“Thus
says The Lord, ‘Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh
their strength, whose hearts turn away from The Lord. They shall be like
a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall
live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt
land.”
Blessed
are those who trust in The Lord, whose trust is The Lord. They shall be
like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It
shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of
drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit’.” Jeremiah 17:5-8 NRSV
The
threat of exile was hanging over Judah as the Babylonian Empire grew
stronger. Judah was so desperate to protect itself from the imminent
threat that they had made an alliance with Egypt for help rather than turn to
The Lord (ironic, huh?). The result? Egypt’s promise of help fell
through, and Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed.
More
than the destruction of the homeland, however, we witness in the exile of both
the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and the Southern Kingdom (Judah) a loss of
identity. Through the worst of times The Lord preserved remnants of His
Covenant, determined to maintain an inheritance of the promise made to Abraham
long ago. Yet the splintered nation, by its actions and determination to
“trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength”, fell in pieces
until the whole was no more. They were so blinded by their own ambitions,
their own desires, their own fears that they were unable to “see when relief
[might] come”.
How
this lesson can be useful to the Church today is in understanding that the
deterioration of the divided kingdoms did not happen overnight. It was
over a period of years the nation became increasingly dependent on its own
resources, its own devices to face the growing threats. Even as the
threats grew and the prophets preached in both kingdoms, the people were so
overwhelmed with paranoia (and maybe even with the arrogance of their status as
“chosen” people) that they refused to believe the prophets who were sent to
them by The Lord to call them back to Him.
It
is a frightening thing to consider how easily (and virtually without notice)
such cultural conditioning can reach such a fevered pitch that The Lord becomes
incidental to our lives and our living that we cannot be bothered to worship
together, to pray together, to work and serve together – for whatever reason,
whatever excuse – with hardly no notice. Has the Church in America become
so arrogant in some sense of salvation entitlement that we refuse to believe we
cannot also fall? Have we become so dependent on “mere mortals” and “mere
flesh” that we have convinced ourselves that no one (no One?) can or
will save us besides ourselves and our own resources; perhaps some “magic pill”
that will solve all our problems with no effort on our part?
Even
for Judah at its worst, however, The Lord still reached out and offered
protection and blessing to those “whose trust IS The Lord”. No
fear, no failure. Yet the people of The Lord needed to be hit over the
head with a skillet before they would finally wake up. They had to be
hurt before they could be helped. By then it was too late, and all they
had placed their trust in was gone – including their identity as The Lord’s
“chosen”.
Pray
that the Church, the “ekklesia”, the congregation of the faithful will soon
awaken before the deterioration we are witnessing before our eyes becomes total
destruction.
Lord,
have mercy!
Michael
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