"They did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’"
Jeremiah 2:4-13
Proper 17C, September 2, 2007
A Sermon by Fr. James Haney V
Last week, we heard in our OT lesson about the call of the prophet Jeremiah. I had said that Jeremiah wasn’t very popular in his culture. I also said that nobody really liked to listen to him.
This morning, in our OT lesson, we begin to see why. Jeremiah delivers a long accusation from God against his chosen people, because they have fallen away from him. They have been worshipping the pagan god, Baal. Baal was the god of the non-Jewish people in and around Israel. And the Jewish people time and time again got sucked into Baal worship, instead of worshiping the one true and living God. Since we don’t have temples to Baal anymore, it’s a bit hard for us to understand what the big attraction was. Yet the worship of Baal was seductive at a couple of different levels.
First of all was the style of worship itself. Sometimes Baal worship involved things that our culture would find unpleasant: cutting yourself with knives, sacrificing your children. But Baal worship also involved consuming huge quantities of wine. And mostly, it involved having sex. For regular worship you could have sex with male or female temple prostitutes. But on the big holidays they’d have big religious orgies. Now at some levels that’s hard to compete with: ‘Come worship with our all-you-can-drink open bars and all the sex you can handle.’ Thus the worship of Baal was seductive based on style alone.
But there was a deeper reason the Jewish people were attracted to Baal worship. Baal was the god of rain and fertility. That was the reason for the sexual worship. If you had sex in the name of Baal, if your participated in an act of fertility, then you would insure that the land would be fertile and that the rains would come. The technical term that you may remember from an anthropology course is “sympathetic magic.” The theory was that a small ritual of fertility would ensure an abundant harvest. It would make Baal send rain and fertility. On the other hand, the Jewish people often thought of their God, the God of Abraham, as a God of the desert. They thought, “He was good when we were wandering nomadic shepherds in the desert. But we’re farmers now. What does a desert God know about crops and rain? Maybe we should hedge our bets. Maybe we should diversify our portfolio. Maybe we should also worship Baal.”
That’s where we pick up with our OT lesson for today: Jer ch2 p685. That’s the situation Jeremiah is addressing. God’s people have fallen away and engaged in idolatry. And it’s laid out as a legal case, with God acting both as plaintiff and prosecutor.
v5 “Thus says the LORD: What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?” God’s accusation is that idols are worthless. They’re not real gods. They’re simply human creations. Back in ch1, God made the accusation that worshipping idols is simply worshipping the work of human hands (Jer 1:16). Idolatry is worshipping things they have been created, rather than the Creator.
And the accusation in v5 is that by worshipping worthless, or empty, things, you become spiritually worthless or empty yourself. We say, “You are what you eat.” Jeremiah would say, “You become what you desire.” Pursue trivial things, and your life will be trivial. Pursue meaningless things, and your life will be without meaning.
What’s more, v6 “They did not say, ‘Where is the LORD?’”
This is, perhaps, the crux of the accusation. This is also, perhaps the greatest danger for us. They stopped asking, “Where is the Lord?” God has dropped off of their radar screen. God is not there in their remembrance of the past. God is not there in their day to day living.
v6 “They did not say, ‘Where is the LORD who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that no one passes through, where no one lives?’” They’ve forgotten what God did for them in the past. God sustained them in the desert. God was the source of life in the midst of barrenness.
v7 “I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination.” God is saying, ‘Fertility and plenty come from me. I brought you to this land with all of its abundance. But you turn around and forget about worshipping me.’
God holds the leadership accountable as well. There are four accusations in v8: “The priests did not say, ‘Where is the LORD?’ Those who handle the law did not know me; the rulers transgressed against me; the prophets prophesied by Baal, and went after things that do not profit.” In other words, those who should be pointing to me have also forgotten me, they don’t know me, or they also are pursuing empty things.
v10 “Cross to the coasts of Cyprus and look, send to Kedar and examine with care; see if there has ever been such a thing.” In other words, look at the other nations, from the northwest to the southeast. Other nations stick with their gods, even though they are empty idols. v11 “Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods?” The implied answer is, “Of course not.”
“But” middle of 11 “my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the LORD.” In other words, even the universe itself should be shocked at how you’ve forsaken me.
And then a final, shocking image for people in a semiarid land: v13 “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.” Cisterns were a common means of water storage. They’re big pits dug in the ground to hold run-off rainwater. When you visit Israel, you’ll probably see lots of cisterns. I remember standing in an empty one about the size of my office. After a rainfall, the water in a cistern is fresh. The problem is, months later, the water can putrefy with bacteria or algae.
God says, ‘You’ve forsaken me, a source of living, delicious, fresh water. You’ve traded me for stagnant cisterns, putrefied gods that you’ve invented. And what’s more, they’re cracked cisterns. They really can’t even hold stagnant water. In abandoning me you’ve traded what is life giving for what is empty.
You’re chasing after empty gods who are not real gods. You’re turning your back on me and turning toward something that cannot give life. And you’ve stopped asking the question, “Where is the Lord?”
It’s a very harsh set of accusations conveyed by the prophet Jeremiah.
2,600 years after Jeremiah, our cultural context is quite different. Yet, the more things change the more they stay the same. We’re probably not tempted to worship Baal, the god of rain and fertility. Yet we are often tempted to pursue other empty things. So we need to ask the same questions:
Where is the Lord? Where is God in your day to day life? Are you thankful? Do you remember what God has done for you in the past? Is God a priority for today?
Tomorrow, many of us are off for Labor Day. I’d encourage you to take a little time and reflect, to ask the questions,
“Where is God in my vocational life, my work or my school?”
"Where is God in my desires and dreams and hopes and plans?”
“Am I pursuing things that matter?”
“Am I seeking the source of living water?”
Ask those questions.
“Where is the Lord? Where is the Lord?”
The Rev. James P. Haney V
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church
Wichita, Kansas
September 2, 2007
