No Matter What

Based on Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
First delivered Sept. 22, 2019
Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr


            Jeremiah has traditionally been called the “weeping prophet.” This common nickname is inspired by some of the scripture we heard read this morning. Jeremiah cried out, “Oh, that my head was a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears!” Jeremiah was not a cool and stone- faced man. He was not hardened, detached or aloof. No, Jeremiah wore his heart on his sleeve. He really cares about his people. He has skin in the game. He is invested. And as he watches the suffering that his people endure, he is right there suffering with them.

            Why is Jeremiah so emotional? What has triggered his tears to flow so freely, yet wished his tears were like a water gushing fountain? Even for someone who cries easily, this is pretty extreme. There must be something that Jeremiah is seeing that is prompting him to cry like he has never cried before. Not just a shed tear. Not even a good cry. He wants the kind of cry that makes you bend over, put your head in your hands, and heave and tremble and wail. It’s a cry that most of us only experience a handful of times in our lives, a cry that you will never forget. Whatever Jeremiah was seeing must have been absolutely heartbreaking. What was it?

            A few weeks back, I talked about what Israel was doing that prompted God’s anger and the threat of punishment. At the time, Israel was under foreign occupation. We may also speculate that the people were struggling a little to make ends meet. The crop yields weren’t keeping up with demand. We can guess this because the leaders of Israel, who were not happy about the state of affairs, began discussing among themselves what could be done to make things better. They came up with the idea of learning about and then worshipping the gods native to the land they were inhabiting. They weren’t going to give up on God. They just thought that if they also worshipped the local gods, maybe that would help assure a prosperous harvest. After all, the local deities had authority over the land. Why not appease them? In the minds of Israel’s leaders, it was worth a shot. Worshipping God was fine. But something more was needed just to make sure the crops would be good. And, who knows? Maybe the gods will do something about the foreign power that was oppressing everyone.

            Well, look what happened. We hear in the scriptures that it was the end of summer, the harvest had passed, and the people are not saved. Sure, this language may be metaphorical. It may only be saying that the people had been waiting for God to deliver them from their oppressor, but God has not saved them. Another way to say it is that the people have had all year to return to God and be saved but have chosen not to repent and now the year is up, (Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, falls around Sept. 29-Oct. 1) it’s still status quo, and God does not deliver them. Or maybe this was the literal truth. The summer is over, the harvest time has come, and there is nothing to harvest. God has not saved them. It will be months until the next crops can be planted, and there will be little to nothing for the people to eat. Winter is coming. Hunger, and even starvation, awaits them. It will be a long and painful winter. And Jeremiah, who will share in the suffering and hunger, breaks down and cries. This didn’t have to happen. But the people were stubborn. Status quo was too powerful. And the consequences for their inability to repent will be brutal. Jeremiah imagines the children groaning and whining for something to eat, while their mothers and fathers sit listless, their cold eyes lost in their gnawing hunger. The prophet weeps.

            Whether the people are suffering massive crop failure or it is some other kind of suffering, Israel was grieving and fearful for their future. They are desperate. Their plan to include worship of the local gods backfired. Things had only gotten worse. In their angst they cry out, “Is the Lord not in Zion?” They were actually wondering if God had abandoned them. How else is it that the people are suffering so? It must be because God has given up on them. What about the local gods they were worshipping? The people aren’t wondering about that. They think God has abandoned them. Unbelievable.

            This was part of their problem. Like I said, they didn’t stop worshipping God. They still read the scriptures. They still participated in the rituals. They still kept the festivals. But for a little insurance, they decided they could also worship the local gods, just to make sure that everything would be fine, or maybe with the idea that things would get better. They were covering all their bases. But when things went south, they question God’s faithfulness.

            I mean, did they think that somehow God would overlook their lack of faithfulness?  They already had a God, the great I Am, who chose them to be God’s people. They were the chosen ones. The God who created the heavens and the earth could have chosen any people to be their God and God had chosen them. All God asked was that they be faithful only to God and follow God’s commandments. They just had to stay loyal to God alone. But instead the people decided not to be faithful to God alone. They decided to worship the local gods as well. And they are surprised that it seems God has abandoned them. Amazing.

