January 5, 2024
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Song: Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
Good News: What’s Good about Purgatory? (17 minutes)
Song: God of Grace and God of Glory
Song: I the Lord of Sea and Sky
Reading Jeremiah 31—In Context, In Depth
The Obvious
Most obvious is the mood of Jeremiah 31: joyful, celebratory, and hopeful. The Psalm rejoices over something about to happen after a long season of pain and suffering. After a time of exile, death, wandering, famine, pestilence, war, disorganization, and futility—God has engineered a reversal for the remnant of Israel. They will be safely gathered home and given fields and vineyards to plant. They will have fattened flocks and bountiful crops.
Furthermore, the things God’s people did in the past that angered God have now been forgiven. Not only is there environmental restoration, but relationship-restoration as well. All these opportunities for restoration and second chances result in merry-making and dancing.
It is also obvious that God is going to try a different strategy in relating to the community. A relationship with God is defined by “covenant.” A covenant spells out the requirements, expectations, and graces allotted to the parties to the agreement. In the prior covenant, the Israelites of the past did not fulfill their end of the covenant. They only drew on the mercy of God’s grace, over and over. The old covenant didn’t work, in part because the very people who were supposed to be teachers and conveyors of that covenant were self-centered and insincere. They were experts at fabricating loopholes. Over time, the loyalty of people to a loving and saving God became a sham. The covenant had become all one-sided.
But the new covenant would be written on the hearts of each individual. Each individual would have a conscience and a sense of what God expected from both individuals and the faith community as a whole. Everyone would know God, God’s salvation, and God’s love. And because everyone would be able to experience this goodness first-hand, everyone would also know intuitively how to respond to God and how to treat each other.
Finally, it is obvious in this chapter that the future is going to be good, even though the past has been harsh. The community will be restored, people will flourish in the restored community, and it will be even bigger than it was before. “…and the measuring line shall go out farther.”
The Less Obvious
What is not so obvious in Jeremiah 31 is its context in the rest of Jeremiah’s book. This is the only chapter in the book that is entirely happy. Most of Jeremiah’s 52 chapters are entirely unhappy—with only a few hopeful words scattered here and there.
The book of Jeremiah is set in the lowest point of Old Testament history: the decades leading up to the fall of Jerusalem, the Babylonian invasion of the city, the utter destruction of all the structures in the city, and the execution or deportation of nearly all its residents. It was a pessimistic and gloomy period, and the book of Jeremiah reflects that darkness.
Jeremiah was an active participant in the life of his country (Judah—the southern remnant of ancient Israel) for over four decades. He advocated political and religious reform, believing that the institutions of his society were corrupt and harmful. He thought that character, truth-telling, humility, religion, wisdom, and respect for history were fundamental to the survival of a nation or faith community. Relationships should be governed by covenant, not greed or lust. And the heart of good relationships lies in listening to each other and to God—then heeding what is heard.
Unfortunately for Jeremiah, his words had no effect on the people who were running things. The politicians and the priests kept lurching toward disaster, even though Jeremiah confronted them repeatedly. Jeremiah watched in despair as people ran their country (and his) into the ground. Jeremiah himself was a decent, thoughtful, loyal, godly, strong individual. He was brave, honest, articulate, passionate, and wise. He positioned himself that he could not be ignored—he was politically savvy. His messages were clear and dramatic. And yet he failed to change the political and religious leaders of his day.
As one reads through the book of Jeremiah, a collection of poems, warnings, historical narratives, biography, and blunt messages—one feels for Jeremiah, being swept along by historical circumstances he abhors but cannot prevent. He is an exhibit of political impotence and despair, not unlike how many people feel in our own day.
Jeremiah was exasperated with his leaders—and with God for not doing more to intervene and stop them. Because of Jeremiah’s courage and honesty, he was often punished by the government for his messages. But he continued to speak truthfully and in the tradition of Moses despite the heavy personal cost to himself.
The hope and joy of Jeremiah 31 is an outlier in the overall book. The biggest problem, according to Jeremiah, was idolatry. This often baffles the modern reader, who thinks of little golden statues when the subject of idols arises. Why would God be so upset about such a trivial thing as statue worship when there are bigger problems in the world needing the attention of the Almighty? A close reading of the entire book of Jeremiah gives us a clue. An idol is something we have made by our own inventiveness and skill. Idols represent the best of human imagination and achievement. An idol is anything that human beings conjure for themselves. It can be a work of art, an object of veneration, a political philosophy, a person, an institution, money, a personal habit, a place…. Wherever, whatever, whoever commands our trust, that is our idol. Even the boxes we create to define God become idols. But the trouble with idols is this: they are not trustworthy. They are an illusion created in the human mind. While an idol may have many fine qualities, it is eventually harmful because it promises to be what it is not—a valid answer to our problems. Idols are never the ultimate answer to our problems because they always have side effects, sooner or later causing even worse problems. In Jeremiah’s day, the idols weren’t harmless; they led to human sacrifice, a growing gap between the rich and the poor, and a distraction from the wisdom people should have been seeking within their hearts.
