University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

A GOD BEYOND OUR IMAGINATIONS

Jeremiah 27:1-11; 28:1-11

A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time January 21, 2007

(This sermon draws partially from a sermon I preached at University Church in October, 2003)

            This remarkable encounter between Jeremiah and the court prophet Hananiah gives us a penetrating insight into the life of the nation of Judah in a time when the nation was threatened by a rising national power just beyond its borders.  It was a showdown of sorts precisely at the height of an uncomfortable, anxious, fearful time for the people of Judah.  People were edgy, at odds with one another about what their nation should do.  And nowhere did that tension become more palpable than in the battle of words between those two prophets which, despite its religious tones, sounded for all the world like an early screening of “Hard Ball” or “Crossfire.”

            With the benefit of hindsight, it is fair to say the issue at hand was the issue of true and false prophecy, and then how to distinguish one from the other.  Two prophets... two prophets called to discern the movement of God in a changing world scene.  Two prophets with two very different messages.  To be honest, we don't come to this prophetic conversation without our biases.  From the outset we're on Jeremiah’s side; he is, after all, the one after whom the book is named.  We know he's the protagonist here.

            But today, I invite you to remove your preconceptions and transport yourself back into the middle of that ancient conversation as bystanders in the courts of Jerusalem. The talk in the public square has been increasingly shrill and frantic.  The word is that the Babylonians, under the leadership of the dreaded King Nebuchadnezzar, are gathering their forces at the border.  Tensions are high. It is a most anxious time. And it is at the height of such suspense and anxiety that Jeremiah comes forward to speak in the public square.  Everyone knows who he is by now; he has been a vocal and constant critic of national policy and of corruption in the public life of Judah. 

            Comes forth to speak Jeremiah.  The crowd he prepares to address is decidedly Hebrew, a proud people shaped by their heritage as God's chosen people.  The crowd's patriotism is stirring and flapping like a flag in a storm, and people are urging one another to take up arms to defend their land from this foreign threat.

It is then that Jeremiah rises to speak, this time with a visual aid in hand.  He carries with him a heavy wooden yoke that he places upon his shoulders, as he begins to pace back and forth through the square.  The crowd begins to take notice, and the din of conversation in the square dies down to a hush.  And someone says, “What's with the yoke, crazy man?”  The question provokes uneasy laughter.  There is a mixture of fire and tears in Jeremiah's eyes, and he wheels around and says, “This yoke is the yoke of the king of Babylon.  It is the will of our God that we should surrender and submit to the Babylonians.  Do so, or be forewarned of the consequences.”

            Now, I need not tell you that there was no spontaneous standing ovation in response to Jeremiah's advice.  Treason, someone yelled.  Outrage, they all cried.  We'll show you, Jeremiah!  We'll show you.  You think you know God's will. Listen to a real prophet!  Bring on Hananiah, the official prophet of the court.  Let's see what Hananiah has to say.

            Thus invited into the fray, Hananiah walks by Jeremiah, casting him a long and disdainful glance.  He stands there for a moment, glaring at his rival, then slowly walks over and puts his hand on the yoke around Jeremiah's neck, and says:

Thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel:  I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon.  Restoration of peace and prosperity is at hand.

            Thunderous cheers from the crowd, and then all eyes are back on Jeremiah.  So, they ask, what do you say to that, Jeremiah?  Jeremiah does not hesitate with his response:

Amen! [he says, his gaze fixed on Hananiah.]  May the Lord do so!  May the Lord make the words that you have spoken come true.  But hear now this word which I speak in your hearing and in the hearing of all the people.  The prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine and pestilence against many nations and great kingdoms.  As for the prophet who prophesies peace, only when the word of that prophet comes to pass, only then will it truly be known that the Lord has sent that prophet.

In short, says Jeremiah, “just you wait and see who's speaking the truth.”

            Now, at the outset I said that the major issue here is the issue of true and false prophecy, and how one can distinguish one from the other.  Here the battle lines are clearly drawn between fiery old Jeremiah and popular Hananiah.  A friend of mine refers to the latter as “Norman Vincent Hananiah,” because of his unflinching optimism and positive thinking.  But that may be unfair to Hananiah.  Anyway, as this confrontation sharpens, one difference between true and false prophets emerges rather clearly.

            Now, let me note before I go any further that false prophets were not bad guys.  As Biblical scholar Jim Sanders has noted, they were not off-brand theologians.  They cited the same traditions and history as the true prophets.  They even employed the same style.  They simply reached different conclusions.  In our case, the results are something like this: first, Hananiah:

The Lord our God, who brought us out of the land of Egypt, guided us through the wilderness, and brought us into the Promised Land, is fully capable of keeping us here.  God doesn't fool around.  When he makes a covenant, he keeps it.  Trust and obey.

So Hananiah.  Now Jeremiah:

The Lord our God, who brought us out of the land of Egypt, guided us through the wilderness, and brought us into the Promised Land, is fully capable of taking us right back out of this land.

You see?  The same traditions and the same authority.  Yet opposite conclusions.  What's the difference?

            The difference, friends, is theological.  And it hinges on a critical choice in interpreting the tradition.  All of the prophets, true and false, believed in the doctrines of redemption and providence.  That is to say, they believed that God had providentially delivered them from slavery and made them into a nation by God’s own power.  All prophets, true and false, cited the same saving activity of God in their national past.  The difference is that the true prophet put those doctrines of redemption and providence into a larger context of the doctrine of creation.  Thus the true prophet would say:

            Yes, God redeemed us.

