Pluck up, Destroy, Build

Mark 13:24-27

24 “But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,

25And the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

26Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God

Jeremiah 1:9-19

9Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me, “Now I have put my words in your mouth.

10See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

11The word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Jeremiah, what do you see?” And I said, “I see a branch of an almond tree,” 12Then the LORD said to me, “You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.” 13The word of the LORD came to me a second time, saying, “What do you see?” And I said, “I see a boiling pot, tilted away from the north.”

14Then the LORD said to me: Out of the north disaster shall break out on all the inhabitants of the land. 15For now I am calling all the tribes of the kingdoms of the north, says the LORD; and they shall come and all of them shall set their thrones at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, against all its surrounding walls and against all the cities of Judah. 16And I will utter my judgments against them, for all their wickedness in forsaking me; they have made offerings to other gods, and worshipped the works of their own hands. 17But you, gird up your loins; stand up and tell them everything that I command you. Do not break down before them, or I will break you before them. 18And I for my part have made you today a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall, against the whole land - against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land. 19They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the LORD, to deliver you.

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God.

How is this good news?

The Bible is the “good book” and tells us the good news of God. We have traded the fire-and-brimstone warnings of Zedekiah for the call of the prophet Jeremiah, and prophetic call stories are supposed to be uplifting, but this one promises only that Jerusalem and Judas will be under siege from Babylon and that Jeremiah will be under siege from the very people to whom he is preaching.

How is this good news?

Even the commissioning, at the beginning of this morning’s passage is a briar patch of threats, “See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” God lays six charges on Jeremiah’s ministry and the first four are destructive: pluck up, pull down, destroy, overthrow.

How is this good news?

Disaster has come to Jerusalem. The temple has been destroyed, the monarchy has ended. The institutions on which the people relied were gone. Their homes are burning, their loved ones have been killed or worse, and the foundation of their faith has crumbled beneath them. The Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem was a complete breakdown of society. “For the book [of Jeremiah’s] audiences, God’s plucking up and pulling down have already occurred...They portray the immediate past history of the readers and name the reality in which they live.” The ministry of Jeremiah is in the aftermath of disaster.

We’re fully into the exile now. The invading army has inflicted wounds to terrible to bear, and the trauma seeps into the soul of the people. None of the old hymns are singable anymore, none of the traditional prayers will touch this heartbreak.

Y’all know that before I was y’all’s pastor, I worked for several months as a Chaplain down at Spartanburg Hospital. They’ve got one of the busiest Emergency Centers in the country at that hospital, and the Chaplains were part of the trauma team. When a bad car wreck, or some accident around the home or workplace, or some intentional violence brought someone to the hospital’s trauma bay, I got paged to go down. I always eventually made my way around to the same question, “Can you tell me what happened?”

That question wasn’t a conversation starter, it was an assessment tool. Someone who has been traumatized cannot answer that question. It’s too difficult to bear, and so the brain fragments the experience, and speaking in more than rehearsed clichés becomes impossible. Experiences of trauma cannot be uttered. “People turn off so they can keep going. But afterwards, without warning fractured remains can return with the force of the original experience.” Today we call it “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” other time periods called it “Shellshock.” In the days of Jeremiah, it was just living in exile, and the whole nation was going through it. The whole nation, at least those who survived, was carrying their trauma with them into captivity.

How is this good news?

As we journey alongside one another, as we travel with our theological ancestors, as we process with Jeremiah through the depths of disaster, how do we find the gospel?

How is this good news? How is exile good news? How is anguish good news? How is a prophetic call to pluck up, pull down, destroy, and overthrow good news? Why, when God promises that he is watching over his word to perform it do I feel more terror than comfort? Why, when God promises to be with Jeremiah do I feel that’s more a message of endurance than assurance? How is this good news?

The short answer is that maybe it’s not.

Maybe this passage, or even most of this whole book, is not meant to be good news.

Maybe this is not good news.

Odds are, the people to whom Jeremiah ministered could not hear good news, couldn’t wrap their heads around it because their world had warped underneath them, and they couldn’t stand. Maybe, in the aftermath of catastrophe, encouragement loses its meaning and optimism evaporates like water from a half-empty glass. Maybe this is not good news.

Last week, Zephaniah’s harsh and anguished warning about the day of the LORD challenged us to look beyond “What a friend we have in Jesus” towards the God who is offended by the injustice we tolerate in the world. This week, Jeremiah brings us a message that might not be good news. He’s preaching in the aftermath of the devastation that Zephaniah anticipates. The traumatized people who are left alive after God sent Babylon through Judah cannot hear good news right now, because what use is good news when everything around us has turned to ash?

How is this good news? Maybe it’s not. There’s not a hero coming to save the day, everything is already lost. Instead of a hero, those left after the suffering have a prophet. “[Jeremiah] is an anguished man, a kind of anti-hero, wounded and isolated and broken like the people of Judah in the grip of catastrophe.” Maybe this message is not good news, but what this not-good news does is very different than what it says.

When God calls Jeremiah “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow,” God knows that the people simply don’t have the ability to rebuild. After the overwhelming destruction of their culture, they don’t have anything left, neither material resources, nor emotional reserves, not imagination to look to a better world. What they have instead are the words God has put in Jeremiah’s mouth. Words that might not be good news, but it’s news that the people can hear.

Jeremiah’s violent and terrifying prophecies, here glimpsed as an oracle of the siege of Jerusalem, are building the scaffolding that will allow a more mature theology to be rebuilt in the exile.

Jeremiah is called to build and to plant, He’s not building the foundations, this is just the scaffolding, it will be torn away before it’s all done, when the people can hear good news again. He is not planting a crop that will be harvested, he’s planting a crop that will hold the soil until the vineyard can be replanted.

The traumatized people cannot bear to touch their experience, they can’t even remember it without being re-traumatized. Jeremiah is building and planting a way of holding on to God that will allow their faith to survive, even if their bitter exilic faith makes us feel out of place. Jeremiah is giving news that might not be good news because the people need to hear that God is still involved. A God who blesses doesn’t fit their reality, so they need a God who punishes, because a God who doesn’t care is even worse.

Jeremiah will become the first to articulate the new covenant, of which Jesus is the fulfillment. But that won’t happen for another twenty odd chapters. First God must finish plucking up the false theologies. God must finish destroying the idols the people had grown to trust in lieu to true faith. Only then will the LORD build a covenant that is based on the character of God, rather than the works of people.

How is this good news? Maybe it’s not. But there is good news coming.

One day.

Some day.

Maybe when we can hear it.