Pastor Darren: Now, Jeremiah, like we said, he is the prophet that was ministering during the temple's destruction, at least the first time, the pre-Jesus time.
Pastor Darren: You can see a little bit of the heaviness of that kind of prophet.
Pastor Darren: You can see that he's uh really contemplating things.
Pastor Darren: He's a very heavy, maybe even some would say a bit of a downer prophet.
Pastor Darren: We're trying to get a sense of who he is.
Pastor Darren: So where does Jeremiah fit in, right?
Pastor Darren: And we've been talking about this short history that we're we're working with.
Pastor Darren: Uh we had this age of kings, right, for the uh the Jewish people, the Israelite community, uh, and it was this highlight with King David and King Solomon.
Pastor Darren: Then, of course, it was really, really good until it wasn't good anymore, and the kingdom eventually splits, and then eventually both of those sides of the kingdoms get conquered, and the people are uh taken out, uh, all the wisdom, all the resources, all the wealth taken out.
Pastor Darren: Jeremiah is preaching when the second kingdom goes down, right?
Pastor Darren: So this is sort of the last of it.
Pastor Darren: Uh so uh one would have to say, and this is from a preacher's point of view, preaching during that time had to be a very, very difficult thing.
Pastor Darren: Because you all like the sermons when everything's going good, don't you?
Pastor Darren: You know, those are some smooth, smooth sermons.
Pastor Darren: Hey, hey, the world's pretty good.
Pastor Darren: How about we all just be a little more patient?
Pastor Darren: Okay, you're that's a good sermon, right?
Pastor Darren: It's an easy sermon.
Pastor Darren: You might even come every Sunday for that sermon.
Pastor Darren: But this one, this sermon that Jeremiah's got to preach here, it's more like society is collapsing all around us, and each of you probably have something to do with it.
Pastor Darren: That's a tougher sermon, am I right?
Pastor Darren: Is that right?
Pastor Darren: You know, so I give Jeremiah a little bit of a break, even though he has that reputation uh of a bit of a downer.
Pastor Darren: At the same time, we want to appreciate the weight of the time that he was preaching in.
Pastor Darren: And I want one more painting that I thought was significant.
Pastor Darren: This is from Rembrandt, and you can see the weight of the world on uh this poor Jeremiah, who's doing his best to reflect.
Pastor Darren: And it's actually, this one is called Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem.
Pastor Darren: Uh and so uh I just the weight of that that uh uh painting kind of caught me a little bit because I and I felt like it captured a little bit of who he is.
Pastor Darren: He is understood to be the writer of Lamentations, which is another one of our books in the Bible, and uh his his grieving over the fall of Jerusalem.
Pastor Darren: Uh and he is speaking to that grief for the larger body.
Pastor Darren: So I give him some slack, and I want to point out as we add to the picture of who he is, he did speak to one of the best uh verses that are my favorite verses in scripture.
Pastor Darren: Uh this is uh um 31, verses 33 and 34, and I invite you just to hear these words from Jeremiah 31.
Pastor Darren: But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord.
Pastor Darren: I will put my law within them, I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Pastor Darren: I like that idea.
Pastor Darren: I will write it within them, I will write it on their hearts.
Pastor Darren: No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.
Pastor Darren: I love that for a community, especially as their society was crumbling, to recognize that God was not confined to this temple that was destroyed, or even this city that was destroyed.
Pastor Darren: God is with all of us, God is in each of our hearts.
Pastor Darren: So I actually celebrate Jeremiah and I hope that you will uh maybe in some journey with him come to that same appreciation.
Pastor Darren: So the core message from today's passage, though, it's about leadership.
Pastor Darren: Leadership in uh in their particular community, but we want to understand leadership in a broader sense, and it's a little confusing when we first get started with it.
Pastor Darren: Because he talks about woe to the shepherds.
Pastor Darren: Woe to the shepherds, and we think, well, what did the shepherds do?
Pastor Darren: They're way out there in the fields, they're doing the best they can to keep the sheep all gathered up, but I don't know that we can blame the entire fall of the temple on the shepherds.
Pastor Darren: And then we get a little more wise and we think, okay, maybe shepherds is a metaphor here.
Pastor Darren: And he's probably not talking about the prophets, right?
