September 21, 2025

Pentecost 15 Lectionary 25

Jeremiah 18-9:1

Epiphany, Winnipeg

When I was on internship my supervisor decided that I should learn to golf. I think that he thought golf was relaxing and it would help me to settle into a peaceful rhythm as I learned more about being a pastor. So I bought some cheap clubs at the Co-op in Yorkton back in the days when you could buy golf clubs at the Co-op, and I learned to golf. One afternoon at a pastor’s conference there were four of us out swinging clubs and was trying so hard to enjoy myself, and my colleague Jerry finally walked over and said to me, “Don’t worry Paul. Things will only get worse.”

He was right. I stopped golfing when my internship ended. Then things got better. I’ve been much more relaxed since then.

That’s kind of a trivial entry into today’s readings, but in some ways you could say that that was a big part of the message of the prophet Jeremiah, who we heard from a few minutes ago: Things will only get worse.

Here’s what’s going on in the book of Jeremiah, and here’s Jeremiah’s message in a nutshell. It’s some time around the year 600 BCE, and the nation which was Israel is now on the verge of catastrophe as a foreign nation called Babylon moves closer to taking over this home of God’s people. Most people ignore it, but a few people see it coming. Jeremiah is one of those people, and for the first half or so of the book he’s telling everyone, especially the political and religious leaders, that disaster is coming soon if they don’t change something. Things will only get worse. Almost everyone who hears that disagrees and says that everything will be OK, and they wish Jeremiah would be quiet, and sometimes they even do things like throw him in jail or put him in stocks and humiliate him in the public square – sort of like cancelling his late-night show - to try to get him to stop.

Then the catastrophe strikes, and Babylon does in fact come and flatten the capital city and the temple, and thousands of people lose their lives, or flee, or are taken off into exile. The catastrophe happens, and for the second half of the book, Jeremiah spends a lot of time saying, “See, I told you so.”

That’s a bit of Jeremiah in a nutshell.

In the middle of all that, we listen in on that conversation we heard a few minutes ago:

First up is Jeremiah: “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. Listen, the cry of my poor people from far and wide in the land.” Jeremiah knows what’s happening and his heart is broken for his people, who have brought this disaster on themselves…

Those same people of the land say, “Is God not with us any more?” They really thought that God would make everything OK.

Then God says, “Why have these people provoked me to anger with their idols and injustice?”

Then the people have their say again as they cry out:

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are still not saved.” We’ve waited and waited; where have you been, God?

And finally, Jeremiah pours out his heart: “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.…

“O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!”

Jeremiah doesn’t have enough tears to express his grief for his dying nation and his dying home. Sometimes, for Jeremiah, there is only lament. For the people, there will seem to be only lament. Tears for a dying nation. Even God joins in the lament.

Mixed in with all that, Jeremiah will also say, to a nation that sees no hope in its future, that what they’re living through is not forever. God will give the people a new heart and make a new covenant with them, and they will learn to see God and see one another in a new way. They will get to go back home to Jerusalem and to their homeland. In about seventy years. That’s what God tells Jeremiah, and that’s what Jeremiah tells the people.

We’re in a Jeremiah kind of time today. When I wrapped up this sermon a day or two ago I had some catchy and smart ways to talk about the situations in the world that make us wonder and worry. Then I woke up this morning and the first words I heard were the morning news on my alarm. Item one was that today, right about now, over one hundred thousand people are expected to show up at a football stadium in Arizona for Charlie Kirk’s funeral. Item two was about the UK and Canada and our plans to recognize a Palestinian state. And immediately I felt my stomach knotting up and my whole body tensing, almost like every angry thought and emotion that I’ve had since October 7, 2023, or since a November election last year or around our own April election this year, every one of those thoughts and feelings came together and took hold of me. Like so many of us, even with so many different perspectives, I kind of see a disaster looming, even if we don’t know what it will look like. So many feelings can take hold of us, and it’s like we’re sitting there with Jeremiah and the people and God feeling and trying to express all those things. And while some of us may wonder and worry, so many more people, far away somewhere and even close to home, are living through their disaster already, as Gazans and Israelis, and our neighbours divided, and people living on streets as another winter draws near…they all wonder where it’s going and when it will end.

We know that shooting an opponent or cancelling late-night TV shows or getting just the right election result will never make everything OK. It’s more likely that we – wherever we are - need a new heart, and we don’t know how that will come.

It’s a Jeremiah’s world kind of moment.

Here’s a thing to remember. We’re not in a unique situation with all of this today. We’re in the good company of lamenters and grievers in the Biblical story. Sometimes it’s right out there for us to see, like when a woman named Hagar watches and waits for her son Ishmael to die. Sometimes you need to listen closely to hear the lament in the background and between the lines where it’s not written, like when Adam and Eve weep for their son Abel who was killed by their other son Cain, or while Egyptian parents mourn for their sons who have been killed by an angel who passed over their homes or drowned in the sea as the waters came together. Paul sits lonely in prison wondering when he’ll ever be free, the Psalms are filled with tears and anger and fear and grief. Even Jesus wonders aloud why he has been abandoned by God. Scripture is full of broken hearts and grief like Jeremiah’s; it’s good to hear that and not try to explain it away. Because it’s always been a part of our stories and the world’s story. And sometimes, for a time, we can just let it be there.

Maybe it’s good news that that lament is there in the Bible. When we see it there, right at the heart of our faith story, we see that it’s normal, and worry and grief and all those emotions are part of the biblical story, which is so much a part of our story. And we don’t need to pretend to be happy, or look for a quick way to fix it all... We can lament, with all the ones who lament.

There’s something else that Jeremiah says, and we don’t see it in the reading today but it’s good news that we do need to hear. Actually, we heard it already today. Tucked right in there with all the worry and knotted up feelings inside, Jeremiah says to the people that the disaster they’re living through will end some day. What they’re living through is not forever. God will give the people a new heart and make a new covenant with them, and they will learn to see God and see one another in a new way. And they will get to go back home to Jerusalem and to their homeland. In about seventy years. In about seventy years.

That’s what God tells Jeremiah, that’s what Jeremiah tells the people, and that’s a word for us today too. Disaster will not last forever, death’s power will come to an end. It’s not a promise that everything’s going to get better right now, or in my lifetime or yours. It’s a promise that God’s long view, God’s ongoing work, is for a world with a new heart, and a world where everyone is at home.

It won’t happen all at once, but we can see the signs. Look around this week, any week, and there will be signs. When people who could not see eye to eye at least talk to each other. When people work together for healing rather than hurting. When an Israeli and a Palestinian work and pray for peace – they’re out there – or maybe even when someone cuts you off in traffic and you make eye contact and read their lips as they say “Oops” and you both get a laugh out of it. There are signs of hearts being made new, signs of a world being made new, signs that point to healing underway. We’ll even speak it together, right out loud, when we proclaim together “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”

My old golfing friend Jerry was wrong. It’s not all just going to get worse. We live through all our days wrapped up in God’s long promise that it is all being made new.