Wisdom from Jeremiah: “How to make your suffering a success”
Texts:
Jeremiah 1.4-19; 16.1-13; 20.7-18
St. Paul once famously said to his protégé
Timothy: “Share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Tm. 2.3,
NRSV). Indeed, St. Paul was no stranger
to suffering (cf. 2 Corinthians) and neither was Jeremiah, or any of the
genuine prophets. From the get-go, God
is up front with Jeremiah and tells him flat out that he will be opposed by the
kings and princes, priests and local leaders of Jerusalem but that he is not to
be intimidated: “Do not break down before them, or I will break you before
them” (Jer. 1.17, NRSV). Jeremiah finds
himself between a rock and a hard place – between a hostile people and an
implacable God. God did indeed keep
Jeremiah alive during the 40 years that he spent warning the people of the
disaster that was sure to come; though, at times, Jeremiah would have preferred
death to continued pleading with those who hated him (cf. Jer. 20.14-18).
Indeed, in chapter 20, we find some of
Jeremiah’s bitterest words, uttered after having been whipped by the High
Priest and having spent the night in the stocks at the gate of the Temple: “You
pushed me into this God, and I let you do it.
You were too much for me. And now
I’m a public joke…” (20.7f; The Message). Jeremiah is nothing if not authentic; he
wears his heart on his sleave. He is
real and raw (and at that particular moment, so was his back). Within two verses, Jeremiah’s emotions can
range from exuberant praise to black despair: “Sing to God! All praise to God! He saves the weak from the grip of the
wicked. Curse the day I was born!”
(20.13-14, The Message; cf. Job 3.1-7, 11-16). This prayer-poem is the last in a series of 5
which begin in chapter eleven and resemble Psalms of lament and complaint.[1]
As if all this wasn’t enough, God forbids
Jeremiah from getting married (16.1-2).
Jeremiah must endure his trials, for the most part, alone. However, there is one thing that Jeremiah
never did – give up. As Ernest Hemingway
said,
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are
strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills
the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are
none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special
hurry.” (A Farewell to Arms, 1929)
I do believe that
Jeremiah was very good, very gentle and very brave; he was indeed broken by his
struggle, and became strong, strong enough to carry on speaking the word of
Yahweh for four decades.[2] Jeremiah never lost his grip on the hope that
on the other side of disaster, there would be new life for his people: “Your
job is to pull up and tear down…and then start over, building and planting”
(1.10, The Message). How to make
your suffering a success? In a word, obey
– remain faithful to the mission God has entrusted to you. See it through, come what may. Complain all you want, just don’t give in to
the pressure to quit. In any case, the
world will kill us all; we might as well face death with the words of St. Paul
on our lips: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have
kept the faith” (2 Tm. 4.7, NRSV).
[1] Cf. Jer.
11.18-12.6; 15.10-21; 17.14-18; 18.18-23; 20.7-13: Walter Brueggemann,
Returning from the Abyss: Pivotal Moments in the Book of Jeremiah,
Louisville; WJK, 2022, pp. 62-64.
[2] Cf. Brown,
Michael L. “Jeremiah” in Longman & Garland, eds. The Expositor’s Bible
Commentary 7: Jeremiah-Ezekiel, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010, pp. 52-55.
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