A Grumpy Prophet, and Family stories

Sept 1, 2019

Jeremiah 2:4-13

Jeremiah, from our Old Testament reading today, is a grumpy prophet. 

And he’s earned it.

Jeremiah had a long career of warning and cajoling and accusing people who had no interest in listening to him.  During his lifetime, he was opposed, belittled, ignored, and hated by pretty much everyone. Priests and kings conspired to kill him, more interested in pursuit of wealth and power than heeding Jeremiah’s plea to turn their hearts to God.  

Well, in today’s reading, Jeremiah is at it again.

He sounds like a lawyer, indicting the people on God’s behalf for breaking their covenant with God.  God has been gracious and saved them over and over. But the people have defaulted on their promises to God.  They have forsaken God and turned to other Gods. They have chosen what is worthless instead of what is life-giving. 

And so Jeremiah accuses them; and not just the people of his generation, but their ancestors as well.

But the piece that strikes me as running through the heart of God’s accusation against the people isn’t so much what they’ve done as what they’ve left undone.

They did not say,”Where is the Lord?”

The first time, Jeremiah phrases it like this: 

“They did not say, ‘Where is the LORD who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that no one passes through, where no one lives?’"

The people of Israel have this incredible history with God, but they’ve stopped telling the old stories about times when everywhere around them were proofs of God’s presence.  When they could hear God in the roar of the Red Sea filling behind their path to freedom. When they could see God through the cloud and the fire that God used to lead them in the wilderness.  When they could smell God through the aroma of roasting birds that God provided in their hunger.  When they could touch God through the fresh water that gushed through rocks when they were thirsty.  When they could taste God through the sweet manna that covered the ground like dew.

The people had stopped asking the question “Where is God?”  The question that would lead to telling these foundational stories that would remind them who they were and why they existed.  They were losing their stories, losing their identity as people of God. God was beginning to disappear for them, and for the next generation. 

And new stories were starting to take their place.  Dangerous stories that weren’t true. Stories about their independence and their greatness, their wealth and their power.

I’ve recently been reminded how important it is to keep telling old stories.

My cousin Rachel died suddenly in November.  I hadn’t seen her in a while. She was part of my dad’s side of the family from Oregon, but as an adult she had moved to Washington state with her family, so we didn’t get to see her much when we visited.  Her adult milestones were things I only heard about from other family members. I missed her weddings, only barely meeting her first husband and never her second. She had two sons that I hardly knew. I had no idea what jobs she held or where she lived or who her friends were.  So when Rachel died, it felt unreal. And distant - it had been so long since I’d seen her that I didn’t feel like I knew her anymore.

But it hadn’t always been that way.  When I was little, we traveled to Oregon almost every summer and would stay with my grandparents.  As much as possible, grandma would bring together all the relatives when we visited, and so even though they lived across the country, my cousins always felt like an important part of my life.  I was about a decade younger than most of my cousins, so I looked up to them in a big way. My memories of Rachel are most vivid from her teenage years - she was beautiful and extroverted and full of joy.  She made us all laugh with her silly jokes and made us comfortable with her constant laughter and enveloping hugs. I wanted to be Rachel when I grew up.  

Flash forward 30 years and she was gone.  

Then her sister, May, another beloved cousin, emailed asking if we might want to have Rachel’s son Zack visit us over the summer.  Zack is 17, living in Washington state with his step-dad. And May wanted to give him a chance to connect to Rachel’s family, maybe to help fill in some missing pieces of his family story. 

And so in August Zack flew east to stay with us for a couple weeks and join our family beach trip.  I was a little worried it might be awkward. This teenage boy we barely knew was going to be stuck with us for 10 days.  What if he was bored? What if we had nothing in common? What if this whole thing was a terrible idea?

But it couldn’t have been better.  

Zack had grown into this great guy - so much fun and so easy to be around.  We ended up talking a lot about his mom.  

