The Park Forum

Links for today’s readings:

Aug 28  Read: Jeremiah 22 Listen: (5:07) Read: 2 Thessalonians 2 Listen: (2:32)

Links for this weekend’s readings:

Aug 29  Read: Jeremiah 23 Listen: (7:13) Read: 2 Thessalonians 3 Listen: (2:16)
Aug 30  Read: Jeremiah 24 Listen: (1:54) Read: 1 Corinthians 1 Listen: (4:03)

Scripture Focus: Jeremiah 22.1-5

1 This is what the Lord says: “Go down to the palace of the king of Judah and proclaim this message there: 2 ‘Hear the word of the Lord to you, king of Judah, you who sit on David’s throne—you, your officials and your people who come through these gates. 3 This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place. 4 For if you are careful to carry out these commands, then kings who sit on David’s throne will come through the gates of this palace, riding in chariots and on horses, accompanied by their officials and their people. 5 But if you do not obey these commands, declares the Lord, I swear by myself that this palace will become a ruin.’”

Reflection: Solo Sins and Systemic Sins

By John Tillman

God, through Jeremiah, confronted wicked kings for their individual sins and for their sins as heads of state. But the first words of God’s message were about governmental responsibility.

Jeremiah challenged kings to rescue people from crime, protect foreigners from violence, and stop innocent bloodshed. These were political/governmental sins.

Prophets address moral problems that are both spiritual and political. This was especially true in Jeremiah’s day, when state power and religious power were synonymous. Every religious problem was a political problem and every state problem was a religious one.

Oppression, violence, and injustice are not on God’s back burner. They are the fruit that shows whether the tree’s heart is sick or healthy. This is true for individuals and governments.

Some Christians individualize moral commands in scripture to the point that they deny any corporate or community culpability for the moral failings of systems that we individuals manage and create together. “We just need to change hearts,” is their half-truth.

Some Christians make the opposite error. They only acknowledge collective sins of political, economic, or judicial systems and deny that personal choices, lifestyles, or identities can be caused by, or connected to, individual sins that need correction. “Better systems, better people, better choices,” is their half-truth.

If prophets like Jeremiah heard us separating individual and systemic sins, they’d pull out their beards in frustration. What foolishness! We need the whole truth. There’s no such thing as “solo sins.” Every sin is systemic.

What are oppressive systems made from other than the compounded selfish choices of individuals? What individual sins are not influenced by the systems of culture, economics, and power that surround, control, and influence us? It is foolish to deny they are connected.

Think of Cain and Abel and the Good Samaritan…

The hyper-individualist Christian denies being his brother’s keeper and denies being the neighbor of the wounded traveller. The hyper-collectivist Christian blames God’s evaluation of sacrifices for Abel’s death, and rather than help the wounded traveler, lectures us that the robbers are merely symptoms of an unfair economy.

Hear and heed Jeremiah’s challenge to the kings as it was intended. It challenges both individuals and the systems those individuals influence. The gospel is the answer to every human problem, but its effects were never intended to stop with individuals.

If the gospel changes only you, and nothing around you, it isn’t the gospel.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence

Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness,… make your way straight before me. — Psalm 5.8

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Read more: What Makes a King?

True kings are those who know God. Their lives, efforts, causes, where they put their money…reveal who is truly a king after God’s heart.

What Makes a King?

Read more: The Crux of Repentance

The unmerited favor of Christ is an acquired taste. Most of us are gauche enough to like our grace flavored with a little bit of earning it.

The Crux of Repentance

Links for today’s readings:

Aug 26  Read: Jeremiah 20 Listen: (3:07) Read: 1 Thessalonians 5 Listen: (2:37)

Scripture Focus: Jeremiah 20:14–15

14 Cursed be the day I was born!
May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!
15 Cursed be the man who brought my father the news,who made him very glad, saying,“A child is born to you—a son!”

Reflection: Cursed Birth Day

By Erin Newton

What do Jeremiah, Job, and Frankenstein’s monster all have in common? Answer: They curse the day they were born. 

Jeremiah has been ridiculed and imprisoned for his prophesying. He curses the day that brought him life and the messenger who brought the news. 

Job suffered the deaths of his children and the loss of his wealth and health. He declares: “May the day of my birth perish, and the night that said, ‘A boy is conceived!’ That day—may it turn to darkness” (Job 3.3-4). 

