Imagine if you will that you are a teenage boy some 2600 years ago in the Kingdom of Judah and God’s word comes to you in a powerful and unmistakable way. God says, “You are to be my prophet to the nations.” Like Jeremiah you would probably protest–“I am too young. What can I say? What do I know? Who will listen to me?” But God says, “I will be with you. Today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to pluck up and to pull down–to destroy and to overthrow–to build and to plant.”
Just when Jeremiah should be going through his adolescent rebellion and discovering himself, going to dances, eating pizza, and revving the motor in his old man’s car, he is called by God to be a prophet to the nations. And what a conflicted, tumultuous, time Jeremiah lived in to be a prophet! In his lifetime the known world of God’s people came to an end. In 587 B.C., King Nebuchadnezzar, at the head of the Babylonian army, destroyed Jerusalem, put an end to the ruling house of David, tore down the temple, and took into exile anybody who was anybody in Judah. Babylon alone seemed to rule supreme in the world. Judah’s world was gone forever–like Scarlett O’Hara’s, it was gone with the wind. And Jeremiah was called to be a prophet during all this turmoil and upheaval–to be God’s spokesperson just before and during the dismantling of all known power and meaning.
What was shocking about the messages of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and other prophets of this time was this: Somehow the end of the known world of power and meaning for Judah was the result of God’s involvement in the world. Rather than being an indication of God’s weakness, Judah’s demise was a sign that God was rearranging the world to fit God’s holy will. Judah’s idolatry, her practice of injustice toward the poor and helpless, her immorality, her trust in swords, fortresses, and war horses rather than in her covenant with the Living God, her willingness to listen to those false prophets who promised success and glory while refusing to listen to the true prophets who called for God’s people to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with their God–all of this was a rotten arrangement of religion, politics, and economics. It was blasphemy to a righteous God whose concern for the world went beyond Judah’s parochial pride and agenda. So as God’s spokesperson, Jeremiah was to proclaim God’s intent to shake the world at its foundation–“to pluck up and to pull down–to destroy and to overthrow–and then to build and to plant.”
Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has a helpful way of seeing Jeremiah’s mission and this time when Judah’s known world was falling apart. He says that what Jeremiah was trying to communicate to the people of Judah was this: Because God is rearranging the world, the people of God must relinquish the old world so that they can receive the new world given by God. Judah must let slip from her hand the political and economic system propped up by a self-serving theology which was oppressing the poor–and Judah must receive from God’s hand the new world–even if it is born in far away Babylon.
So Jeremiah’s message was this: Judah must relinquish in order to receive–she must let go in order to have a future. That’s what those six verbs are all about in v. 10– “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, and then to build and to plant.” They are concerned with losing the old and receiving the new–relinquishing and receiving.
But you can imagine how Jeremiah’s message was received, especially prior to 587 B.C.–before the event which confirmed his prophecy. Jeremiah’s contemporaries did not want to lose the old world, and they did not want to receive a new world at the hands of the Babylonian Empire. So they engaged in denial, self-deception, and wishful thinking. They listened to the prophets who promised them more of the same as the content of their future while prophets like Jeremiah were spumed, imprisoned, beaten, charged with treason, and dismissed as doomsday misfits. So Jeremiah’s job was formidable. He had to speak truth to power–he had to speak in the face of organized religion, political structures, economic interests, and national pride. He had to preach to a people who feared their loss of control over their lives, their land, and their pocketbooks. He had to minister to a people who preferred the equilibrium of the status quo to the transformation of a God who was about to make all things new. He had to labor with a people for whom selective memory came easier than inspired imagination about how different their world could be if they were open to God. He was called to be a prophet to a people who had to let go before they could receive.
Brueggemann suggests that there is a similarity between 587 B.C. and our time. He points out that in many ways we are experiencing the end of our known world. The assumptions and principles that have guided Western civilization since the Enlightenment are being challenged by the hard doses of reality bombarding us day by day. The raw concentration of power and knowledge has resulted in monopolies in the political and economic world which remain largely uncriticized. Multinational corporations, political pacs, international cartels whose sole aim is to amass more profit and power are answerable to no one. And when profit and power are one’s primary if not sole goals, then all other considerations suffer from neglect. Much of the chaos and tragedy in our world is the result of the use of power without conscience and knowledge without wisdom.
The continual pollution and degradation of our environment is also a legacy of the Enlightenment. Everyone knows conservation, simple living, and lower expectations as far as material wealth is concerned are required for the survival of this planet. Very few political or world leaders promote conservation, simple living, or lower expectations. In fact, we are told to do the very opposite. “Go spend and consume more to stimulate the economy!” All that matters is profits, production, consumption, and the GNP.
And that same set of assumptions–profit and power, growth and success now concentrated in the hands of people who cannot see past next quarter’s profit-loss projections contributes to the widening chasm between the rich and the poor in our world. And that widening gap has already hit home. One in 4 children in America, according to our own government, is hungry, malnourished, and living in life-threatening poverty.
Now from what we know of the God of Jeremiah and Jesus, can we expect such a God to do nothing about all this–to be indifferent to injustice and suffering and to the degradation of the very creation which is the work of God’s hand?
As the church we are the people of God today. And just like those ancient people of Judah we must choose between two paths–we can join the crowd and hold on to the old world which is slipping fast into oblivion or we can relinquish that set of assumptions which our planet, our children’s future, and the world’s poor can no longer endure so that we can receive the new. The exact contours of that new world are not yet clear, but they are beginning to emerge. And strangely enough these contours look remarkably familiar–they include justice with compassion, freedom for all with responsibility for and from all, earth-tending instead of earth-ruling, and walking humbly with our God instead of strutting across the pages of history with agendas unworthy of our Maker or of us as God’s children.
The last part of Jeremiah’s mission was to build and to plant. That is God’s goal–the plucking up and pulling down, the destroying and overthrowing are only the means to create space for the new. And that new is for our salvation if we will relinquish the old and receive from God’s hand the gift of a future that is to be embraced and not feared. May the church have the vision, the courage, and the imagination to show the way to that future as God moves in our midst.
[I would highly recommend two books written by Bill McKibben. The first is entitled EAARTH: MAKING A LIFE ON A TOUGH NEW PLANET. The extra “A” in the title is not a typo. The first chapter of that book blew me away. Basically McKibben maintains that it is already too late for us to recover the earth most of us Baby-Boomers were born into. We often hear that we have one, two, or three decades to save our planet, but McKibben demonstrates convincingly that we will never be able to recover the earth previous generations have enjoyed and taken for granted. He says there is still time for us to make the necessary changes to “receive” the earth as it can be if we are willing to relinquish the old. If we are not willing to relinquish our practices, lifestyles, consumption, and arrogance, the resources necessary for any kind of worthy life will increasingly be usurped by the rich and the powerful. The rest of us will become expendable. I will probably be dead before the magnitude of this demise occurs, but I have a daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons whom I dearly love. I care about their future and the price they will have to pay for our greed, arrogance, and stupidity. McKibben does offer hope for the future. But like Jeremiah, such hope will depend on how willing we are to relinquish the old and then, and only then, receive the new.
The second book, FALTER: HAS THE HUMAN GAMAE BEGUN TO PLAY ITSELF OUT? is more recent (April of 2019) and was written eight years after EAARTH. It is more up to date with statistics, information, and analysis. If you have time to read only one of these books, FALTER should perhaps be your choice since it is more current regarding the crisis, challenge, and opportunities we face.]
