Jeremiah: Word From the Ashes
Lamentations 3:19-26
When everything crashes,
we can still hope in God.
A sermon preached by
Dr. William O. (Bud) Reeves
First United Methodist Church
Hot Springs, Arkansas
August 14, 2011
This past week we remembered the 66th anniversary of two of the most devastating events ever created by humans. On August 6th and 9th, 1945, the U. S. exploded atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, killing over 200,000 people—hastening the end of World War II.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was a maritime engineer who was in Hiroshima on a business trip on that fateful day. At 8:15 in the morning, he heard the bomber fly over the city. Suddenly there was a great flash of light, and he was blown over by a powerful force. Yamaguchi was not one of the 140,000 killed there, but his face and arms were burned, he was temporarily blinded and lost his hearing.
After staying a day recuperating from the blast, Yamaguchi made his way to his home 190 miles southwest of Hiroshima, a city called Nagasaki. Two days later, the second atomic bomb was detonated there. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time! Again he saw a flash of light, and he was knocked unconscious by the blast. But he was not seriously injured. He had survived two atomic bomb explosions.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was the only person officially recognized by the Japanese government as a survivor of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Despite some lingering effects of radiation poisoning, Yamaguchi survived 65 less traumatic years and died in January of 2010 at the age of 93.[1]
If Jeremiah had known what an atomic bomb was, he might have compared it to the destruction of Jerusalem. But he wasn’t just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was right where God wanted him to be.
Jeremiah served as the prophet of God during the most disturbed time in Israel’s history. The northern kingdom of Israel had been destroyed by the Assyrians a century before. The southern kingdom of Judah was a ping-pong ball in a match between the superpowers of Babylon and Egypt. A series of weak kings and political deals finally led to the deportation of the upper class of Judah to Babylon in 598 BCE. Nine years later, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and tore down Solomon’s Temple. They killed the king’s sons in front of him, then put out his eyes and carried him away to Babylon. The two great symbols of God’s covenant with the Hebrews had been destroyed: the Temple in Jerusalem and the line of kings stretching back to King David. The Hebrew people went away into exile for seventy years.
Jeremiah was God’s prophet to Judah during this time of destruction. His prophecy details the history and activity of the period and the word of the Lord to the people. He stayed in Jerusalem through the whole disaster. The Book of Lamentations is a poetic reflection on the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. Traditionally, these five poems have been attributed to Jeremiah, although the Bible scholars argue about that.
I like to think of Lamentations as Jeremiah’s blues album. Like good blues music, they’re sad, and they’re real, but they are also life-affirming and hopeful in the end. And, like good blues music, these words span the generations to speak to our situation today. Even though they were written so long ago and so far away, they are as relevant as today’s newspaper or the thoughts inside our head.
Most of us have not experienced destruction like Jeremiah did. We were not in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. We were not in New York City on September 11, 2001. We haven’t lived in Iraq or Afghanistan for the last ten years. We are not facing famine and disease in Africa today. But we have had our own periods of destruction, haven’t we? People we love have died. We have had serious illness afflict our bodies. Relationships have soured, and marriages have failed. We have lost jobs or income. We have been alienated from God. We know what it’s like to sit on the ash heap in the middle of the chaos, if not physically, then emotionally and spiritually.
What does Jeremiah have to say to us today? Where is the hope in the midst of destruction? How can we stay between the ditches when the road has been blown up in front of us?
The first thing Jeremiah says is to wait. In the midst of trouble, be still and wait for the Lord to lead you: “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”[2]
The Psalmist echoes that thought in the 27th Psalm: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”[3] Isaiah the prophet counseled God’s people, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”[4]
We talked a couple of weeks ago about Joseph having patience during his time of trials, and here Jeremiah is telling us just to get still before God and to wait. Sometimes the pain is so deep that you can’t even have hope until you wait for God a little while.
Hope is born in your personal prayer time. Spending quiet time with God is where you find strength for tomorrow. As you develop this habit, God will speak to you through your reading, your thinking, and your listening times of prayer.
One of the devotional books I have used for years in my quiet time is called Streams in the Desert by L. B. Cowman. Published in 1925, Mrs. Cowman compiled this book while she cared for her husband during his terminal illness. A couple of weeks ago, there was a reading from Dr. George Matheson. He was perhaps the most prominent and beloved pastor in Scotland during the second half of the 19th century. He was a scholar and a poet and an eloquent speaker, despite the fact that he had developed an eye disease during his teenage years that left him blind by the time he was twenty years old.
