Cracked

Cracked

 

Jeremiah 2:4-13

Israel forsakes the Lord 

 

2:4 Hear the word of the LORD, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel.

 

2:5 Thus says the LORD: What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me and went after worthless things and became worthless themselves?

 

2:6 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?"

 

2:7 I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination.

 

2:8 The priests did not say, "Where is the LORD?" Those who handle the law did not know me; the rulers transgressed against me; the prophets prophesied by Baal and went after things that do not profit.

 

2:9 Therefore once more I accuse you, says the LORD, and I accuse your children's children.

 

2:10 Cross to the coasts of Cyprus and look; send to Kedar and examine with care; see if there has ever been such a thing.

 

2:11 Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit.

 

2:12 Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked; be utterly desolate, says the LORD,

 

2:13 for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.

“Has a nation changed it’s Gods?” the prophet asks. Have we? Friends, given the bizarre occurrences since January 20 of this year, I confess that this is a prophet-inspired RANT sermon. I am disgusted with what my country has become. I don’t believe there is ANY defense for the actions of our current President and his staff that is not either selfish, bigoted, or misinformed. Those who are the current government’s “base” have sold their souls to a “false god,” and have abandoned the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not to mention, Jesus Christ, God’s Son. With each passing week, the acts of this administration have been about retribution, consolidation of power, and misinformation and “misdirection” of what our federal government is to be about, which is to “insure domestic tranquility,” provide for the “pursuit of happiness,” and to protect the “inalienable rights” of each citizen. As was the case of Israel of old, our nation may be moving toward its own downfall with passion and self-centered purpose.

 

It has always been my conviction that the world needs a “free” and “constitutional” America. Our founders did an amazing job creating the boilerplate of a governing document that could assure not just the survival of our nation, but that we could be a beacon of humanism and hope for the rest of the world. As has been often quoted, it was Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding “minds” of this nation, who said that what they gave us was: “a republic...if you can keep it.” That challenge is now, in our time, being seriously threatened. Why? Because we have a modern-day Nebuchadnezzar in charge of our government—one who delights in seeing his own name blasted in pubic media, and who believes he is the “god-ordained” leader for his time—we are slipping toward irrelevance, if not dissolution as a nation, day by day. The danger is already hammering those our nation has traditionally tried to elevate: the poor and down-trodden; the marginalized; those without a voice; and the “strangers in the land,” the immigrants, without whom American NEVER could have become “great.” Those who speak prophetically in support of the historical and time-tested values and aims of this nation have themselves become immediate targets of a ruthless, authoritarian band that at once utilizes the great power afforded them by their allegiance to the elected leader of the Executive Brance, all the while mocking him behind his back, because they realize that he is both drunk with power, and hopelessly focused on his own aggrandizement. Nebuchadnezzar, it is!

 

When I consulted the Revised Common Lectionary for a passage to focus on for this week’s “retirement sermon,” I noticed that the ecumenical document also offered a text from the Apocrypha, something mainline Christians usually don’t consult when preparing lessons and sermons. However, the passage from Sirach 10 was most elucidating:

 

10:12 The beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord; the heart has withdrawn from its Maker.

10:13 For the beginning of pride is sin, and the one who clings to it pours out abominations.

 

Sound familiar? This text warns Israel of what will bring its downfall, and it doesn’t take much effort to extend this warning to a nation, or to all humankind, for that matter. When we turn away from God to “swear allegiance” to a human who sets himself UP as God, we are not just sowing seeds of our own destruction, but we are fertilizing them and saturating them in Miracle Grow as well! Those who are benefitting politically and economically from the “power” of our current Chief Executive have shown themselves willing to bend the knee—or both knees—to worship him as their savior. This is precisely what the prophet Jeremiah is warning about. His words ring just as fresh and true today as they did hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Nations that don’t heed them will pay the consequences, even as the second part of the Sirach 10:13 passages warns:

 

Therefore the Lord brought upon them unheard-of calamities and destroyed them completely.

 

 Jeremiah is even more profound in both is warnings, and in what “crops” he says will be reaped by Israel:

 

What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me and went after worthless things and became worthless themselves?

 

The priests did not say, "Where is the LORD?" Those who handle the law did not know me; the rulers transgressed against me; the prophets prophesied by Baal and went after things that do not profit.