I shared my stories about Rachel when she was younger.  About our epic card games, and the family dinners full of laughter — and always Tillamook cheese.  About visiting Rachel and her sister at college and being introduced to seltzer water, which I thought was incredibly gross but pretended to like so they would think I was mature.  About how big an impression Rachel’s kindness and beauty and laughter had made on me.

And Zack shared stories about his growing up, about his mom’s wedding to his step-dad, about their life together.  Through his stories I got a more complete understanding of Rachel as mom and wife.

She came alive for me in a new way, both through my retelling of old stories that I hadn’t thought about in years, and through the new stories Zack told.  And those stories definitely brought Zack and I together.

But it wasn’t just the old stories that brought us together.  Every day we made new memories that would become part of our continuing family story.  

Like the emergency room visit after Zack got hit in the jaw by a ball at his first-ever baseball game.  (Thankfully, it wasn’t broken and the pain lessened AND he not only got to keep the ball but he had a brief moment of fame on TV.)

And the big fish he caught at the beach and proudly fried up for us for dinner one night.

And just the small moments getting to know each other as we toured DC on one of those hop-on-hop-off buses, rode every serious ride at 6 Flags, and taught each other new games.

Now I have a relationship with Zack that extends from those old stories.  And my cousin-love with Rachel has been passed down to the next generation.

That’s where the people Jeremiah was accusing had failed again.  Not only had they not kept telling the old stories about God with them, but they had also stopped looking for new stories of God in their midst.  They weren’t asking the question “Where is God NOW?” They were in danger of losing God completely, of thinking they had no need for God in their story.

I think we struggle with that same issue.  

Sometimes the stories of the Bible feel irrelevant.  Sometimes we modern people scoff at miracles and feel distant from the Jesus of history.  Religion can start to feel old and dusty. We stop hearing the echoes in our own lives of the old stories — echoes of grace and truth, love and redemption.

And then we forget to ask the question “Where is God NOW?”  We begin to lose our identity as people of God. And other stories rush in to take God’s place -- that we are what we possess, that we can achieve anything if we work hard enough, that we are the rulers of creation.

So how can we ask the question “Where is God?”  The question that leads to our noticing God in our own stories.  The question that helps us remember whose we are and why we exist.  How can we go about looking for God’s faithful presence here with us right now?  To not just know about God but to be in relationship with God, participate in the life of God, become part of God’s story?

Millenia of Christian spiritual practice offer an almost endless array of possibilities.  But my favorite comes from St. Ignatius, a monk from the 16th century. Ignatius developed the Examen, a way of looking back over day to reflect on where God is in your everyday life.  After giving thanks for your day, and asking to see it through God’s eyes, you review the pieces of the day, then specifically note the times that brought you the greatest joy and the times that brought you the greatest sorrow or trouble.  The Examen ends with asking for God’s presence with you in the day to come. 

This practice has been boiled down by generations of youth groups to a simplified version where you take turns sharing your Highs, Lows and God Moments.  This makes for pretty interesting dinner table conversation with family or friends.

It doesn’t seem like much, but the process of looking over your day with the intention of seeing God’s presence helps you to become gradually more aware of God’s presence with you, both in the good and in the bad.  And while it might seem hard at first to name “God moments,” with practice it not only becomes easier, but slowly it helps attune you to the God moments when they are actually happening. It helps us learn to see our own stories as part of God’s bigger story.

Now, briefly, back to this indicting lawsuit speech of Jeremiah’s.  Our reading at first glance sounds sort of dreadful and grumpy and condemning.  But it is actually full of hope and good news. Beneath God’s sadness and anger at the people's betrayal is God's loving desire for the people.  The community is broken, but it is not without a future. Despite everything they have done and failed to do, God has not given up -- God still calls them “my people”.  God is willing to continue to struggle to recover this relationship.

Their story with God isn’t over.

And neither is ours.

Amen.