Pastor Darren: He's not talking about the leaders of the church because they don't necessarily have the power to lead to the scattering of the Jewish people in the way they got scattered, in the way they got conquered.
Pastor Darren: He's really probably talking to the kings and the other leaders of that kingdom, right, of that society, and he's pointing to them saying, You guys have scattered our community.
Pastor Darren: Now we don't know if it's uh if he's blaming them for actions that led to the fall of the kingdom, and that's why they're scattered, or if he's blaming them for exactly how he's blaming these leaders?
Pastor Darren: Was it the cause of the scattering, or maybe it's the result of their actions?
Pastor Darren: That we don't know for sure, but he's blaming them for that scattering.
Pastor Darren: But in that blame, there is lots of good news.
Pastor Darren: First of all, for those of us who would be frustrated in that sense, God's coming and God's first gonna deal with those evildoers who allowed the community to be scattered, or maybe even caused the community to be scattered.
Pastor Darren: But then listen to these words of hope.
Pastor Darren: And you've got Bibles in your pews if you want to look it up, but listen to these things that he says that are gonna be part of the future despite where the Israelites are, despite where the community is.
Pastor Darren: Listen to what he says.
Pastor Darren: But then God's gonna gather the remnant of the flock out of all of the lands and bring them back to the fold where they will be fruitful and multiply.
Pastor Darren: Very powerful, comforting words, hopefully, for the community, especially that is suffering, that is grieving.
Pastor Darren: But God is gonna deal with those shepherds who led us where we're at, and then God is gonna bring us back together.
Pastor Darren: That remnant, that's the remnant of the Israelites who've been conquered.
Pastor Darren: They've been spread out now.
Pastor Darren: He also says, shepherds raised over who shepherd them, no longer in fear or missing.
Pastor Darren: All of these shepherds who used to get oppressed are now going to be able to have a little bit of authority and a little bit of power over those who oppressed them.
Pastor Darren: Words of hope, again, especially for an oppressed community.
Pastor Darren: Then he says he's gonna raise up for David a righteous branch who will reign wisely, executing justice and righteousness.
Pastor Darren: So somebody out of the branch of David, this king who they celebrate, because those were good days, he's gonna raise somebody up from that line who is gonna be just and kind and comforting and bring us back to our days, executing justice and righteousness.
Pastor Darren: And then his name will be called the Lord, our righteousness.
Pastor Darren: So they got that going for them, which is nice.
Pastor Darren: Nobody saw Caddyshack.
Pastor Darren: All right, I threw it out there for us Christians, for us Christians, that name, that person actually came.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: That is Jesus.
Pastor Darren: Did you notice that last bit?
Pastor Darren: His name will be the Lord, our righteousness.
Pastor Darren: That is Jesus, and we celebrate that presence every year, right about this time, the birth of Christ.
Pastor Darren: And we ask ourselves sometimes, what is it that we're actually so excited about Jesus for?
Pastor Darren: Why does this inform our faith?
Pastor Darren: Why does this enrich our journey to know who God is?
Pastor Darren: What is Jesus actually bringing?
Pastor Darren: Well, these are some of the words of what Jesus brings.
Pastor Darren: The things that Jeremiah is calling for, the things that Jeremiah points to are what we understand to have come with Christ.
Pastor Darren: And this is why we celebrate at Christmas.
Pastor Darren: Because that leader that came to reign with justice, with righteousness, with love, forgiveness, with grace, we celebrate that that authority, that power actually exists and is in our world.
Pastor Darren: We aren't just victims of our own human tendencies and disappointments and brokenness.
Pastor Darren: There's actually these forces, these layers of justice and love and peace and grace that are in and among us.
Pastor Darren: But now we get to the difficult part of the passage.
Pastor Darren: I hope that you are ready and you have girded your loins.
Pastor Darren: We love this thought justice, truth, peace in the world, and certainly if there is a force or a group or even a person in the world that is bringing something dark into our world, we'd want to scatter that darkness, would we not?
Pastor Darren: We are glad when darkness is made weak.
Pastor Darren: We are glad when it is scattered about the earth.
Pastor Darren: But what do we do when we disagree on what that evil is?
Pastor Darren: What do we do when we're not in agreement with what needs to be scattered?
Pastor Darren: We're kind of living that right now, are we not?