            There is an excellent documentary on PBS that started this past week produced by the great Ken Burns on the subject of country music. If you didn’t get a chance to catch it, you can go to pbs.org and find the page where you can watch the previous episodes to catch up. In one of the episodes we learn about Kitty Wells who sang a song that spoke to a lot of married women who had to put up with their cheating husbands. The song was called “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” This was a song that came out in 1952 in response to a Hank Thompson tune called “The Wild Side of Life” which was wildly popular that year. It was like Kitty Wells had had enough of all these songs about women who are floozies and flirts that tempt men to be unfaithful while their wives are supposed to always be there at home waiting for their husbands to stumble home from the honky tonk. The wives were supposed to stand by their men while their men went carousing. So, Kitty sang:



            As I sit here tonight the jukebox's playing a song about the wild side of life
As I listen to the words you are saying it brings mem'ries when I was a trusting wife
It was't God who made honky tonk angels as you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they're still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong
Well it's a shame that all the blame is on us women
It's not true that only you men feel the same
From the start most every heart that's ever broken
Was because there always was a man to blame



            As I thought about Israel’s relationship with God this song seems to resonate. It’s like Israel thought they could have a relationship with the local gods but, when things go bad, that God would still be there for them at the end of the day, to comfort and, frankly, to bail them out in their time of need.

            If you were God, the jilted lover, in the relationship with Israel, how would you respond? One way would be bitter rage. You may aim to inflict maximum punishment on your cheating spouse or partner. Another response may be “the silent treatment.” You move out or make them move out. And it goes radio silent: won’t return calls, unfriend on Facebook, incommunicado.

            But how does God respond to the unfaithfulness of the people? Jeremiah’s response may be a clue. See, the prophet is the voice of God. God speaks through the prophet. There’s other ways to communicate than words. Could it be that the way Jeremiah responds to Israel’s ongoing unfaithfulness reflects God’s heart? I wonder if Jeremiah’s tears and crushing sorrow reflects God’s tears and sorrow. I wonder if Israel’s unfaithfulness, and the suffering they experience as a consequence, breaks God’s heart? As God sees the broken relationship God has with Israel, God wants to cry a river.

            When we go through heartache and betrayal, what we need is healing. We need something to soothe the pain. One way we get that relief is through drugs and alcohol so that we don’t feel anything. I came across this video interview this man had with a homeless woman in Detroit named Amber. She had been back out on the streets for about eight months, feeding her addiction to heroin and crack. She had been clean for five years. But then she broke up with her girlfriend and it threw her into a manic depression. She turned to alcohol to self-medicate. She lost her apartment, lost her job, and lost her brother to an overdose. She fought with her mom all the time. And it broke her. She left her daughter with her mom and dad and went back to the hood to get high. And eight months had passed since then. She said it, she couldn’t take the pain anymore, the heartache, so she chose to try to numb her pain with heroin and crack. All alcohol did to her was make her sick. So that was Amber’s response, which a lot of people choose in the experience of loss and heartache…to numb the pain so they won’t feel anything.

            Others choose to turn to friends and family who are there for us when the pain is too much. There is a musical being performed right now at the Ohio Theater called Dear Evan Hansen. Without getting into all the details of the story, Evan is carrying a lot of pain and anxiety. He copes with his pain by telling lies upon lies. He even lies to his mother. But the lies come crashing down all around him. He has nowhere to turn. He has broken everyone’s trust. So, he goes home. And there is his mom. His dad left when he was seven, when his parents divorced. Evan knows he is messed up and that he is broken. He knows he has hurt his mother and treated her badly. But he has no one to turn to. In a touching scene near the end of the musical, his mom tells the story of when the U-Haul truck pulled up in their driveway on the day Evan’s dad moved away. That night, as his mom came to tuck him into bed, he asked her if tomorrow another U-Haul truck would come to move her out. And she told him there would be no U-Haul truck. She would stay with him, no matter what. She would always be there for him. And she kept her promise. When there was no one else Evan could turn to, he had his mother and her love.

