“Believing the Lie”
Sermon Presented August 29, 2010
Jeremiah 2:4-13
Don’t you wonder why some people are so quick to believe a lie? Is it because they want to believe anything that confirms their point of view or that discredits someone they consider an enemy? Is it because they trust the messenger of lies as a purveyor of truth? The fact that more than 20% of the U.S. population believes President Obama is a Muslim and not a U.S. citizen, and more than 40% believe he is not a Christian, lets us know the power of the lie and the gullibility of people. As we approach the mid-term elections in November, we will continually be inundated with political lies from both parties.
Our text is God’s complaint against the people of Israel who have believed the lie and now follow false gods instead of Yahweh, the God of Israel. And by changing their allegiance, they are in deep trouble with the One who led them out of bondage into the promised land. Hear God’s complaint against Israel through the prophet Jeremiah. I’m reading Jeremiah 2:4-13.
Just before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, God sends an indictment of the people through the prophet Jeremiah. This is a common technique used by prophets called a Covenant lawsuit. God accuses the people of turning from God and breaking God’s laws. God accuses the leaders of Israel of leading the people astray; the people of following them; and the prophets, priests and legal experts of failing to do their jobs. God’s chosen people have left the God of Israel, who brought them out of Egypt and through the wilderness, for false gods who perpetuate the lie.
Let’s look at the Sinai Covenant. Israel and God are partners in a type of covenant common in the ancient world, bound together by mutual promises. Israel, however, has defaulted on its obligations, and God is both sad and angry. Unless things change quickly, political and economic consequences will bear down on the people. (Sally A. Brown, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 4, p. 3)
What are God’s accusations? First, they have forsaken God and God’s living water; and second, they have dug out their own sources of water that are cracked and hold no water. This desecration of the covenant didn’t begin with the current generation, but with their ancestors who began the decline by forgetting God’s guidance and leadership. When they forgot God and began to defile the land, they offered no model of faithfulness to their children and grandchildren. The sins of the parents affect the children – an entire nation of children. Now, no one remembers and God is forgotten. Jeremiah’s task is to bring the people back to God, if at all possible.
As a child, I learned the difference between a well and a cistern when visiting my grandparents’ farm. Well water was fresh water that came from an underground stream, but cistern water was collected from the rain and became stagnant. You could drink the water from the well, but not that from the cistern. In this indictment, God uses the metaphor of water sources, saying that the people have forsaken the fresh water God supplies and built leaky cisterns in exchange. But behind this metaphor lies the metaphor of marriage. A marriage is a covenant, and is intimate and domestic. When one partner is abandoned, life as they know it can’t continue. (Walter Brueggemann, To Pluck Up, to Tear Down – Jeremiah, p. 34)
When we turn away from one thing, we usually turn toward something else. When we lose sight of the past, we get into trouble. By not remembering the bad, we repeat the sin. By not remembering the good – we leave God to trust in worthless gods and self. We invest in leaky cisterns. When we live our lives without aligning our choices with the concerns of God in the world, we make the wrong choices. We choose stagnant water instead of life-giving fresh water.
Last week we read of an 85 year-old woman from Cedarburg who was having a sale. Her house was filled – bottom to top – with things she purchased and never used. These things are worthless to her, and have little value to others compared to what they cost. Another woman in Nevada lay dead for months in her home filled with stuff until her husband saw her feet sticking out of wall-to-wall junk.
God’s people turned from God to worthless things, and by so doing, they became worthless. They no longer remembered or appreciated what God had done for them. Because Israel’s whole life was about land, God gave them land. By forgetting their story, as well as God who orchestrated the story, they will lose the land. Throughout Jeremiah, we hear that to know God is to practice justice. When people abandon God, they abandon justice. (ibid, p. 33)
Israel has distorted the basis of its foundation, and can’t sort out what is real and unreal; what is true and false; what is life-giving and death-dealing. Maybe the God of Israel is too demanding (ibid, p. 34,) but God expects them to keep the covenant!
The people of Israel are dying of thirst – literally and spiritually, and God says: “You are responsible for this situation. Your actions have consequences. So find the truth for your lives and do something about it. Serious self-reflection, followed by appropriate action, brings people back to God.
There are times in all of our lives when we are spiritually thirsty or hungry. As part of our personal self-reflection to see why we are where we are, we need to remember our spiritual heritage and those who helped us to trust in God, so that we can better understand the direction we need to go. Sometimes we need to do some grief work, and other times anger work. Then we need to reflect on where we need to be in comparison to where we are. The truth of our text isn’t limited to Israel more than 2500 years ago. It has something to say to us – now!
Our stories matter! When we forget and disregard them, we suffer. If we cease to tell, enact and live by our saving story, other narratives will take its place. When we don’t live our lives out of Christ’s story and bear witness to Jesus’ command to love God and be generous toward neighbors and strangers in Christ’s name, we turn to other allegiances – self included. A person or community that remembers its story as a story of God’s grace is delivered from bondage. (ibid, Brown, p. 5)
This text shows a contrast between life that is worthy or worthwhile and life that is worthless or empty and vain. The people of Israel are no longer living by their covenantal code, but by what they see from their pagan neighbors. They traded a life of commitment to God for a flimsy structure of short-sighted political alliances and religious compromises. (ibid)
We are as prone as they to eye our neighbors and appropriate their tastes. We base our self-worth on what we have in the way of possessions, successful career, or family bond. It’s an easy slide to move away from a worthy life and a desire to be what God wants us to be toward the temptations of the world.
Jesus wants an exclusive and loving relationship with us. He asks his followers to deny self, take up their cross and follow him. God expected the same from the people of Israel. “Be true to me and receive living water.”
God’s people have been unfaithful. They have blown the relationship. They stepped outside their relationship of love and grace to look for the best bargain – best sex partner – best economic promise – best position of power, and have exchanged their allegiance to God for another. God says: “No! When you forsake the living water, you get death instead of life.”
The people of Israel went from God to worthless things, and by so doing, they became worthless. They didn’t remember God’s love to them. God brought them from darkness and desolation to a land of plenty, but they didn’t appreciate it and over time made this new land an abomination to God. They weren’t accustomed to the good life and soon slipped back into their former ways. It didn’t happen immediately, but it happened, none-the-less.
God says: “Examine yourselves. Why have you turned from One who is faithful to other gods? Why have you turned from glory to something that does not profit? You have given up a fountain of living water for cracked cisterns that hold no water. You don’t appreciate what you have and now are going to lose it. Why? Because you put your trust in worthless things.”
When Wilanna presents new piece of music to the choir or the congregation, she doesn’t expect us to get it immediately. She works with us, presenting it over and over again, and each time she does, it becomes more familiar. When the tune and the text become a part of us, she has succeeded. Try that approach with God’s word as presented in our text. It takes time and effort to get God’s message deep into our souls, so work at it.
We need this text! But it’s only valuable if we find God’s truth in it as it applies to us. So spend time with God in meditation and consider where your trust lies. This may be uncomfortable, but it does offer truth, so let’s determine to sit with it until we hear and absorb God’s message. (John T. Debevoise, Feasting…, p. 2) We don’t want to be guilty of believing the lie!
08/29/2010
