Living in the First Draft

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem: A hot wind comes from me out of the bare heights in the desert towards my poor people, not to winnow or cleanse— a wind too strong for that. Now it is I who speak in judgement against them.
‘For my people are foolish,
   they do not know me;
they are stupid children,
   they have no understanding.
They are skilled in doing evil,
   but do not know how to do good.’

I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void;
   and to the heavens, and they had no light.
I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking,
   and all the hills moved to and fro.
I looked, and lo, there was no one at all,
   and all the birds of the air had fled.
I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert,
   and all its cities were laid in ruins
   before the Lord, before his fierce anger.

For thus says the Lord: The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end.
Because of this the earth shall mourn,
   and the heavens above grow black;
for I have spoken, I have purposed;
   I have not relented nor will I turn back.

I’ll start out this sermon, and our regular church season of sorts with an apology. I am so sorry I decided to do this Jeremiah sermon series. It’s a downer! Jeremiah is literally referred to as “the weeping prophet.” But, you know, I think we sometimes have a tendency to wag our fingers at other denominations for cherry-picking, for only reading passages that fit perfectly in line with their values, so we can’t do that. we can’t cherry-pick our Bible verses just to find the nicest, most pleasing, easy-to-digest verses—we have to reckon with all of it—the violent, the depressing, the confusing; so as we’re going through this, let’s try to keep in mind the fact that for, us Jesus and resurrection is always there. And even in this passage, before we get bogged down with the descriptions like “waste and void,” my God, let’s remember, God will not “make a full end.” God won’t let us completely destroy ourselves. There’s always hope.

So I’ll begin by putting Jeremiah’s ministry in some context, which entails a very cursory history lesson—Jeremiah was told by God to preach repentance to his people and warn them about an incoming attack from North. This would turn out to be the Babylonians, and they will indeed take over. This will change everything— including even God’s covenant with Israel. But where we are now, is the beginning of Jeremiah’s ministry. Yeah, he’s kind of a negative Nancy, a Debbie downer. And the running theme of Jeremiah is that he’s kind of screaming into the void. Because before the Babylonians attack, Judah has sort of settled into a nice little peaceful complacency. There’s been a lull in violence, in exiles, and the people are doing pretty well. So when Jeremiah comes on the scene telling everyone that they have to prepare, and that they have to stop acting evil and start acting right again, that they’re on the verge of war, they don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to hear it so badly, that false prophets actually start popping up to counter what Jeremiah is saying— in the next chapter, it’s written “They have spoken falsely of the Lord and have said, ‘He will do nothing. No evil will come upon us, and we shall not see sword or famine.” Further on, in chapter 23, Jeremiah continuing to scream into the void, laments, “Both the prophet and priest are ungodly…the prophets in Jerusalem…commit adultery and walk in lies; they strengthen the hand of the evildoers so that no one turns from wickedness…”. And these prophets that Jeremiah is talking about here simply saying what the people wanted to hear. Essentially, they were saying, “oh everything is fine, just keep doing what you’re doing, live your comfortable lives, nothing to worry about here!” for the purpose of keeping the status-quo.

And you know—I get it. Do you remember back in Winter of 2020, when the rumblings of covid were just starting to get a little traction? I remember I actually went to a little young adult dinner party with the friends from the church I went to down in Philly, and there was a medical resident there, and he, like so many others at the beginning was sort of brushing it off as hysteria. He had only seen a couple covid patients so far had they had relatively mild symptoms. And of course, this guy wasn’t being malicious like the false prophets in Jeremiah’s time, there just wasn’t enough known yet, and he was only going by what he saw. But I remember hearing what he said and thinking, ‘yep, that’s the narrative I want, that’s the thing I want to be true.’ And so I held onto that until I simply couldn’t anymore. Now, remember I was a hospice chaplain at the time, and I held onto that “oh it’s not so bad” narrative as long as I could—until I began to see my patients become isolated. Until I saw my patients become so sick, alone in their nursing home rooms, unable to say proper goodbyes to their families. I held into that “oh it’s not so bad” narrative until I truly couldn’t deny it anymore. And I know I wasn’t the only one— and I know this country wasn’t the only one. We didn’t really believe what was really happening until it was too late. Until it had already taken hold. And sadly, spoiler alert, that’s what happened for Jeremiah’s people. They refused to believe Jeremiah, and they refused to prepare until it was too late, until Jeremiah’s prophesies became real.

In this passage, it reads as almost apocalyptic—the earth as waste and void, the heavens with no light, the mountains and hills are quaking; no birds, not plants, no fruit, just ruins—pure desolation. The language here purposely harkens back to the chaos of the days before creation—of the void that this earth once was before life appeared. But remember—God “will not make a full end.”