The Creature in Mary Shelley’s gothic novel experiences rejection from his maker and cries out: “Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?”

We know the value of life. We celebrate birthdays. We pray for healings. 

But let’s be honest. Many of us have felt pain deep enough to wish it away. We have grieved to the point that the future seems not worth the trouble. We understand that living is a gift, but pain brings us to the place we want to trade it all in. 

And that’s expected. Despite our desire for ease and comfort—this world often brings the uncomfortable and the painful and the awful events right to our doorstep. 

It is good for us to sit with the uneasiness of this chapter in Jeremiah. It ends rather bleakly. We want to rush to tidy it up, to add a “but then” phrase in there. 

But if we move past the harsh, raw emotions of pain too fast, we lose the transformative moment of what brutal honesty can do for us. Telling God we wish we’d never been born is probably the most honest we will ever be. But it’s scary. Are we allowed to not want this? 

I think Jeremiah and Job give us permission to say what we are really thinking. Job sits in misery for a while. He bangs on the doors of heaven until God speaks. A fire of passion is stoked by God in the heart of Jeremiah. He cannot contain it even if he wants to give up. 

We are not a creature stitched together from decomposing flesh and rejected by our father. We are like the prophet and the most faithful servant—seen, heard, and tended to by God. Don’t be afraid to be honest. He’s heard all this before and still loves us.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence

Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. — Psalm 86.4

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Read more: Better Unborn

It is normal to feel ready to give up, regret answering God’s call, and wish we could go where no one can reach us.

Better Unborn — Readers’ Choice

Read more: Be Awake Be Light

In Christ, we are “of the light” but live in a world dominated by darkness…How then should we live?

Be Awake Be Light

Links for today’s readings:

Aug 25  Read: Jeremiah 19 Listen: (2:58) Read: 1 Thessalonians 4 Listen: (2:24)

Scripture Focus: Jeremiah 19.1-4, 10-15

1 This is what the Lord says: “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take along some of the elders of the people and of the priests 2 and go out to the Valley of Ben Hinnom, near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. There proclaim the words I tell you, 3 and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, you kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. 4 For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned incense in it to gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.

10 “Then break the jar while those who go with you are watching, 11 and say to them, ‘This is what the Lord Almighty says: I will smash this nation and this city just as this potter’s jar is smashed and cannot be repaired. They will bury the dead in Topheth until there is no more room. 12 This is what I will do to this place and to those who live here, declares the Lord. I will make this city like Topheth. 13 The houses in Jerusalem and those of the kings of Judah will be defiled like this place, Topheth—all the houses where they burned incense on the roofs to all the starry hosts and poured out drink offerings to other gods.’ ” 14 Jeremiah then returned from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and stood in the court of the Lord’s temple and said to all the people, 15 “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘Listen! I am going to bring on this city and all the villages around it every disaster I pronounced against them, because they were stiff-necked and would not listen to my words.’ ”

Reflection: When Truth Provokes Violence

By John Tillman

Immediately after Jeremiah’s message, a priest, Pashhur, had Jeremiah seized, beaten, and put in stocks (Jer 20.1-2).

Jeremiah suffered seven recorded instances of physical violence, threats, and arrests—more than any other prophet. However, Jeremiah’s message was not unique.

Moses and Joshua warned that if Israel was unfaithful, God would remove them from the land (Deut 4.23-30). God warned Solomon that he would destroy the temple and exile his people for unfaithfulness (2 Chron 6.36-39; 7.19-22). Micah, Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah repeated and amplified these warnings (Mic 3.12; Amos 5.27; Hosea 9.3, 17; Isa 5.13; 39.6). Jeremiah was just telling Jerusalem’s leaders what scripture said would happen.

Despite the fact that Jeremiah’s warnings were “biblical,” his message was unwelcome and unthinkable. To religious leaders, like Pashhur, it was unthinkable that the temple would be destroyed. To political leaders, Jeremiah’s critiques of corruption, cruelty to the poor, idolatry, and wicked alliances were unwelcome.

Rather than repent, they called Jeremiah a liar and traitor. They accused him of allying with the Babylonians and sabotaging soldiers’ and citizens’ morale. They falsely accused him of defecting to the Babylonians (Jer 37.12-14). They labeled his moral critiques as political threats to justify responding with political violence.