            Yes, God brought us out of the land of Egypt.

            Yes, God sustained us in the wilderness.

            But it is the God of the whole earth who did that,

                and God’s power is not at our beck and call.

Indeed, God can work in ways that astonish us!

With such a conviction Jeremiah could stand in the courtyard in Jerusalem and speak in God's behalf, saying:

It is I who by my great power and my outstretched arm have made the earth.  And I give it to whomever it pleases me to give it to... [and furthermore...and fasten your seatbelts!]... Now I have given all these lands into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, my servant!

Can you imagine the outrage in those courts?  How in the world was a heathen king like Nebuchadnezzar a servant of God, an instrument of God’s purposes?  Yet that is what Jeremiah said, in behalf of the Lord of all creation: that God was using Nebuchadnezzar for God’s own purposes.  And that's the difference, I think.  That was the principal difference between Jeremiah and Hananiah, between true and false prophets.  And it is a world of difference.  Hananiah could not, would not see the God of Abraham as the God of all peoples that on earth do dwell -- a God who can work through all creation to accomplish God's purposes, a God who directs the destiny of all nations in such a way that even a ruthless Babylonian king can accomplish the will of the Lord.  In short, Hananiah would not monotheize.[1] Hananiah and the other false prophets broke the very first of all the commandments, which is “monotheize!”  Have no other gods!  They failed to see that the God they chauvinistically called their own and believed to be the guarantor of their success was indeed the God of the whole earth and worked in ways beyond the limits of their imaginations.

            The false prophets had orthodox theology.  The false prophets had charisma.  The false prophets spoke encouraging words in times of uncertainty and fear.  The false prophets did everything we think is right.  But they did not monotheize.  To monotheize is to rely and call upon God as the Creator of all that is – not the private God of one small segment of creation, of one nation or people, but the God of the whole creation, the God of all nations and all peoples.  Only within such a theological framework could Jeremiah ever think of a heathen king like Nebuchadnezzar as a servant of God's will.

            It is little wonder that Jeremiah became so unpopular.  But he got it right. He did tell the truth.  And the truth is, society always tends to honor its dead prophets and revile and destroy its living ones.  And so I am fairly comfortable in saying that, had I been in the courts of Jerusalem that day, I probably would have sided with Hananiah.  I mean, Jeremiah calling Nebuchadnezzar the servant of God's purposes ... goodness, today he might be talking about...  well, I don't want to think about it.

            True prophets are sometimes hard to hear because they speak words we'd rather not hear; they speak of an omnipotent God of the whole creation, when we're more comfortable with our God.  Our peril today is not really so different from theirs who heard Jeremiah speak; many Americans and more than a few of their leaders seem to want to domesticate God or reduce God to a kind of partisan guarantor of our own cultural status quo.  Look, I still get goose bumps when I hear, “God Bless America” like everyone else, but there’s a danger lurking in the theology of that song, in that it doesn’t say enough, doesn’t pray God’s blessing on all the nations of earth.  To think that God is somehow our God alone is to violate what the Biblical prophets affirm, and indeed is to subscribe to polytheism.

            True prophets arise to warn us of that danger.  They point us toward a larger view of the world and the God who made it, toward an understanding of all persons of all stations and nations as children of God, and thus as our sisters and brothers.  One God…one world.  That is the message of Jeremiah. The one God embraces all of God’s children – “from the shacks of Soweto to the ice of Nome/ from Baghdad city to the streets of Rome, [God’s] calling all the children home.”[2] The one God is present with us in our formal worship here this morning and earlier today was also graciously present with those who gathered barefoot under a tree in east Africa to dance and sing their praises.  The one God can minister with equal compassion to the needs of a grieving woman whose husband has suffered a stroke and to the grieving man whose partner is dying of AIDS.  Hear, O Israel, [said Moses,] the Lord our God, the Lord is one. (Deut. 6:4)   True prophets remind us of such truth.  True prophets remind us to be alert for signs of God's surprising activity in the world, beyond the predictable restraints with which we would try to lay hold to the Almighty.  Such prophets are often hard for us to hear, because too often we live with a perspective that is too narrowly confined.

            I’ve told you before about a t teacher I know who gave her second-grade class an assignment one day.  That night was supposed to be a beautiful night, with nary a cloud in the sky, and so she asked them to step into their backyards that evening and see how many stars they could count.  The next day she asked for individual reports.  Allen said he had counted five hundred stars.  Allison said she had stopped counting when she got to a thousand.  But Charlie reported that he had only seen six stars.  "Just six?" she asked.  "Hey," said Charlie, "we've got a small backyard!"

            Well, it happens to all of us sometimes.  Our perspectives get cramped, and our boundaries close in, and our vision is narrowed.  And in such circumstances, even our understanding of God gets squeezed.  It happened to the people of Jerusalem when Jeremiah told them a truth they could not, would not hear.  Jeremiah told them they needed to get out of their small backyards and consider the vastness of God's creation… to contemplate the one God of the whole world… to comprehend the size of God's design and the scope of God's providence… of this God who is so vast, so far beyond our feeble imaginations. 

Maybe... maybe today is a good time for us to do the same.