Skip to main content

Prophets and Covid-19

The Old Testament prophets are often placed in the category of being fortune tellers. After all it is the prophets, such as Isaiah, that talk about the day when God’s Messiah will come. However, the prophets are offering us something more. The Prophets help us connect the dots between the world as it is and the world as it might be. A small example of this can be found in reading Jeremiah 4:11-12 and 23-28.

Reading up to and including 4:11-12 the people have become numb and apathetic towards God. Yet the prophet is out to jolt the people out of their collective denial and into the reality that human sin has wide ranging effects. Jeremiah offers a terrible warning that “a scorching wind” is coming their way.

Yet, just like us, the people remain in their denial. Verse 22 describes the people as “senseless children” with no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil without any perception of how to do good. The community is on the path of self-destruction. Even with this heartbreaking assessment of the situation God calls the Israelites “my people”. (See Ex.34-37) A sign of hope in the middle of calamity. Interminably bound to “my people,” God will again issue a call for repentance and give Israel an opportunity to change its future.

In verses 23-26 the phrase “I looked” is repeated to create a haunting undoing of creation. It is the creation story in reverse. The light (sun) has gone out, people and birds have disappeared and the land no longer produces crops. This reversal of creation conveys the hopelessness of the situation. God says that he “will not turn back” (v. 29) yet in Jeremiah 5:1,18 God offers some hope. In the coming disaster there will be a remnant who can rebuild the nation.

Walter Brueggemann, the highly regarded Old Testament scholar, suggests that this prophetic discourse “is not a blueprint for the future. It is not a prediction. It is not an act of theology that seeks to scare into repentance. It is, rather, a rhetorical attempt to engage this numbed, unaware community in an imaginative embrace of what is happening ... because ... evil finally must be answered for.”

Overall it seems that Jeremiah is out to engage the people's imagination. Their unthinking, apathetic, thankless ways of living, not only displays their disregard for God, it has created all kinds of evil. What Jeremiah is calling for is repentance. That is not just an acknowledgment of the mind. It is reconsidering how we do life. That to return to God means demonstrating a love for God that includes love for neighbor. If C19 has exposed anything about our lives it is that we too have often been unthinking, apathetic and thankless towards God and our neighbor. Let us use this terrible moment that feels like creation coming undone and use it to reconsider how we do life.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts on The Widening of God's Mercy by Hays and Hays

When I heard about the book by Hays and Hays titled The Widening of God Mercy I was intrigued. I had read Richard Hays' book The Moral Vision of the New Testament in seminary, especially the chapter on homosexuality. I ended up adopting much, if not all, of Hays' position on homosexuality and often used his reasoning while serving as a church minister.  I have read other things that Richard Hays has written such as Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness and found it beneficial to my understanding of Jesus and what it means to be a follower of Jesus. When it was suggested that Richard Hays might have changed his mind about what he wrote in  The Moral Vision of the New Testament  on homosexuality, I wanted to find out for myself.  My Context I spent over ten years doing youth ministry in the local church. I now know many adults who used to be teenagers in my youth group. Some of those adults are gay or lesbian. That means unbeknownst ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is 666 all about?

There are a lot of things that can totally creep us out. Certain foods. A dark hallway. Halloween night with a full moon. Watching a fast food worker cough into their hands and then use their hands to wrap up your burger. Clowns. People who have way too many cats. Lots of stuff creep us out.  For many the number 666 is creepy. The number is often connected to the Devil, evil happenings or viewed as a bad omen. A few years ago I was doing some visiting rounds as a hospital chaplain. I visited a man who was in room 6XX. The hospital knew that people were creeped out by the number 666 so they changed the room number to 6XX. As I visited with the man in the room he informed me that he was a good Baptist, had been going to church for years, and was mad. I mean he was really mad.  He expressed his great displeasure at being in “the Devil’s room.” He got loud, so loud that I am sure the people at the other end of the hallway could hear him. He had quickly figured out that 6XX was rea...
3 comments
Read more

Worshiping the Executioner part 2 (Suffering and Faith)

The medical staff quietly and somberly removed all the medical lines and devices from the 48-hour-old baby. The baby's mother and father wanted to hold their child for the first time. Removing all the medical devices meant that their child would live only a few moments. Holding your child for the first time should be a joyful occasion. Instead of this moment being a kind of introduction between parent and child it was a goodbye. The baby's body was simply not set up to survive and thrive.  After removing all the medical equipment the little one was wrapped in a blanket and gently handed into the arms of the mother. The room went silent as the mother softly repeated "Mommy and Daddy love you" while she wept. The baby's father wept and kissed his newborn on the forehead. Other family members in the room started to cry as well. Once the little one had passed the family gathered together to pray. After composing himself, one of the older men in the family offered a pr...
Post a Comment
Read more