I’ve got to wondering.

Did Jeremiah know Psalm 19?

Raised in a priestly family,
with trips to the Temple as part of the rhythm of life,
it seems likely that Jeremiah would have known this psalm.

Given how deeply rooted Jeremiah is in the Torah,
one can easily imagine him singing along
with the cantor extolling Torah as
perfect,
sure,
right,
clear,
and true.

This is God’s gracious covenantal word that
revives the soul,
makes wise the simple,
rejoices the heart,
enlightens the eyes,
endures forever
and makes righteous altogether.

And if you pay attention to the rich creation theology in Jeremiah,
you can see that he would also have had the ears to hear that word
proclaimed from the firmament,
an eloquent voice that speaks through all the earth without words,
reflected in the daily rhythm of the sun rising and setting.

Undoubtedly Jeremiah would have been able to sing with a quiet confidence:


More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold.
Sweeter also than honey,
and drippings from the honeycomb.

The word of God,
the word that calls all of creation into being,
the word that all creation bears witness to,
the word graciously given in the Torah of Israel,
is sweet and delightful.

Yes, I can imagine this being at the heart of young Jeremiah’s faith.

Until he becomes a prophet, that is.

Until he receives a call of confrontation
with the nations,
with the priestly caste,
with the Temple,
with the royal court,
and with the academic advisors of that court
amongst his own prophetic colleagues.

Until he receives a commission
to pluck up and pull down,
to destroy and overthrow.
A commission of judgment and destruction
before he can begin to build.
A commission of tearing things up from their roots
before he can begin to plant.

Is this word sweeter than honey?
Is this word a joy for this weeping prophet?

No, for Jeremiah this word becomes a violation:

O Lord, you have seduced me
and I was seduced;
you have raped me
and you have prevailed,
he laments in chapter 20. (20.7)

For whenever I speak, I must cry out,
I must shout, “Violence and destruction!”
For the word of the Lord has become for me
a reproach and a derision all day long,
he continues. (20.8a)

But silence is not an option.

If I say, “I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name,”
then within me there is something like a burning fire
shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot prevail. (20.9)

You see, if the words of Jeremiah’s mouth
and the meditations of this prophet’s heart
are to be acceptable to Yahweh, his rock and redeemer,
then they will be anathema, offense,
sedition, blasphemy, and pernicious nonsense
in the ears of the ruling elite in Israel.

Gee, it’s a good thing that Jeremiah didn’t need to get ordained.

It’s a good thing that he wasn’t subjected to psychological testing:
I mean, how many manic depressive folks can we handle in leadership?

It’s a good thing that he didn’t go to seminary:
he would have failed homiletics,
been a pain in the ass in systematic theology,
totally disrupted the liturgics course,
and his profs would have hated him.

And it’s probably a good thing that he didn’t have to be examined by a bishop.

I can just imagine the conversation.

“So Jeremiah,” Bishop Poole asks, “tell me about your vision of ministry.”

“Well, Bishop,” Jeremiah might reply, “I think that basically we’ve got to spend most of our time plucking up, pulling down, destroying and overthrowing the way things presently are before we can even begin to start worrying about church plants and any building projects. In fact, I don’t really envision hardly any building or planting in my ministry.”

Did you and the Bishop have that kind of conversation, Jason?

Have you and Sandra had that conversation?

Is the Jeremiah community prepared to receive a priest
who just might take on something of the mantle of your namesake?

Are you prepared, my brother, my friend, my compatriot
to be overpowered by the word of the Lord?
For this word to not just be sweet, but also bitter?
For this word to weigh on you as a reproach and a derision?
For this word to burn within you in such a way
that you will be unable to hold it in?

My friend, when you know with the psalmist that the word of God
revives the soul,
makes wise the simple,
rejoices the heart,
enlightens the eyes,
endures forever
and makes righteous altogether,
then the burden of that word is deeply experienced
in the face of souls captivated by hipster consumerism,
in the midst of a socio-economic world of fools,
in day to day pastoral care of those for whom joy has reach its eventide,
in a world blind to God’s shalom and deaf to a word proclaimed throughout all of creation,
and in a culture of deceit, oppression and injustice.

I don’t know, Jason, Bishop Poole, friends in the Jeremiah community,
sisters and brothers gathered here this afternoon.

What does it mean to take up the calling of Jeremiah
in a post-Christendom church?

What does it mean to take up the vision of Jeremiah
in a post-modern culture?