There’s a beautiful book I’ve used in a sermon or two before, Pure Colour by Sheila Heti. The book has a lot of strange and lovely musings about the nature of this world, its people; creation and God. And the author has this idea that the world we’re living in now is a first draft of sorts. And I love this, because it works perfectly for us, as Christians, waiting for a second coming, and working for an earth as it is in heaven; and it also works for the book of Jeremiah, because, spoiler alert, this is all building towards God sort of updating their covenant with Israel—it’s all leading up to sort of a second draft of the covenant.

But right now, we’re in the first draft; right now, Jeremiah’s people are in their first draft and they don’t realize it yet. They think they’re doing just fine, and that they have nothing to worry about.

Just imagine how frustrating this must have been for Jeremiah. He got a call, directly from God, telling him, in detail, about invaders from the North; telling him in detail that nothing can be done, about this happening, but his people can at least prepare and protect themselves—this is absolutely dire, and no one is listening to him.  I imagine this is how climate scientists have felt for decades—decades of saying the future looks pretty rough; decades of saying we should really do something; decades of screaming into the void while modern-day false prophets—fossil fuel lobbyists, oil and gas company CEOs—countered everything scientists and activists were saying with lies and false hope.

And screaming into the void has taken on a new meaning these days—it’s not just trying to convince people who won’t be convinced; it’s also the problem of the internet and echo chambers. We seem to either be yelling at people who won’t budge, or yelling at people who already agree with us. What’s the point? I imagine Jeremiah was very much feeling that “what’s the point” during his ministry. He was probably constantly wondering what the point was, if no one would listen to him, and his people were just going to destroy themselves anyway. Why would God give him this thankless, wrenching job if he was just going to be ignored, scoffed at, even imprisoned for a time? Well, remember—God said, “I will not make a full end.”

So there must have been someone listening to Jeremiah. There must have been some folks who read the writing on the wall, who saw through the false prophets, who prepared and kept their faith. Because the world did not end, God’s people were not destroyed. So as demoralizing as Jeremiah’s job was, he knew there would not be a full end. “The…land shall be a desolation.” But not complete and utter desolation. A new covenant with God, a new relationship would rise from the ashes. A new way of being in the world would rise from the ashes.

I imagine this kind of hope is still alive today—why else would scientists and activists continue to warn us of what may come, even when it feels like they’re screaming into the void? Even as the temperatures keep rising? They have hope in the good that God has graced us with, they have hope in the good that we are all capable of. They have hope that we will indeed come together to make a better world.

But we’re not there yet. How do we all maintain hope that a better world is indeed to come? How do we make it through this broken world? How do we trudge through this first draft of God’s creation? In that book I mentioned, Pure Colour, Heti writes,

There is something exciting about a first draft—anarchic, scrappy, full of life, flawed…

Our lives are full of misery, but what about the thrill of being here together, in this terrible time, knowing that life will not be so terrible once the next draft comes?

How crude and bizarre our world will seem to [the people of the second draft]! How small, tragic, and imperfect, when they consider what we had to do to find love.

Yet we can see what’s beautiful in it. We can see the beauty, in a way they will never understand. They will not understand it, in the next draft of the world, which will be so much more utterly whole. Could any of us even bear that wholeness, us creatures of the first draft? Wouldn’t we find something discomforting about such an excellent world?[i]

There’s something really gut-wrenching, but beautiful about living in this crude and bizarre world but seeing glimpses of what’s possible— of understanding that a better, perfect world is possible, and working for that world so that future generations will never have to know the brokenness and the evil that is possible. It’s difficult, and it’s infuriating, but it’s also, as the narrator of Heti’s book “thrilling” to know that in the future, at some point, because of work we are inspired to do thanks to our faith and our understanding of the world God calls us to fight for, that “life will not be so terrible when the next draft comes.”

Maybe we just weren’t made for a second draft. We’ve been put on this earth, during this first draft to fight for the second one. And it can be frustrating. It can be infuriating. And it might feel like we’re screaming into the void sometimes, but we are here, living and working and loving and fighting in this first draft for a reason.

We’ll see this Fall, as we continue with Jeremiah the weeping prophet, that no matter how much he weeps, no matter how much he laments, that he doesn’t give up. We’ll see that regardless of what comes his way, he keeps telling the truth, he keeps warning his people of what is to come. And you know, we might continue to think of him as a bit of a Debbie downer. Some of these scripture passages might not read as the most hopeful on the surface. But doesn’t that make it kind of perfect for uncertain times? Don’t we need a prophet right now who refuses to stop speaking the truth, no matter how much we don’t want to hear it? And don’t we need to be those prophets right now?

Let’s continue to remember, there will never be a full end. No matter how much Jeremiah weeps, no matter how often we may feel like we’re screaming into the void, no matter how dire the warnings seem, there will never be a full end. We were created to live in this first draft of creation, to work towards that perfect final draft. Let’s own that. Let’s embrace that. And let’s always be aware of the beauty in this world that shows us that a better, more perfect world is possible. Amen.

[i] [i] Sheila Heti, Pure Colour (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), 152-53