The Pain of Prophecy: A Reflection on Jeremiah 20:7-18

Last updated on: June 23, 2017 at 2:26 pm by John C Holbert

The Pain of Prophecy: A Reflection on Jeremiah 20:7-18 2017-06-23T14:26:25-05:00 John C Holbert

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230px-Пророк_Иеремия,_Микеланжело_Буонаротти Since I have ended my screeds against Donald Trump, based on biblical characters, which I called “The Bible As Mirror,” I have decided to use the alternate first readings from the Hebrew Bible that the Revised Common Lectionary offers each week as springboards to more random thoughts (no, not the “deep thoughts” of SNL’s Jack Handy, I hope!) that the texts suggest to my aging brain. These readings are designed to follow the “complementary historical tradition of thematically pairing the OT reading with the reading of the week’s gospel,” as the lectionary collectors say. The primary readings that I discuss in my lectionary articles for each week are “OT readings, read semi-continuously, follow(ing) major stories/themes” in succeeding years A, B, and C of the three-year cycle. I hope you find my reflections useful for preaching and for your own delectation, whatever your tastes may be. If not, well, I plan to write them anyway! So there!

Today’s Jeremiah text is a doozy. In a quite direct way it warns any would-be prophet, any and all want-a-be firebrand, that the work of prophecy, of speaking out against authorities and powers, is deeply dangerous work and thoroughly hazardous to one’s health and well being. Jeremiah is model case number 1 of one called to confront the powers and announcing painfully and continuously that he wishes he could do anything else. He will teach us that the work of a genuine prophet is not for everyone, since it entails untold agonies and unmatched loneliness, well beyond the obvious public rejection and humiliation. It may even lead to a profound crisis of faith in the God who called in the first place, as it did for this prophet.

In a series of five so-called “confessions,” Jeremiah reveals the rigors and costs of the prophetic task. This final one, Jer.20, is the most astonishing of the lot, as any reading of it will quickly demonstrate. The opening gambit of Jer. 20:7 is nothing less than mind blowing. The NRSV rather politely translates the line: “O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed.” This reading implies that YHWH has held out a luscious ice cream cone for the prophet that he feels incapable of resisting! However, the word used here is often found in contexts of sexual assault, even rape. Let me translate the line with that possibility in mind: “YHWH, you have raped me, and I was raped! You have grabbed me and you have conquered!” The Hebrew is sharp, assaultive, rough, near pornographic. Jeremiah has spent his entire life fulfilling the call and commands of YHWH, and the result is that he feels violated, abused, conquered by a far more powerful and seemingly uncaring God.

He continues his accusations against YHWH by saying: “I have become a continuous joke; everyone jeers at me. Whenever I speak, I feel forced to cry out, destined to shout, ‘Violence! Destruction!’ The word of YHWH has become for me one continuous source of reproach and derision” (Jer. 20:7-8). You never want to invite Jeremiah to a dinner party, because he will stand by the canapés and mutter loudly “Doom, Destruction, Violence,” turning a festive evening of wine and munchies into a fright fest of darkness.

Oh, the prophet wishes he could be different. “If I say, ‘I will simply forget God, will never again speak God’s name,’ there is within me something like a burning fire eating my bones; I am exhausted trying to contain it, since I cannot” (Jer. 20:9). Jeremiah would much rather join the society folk to be welcomed and embraced as one of them, to eat and drink with many convivial friends. Alas! The hand of YHWH is heavy, onerous, supremely demanding. For this prophet there is finally no escape. YHWH has him in a divine chokehold and there is no place to go and hide.

Very few of us ordained types can fully identify with such extreme language coughed up by a desperate Jeremiah. After all, we are called to our work, as he was, but with few exceptions our calling is also our job for which we are paid, however much or little, and are provided with certain expected amenities like parsonages, insurance, pensions, along with at least a modicum of respect and honor. Surely, few of us feel raped by God, tricked into submission, left to cry out alone the words that God has placed in our hearts and on our lips.

And yet. And yet. There are for all of us clergy types those days when we may not be so far from the anguish of Jeremiah. I have been privileged to teach several thousand students on their way to the life of a clergyperson, and I have also had the opportunities to preach and teach in over 1000 churches, as well as to serve as interim minister in two very difficult church situations. Thus, I know stories first-hand and have heard many stories from preachers over many years that approached the pain and struggle of Jeremiah, stories of racism, sexism, heterosexism, xenophobia that demanded of preachers extraordinary courage, a courage they sometimes displayed and sometimes not.

In one of my interim assignments, where I followed a prominent clergyman accused of multiple instances of sexual misconduct over many years, the one thing I quickly discovered is that I was not 1stmeth_small nearly as courageous as I imagined myself to be. When day after day I had to confront furious parishioners, who simply did not believe that their beloved pastor could ever in a million years have done the terrible things of which he was accused, I found the withering rage very hard to withstand. I went home each night depleted, afraid, beaten down. In addition, I spoke to many of the accusers, and their stories left me disgusted and outraged, but also horrified at what a human being could do to fellow human beings. My rosy view of my comfortable life as a teacher of preachers began to darken and fade as these abused women painted a portrait of a human being that I finally did not want to see, but was forced to witness again and again. Like Jeremiah, I questioned what God was about in the calling of this predator to ministry. Equally, I questioned why that same God had called me to watch these tragedies come into the light, to bear witness to some things I could never have imagined in my wildest nightmares.

Rather like Jeremiah, I ended some of my days during that time with the cry, “Why in Hell (my own translation of the tiny particle ze) did I come out of the womb to witness trouble and horror, and live my days in shame” (Jer. 20:18)? Why, indeed? It was the call of a prophet, and I heard and accepted the call, not knowing the full weight of what I was embracing in my acceptance. Like Jeremiah, I just did not envision what this prophetic life might entail, and I was not strong enough, courageous enough, faithful enough to do the calling any justice. I just tried my best, at least some of the time. Whether I succeeded or failed I leave to God; I look back on that time, over 20 years ago, and I do not know the full outcome.

The end of the story of Jeremiah as enshrined in his long book is quite intriguing. He apparently witnesses the final fall of Jerusalem and Judah in 587BCE under the onslaught of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. That fact means that Jeremiah has been a prophet in Judah for well over 40 years. Though he is urged by some of his few followers to escape to Egypt, he is determined to remain in Jerusalem. As he watches the last king of Judah, Zedekiah, now blinded and childless due to the murder of his children by the conquerors, walk his weary way eastward to the great capital of Babylon, Jeremiah gives a final prophetic word to Seraiah, an official of the exiled court. He tells him to take with him to the enemy city a scroll that Jeremiah has written at the demand of YHWH, a scroll that predicts the ultimate downfall of the empire of the Babylonians. Seraiah is to read it and is then to tie a stone to the scroll and throw it into the Euphrates River as a sign that Babylon will sink, never to rise again. And then an odd sentence concludes the words of this amazing and anguished prophet. “The words of Jeremiah thus far,” says Jer. 51:64. In other words, Jeremiah is still speaking; the words we have read are only those he has uttered “thus far.”

We modern prophets must now speak the difficult words that he spoke; we are his heirs, all of us preacher types today. Our task is no less difficult and dangerous than his, if we grab the calling of YHWH, a calling that has grasped us and will not let us go. Yes, prophecy can bring pain; in fact it inevitably will if the prophet is genuine. Our God has grabbed us; let us now grab the prophetic task again, a task fully worthy of Jeremiah, the pioneer and guide to our own prophetic work.

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