Note: like most of my religious posts this is not short. If you are looking for a religious sound bite, this is not it. Understanding religion is not easy even for professional clergy and theologians like myself. And making it easier to understand by intelligent laypersons takes more words than if I were writing a professional paper where I could assume that everyone understood the text, the context, the jargon, the shortcut phrases, and such. I write this post to be clear and understandable to Christians, and, hopefully, to other believers and non-believers alike. Keep in mind this is written by a Christian for other Christians and those interested in this religion, but it contains metaphors, themes and moral injunctions that should appeal to anyone interested in living an ethical life.
Jeremiah 31:1 At that time, says the LORD, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people. 2 Thus says the LORD: The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel sought for rest,
3 the LORD appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. 4 Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel! Again you shall take your tambourines, and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.
5 Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria; the planters shall plant, and shall enjoy the fruit. 6 For there shall be a day when sentinels will call in the hill country of Ephraim: "Come, let us go up to Zion, to the LORD our God."
7 For thus says the LORD: Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, "Save, O LORD, your people, the remnant of Israel."
8 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 here.
9 With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back, I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble; for I have become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.
10 Hear the word of the LORD, O nations, and declare it in the coastlands far away; say, "He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd a flock." 11 For the LORD has ransomed Jacob, and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him.
12 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.
13 Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning nto joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.
Jeremiah is a hard prophet to write about and the passage above is not typical of his writings; but it is the most important thing he has to say to us today. Mostly Jeremiah was a prophet of gloom and doom, and rightly so, given the time in which he prophesied. And, even a casual reading of his book will leave most readers with the distinct impression that often his elevator did not seem to go to the top floor.
Jeremiah was known to do crazy things. He was kind of a living metaphor. For instance, one time he walked 800 miles from Jerusalem to a place on the Euphrates River where he buried his new underwear in the side of the river bank, because, he said, "The Lord told him to do it."
Then, much later on, having returned to Jerusalem, he goes back to the river and digs the underwear out of the river bank, and the garments have all rotted and decayed. His point? This same fate will happen to Judah if it does not straighten up. A dramatic demonstration, to be sure, but there must have been an easier way to get the point across!
When not busy subjecting his underwear to the rot test he is screaming at people and almost gets himself killed several times for speaking God's word to people who simply don't believe it is God's word. How can God's word actually come from a guy who seems several cards short of a full deck?
And so, Jeremiah was often in mourning, mourning for the nation, and at times for himself; mourning because the day of reckoning for Judah was fast approaching and the people who needed to listen mostly ignored him.
But we must also remember that Jeremiah always had something than many, then and now, do not have: hope. Jeremiah was never without hope. Amidst his outrage, his diatribes, his utter disgust with the government and its people, God never let Jeremiah forgot that, with God, there was always hope.
But, mostly he was in mourning and left to his own devices he would have been a bitter, lonely man. But God filled him with hope, hope that he otherwise would have rejected because all he had to do was to look around him and see that there was no reason to hope.
And just as God insisted that Jeremiah preach the damning of the nation which had lost its way, God insisted that Jeremiah include in his message the hope of a brighter day.
Remember another thing about Jeremiah: he was God's spokesman, and it did not matter to him if he fully understood why God wanted him to say and do what he did, nor if he agreed with it. He spoke what God told him to say, and if he personally suffered from the responses to his oracles, well, that just went with the territory. And in the text above it is clear that at one point in this dismal prophet's life God told him to speak of turning mourning into dancing.
For you to understand how he got to this point I need to set the scene for you. Israel is in shambles. The Northern Kingdom, Ephraim, has already been overrun for over a hundred years, and is captive to foreigners.
What is left of free Israel is the smaller southern part, Judah, which is now facing its own doom, and is about to be destroyed by Babylonian hordes from the north. Shortly, the great city of Jerusalem, the city of David, will fall, not once but twice in ten years, and its leaders will be marched off to Babylon in chains.
Ironically, Jeremiah is the only prophet who understands that this invasion by the Babylonians is God's work. It is God's punishment of the Israelites for turning away from him.
Yet, in the midst of all the chaos, rot and decay, in the twilight right before the darkness of total military defeat, God speaks a work of hope through Jeremiah: "In that time, says the Lord, I will be the God of all the families...and they will be my people."
But when, one might ask, is "that time" in which God will once again be with God's people? There is an unstated opportunity for learning here, for the Israelites and for us. "That time" is in God's hands. "That time" will be when God says it will be. God's promise insists that God is in control, even though the Israelites may think that they are.
