday of my oldest brother, but his birthday for 15 years has been overpowered by the events of that day.
And this Jeremiah text was the lectionary selection on the Sunday after the Tuesday attacks. I had been scheduled to preach in a local church some months before, but I assumed that that church’s pastor would need to be in his pulpit for all the obvious reasons on that Sunday. However, his doctor was treating him for a severe and debilitating vocal problem and demanded that he not preach for reasons of his future vocal health. So, I was still on call. And this was the text. Just listen to Jeremiah’s words in the light of those apocalyptic images of two 100-story towers collapsing upon themselves and in the face of a huge hole gouged into the Pentagon by the fury of an airplane turned guided missile.
“I looked on the earth: Lo! It was utter chaos! And at a sky without light! I looked at the mountains: Lo! Trembling! And all the h
ills quaking! I looked: Lo! No one!
All the birds of the sky had fled. I looked: Lo! Carmel a wilderness; all its cities ruins, before YHWH, before YHWH’s fierce fury” (Jer 4:23-26)!
I well remember the chills that crawled up my spine as I read the words of that passage, the assigned lectionary text for that day, as my face was glued to the now-iconic television images. I feel those chills again as I write now. Jeremiah was describing in cosmic terms the horrors of the city of Jerusalem, a city made ruined and desolate and dark by the evil of its people, their refusal to listen to the word of YHWH, that word that calls for justice and righteousness for all God’s people. But Judah would have none of that. And so the prophetic eye envisions their doom.
Of course, in the time when Jeremiah uttered this prophecy, perhaps in the third or second decade of the 7th century BCE, Jerusalem had not yet suffered its demolition by the forces of Nebuchadnezzar in 597 and 587 BCE. His words were prophetic, not in the sense of absolute predictions of what would happen, but in the sense of what would surely befall a wayward people who claimed worship and love of YHWH but whose actions betrayed their actual beliefs, beliefs far from the will and way of their God. An evil people, unconcerned with the poor, indifferent to the marginalized, the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, would finally witness a return to the complete chaos of the earth that existed before the great YHWH formed it out of that raucous chaos. Only here do we find that unique juxtaposition of words that Gen 1:2 enshrines: tohuwabohu, “formless void,” as the NRSV has it, but in fact probably untranslatable, its very sound inscribing the chaos it tries to portray. The foul evil ones of Judah will by their own acts of injustice bring back upon themselves the terrible chaos of a world without YHWH.
It would have been easy, and for some preachers that day it was easy, to use the 9/11 attacks as guidelines that announced the wrath of God on a sinful people. Some spoke of easy sex, or sex with the wrong partner, as the trigger for the attacks. Others spoke of gambling, wanton behaviors, the appearance of Satan upon the earth. These monstrous deeds must have had a trigger, they shouted, and the triggers were as numerous as the preachers. Fear was alive in the land as many had never experienced it. In the two services I led that day, every person who had any kind of uniform wore it: boy or cub scout, nurse, army, navy, marine. Before the second service, someone had moved the American flag from its spot in the corner of the sanctuary to a place not one foot from the pulpit, so I preached in the very shadow of Old Glory. The air was charged with fear and patriotism and the rich and bold desire to find the perpetrators of these heinous assaults and do them in.
Over the succeeding 15 years, for many that fear has not dissipated, and again a very public man has capitalized on those who remain in terror of their lives and who at the same time are fearful that their great country is somehow in decline, that we are not the “shining city on the hill,” proclaimed by John Winthrop and four centuries later by Ronald Reagan, as once we were. He uses that fear to announce his own willingness and sure ability to “make America great” again, and when he is elected president, he proposes to do just that. His name is Donald Trump, and he is the latest purveyor of fear in our land. In a recent foreign policy speech he played on this theme of fear again and again. We must destroy ISIS, he shouted, and he had the ways to do that, while his opponents are incapable of it. He demanded that we “vet” much more carefully all immigrants, apparently calling for a new sort of McCarthyism, especially those from countries that have been breeding grounds for terrorists. He insisted that we work with our allies to step up the assaults against the so-called “caliphate state,” bombing them without mercy. We should fear them, but we must obliterate them. We perhaps should join with our NATO allies in these missions, but only if those allies will pay their fair share of the cost of our involvement; in the end those long-time allies are not to be trusted. Each point of Trump’s vague plans began with fear.
How are we to differentiate between the fear that Jeremiah employs in his stark visions of a ruined Judah and Trump’s use of fear to get Americans to vote for him instead of Hillary Clinton? I find that difference quite powerfully stated in Jeremiah 8:21- 22: “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt; I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead (famous for its healing arts)? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?” Jeremiah does not revel in his statements of fear, pronounced against Judah. He does not use fear only to force the people to change their ways. Jeremiah sees himself as one of those poor people, and when he proclaims a terrible future, he does so because his love for the “poor people” is so great, so true.
To the contrary, Donald Trump proclaims fear so as to garner votes. He knows all too well that his vast wealth will protect him from any fear that he can envision or announce. For him, fear is merely a ploy, a stratagem designed to win; he cares little or nothing for those he seeks to terrify or to cow. At the last, it is only those who see themselves as one of the people to whom one speaks who gains the right and privilege to speak on their behalf. Jeremiah never forgets from whence he comes; he is Judean just as those in his audience. Trump demonstrates little connection with his listeners. To the contrary, he is above them, their potential savior, a man whose style of life is unimaginable to 99% of the ones who would follow him.
It could be said that both Jeremiah and Donald Trump are purveyors of doom, but the reasons for their purveyance could hardly be more different. Jeremiah seeks healing and restoration, while Trump seeks power and success above all. Do not be deceived! The use of fear is not always what it appears. Jeremiah spends nearly his whole life looking for ways to turn his own beloved people to the ways of God. What will Donald Trump do after he loses his race for president, as he seems now destined to do? Will he continue to seek ways to help his people, or will he return to a life of unbridled excess and luxury? I fear I know the answer to my question, and I fear he does, too.
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