GEMS FROM JEREMIAH (56) sharing God's burden IV

 


“O Lord, you have enticed me,
    and I was enticed;
you have overpowered me,
    and you have prevailed.
I have become a laughingstock all day long;
    everyone mocks me.
For whenever I speak, I must cry out;
    …“Violence and destruction!”
For the word of the Lord has become for me
    a reproach and derision all day long.
If I say, “I will not mention him
    or speak any more in his name,”
then within me there is something like a burning fire
    shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in,
    and I cannot.” (Jer. 20.7-9)

     We have seen that the God of Israel chooses certain creatures who “bear his image” to share his emotions – especially his pain – and to bend their backs under the burden that he carries, the burden of being the covenant God of a wayward, stiff-necked, obstinate, rebellious people (cf. Is. 65.2-5).  By becoming the divine husband of Israel, Yahweh had made himself vulnerable to rejection on the part of his chosen spouse (cf. Jer. 2—3; Hosea 1.1-3; Ez. 16).  In countless attempts to woo his bride back to him, Yahweh sent prophets who called Israel to repentance and renewed faithfulness to her God; these prophets then shared in Yahweh’s rejection by his people, as their message was greeted with contempt.  The prophets, beginning with Moses and culminating with Jesus, were the rejected messengers of the rejected God (cf. 1 Sam. 8.7; Mk. 12.1-12).  As the prophets are spurned by their own people, so Yahweh is abhorred by the people whom he had made his own (cf. Ex. 19.5-6; Dt. 7.7-10).

     To be a prophet meant – for all intents and purposes – to “be God” for the people of God (cf. Ex. 7.1).  He who speaks the word of God makes God present to his people.[1]  Rowan Williams speaks of those who “take responsibility for God”, for making God credible in the world (more often than not, through their suffering and death).[2]  Prophets were indeed such people.  The response the prophets elicited from the people of God was itself evidence, a demonstration to the people of the way they were treating Yahweh… Alas, the people of God routinely failed to recognize the face of their God in the anguished figures of his messengers.  If this people could give credit to a golden calf for their salvation from Egypt (cf. Ex. 32.1-4), how could they be expected to recognize the voice of Yahweh as their prophets pleaded, threatened, cajoled and denounced them time and time again?  The people of God proved itself, in the main, to be both blind and deaf, like the idols they so often worshipped in lieu of Yahweh (cf. Is. 6.9-10; Jer. 5.21; Ez. 12.2; Dn. 5.23; Hab. 2.18; Is. 44—46).

     The “identification” with Yahweh that the prophets underwent gave them great powers of intercession (cf. Ex. 32.7-14, 30-34).  When God threatened to annihilate his people, it’s as if He was asking his messenger, What would you do if you were me?  To be a prophet was to be called to love an unlovable people.  Yahweh loves Israel, even when Israel rejects him.  It is a commonplace that the Psalms are words spoken by humans to God, as opposed to the “word of God” addressed to humankind.  But if we read the Psalms, especially those where the Psalmist complains of being rejected and persecuted unjustly, as if they were the words of God, the Psalms take on a particularly “prophetic” character.  The prophets were called to give expression to the heart of God in human words. 

     Jeremiah, who prophesied 600 years after the time of Moses, discovered Yahweh to be Israel’s rejected husband, the ignored Father of the people of God (cf. Jer. 3.19-22).  Jeremiah was charged with the burden of being the last messenger, the one to deliver the final warning to God’s people before the ultimate judgment befell Israel.  Jeremiah would experience the protracted anguish of a loving God who must judge his people for her consistent infidelity and must share the torturous realization that the marriage of Yahweh to Israel had failed…  Yahweh told Jeremiah that it was no use interceding on behalf of the people; not even Moses could convince God to relent this time (Jer. 15.1-2).  Jeremiah’s pain upon witnessing the destruction of Jerusalem would be the pain of Yahweh, whose “house” was razed to the ground…[3]


[1] Cf. Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, New York: HarperCollins, 2001 [1962], p. 27.

[2] Cf. Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief, Louisville: WJK, 2007, pp. 20-26.

[3] By the Babylonians in 587 B.C.

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