God is in control; not Judah; certainly not already defeated Ephraim. Even the fierce Babylonians are but the tools God will use to chastise the Israelites who have turned their hearts from him believing that they are in charge of their own futures.
Given that, what then, is the role of the Israelites? Israel's role is the wait and watch upon the Lord in hope, waiting and listening for his Word. God has promised that hope will be rewarded "in good [God's] time."
What is a bit amazing is that we Christians are already much better off than the ancient Israelites. Christians can not hide behind the idea that we have not heard. We have already heard God's word to Christians, and still we dig ourselves deeper into sin.
God has not told us to wait and watch for when God will be with us. Christians have been told for over 2000 years that our salvation is here, now, Emmanuel, "God with us." God has already answered us.
But have we really heard him? Do we really believe it? Have we heard him tell us that now is the time to turn our mourning into dancing?
The Israelites had to wait through a time of destruction and despair before they were to hear the Word of God again. But we have heard it. Christians know what that Word is, who that Word is: Jesus Christ. For those who believe the Christian message and know what it means to follow him in the Way, this time, now, is "in God's good time."
The Gospel message is that this is the time when God says it is time to turn our mourning into joy, our mourning into dancing. This is the time to dance, to participate in the party that God is offering us because of faith in his Son.
God is saying to us, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you." If we believe that then why all the worry about when "things" will get better? Things, including material things, are already better for many of us. But. instead of helping things get better for all, we insist on hoarding our blessings, including our bounty.
Are we sharing those blessing with others so they can know them too? Are we reaching out to those that are hurting, have suffered losses, are in the throes of illness, and said that we will be with them and pray for them, that we will help them, sharing with them some of the love that God has poured out on us?
A few have shared generously and continue to do so; many have done that for a while and then fallen back into fearful, self preservation mode, even though God tells us we already have our salvation, that however bad it is now for us we will experience joy and love beyond our comprehension at a future time.
This is the time to share, to invite, to help, to reach out, to give both our bounty and our love to others. This is the time to dance, and to share that hope with others who have it far worse than we do, a time to turn our mourning, our self directed pity, towards others who are desparate to turn their mourning into dancing.
We may say that we are not worthy to celebrate; we may say that our Christianity is weak, that we have doubts about our faith. Of course we are not worthy! Christianity does not exist because we are worthy. We have weaknesses; we have doubt; we are, in other words, human. If we were worthy we would not need Jesus, his love, his sacrifice for us. God isn't inviting us to dance because we are worthy. He is inviting us because he loves us. It is by our faith in his Son that we are "considered" worthy.
We may say that we can't forgive those harsh words, the hurt we felt, when this one or that one said this or that, or did this or that to us.. We may say to ourselves, "I find it hard, maybe impossible to forgive." Of course it is hard to forgive. We are all sinners.
Why would we think that forgiveness should be easy? It was not easy for Christ to go to the Cross for us; to forgive we who crucified him. Yes. You are a sinner. But don't be afraid to come to the party -- because God is inviting only sinners anyway!
Why hold on to old hates, when there is so much love that you could be spreading around? So come to the party dressed in your sins. God loves you and if you come to the party some of that excessive love that God freely gives may rub off on you. And you may be surprised to find that you have the courage to ask that person that you "simply cannot stand" to dance.
Remember this: everyone is invited. Everyone. God excludes not one single person. To the Israelites he invited the far flung remnant to come home and rest under their own vines and trees unafraid. Christians are asked to invite others to "come and see" what we have when we gather to worship.
Were we to do that what would the visitors see? Would they see Christians partying, rejoicing in God's grace, welcoming all to come in and party with us?
Or would they see us picking and choosing who could come, who could dance, who will be considered eligible to become "insiders" and who we will define as "outsiders?' Would they see a warm, open, welcoming, joy filled group of people or would they find a dour, doubtful, fearful, closed, prejudicial, worried and inbreed bunch who have confused their own insistent selectivity with God's openness and love?
Christians would do well to remember that God calls all people in this world "his children." Christians have the way that we come to him, to close the gap between us and him. But Jesus came to the world that all might be saved, that all would be welcome, that all may know the joy of turning mourning into dancing.
No one should presume to claim that they know how God intends to bring all people to him. I know how God intends to bring Christians to him. That is enough for me to know. I have found in my years of working with Christians that I had more than enough work just getting Christians to dance. But the goal is the same regardless of the path: to make it to the dance and to live within the spirit of the promise of God to Jeremiah.
"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. I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow."
God promises that the rest of this life and the life to come can be a party, a dance in celebration of life, of God's gift of that life to us. Now is the time to turn our mourning into dancing.
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