Most of our readers live in places with legal freedoms of religious expression and speech. Jeremiah didn’t have that. But such protections are only effective if leaders follow them. Also, some powerful political movements are attacking these rights. Violent attacks against those speaking God’s truth can happen anywhere and at any time, even in places that guarantee freedoms of religion and speech. We need to be ready for moments when speaking unwelcome biblical truths is labeled treasonous, unpatriotic, or criminal. 

It can be tempting to back away from scripture when its teachings against greed, lust, sexual promiscuity, power, and favoritism or its teachings about helping the poor, immigrants, and outcasts are labeled as a political movement instead of a moral imperative. We must be willing to stand faithfully even if Pashhurs of the world slap us verbally or physically. However, “getting slapped” doesn’t mean you are being faithful.

Some Christian “truth-tellers” today are persecution farmers, provoking others to claim persecution. They are Pashhur, pretending to be Jeremiah. They are bullies pretending to be prophets. They don’t weep over the lost. They gloat. Being a cruel bully doesn’t make you a faithful prophet and suffering for doing wrong is not persecution (1 Pet 2:20; 3:17; 4:15-16; Gal 6:7).

Be a Jeremiah not a Pashhur. Don’t seek persecution as validation but be faithful regardless of the consequences.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Morning Psalm

Show me your marvelous loving-kindness, O Savior of those who take refuge at your right hand from those who rise up against them. Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me under the shadow of your wings, From the wicked who assault me, from my deadly enemies who surround me. — Psalm 17.7-9

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Read more: Stephen, Isaiah, and Confronting God’s People

Stephen and Isaiah stand in a long line of those who were killed for confronting God’s people with hypocrisy. Not pagans. Not enemies. God’s people.

Stephen, Isaiah, and Confronting God’s People

Read more: The Weeping Enduring Prophet

No matter what insults they throw at him or what pit they throw him down into, he holds firm to the truth.

The Weeping Enduring Prophet

Links for today’s readings:

Aug 24  Read: Jeremiah 18 Listen: (3:40) Read: 1 Thessalonians 3 Listen: (1:44)

Scripture Focus: Jeremiah 18.3-10

3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. 5 Then the word of the Lord came to me. 6 He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. 7 If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. 9 And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, 10 and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.

Reflection: Hope for Marred Pots

By John Tillman

Watching something you love self-destruct is wearying in a unique way. This is true whether what is self-destructing is a person, a nation, or a political group. It is for this reason that reading through the prophets can be an exercise in endurance. 

If we begin to grow tired of accounts of the sins of Israel and Judah and the judgments coming their way,  we are not alone. The other prophets and priests of Judah grew so sick of Jeremiah’s messages that they conspired against him.

Their opposition would grow from verbal attacks and ignoring Jeremiah to more insidious and violent forms. Their opposition would culminate in a plot to take his life.

They are not alone. Jeremiah grew weary of his own message. Jeremiah’s writings are filled with moments of grief and longing for his people to listen, to change, to repent. 

Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet, but he is not the only one weeping. Many of Jeremiah’s most mournful passages could be read with God as the one weeping rather than Jeremiah. The most likely interpretation is that it is often both, not one or the other. Jeremiah is a weeping prophet because he serves a weeping God.

God, understanding Jeremiah’s grief, sends him to a place where he can see that there is hope for marred and broken things—the potter’s house. 

God tells Jeremiah that it is Israel on the potter’s wheel. Marred, rebellious, stubborn, yet still the artisan keeps the clay in his hands, crushing, spinning, shaping, and reforming the pot.

There is hope for marred and broken things like us. Whether nations, peoples, groups, or individuals, we can be reshaped. We don’t have to remain a useless, malformed pot. If we will stay pliable and stay in the hands of our potter, we can be reshaped. We can become a fitting vessel for the good plans that God has for us.

May we stay humble.
May we stay pliable.
May we stay in the potter’s hands.

Divine Hours Prayer:

Blessed be the Lord! For he has shown me the wonders of his love in a besieged city. — Psalm 31.21

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Read more: The Two Ariels

“Judicial hardening” refers to the way God acts in response to our rejection of him and his messages.

The Two Ariels

Read more: Never Too Far

The fate of Israel is like watching a train wreck…Is there any time when someone is too deep in sin to repent?

Never Too Far