A Redemptive Question

Jeremiah 5:29-31

In the late 1950’s and 60’s there was a pronouncement that rung out throughout the land. This announcement found its way into many influential arenas of our society. Primarily among the educated, elites and middle class Americans, who for the most part were primarily white and educated. The pronouncement was heard in some corners of marginalize communities, like African Americans and some poor impoverish communities. The reverberation effect from the pronouncement was more pronounce among white mainline churches than anywhere else, leaving them baffle and stung. They were witnessing church attendance drop dramatically for the most part across all denominations. The one exception was the African American church. Instead of attendance falling off, it was stable and in most cases increasing.

The country at the time for many, who resonated with the pronouncement, was falling a part. There was political corruption on a scale not witness before as manifested by political assassinations, and the principle keepers of the law, were breaking the law as in Water Gate. There was the blinding insanity of foreign policy with Russia over Cuba, along with our greedy blundering in Vietnam, that had spiral our society into such vicious violence it would push us to the brink of nuclear destruction. Poisonous social and cultural venom was unleashed upon society by those who were entrusted to maintain the status quo of a segregated society based on White Supremacy. Persons in the likes of a George Wallace, a Bull Connor or the FBI director, J. Eagar Hoover fangs tore into entire communities victimizing children, women, and elderly, unleashing deadly venom upon the soul of the nation, on top of the insanity, and madding violence it had already been inflicted with. And yet the pronouncement “That God is dead” reverberated with such forces among many mainstream White Americans, because God for all practical purposes was irrelevant in holding together there collapsing world. As far as they were concern “God was dead”.

I sometimes wonder however about this pronouncement. I wonder if what those elite, sinfully rich and drunkenly powerful educated minds was really saying without saying, is that we can no longer use the concept of God to advance our  oppressive and wicked agenda, like we have in the past. I wonder about this pronouncement, because I’m sure back then, there was a lot of ordinary everyday white people, who thought of themselves as good people and not oppressors, who identified with this pronouncement. Maybe they identified with it and reverberated with it because for them, God had ceased to be a meaningful force in their life. The inability to command God presence when they wanted to, dictate they needed something more reliable they can control, to be in control. Just maybe, the material orientation to life had numbed them and crowded out any space within where the presence of a God could be experience and felt.

Without the capacity to experience God’s presence, to taste God’s goodness, and to feel God’s grace, is to have to bear your guilt and burden all by your self, which no one is able to do. Under judgment guilt is a heavy burden to carry, especially when you know you’re guilty.  You can try to hide its effects, by shoring up your face with an artificial smile, uttering what you think are wholesome words you don’t really mean or you may try to engage in some positive thinking that just don’t seem to cut it. The only thing that can bear the unbearable death of guilt is redemption.

This is why these words we find in Jeremiah 5 cut so deep. They remind us that we’re all guilty, destine if we ignore God’s judgment, for an unbearable death of guilt. Jeremiah declares in this text, it’s God’s judgment that no one is without guilt nor has ceased making themselves guilty. And in verse 18 we’re told the only reason our guilt has not received the full measure of what it deserves is because of God’s judgment. Look with me if you will and let us hear and see what the Spirit of God is saying to us if you can.

5:20-31. Judah had become willfully ignorant of God. Though she had eyes and ears, she did not see or hear (i.e., comprehend) the true character of God (cf. Ezek. 12:2). She refused to fear, or reverence, God (cf. Prov. 1:7). Though even the sea remains within its everlasting barrier (cf. Job 38:10; Ps. 104:9), the people of Judah refused to stay within God's covenant limits. Instead they turned aside and went away. They refused to see God's gracious hand at work, providing them the fall and spring rains which assured the ... harvest.

Jeremiah then specified some of the people's sins. Wicked people, who were rich and powerful, were waiting to snare the poor. They refused to help the downtrodden (the fatherless and the poor). The prophets, who were to proclaim God's word of truth, were prophesying lies; and the priests, who were to instruct the people in the ways of God, were instead ruling by their own authority (cf. 2:8). Yet these aberrations of righteousness were condoned by the people who loved it that way. All the elements of society preferred wickedness to righteousness.