The Way Out
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
My joy is gone, grief is upon me,
my heart is sick.
Hark, the cry of my poor people
from far and wide in the land:
‘Is the Lord not in Zion?
Is her King not in her?’
(‘Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,
with their foreign idols?’)
‘The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
and we are not saved.’
For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people
not been restored?O that my head were a spring of water,
and my eyes a fountain of tears,
so that I might weep day and night
for the slain of my poor people!
I’m going to reference and quote a book again, and it will be the fourth time I’ve mentioned this book in a sermon. It seems it’s almost become my second Bible. The book is When We Cease to Understand the World, and my favorite chapter in the book is about Karl Schwarzschild, the early twentieth century German physicist who discovered black holes. Schwarzschild hated what he discovered. He took no joy in the fact that he discovered the very real possibility of absolute nothingness—essentially that pre-creation void that we talked about last week. He spent the final days of his life in a WWI hospital, not trying to get his discovery out to journals or bragging about his genius—he spent those days of his life trying to prove himself wrong. And when he did die, Albert Einstein gave the eulogy, and in it said “He fought against the problems from which others fled.”
Church, this is what Jeremiah did. He fought against the problems from which others fled—the things people were in denial about. He told the truth, he told his people what God told him. Others were in denial and fled from the truth, Jeremiah was persecuted for telling that truth, but no matter how painful things got, Jeremiah never fled from the truth. And like Karl Schwarzschild, Jeremiah mourns, Jeremiah despairs. He wants so badly to be wrong, but he knows he’s not, and he mourns for the future—for what is about to happen to his people, and to him—for the inevitable violence and suffering that will come when the Babylonians attack from the north and take over. And Jeremiah takes no pleasure in this, he takes no joy that he’ll be proven right, he doesn’t want to be proven right—being proven right will mean violence and suffering, death, and an end to his people’s faith and their way of life as they know it.
Now it might seem obvious that Jeremiah is dreading the war that’s to come—no one takes pleasure in war, in the suffering of others, right? Sadly, this just doesn’t seem to be a universal truth. There are extreme examples, like the rightfully reviled Westboro Baptist “Church,” picketing funerals and taking a perverse joy in the grief and suffering of others; as Brian mentioned in Bible study last week, people like Jerry Falwell preached that the HIV/AIDS crisis was the fault of queer folks and that’s what they get, that they deserved that pain and suffering.
But there are more current, more seemingly less extreme, but certainly just as cruel versions of this—it seems like every time something happens in Texas, and the power grid struggles, and people’s heat isn’t functioning during a rare cold snap; or in Louisiana, when the waters rise and the levies break—when things like this happen and people die, there are always, always some jerks on the internet, many of them not even remaining anonymous, posting on their public Twitter accounts, “Oh well this is what they get for voting so-and-so in as governor.” “This is what they get for denying climate change is real, haha.” Or when a rash of murders in Chicago or Philadelphia make national news, “oh well this is what they get for voting for so-and-so for mayor, haha.” All this disgusting joy while people are dying. Not only is this cruel, but it’s also so arrogant, isn’t it? We can think deeply about this and work to understand that that certain policies, that certain systems are put in place that makes disasters more likely, that make this world more dangerous for people. We can’t point our fingers and say with certainty that this horrible thing happen because the actions of one person voted into power, and therefore people should be hurting and suffering. Only God can know why things happen the way they do, and our job is to listen to the modern-day prophets—not the arrogant false prophets pointing fingers— and do our best to right our wrongs and create a world that is safe for all people, regardless of who they voted for or what they believe.
But this idea of laughing at people’s suffering—it’s pretty much the concept of schadenfreude, right? That we can derive pleasure from someone else’s perceived deserved misfortune. I read in an article on schadenfreude that while there’s not a direct English translation, hence why we still use the German word, the most literal way to translate it to English would be would be “malicious joy.” There’s this malicious joy people seem to take in the misfortune of others who they believe deserve that suffering. And when division is being sowed, when people are pitted against each other all the time, this malicious joy seems to ramp up, it seems to become acceptable and commonplace.
Now, I know Jeremiah is kind of a downer. But the reason he’s a downer is that he’s deeply empathetic, and even though he’s been told by directly by God that these his people brought the coming doom on themselves, by being awful to the poor and the oppressed, by getting greedy and forgetting their roots, Jeremiah can’t take any pleasure in it, even if they ostensibly deserve it. He is pure of heart, he is earnest; so he’s grieving and mourning and weeping because he doesn’t want to see anyone suffer regardless of how awful they may have been, regardless of how much they have sinned. “For the hurt of my poor people, I am hurt, / I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.” This is not a man who is happy about being right. His people are hurt, therefore he is hurt.
