It’s been a week … ’nuff said.Luke 21:25-36; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Psalm 25:1-10; Jeremiah 33:14-16
It seems like this past week I’ve talked to a lot of people who are not having the greatest time. A lot of folks are sick, or dealing with a loss of one kind or another. Others have just had a whole slew of minor things happen that all add up and they’re stressed out. There’s just a lot going on that makes us all feel kind of down.
First I want to tell anyone who is feeling that way that it’s ok. You’re not alone in feeling like you do. I’m right there with you, and I’m sure a number of people around you are too. That’s one of the benefits of meeting together at church – we can share our burdens and our joys with one another and lighten everyone’s load.
In our first lesson for today, from the prophet Jeremiah, we have an excerpt from the writings of someone who didn’t just have a tough week, but a tough life. When Jeremiah was still quite young, likely under the age of 20, God basically told him he was going to tell the nation of Judah that they’re going to be destroyed, and that he gets to witness it. Barely forty years after he receives this call from God, that very thing happens.
So Jeremiah’s life is spent preaching a message that no one wants to hear: “Out of the north disaster shall be let loose upon all the inhabitants of the land. For behold, I am calling all the tribes of the kingdoms of the north, declares the Lord, and they shall come, and every one shall set his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem.” Jeremiah knows, from the beginning of his ministry, that the land he’s known for his entire life is going to be destroyed.
Already it’s hard to live with that knowledge, but it’s even harder to try and tell people. No one wants to hear that everything they’ve ever known is going to change. It’s hard to accept. So Jeremiah often lamented to God that preaching to Israel is not unlike preaching to a brick wall. At one point, because of his preaching, he is thrown into a water tank to drown, because he angered the king. Another time, he is kidnapped by some of the remnant of Israel after Jerusalem’s fall and taken to Jerusalem against his will.
Jeremiah knew what it was to have a rough week. His own people turned against him countless times. He even once asked God to take the Word of the Lord away from him, because every time he spoke the Word of God to the people the were enraged and wanted to cause him harm. And yet in the midst of it all, Jeremiah gives us the wonderful message of hope we read in today’s lesson:
“‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sproud from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness’”
Jeremiah still saw a glimmer of hope for the future of the nation, and of the people of God, because he knew that despite the pain and suffering he endured at the present time, there would come a day when that suffering would go away.
God likes to do things like that. Even when we’re uncertain and struggling through our days, God finds ways to bring us little bits of hope. He reminds us that we can rest in his arms no matter where we are. That’s even kind of what happened in the reading from 1 Thessalonians. Paul had been worried about the church at Thessalonica, and because he was in jail wasn’t able to do so. He was concerned that their faith had weakened somehow in his absence, but instead of weakening, Paul heard a report that their faith was strengthened, so he gave thanks because of that news.
Yet the pinnacle of his hope is Jesus Christ himself. Last week, remember, I told you that the whole message of the Bible is that God Wins, right? Jeremiah’s trust is in knowing that, when Jesus Christ comes as a baby, God will defeat sin and free Israel from its effects. Paul already knows that Jesus has come as a baby, and that sin has lost its power of us. But Paul also knows that sin still works against us, yet there is a time coming when, as we read in Luke’s gospel, the Son of Man will come in a cloud with power and great glory, bringing with him our full redemption.
Even when things seem hopeless, and the world around us is in chaos, God wants us to see that there is hope in Him. Sin and death, even though defeated on the cross, still works against us on this earth, but because of our faith in Christ it no longer has claim to us. Like Jeremiah, even though our own Jerusalems seem to be conquered and sacked, hope is not lost.
In Jeremiah 52, the last chapter of the prophet’s writings, he retells the events of the siege and fall of the capital of Israel. He has to relive, through writing it down, the destruction of his home and the loss of almost everyone he knew. And yet it has an interesting ending. The last king of Judah, Jehoiachin, is released from prison. God showed the people a concrete hope for the future. He left hope for Israel that someone of David’s line would still live and fulfill the promise he made to David.
Jeremiah’s hope was made fact in the birth of Jesus Christ, an event that Advent is all about preparing for. Yet we too have a similar hope for the future, because no matter how hard things seem to be God wins. Because God has called us his own, we have a certain hope that, no matter our struggles, God is bigger than anything life can throw at us.