 

These words should do far more than make us go “tsk-tsk” for ancient Israel. Modern-day, political Israel under Netanyahu is even worse than the people Jeremiah is steamed about, as they are killing women, children, and relief workers in the name of “security,” but with the actual aim of profit, but taking control of the entire West Bank and Gaza. Believe me, when this is all over, Palestinians will not only have a prayer of a “homeland,” but will have been driven off even the modicum of land the United Nations granted them in 1948, and what was once theirs will now become Israeli settlements. What ever happened to the Hebrew hospitality code, which was once a primary command of Yahweh’s to be honored by God’s people? In our time, as the world watches, it has surrendered to a lust for power and land. And with the blessings of the President of the United States. [WHEN will “evangelical” Christians realize that modern, political Israel has little connection—other than its sins—to biblical Israel? And certainly it has none regarding belief in Yahweh! We see no modern equivalent in Netanyahu’s Israel to biblical Israel’s numerous acts of repentance and contrition.] Jeremiah would be freshly raving.

 

The question for America—ESPECIALLY for those who would call themselves Christians—is this, according to the prophet:

 

Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? 

 

A question that the prophet believes begs an answer, and he immediately issues:

 

But my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit.

 

This is precisely what we are about, currently. What was once the “great glory” of this nation—justice, freedom, defending the rights of oppressed peoples, and uplifting the downtrodden, offering them a “fair chance” at the “American dream”—is being sold out for the promise of a tasty potage that will feed some folk’s lust for power. “Owning the libs” has become a destructive game of one-upmanship, something that was NEVER part of the great “American experiment.” We’ve turned over the reins of power to a malignant narcist, who “knighted” for a season a billionaire whose brain was fried on ketamine, and who was empowered to “take a chainsaw” to the most benevolent arms of our democracy. Eventually, even HE turned against “Nebuchadnezzar.”

 

The prophet Jeremiah’s last indictment is his most harsh:

 

…for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.

 

We are in grave danger of becoming a nation of “cracked cisterns,” all the while thinking they will capture and hold our personal treasure of wealth and power. They will not, for they, like the minds of some of our currently most voter-validated leaders, are cracked and leak badly. We have endorsed people who cannot “hold water.” The brackish water collecting currently in Washington, D.C. will most certainly filter into the “ground water” that has sustained our representative republic, unless Americans—Christians included—stand up, speak up, and “man” up against these ungodly forces. What will we do to support the “least of these” whom Jesus befriend, healed, and uplifted? What will we do to “welcome the stranger” and to restore “treating them like citizens of the land” which God demanded of biblical Israel—AND of us? And what will we do to stem the rising tide of racism and white supremacy infesting anew the American landscape? If your answer is “nothing,” or “this is what I voted for,” you will not get this sermon, and I will have a hard time relating to you as an American, let alone a “Christian.” Neither should you read Jeremiah without putting on your tinfoil hat.

 

I have always preached Jesus as a loving, self-sacrificing, “love one another” Savior, but in this case, there comes a time when the Jesus who railed against the power-conniving religious leaders (calling them “whitewashed sepulchers,” which was apparently quite in insult in his day!), AND overturned the encroaching, displacing tables of the money-changers, proclaiming his “Father’s house” as a house of prayer, not of payers. We are rapidly moving toward one of these “tough Jesus” times, in my view. If you don’t believe me, read the prophets. Start with today’s passage in Jeremiah 2! All that has to happen for humanity to seriously harm itself and its future is for God to step back. I fear we are approaching this reality. Where is the nation of this planet—at least one that has any power—that is speaking for justice and hope? Not China; not Russia; not North Korea; not the well-oiled Arab nation states; and, possibly for the first time in history, NOT the United States of America. “America First” might become our epitaph.

 

So, where’s the good news? If we keep reading in the Bible, it is clear that God just keeps offering people another chance. Repentance is the unlocked door to a return to God’s favor. We Christians believe that in Jesus Christ, God continues to extend a hand of hope, forgiveness, and redemption to any who will receive these gifts of God’s grace. Years ago, my evangelical friends—the same ones who now almost to a person have endorsed those who have targeted our freedoms with cracked promises of “greatness” and prosperity—used to quote a text from II Chronicles as a “formula” for what America of the “wild” 1970s needed:

 

“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” [II Chronicles 7:14]

 

Perhaps this is a text whose time has now truly come for the people of the United States of America. We are now a cracked nation—split right down the middle. Yielding to God, to the teachings of Jesus, and returning to the framework of our forefathers, may be our only hope for the healing we so badly need. Nothing else will hold water. Amen.

 

Postlude: I told you this would be a rant, but I hope you have found it provocative enough to reconsider our situation, as a nation. I fear that the apathy born of fear—“Oh, things will work out; they always do”—this time may be words engraved on our collective tombstone, should we cease to survive as a “beacon” nation. Please, Dear Ones, may we pray for our country, our world, and the church!