May the mumbling commence!
Today’s readings from the chronological Bible that I am reading from brings me to a passage that has great meaning for me. The prophets of the Old Testament are difficult to read. Sometimes they are difficult to read because they are hard to understand. Sometimes they are difficult to read because I understand them – and what they are saying hits a little too close to home. At the beginning of Jeremiah 13, the Lord asks Jeremiah to perform a symbolic action that would send a message to Israel. Read verses 1-11 below:
This is what the Lord said to me: "Go and buy a linen belt and put it around your waist, but do not let it touch water." So I bought a belt, as the Lord directed, and put it around my waist.
Then the word of the Lord came to me a second time: "Take the belt you bought and are wearing around your waist, and go now to Perath and hide it there in a crevice in the rocks." So I went and hid it at Perath, as the Lord told me.
Many days later the Lord said to me, "Go now to Perath and get the belt I told you to hide there." So I went to Perath and dug up the belt and took it from the place where I had hidden it, but now it was ruined and completely useless.
Then the word of the Lord came to me: "This is what the Lord says: 'In the same way I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. These wicked people, who refuse to listen to my words, who follow the stubbornness of their hearts and go after other gods to serve and worship them, will be like this belt – completely useless! For as a belt is bound around a man's waist, so I bound the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to me,' declares the Lord, 'to be my people for my renown and praise and honor. But they have not listened.'
This ruined linen belt to underwear, depending on the translation you are reading, was to be a bold reminder of how Israel was chasing after other gods. In the preceding chapters, God had pointed to many different things. They were going their own ways and throwing off the yoke of the Lord (Jeremiah 5:5). They were lusting after others wives and coveting neighbors’ property (5:7-9). They believed the Lord to be impotent (5:12-13). They grew fat off the vulnerable, who they took advantage of (5:27-28). They would not listen to the Lord, so they were ruined. They were ruined for the task of bringing renown and praise and honor to the Lord.
But, one thing I am sure of is that God is not asking all of us to wear and not wash our underpants into oblivion. If that is the message that you get from this passage, then you are woefully off course. You are missing the point.
I am sure that those who witnessed my first sermon at Community Church of the Brethren of Hutchinson, Kansas, will remember this passage. And they will remember the rap parody of General Larry Platt’s “Pants on the Ground” that I wrote and that Jud and I performed (called "Ruined Underpants"). The bottom line of the sermon was: do not be fooled by the surface events of Jesus’ cleansing of the temple. In the act, Jesus was symbolically showing the Jewish people the coming destruction of the Temple and of worship as they had known it because they had not welcomed and shown the love of God to all people – including those on the fringes, the most vulnerable.
I spoke of a dream that I have in that sermon. It is a dream that I continue to have. Here is the dream from the text of my sermon:
“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. I have a dream, too. That Community Church of the Brethren, and all God’s church, can successfully communicate God’s love to all people.
Let me say that again: I have a dream that Community Church of the Brethren, and all God’s church, can successfully communicate God’s love to all people.”
May it be so!
Enough mumbling for now…
Peace Out
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