The joy of Jeremiah 31 comes in the midst of Jeremiah’s anguished writings about the decline of his country, the foolishness of its leaders, and the trust people put in the things and ideas they had invented for themselves. We want to ask why Jeremiah feels any joy during his life.
Jeremiah has chosen to view history, including news events in his own time, through a peculiar framework. He sees history as somewhat cyclical. 1) God creates, 2) God sets creation free, 3) creation stumbles, 4) God responds with mercy and instruction to God’s people, 5) people stumble again—then turn to idols to save them, 6) a rejected God puts up boundaries—refusing to be co-dependent, 7) people fall into a period of purgatory-on-earth, 8) God re-creates and sets creation free with a new strategy. Every passage in Jeremiah relates to one of these eras.
This leads us to the bulk of Jeremiah—purgatory. Purgatory is a place where people are purged of undesirable qualities. In medieval Catholic theology, purgatory is a well-defined place where people go after they die in order to be purged of their sins prior to moving on afterward to heaven. It is a very elaborate, interesting theory.
But the biblical presentation of purgatory is more this worldly. It is a painful period of time, a punishment, with the goal of making our lives and our communities more just, joyful, prosperous, and compassionate. Jeremiah chooses to see the worst times in his nation’s history as times of purgatory. God has put up boundaries, refusing to be abused by religious and political leaders. The boundaries have consequences that are painful for people. But the boundaries are also purposeful—the reform of the nation and its institutions.
In the book of Jeremiah, the period of purgatory commences with the Babylonian invasions of his country. The destruction wrought by Babylon is immense. But its purpose is to root out all arrogant and heedless behavior. The new day cannot begin until it cannot be infected by the foolishness and evil of the old era.
But the new day will come. The whole purpose of a time of purgatory is to get to the new day, the day described in Jeremiah 31.
Something to Share Today
Jeremiah believes the troubles of his time in history are purposeful. It takes humility to find purpose in suffering. We’d rather rise up and rage against those who are causing our distress. But while Jeremiah does do some raging, he is mostly humble. He seeks purpose in his suffering. Now–To find a purpose in suffering is not to say that everyone who suffers deserves it. It is to say that one of the things that makes us most human is to discover meaning in life, whether we be suffering—or doing just great.
Jeremiah has to figure out what to do with Babylon. The vandals who are destroying the political, religious, and social structures of Jeremiah’s society. While the leaders of religion and politics seem to have it coming to them, the ordinary people do not. And Jeremiah certainly doesn’t deserve all the destruction and pain—as he was the foremost advocate for reforming corrupt systems. But nevertheless, Babylon wrecks its havoc. How then does Jeremiah handle the destroyer of his nation?
First, he tells the truth about Babylon’s evil. (cf. Jeremiah 50-51) They are indeed outrageous in their evil and hubris. And he believes they will fall. And they will deserve every evil coming to them.
Second, Jeremiah insists on talking about a post-Babylonian vision. This is what he is doing in Jeremiah 31. Even in the worst of times, he will continue to dream and speak words of hope.
Third, Jeremiah does not focus on the evil that Babylon does. He acknowledges that reality. But his focus will be on his own people and the ways they were wrong. In other words, he practices national humility. On a twist of what Jesus taught, Jeremiah insists on taking the “log out of his” own nation’s eye before obsessing about what others are doing wrong to them. This is humility.
Fourth, Jeremiah accepts the reality and the necessity and the opportunity of purgatory. In his book, Babylon will rule for 70 years. This is a symbolic number. It represents the period of time for God to finish transforming the people and creating a new day.
And fifth, Jeremiah continues to see the people as a whole. In his day, the community of faith was divided, as was the nation. But in his words and rhetoric, Jeremiah always upheld the vision of one nation and people, under God. As we feel helpless in our own day, with problems getting more and more out of hand, with runaway politicians and clueless leaders in our institutions—Jeremiah gives us a map for how to remain human and humane, sane and creative, humble and yet purposeful.
Repertoire 