            And, of course, we can always turn to God in our times of heartache. God is as close as a prayer, or the cry of the heart. The psalms are full of laments, where the psalmist cries out about the suffering, rejection and heartaches of life. But the psalmist testifies that God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in time of need. God is there to renew our strength. We can fly on wings like eagles. The psalmist says, “I will yet praise God, and worship Him; for God’s love endures forever.” In that dark night of the soul, when nothing is going right and the future looks grim, we can rest in the presence of God, trust in God’s grace, and assure ourselves of God’s everlasting love. This can bring relief to the pain in our hearts.

            But what if it is God that you have betrayed? What if it is this betrayal that is the source of your heartache? Jeremiah wants to know, on behalf of his unfaithful people, is there a balm in Gilead? Maybe there isn’t. Maybe God refuses to comfort and heal the people in their suffering and pain. And who would blame God? The people deserve maximum punishment for their continued infidelity and their apparent inability to acknowledge their unfaithfulness. So, God will just let the people lie in the bed they made for themselves. It is hard for us not to blame God for not coming to comfort and heal the Israelites who had treated God so badly. I wonder if we would want a different response from God when we are in Israel’s shoes?

            Or maybe there is a balm in Gilead. God is ready to comfort and heal the sin sick souls of the people if they would at this late hour turn back to God in humility, confess their sin, acknowledge the error of their ways, and recommit anew their singular faithfulness to God alone. But they haven’t done this so far. They don’t even realize they are doing anything wrong. I wonder if we are ever like that?

            Regardless of how the people respond, or fail to respond, in their time of suffering and heartache, if it is so that God weeps over the people, this suggests how God will respond if the people choose to turn back to God and forsake the other gods. God’s relationship with the people really matters to God. Their continual lack of faithfulness breaks God’s heart. God longs for the relationship to be restored. I am convinced, as I think Jeremiah would be, that if the people would finally wake up and realize what they are doing, and make the turn back to God, that God will rush to them, embrace them, and bless them.

            It makes me think of the father who runs to his prodigal son. How often, I wonder, that the father sat on his porch, looking out toward the horizon where his younger son had gone when he took his half of the inheritance and abandoned his family to strike out on his own. Until that late afternoon, as he rose from his chair to go inside for supper, he noticed someone walking down the road. And as the traveler got closer, it became clearer to the father that that was his son. And he leaped down the porch and ran to his son, embracing him, kissing him, and with tears running down his cheeks whispering into his son’s ears, “Oh son, it is so good to have you back.”

            That’s what God is like when we turn back to God in our times of unfaithfulness. There is a balm in Gilead for us. When it comes to making things right with God, we only have to turn back and God will close the gap. God is always ready to love on us, to claim us as one of God’s own. God will never choose to load up the U-Haul and move out. God will always be there for us.

            Now, that doesn’t mean our heartaches are suddenly healed and our problems go away. Israel could have turned back to God in humility and asked for forgiveness, recommitted themselves to God alone and God would have welcomed them back. But they still had no food laid up for winter. They would still be hungry and have to contend with a long winter. The consequences of unfaithfulness and rebellion toward God don’t magically disappear when we repent. The price still has to be paid.

            But as we suffer the consequences of our actions and work to make things right, we can count on God to be with us through it all. It takes time to repair relationships, whether that be with other people or with God. Repentance is hard work. Healing and restoration take time. But if we turn back to God in the midst of our hurt and heartache, we can trust that God will always love us, no matter what and that God will never give up on us. God is always at home waiting for us. God will tell us the truth of the matter. God will hold us accountable. There is no cheap grace with God. But God has promised that God will be with us always, even to the end of the age. God will never leave us or forsake us. No matter what.