Tag: Jeremiah

Scripture Focus: Jeremiah 16.14-15
14 “However, the days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when it will no longer be said, ‘As surely as the LORD lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,’ 15 but it will be said, ‘As surely as the LORD lives, who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where he had banished them.’ For I will restore them to the land I gave their ancestors.

Reflection: Captivity, Exile, and Exodus
By John Tillman

Jeremiah and other prophets spoke often of how eventually God’s people would return from exile. The return from exile narrative is a mirror-version of the Exodus from Egypt narrative. 

In this mirror version, the corrupt state of Egypt is the corrupt states of Israel and Judah. The false gods of Egypt are the false gods of Israel and Judah. The harsh, desert wilderness experience is the harsh experience of the people in captivity in exile. The entrance to the promised land is the return home of the exiled people of God from all corners of the world.

In the original Exodus narrative, God’s people were enslaved by state power. The people did not abandon God, the state turned against them. In freeing the people from Egypt, God used plagues that were specific attacks on the false gods of the state in order to free his people to worship him, the one true God.

But Jeremiah describes a different kind of enslavement. While living in political freedom, the people of Israel and Judah became spiritually enslaved. They rejected God and set up their own gods and a government filled with oppression and mistreatment of the poor and outcasts. In the desert, they grumbled to go back to Egypt. When they made it to the promised land, they made another Egypt out of it.

The governments God established for his people were intended to be a light to the pagan world, carrying out God’s justice and demonstrating his righteousness. Instead, they became just like the pagan nations. The formerly oppressed, became oppressors. The formerly abused, became abusers. Israel became Egypt. 

How often do we repeat this cycle?
How often do we become our own spiritual oppressors, enslaving ourselves to sins and idolatry? 
What unholy “state” do we build up, abusing the power we have for our benefit?
What gods do we allow to set up shop in the temple of our hearts?
What suffering people have we shut out to make more room for ourselves?

God brought plagues to destroy the false gods. May he destroy ours. 
God moved his people through a place of suffering and purification. May we follow him.
God restored his people and renewed his covenant with them. May we seek his face in repentance and be restored.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick…And indeed I did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners. — Matthew 9.12-13

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Jeremiah 16 (Listen – 3:52) 
Mark 2 (Listen – 5:05)

Read more about Keeping The Greatest Commandments
Even Christians are easily misled into thinking love is primarily a feeling. Yet, it is so much more.

#ReadersChoice is time for you to share favorite Park Forum posts from the year. What post helped you forgive?

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Scripture Focus: Jeremiah 9.17-18
This is what the Lord Almighty says:
“Consider now! Call for the wailing women to come;
send for the most skillful of them.
Let them come quickly
and wail over us
till our eyes overflow with tears
and water streams from our eyelids.

Reflection: Praying Through Weeping—Guided Prayer
By John Tillman

If prayer is relationship then when God weeps, we should join. What friend would weep, whom we would not join in weeping? Weeping for our own hurts and harms is one thing. Weeping for what grieves God is a prophetic task and a work of faith.

Weep in prayer with the weeping prophet. Jeremiah’s tears, just like his words, are not his own. They are as much a part of the revelation of God as the words he writes.

Oh, that my head were a spring of water
and my eyes a fountain of tears!
I would weep day and night
for the slain of my people. — Jeremiah 9.1

Jeremiah expresses our desire to escape evil—fleeing to the desert to be away from wrongdoers.

Oh, that I had in the desert
a lodging place for travelers,
so that I might leave my people
and go away from them;
for they are all adulterers,
a crowd of unfaithful people. — Jeremiah 9.2

We confess we are part of a culture that seeks out its own version of truth.
We confess that we live in echo-chambers of the lies we prefer rather than the truth. Any lie or obfuscation is acceptable as long as it can be weaponized to help us win.

“They make ready their tongue
like a bow, to shoot lies;
it is not by truth
that they triumph in the land.
They go from one sin to another;
they do not acknowledge me,”
declares the Lord. — Jeremiah 9.3

Weep with Christ prophetically. He weeps that our hypocrisy not only harms us, but blocks the path of redemption for others.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. — Matthew 23.13

“And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation.” — Matthew 23.35-36

More specifically, judgment would fall within the next week. And more personally, it would fall on Christ himself.

Christ can weep with us and wipe away our tears because he took the just payment for their cause.

Divine Hours Prayer:
Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
Had you desired it, I would have offered sacrifice, but you take not delight in burnt-offerings.
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; and a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. — Psalm 51.16-18

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Jeremiah 9 (Listen – 4:38) 
Matthew 23 (Listen – 4:53)

Read more about Undignified Weeping and Dancing
Hannah carried the weight of her grief to God’s presence and broke open her heart with shameless weeping.

#ReadersChoice is time for you to share favorite Park Forum posts from the year.

What post helped you pray more passionately?https://forms.gle/DsYWbj45y9fCDLzi7

Scripture Focus: Jeremiah 2.34-35
34 On your clothes is found
    the lifeblood of the innocent poor,
    though you did not catch them breaking in.
Yet in spite of all this
35     you say, ‘I am innocent;
    he is not angry with me.’
But I will pass judgment on you
    because you say, ‘I have not sinned.’

Reflection: Blood Spilled
By John Tillman

God made us from the earth. This may be why it is so often noted that the spilled blood of humans “cries” to God from the ground. When the Maker senses his creation unmade, his wrath is justifiably stirred.

Abel’s blood, spilled in an act of jealousy, and revenge, was the first liquid cry in God’s ears but, unfortunately, humanity was not done spilling blood. We spill blood constantly and for many reasons. We spill blood in direct and indirect ways.

One specific way that we spill blood is exactly as Jeremiah describes. We spill blood when we allow the poor to be convicted of crimes without proper evidence and we take their “lifeblood” in execution or by imprisoning them for life. 

We spill blood when we participate in an economy that cheapens our goods by cheapening the lives of workers who put their health and lives in danger in the mines, factories, or sweatshops that produce our goods.

We spill blood when we do not hold those who administer justice accountable for deadly errors or abuses.

We are collectively guilty of spilling blood. As Jeremiah says, the blood of innocents is on our very clothing.

We need the Holy Spirit to confront us with the enormity of injustice around us and to stop saying, “I am innocent. I have not sinned.” Only when we drop our pointless excuses and confess that our clothes are stained with blood and our lips and hands are unclean before God, can we be forgiven and restored.

We can be forgiven of innocent blood we have shed because there is another whose innocent blood cries to God from the ground—Jesus. All the innocent blood we have spilled, from “the blood of righteous Abel” to the blood of the latest innocent to be spilled in today’s news headlines, is answered for by the blood of Jesus. We have spilled the blood of many innocents, but Jesus is The Innocent who spilled his own blood for us. 

His blood cries out not judgment but forgiveness. His blood cries out not curses but blessings. His blood cries out “it is finished.”

When we confess our need for clean hearts, hands, lips, and new garments, Christ clothes us with his righteousness that we may stand and walk in justice.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
“Because the needy are oppressed, and the poor cry out in misery, I will rise up,” says the Lord, “And give them the help they long for.” — Psalm 12.5

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Jeremiah 2 (Listen – 5:54) 
Matthew 16 (Listen – 3:43)

Read more about Philemon’s Speck and Our Log
Our existence is supported by the labor of people who directly or indirectly serve us, just as Onesimus served Philemon.

Read more about Blind to Injustice, Deaf to Oppression
Our nations need your forgiveness. We bow deeply before you. We have betrayed you Lord and done evil before you.