FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
22 June 2008

If you were asked to name three Old Testament prophets, who would head your list? Isaiah, almost certainly, from whose writings we read at key times in the Church's year, such as Advent and Holy Week; Eliijah and/or Elisha, no doubt, who though they have no books to their name figure prominently in the history of the Kings of Israel; and then perhaps Daniel, he of the Writing on the Wall and the Lions' Den, or maybe Ezekiel, who famously saw Dem bones, dem dry bones, and The wheel, way up in the middle of the sky.

Somehow, however, I suspect Jeremiah would not figure in most people's lists. And that is ironic, since while we read from his book least of the four major prophets, we actually know more about him than many Old Testament figures. Isaiah we know so little about that most scholars believe the book that bears his name is the work of at least two, and possibly three people, writing at very different times; and the book of Daniel is at least in part what we would call historical fiction rather than the work of a single person. But of Jeremiah we know his origins, where and when he was active; and even, thanks to an incident involving three young boys who taunted him for it, that he was bald. So this is a sermon about Jeremiah, from whom we heard in our first reading.

Born of a priestly family, he was active during the final years of the kingdom of Judah... Judah having parted from the rest of Israel following the death of Solomon. Israel itself had fallen to the Assyrians around 720BC, and its inhabitants – the so-called “lost tribes of Israel” – had been dispersed. Now only Judah, with its capital Jerusalem, remained of the once-great kingdom of David; and it was a nervous place. Imagine, if you like, that the Nazis had invaded the mainland during world war two; and all that remained of a free England was a rump nation in the north centred on somewhere like York. You would have known that your continued existence was entirely dependent on the mood of your neighbour. This was the context in which Jeremiah proclaimed God's message.

And the burden of his message was this: Jerusalem would not be saved by the scheming and alliance-building of its rulers, but only by returning to the Lord. In particular, he was against the repeated attempts of successive kings to save their throne by entering an alliance with Egypt against King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, who had supplanted the Assyrians as the regional super-power. Inevitably the Babylonians tired of these repeated attempts by one of their client states to make common cause with their enemy, and in 597BC, after a lengthy siege during which Jeremiah remained in the city under house arrest, Jerusalem fell, the King and his people were carried off into exile, and a puppet king, Zedekiah, was placed by the Babylonians on the throne of Judah.

Even then, the plotting did not stop; Zedekiah tried once again to rebel with Egyptian support. This time the Babylonians were ruthless. Like Hitler cavorting himself with his generals under the Eiffel Tower in Paris, King Nebuchadnezzar himself came to supervise the burning of Jerusalem and everything of value in it, including Solomon's great Temple, which was not to be rebuilt for three generations.

Yet throughout all this turmoil, which he must have surveyed with Cassandra-like certainty that it would all end in tears, Jeremiah remains a very human figure, frequently grappling with doubts, and struggling with his rôle. He is often known as “the broken-hearted prophet”, and was warned by God at the beginning of his ministry, that whatever he said to the people, they would not listen. He is taunted, put in jail, at one point thrown in a pit to die. He was often bitter about his experience, and expresses the anger and frustration he feels. He is not depicted as a man of iron in the mould of Elijah, and yet he continues in preaching and praying for God's people. All of this we sense in our reading today.

So what do we learn from it? The challenge, of course, is to discern “The Word of the Lord” in what can seem like the political manoeuvrings of a world far removed from our own. But I think we can draw at least three conclusions from the life and witness of Jeremiah:

First, unlike Amos, for instance, who makes a great point of being only a shepherd from “up north”, or Elijah, who was often on the run from the royal household, Jeremiah spent the greater part of his ministry within or very close to what we would call “the corridors of power”. That's an important, but difficult, place to proclaim God's word. We need to pray that God would continue to raise up those who can fulfil that rôle of speaking truth to power. At a more modest level, it is the only justification for bishops in the house of Lord.

Second, Jeremiah's doubts do not hinder his ministry. It's easy to think, I would be so much more effective in my witness if I had more self-confidence, greater gifts, or whatever. But over an over again the Bible presents us with individuals who are effective precisely because of their imperfections: Moses, for instance, who complains of his speech impediment and has to have his brother do the talking; or Peter, “opening his mouth to change feet”, whom we shall be thinking about next week. And we must not allow whatever doubts we have to hinder us as we seek to give witness to the Gospel in our lives. Indeed, they may be our greatest strength.

Finally, Jeremiah perseveres to the end, embodying our Gospel today, which is no doubt why these two passages are appointed together. Notwithstanding powerful enemies arrayed against him, and unafraid of those who could harm him, trusting totally in God, he ceaselessly proclaims God's judgement on the faithless leaders of his people, and accepts the consequences.

Of Jeremiah's later life we know nothing for sure, other than that the Babylonians released him from the house arrest under which he had been kept in Jerusalem during the siege, and allowed him to settle where he wanted; but eventually he was taken against his will to Egypt by the last remnants of those who had turned to Egypt for support against Babylon; and there he died, according to one tradition, stoned to death by those he had angered by his opposition to the Egyptian alliance, faithful to his message to the very end.

In addition to the book that bears his name, he left us one other work, the short and hauntingly beautiful lament for fallen Jerusalem we know as The Lamentations of Jeremiah, with its repeated refrain, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, return to the Lord your God. They have been frequently set to music, and are especially associated with the liturgy of Holy Week. And the Apocrypha includes a short book attributed to his faithful secretary Baruch.

We thank God for the witness of Jeremiah; and of all who like him have truly found their lives in losing them. And as we do so, we pray for strength to learn from their example and follow in their footsteps.