Pastor Darren: We have a lot of infighting, we have a lot of tribal positioning, we have a lot of justified dishonesty, we have a lot of poor behavior and actions, a lot of poor language and communication with each other.
Pastor Darren: Let me ask, does sometimes, right, does it sometimes feel like our particular society has become one massive family Thanksgiving?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: And not the good one, right?
Pastor Darren: Where we go around the table and we, oh, what are you thankful for?
Pastor Darren: What are you thankful for?
Pastor Darren: And what are you thankful for?
Pastor Darren: And all that stuff.
Pastor Darren: Not that Thanksgiving.
Pastor Darren: No, the other kind.
Pastor Darren: Where the whole family ends up at odds with each other, right?
Pastor Darren: The one that all the comedians like to make fun of and poke at with Thanksgiving.
Pastor Darren: Oh, don't, don't bring that up around Uncle Frank.
Pastor Darren: Have you seen his Facebook?
Pastor Darren: We do not want to be in that conversation.
Pastor Darren: Oh, and do you remember that outburst from Aunt Sally during COVID?
Pastor Darren: Thank goodness jello salad is easy to clean up.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: It's that Thanksgiving.
Pastor Darren: We have this problem that we've made such a mess of things with our society, right?
Pastor Darren: Where now when we hear some fact, somebody's listing a fact for us, our first reaction is, well, where'd you hear that?
Pastor Darren: Where did that come from?
Pastor Darren: And what's worse, we kind of have to ask that question because so many sources of our information have a sort of self-justified, for I assume, some larger priority, giving us things that aren't quite true, telling us things in ways that aren't necessarily honest or with integrity.
Pastor Darren: You know, uh when we open our doors to this world of alternative facts, and I would argue opened our doors to this world of alternative ways of dealing with disagreement, we really turn our world into a bit of a battlefield.
Pastor Darren: Do we not?
Pastor Darren: If we're not even able to agree on how we're going to talk to each other and how we're gonna find some place that we can agree on and move forward together, we're just in this place of fighting.
Pastor Darren: Peter Marty is a retired Lutheran pastor, he's also the editor and publisher of the Christian Century, which I appreciate.
Pastor Darren: He spoke to this challenge, right?
Pastor Darren: And he pointed out its particular relevance this season as we move from Thanksgiving into Advent.
Pastor Darren: And I think I have his first quote right here.
Pastor Darren: Right, Sarah, you had it.
Pastor Darren: There we are.
Pastor Darren: He writes, uh, in the latest issue of Christian Century, wherever we situate Bethlehem, let's be clear that it's far away from the corridors of power.
Pastor Darren: God shows up in profound humility, taking up very little oxygen in that cattle stall.
Pastor Darren: No coercion is in the air, no imposition of will, no compulsion to intimidate those shepherds, angling for a glimpse.
Pastor Darren: In fact, the manger is so small, there's no room inside and decided for arrogance or pomposity, no space for self-righteous power plays or siege mentalities.
Pastor Darren: In the awesome simplicity of a child, God comes to redeem hearts, not to rule nations.
Pastor Darren: When I think about what happened on that night, that night of Christ's birth, I'm reminded of what a powerful thing, so powerful that on most church blocks here in our nation, you are gonna find a community that's dedicated to what happened on that night.
Pastor Darren: That is powerful.
Pastor Darren: Happened in such a small place, not needing the grandeur, not needing the manipulation.
Pastor Darren: I think there's an Advent lesson to be learned about our constant need to convince, to manipulate, to conquer, to save.
Pastor Darren: Peter Marty goes on to say, I'm convinced there is no such thing as a perfect Christmas, or I would argue Thanksgiving in this case.
Pastor Darren: But we can make of it what we will.
Pastor Darren: Either receiving the tenderness of God as an astonishing gift to humanity, or singing a few carols, then returning to a life of giving orders, dishing out insults, and acting as righteous warriors.
Pastor Darren: I know where I want to land on Christmas night.
Pastor Darren: I invite you to open yourself to Peter Marty's words here, especially as we move into this holiday season and then into our more significant one.
Pastor Darren: In that spirit, might we look to become again that place of simplicity, that place of love, and that we have a blessed Thanksgiving.
Pastor Darren: Amen.