welcome back to below, the Bible Belt weekly recap of our ongoing journey, making sense of the Hebrew Bible for today, live in Jerusalem. The ancient wars meet terrible ones today with hopefully some tools for how to help and how to cope.
Jeremiah the prophet of Jerusalem lived to see the savagery of war destroy his city, the temple, disrupt everything he knew. He tried to warn the people, but, like us, they looked away and hoped the prophecies of doom and gloom will go away. They didn’t. And they don’t.
This is our final weekly video with Jeremiah - a journey that began 50 chapters ago, on August 20th, ends mid bloody war as ancient words echo another bitter battle and this awful rage.
What is the legacy of Jeremiah?
He gives us tools - for grief, for growth, for honesty and hope.
In his book - A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming, Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann writes:
”On the eve of destruction, Jeremiah issues a paradoxical message that utters holiness in the midst of disruption, sounds that summon to honesty and to hope...
Jeremiah brings to public expression the dread of endings, the collapse of our self-madeness, the barriers and pecking orders that secure us at each other’s expense, and the fearful practice of eating off the table of a hungry brother or sister...
The proper idiom for the prophet is the language of grief, the rhetoric that engages the community in mourning for a funeral they do not want to admit. It is indeed their own funeral.”
We not only need Jeremiah’s language of grief, to help us mourn and handle our hurts and healing.
He also gives us the notion of tools for exile. The prophet that warned of exile also knew that we need what it takes to survive even if away from our familiar settings, refugees, asylum seekers -- what do we take in our backpocket when fleeing for our lives? What will help our spirit and our legacy survive?
This, for me, is Jeremiah’s gift to us, in every generation, and right now. In chapter 46, as imagines the future battles that will displace not only his people but so many others too, he sends a message to the next door kingdom of Egypt:
Since the 6th century BCE our people, and many other people, have been displaced so many times. Who knows what next, for whom, for what reasons?
What do we pack in our pockets?
What are the core values, heirlooms, teachings, wise words, soul songs and security blankets portable enough to travel with us no matter where and what, to help us weather wars and horrors, illness and hardships, ordinary and extraordinary days? Jeremiah, prophet and refugee, leaves us with this personal and collective question.
Two more chapters left next week before we migrate to the rivers of Babylon to explore the wild world of Ezekiel.
On this Friday, while this brutal war is raging on, so many suffering, killed, captive, wounded, exiled, hurting, hopeful -- let us be each other’s healing, hold each other’s hearts with care. The best tool that we got are in our hearts and hands, like love and breath, resilience and patience. May there be peace.
Shabbat Shalom.
Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey, @belowthebiblebelt929.
"The Sound of War.. The Dread of Endings"