What does it mean to take up the commission of Jeremiah
in a world of globalization on the brink of
ecological, economic and geo-political collapse?

What does it mean to be a community named after this prophet
in a Parkdale in the midst of urban renewal and gentrification?

Where do we start to pluck up and pull down?
What practices and traditions do we need to destroy?
What are the socio-cultural and ecclesial structures that need to be overthrown?

What needs to be torn down before we can begin to build the church anew?
What needs to be uprooted before a fresh planting of the church can proceed?

Jeremiah was worried that he wouldn’t have the words to say,
so God touched his mouth and gave him the words.
But the words are so terrible.
The words are so painful.
The words cost so much.

And so the words of Jeremiah come with tears.

There is no prophetic ministry of any integrity without tears.
There is no authentic vision of a missional church apart from pain.
There the prophetic call to deconstruction is cheap and cavalier,
if it is not suffused with weeping.
There is no renewal of the church, no planting or building, apart from lament.

And Jeremiah learns lament from creation.

In the face of the ecological destruction of the land, the prophet cries out:
Take up weeping and wailing for the mountains,
and a lamenting for the pastures of the wilderness,
because they are laid waste so that no one passes through,
and the lowing of the cattle is not heard;
both the birds of the air and the animals
have fled and gone. (9.10)

The one who knew with the psalmist that the heavens declare the word of God,
now laments:

I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void;
and to the heavens, and they had no light. (4.23)

Heavens with no light do not proclaim the word of the Lord.

A couple of weeks ago in this community, Jason preached that,

“It is from creation that Israel must learn to lament.
It is from creation that we too can learn to lament.”

Our brother went on to say,

“For, creation mourns, not with crying and wailing, but with a whisper —
with scarcely more than ‘a sensuous breath.’
Creation mourns, we might say, ‘with sighs too deep for words.’”

And this brings us, of course, to St. Paul.

Paul knew Jeremiah, and he knew Psalm 19.

And in Romans 8 he demonstrates that he knows how to bring together
the confidence of a torah-infused creation
with the tears of a Jeremiah proclaiming radical endings.

St. Paul knows that when it comes down to giving voice
to the deepest of suffering,
and the deepest of our longings and hopes,
there are very few words indeed.

St. Paul who was so elegant and expansive in his own use of words,
knows that when it comes right down to it,
in the face of disappointment and failure,
before the reality of betrayal and brokenness,
grasping for some semblance of hope for the future,
we find ourselves at a loss for words.

And in Romans 8 the apostle tells us
that these deep longings,
this profound waiting,
and this debilitating loss of words,
is in tune with the very nature of creation.

All of creation, Paul writes, waits with eager longing.
All of creation is waiting for redemption.

Creation knows all about being plucked up, pulled down,
destroyed and overthrown.


But now, all of creation is waiting for the restoration of all things,
not least for humans to take up their call anew to build and to plant.

All of creation waits.
Waiting goes all the way down.
And in that waiting, the once eloquent voice of creation
is reduced to the inarticulate groans of childbirth.

So we are not alone in our waiting.
And we are not alone in our loss of words.
We are in tune with the very nature of things.

And the very nature of things, is in tune with the very heart of God.

You see, God herself, God the Holy Spirit,
groans with all of creation,
and groans with all of humanity,
in the travails of childbirth,
in the labour pains of the new creation.

Waiting goes all the way down,
and all the way up,
and all the way through, and around, and within.

All of creation waits,
and even God waits.

We’re all in this together.

But Paul also takes this a step further.
Not only does God groan in the travails of childbirth with us,
those groans are sighs too deep for words.

You see, the Holy Spirit is just as much at a loss for words as we are.

The brooding Spirit over the face of the deep,
is still brooding,
still about to give birth,
but like all women in the throes of contractions,
the Spirit isn’t all that articulate in her groanings.
These are sighs too deep for words.

But … God can interpret the groaning of the Spirit,
God can understand the mind of the Spirit,
because the Spirit is groaning on behalf of us,
and God knows those deepest longings,
God knows what we wait for,
because God shares those longings
and God is waiting for the same thing as we are.

And so my friend, we invite you this day to stand in the tradition of Jeremiah.

We invite you to embrace the word as sweet, even when it will be bitter.
We invite you to a ministry that will be bold enough to
pluck up, pull down, destroy and overthrow,
while being wise and gentle enough to build and to plant.

Embrace this ministry, Jason, in hope and in patience.
Embrace this ministry, my brother, in community and solidarity.

Amen.