And hurt, more literally translated, would be broken—and not just broken like brokenhearted; the best way to think about this broken would be when a vase breaks, when something delicate shatters. In Bible study (I’m so glad Bible study is back!) Linda’s translation translated it to “crushed.” Broken, shattered, crushed, these are such striking words, with such finality. This is a moment in which Jeremiah truly had no hope. He had fallen into deep dismay, deep despair.
How do we piece something back together that is broken, that’s crushed, that’s shattered beyond recognition. Maybe we throw our hands in the air in exasperation and throw it in the trash, to waste away in a landfill for eternity. But Church, we know that’s not what happens to God’s people. We know, no matter how dire things seem, remember from last week—"God will not make a full end.” “…a full end.” The implication here is that there will still be some kind of end. Not a full one, not a void of complete desolation, but something will end. Now, because we can read ahead, and because this has all already happened, we know that God’s covenant with Israel will change. And we know that even later on, Jesus will be born, die, and rise again. There is never a full end. But ends still occur.
Even though we know there’s a positive end to all this, and even though Jeremiah never really lost his faith in God, he was still mourning the end that was to come; he was grieving the fact that life as he knew it would be over. And a new way of being would emerge, but not until they made it through some scary and uncertain times.
The artist and theologian Makoto Fujimura writes about learning about gardening and soil from farmers he lives near in New Jersey—“Farmers ‘fix’ the soil; they amend it to create biodiversity in their fields… Soil is something we do need to ‘fix’—both to remove the rocks and, in a deeper sense, to amend and nourish it to prepare it for the spring… Note that this process is not restorative; it is a kind of new creation… it renews the soil and makes it more productive than it was before.” So this process of fixing the soil, makes it something completely new. This is what’s going to happen to Jeremiah and his people—they’re going to enter into a brand new covenant with God that will give them more life and more flexibility, that will change the way they worship, and will change the way they think of home.
But we’re not there yet. Right now, Jeremiah’s world is filled with rot and rocks and it’s no longer the fertile and perfect land it once was. Remember our reading from last week—"I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert…”. Jeremiah knows deep down that things will be okay—he wouldn’t keep screaming truths into the void if he didn’t—but he’s full of dread for what’s to come, he’s mourning the end of this perfect promised land that was good for so long.
Last week, inspired by Sheila Heti’s book Pure Colour, I talked about the fact that we’re a people living in the first draft, that we were made to live in this draft, we were made to slog through these hard times, knowing that in the future, things won’t be so terrible. There’s that old Robert Frost-penned saying, right, that the only way out is through. To quote the poem directly, “He says the best way out is always through. / And I agree to that, or in so far / As that I can see no way out but through.” I love that that saying starts with an attempt at a positive spin, that the best way out his through, as if there are other options. But church, there are no other options. The only option is to make it through this draft, to make it through whatever horrors we’re destined to face—climate catastrophes sure to continue, wars abroad, the continuing fracturing of our apparently fragile systems of government—so we can get to that perfect final draft for future generations so that they will never have to experience these things.
Facing an uncertain future is terrifying. Facing the fact that we are going to experience hard times, that we can’t avoid what is to come is terrifying. I don’t blame people for not wanting to be like Jeremiah, for not wanting to face that the fact that when things get bad we are all going to suffer, not just those who we think deserve to suffer. So instead of coming to the correct, but scary conclusion that we are all in this together, and that we should be working for a better world for everyone, we sometimes put our defenses up. We sometimes try to make ourselves feel better, that we’re in the right, that we know the truth, so only the people who messed up are the ones who will suffer and that’s fine because they deserve it.
It's right in line with all the lies people in this country love to tell themselves about people on food stamps or people who get WIC or people who are houseless—that they must have been so irresponsible and awful that they deserve it, that I live in a nice warm house because I’m a good person, they live out of their car because they’re bad. We know that’s not true, Church. I’ve been very transparent with you all that the only reason Chris and I were able to buy a home here in Hartland was thanks to a lot of family help, was thanks to our privilege—it wasn’t because we’re good people, it wasn’t because we “deserve” it and others don’t. Everyone deserves a roof over their heads. Everyone deserves to feel safe, to have warmth, to have comfort, to have their bellies filled, to have their thirst quenched, to be capital L-Loved. Everyone.
Oftentimes when it comes to these revered and wise prophets, I’ll say something like, “Let’s be more like Jeremiah!” But I know we don’t want to all be wallowing in despair constantly, so I won’t say that today. What I will say is that it’s okay to not be okay, that it’s okay to fall into these bouts of despair sometimes; there is, admittedly a lot to despair about these days. But let’s also remember that the only way out is indeed through— so we can prepare, and we can work to mitigate the damage as much as possible for everyone as we make our way through, not just those who think like us, not just those who agree with us. And so we will not find joy in the misfortune of others; We will find joy in the glimpses of the perfection that is possible in the perfect world to come. We will spend our lives working towards that perfect world. That is the way out. Amen.