He wrote, “There are times when everything looks very dark to me—so dark that I have to wait before I have hope. Waiting with hope is very difficult, but true patience is expressed when we must even wait for hope. When we see no hint of success yet refuse to despair, when we see nothing but the darkness of night through our window yet keep the shutters open because stars may appear in the sky, and when we have an empty place in our heart yet will not allow it to be filled with anything less than God’s best—that is the greatest kind of patience in the universe.”[5]
How many times do we try to fill our empty places with things that are less than God’s best? Then we find ourselves in the ditch, don’t we? Wait for God, and stay between the ditches.
Second, we can trust in the providence of God. Even when everything around us is destroyed, God will provide. God will take care of us in our suffering. Watching his beloved Jerusalem go up in flames, Jeremiah said, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”[6] What a tremendous affirmation!
Did anybody notice the stock market this week? They are calling it the wildest week in the history of Wall Street. Four days in a row of 400 point swings. It was incredible. I can tell you that Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, after the stock market fell some 600 points, I was worried for our nation and the world in these tough economic times.
But again, my prayer time saved me. Did you read The Upper Room Tuesday morning? That’s another devotional book I read nearly very day. The writer talked about watching squirrels play in the trees. It looks dangerous, but the squirrels know the branches to jump on that will hold their weight. Even if the branch dips and sways, the squirrels still hold on.
Then the writer related the squirrels to the current economic crisis. She probably wrote that devotional months ago, but there it was on Tuesday morning, just when I needed it. She talked about continuing to give to God and to be a good steward with her money. She talked about trusting in God’s providence the way the squirrels trust in the branches. It was a good word, and it was great timing. That’s the way God works. If we wait and listen, we can trust him to provide for us.
Eric Liddell was a Scotsman who competed in the 1924 Olympics. He made a witness and shocked the world when he refused to compete in his best event because it was held on a Sunday. They made a movie about it several years ago called Chariots of Fire. Liddell went on to become a missionary to China. He was imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II and ministered in the prison camp until he died in 1945.
Liddell could have been sitting beside Jeremiah when he wrote these words: “Circumstances may appear to wreck our lives and God’s plans, but God is not helpless among the ruins. Our broken lives are not lost or useless. God’s love is still working. He comes in and takes the calamity and uses it victoriously, working out his wonderful plan of love.”[7]
That’s the basis of our hope. We know God’s steadfast love. Therefore we can hope in him. Therefore we can hope in the future. Hear the words of Jeremiah again: “This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’”[8] Our hope is not in our own intelligence or ability; our hope is not in the political or economic systems of the world; our hope is not in some optimistic philosophy of history. Our hope is in the steadfast love of the God of Joseph, Job, Jeremiah, and Jesus.
When Jeremiah saw the city of God destroyed and the leadership of Judah carried off to exile in Babylon, he could have given up in despair. Instead he spoke a word of hope. Out of his prophecy we read, “For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.”[9] They could hope in the future because they could hope in God.
Dr. George Matheson, the Scottish preacher I mentioned, was engaged to a young woman who broke off the relationship as his blindness became nearly total, breaking his heart at an early age. He never married.
But George had a very faithful sister who became his eyes, as she helped him study and prepare and write his sermons. She remained his pastoral helper throughout his life. Eventually, though, she fell in love and planned to get married. On her wedding day, George stayed home, his mind and heart filled with sorrow. Nobody knows if he was upset over his sister’s marriage or over the love he had lost earlier in his life, but out of this day of distress, there came one of the most beautiful hymns of the era.
Matheson later wrote, “Something happened to me, which was known only to myself, and which caused me the most severe mental suffering. The hymn was the fruit of that suffering. It was the quickest bit of work I ever did in my life. I had the impression rather of having it dictated to me by some inward voice than of working it out myself. I am quite sure that the whole work was completed in five minutes, and equally sure it never received at my hand any retouching or correction."[10] The hymn is a beautiful, poetic statement of hope in the midst of sorrow:
O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee.
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
O Light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in the sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.
O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.
O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.[11]
George Matheson knew the ditch of despair, but he left a legacy of hope. Jeremiah knew the ditch of destruction, but he left a legacy of hope. What will your legacy be?
Will they say, “He was such a man of prayer. He was always telling us about the strength he got from his quiet time with God.”
Will they say, “She was always giving of her self because she trusted that God would provide for her even more abundantly.”
Will they say that you always had hope because you knew the steadfast love of God?
What will your legacy be? Will it witness to your journey between the ditches? Amen!
[1] Craig Brian Larson, PreachingToday.com: "The Man Who Survived Two Atomic Bombs," The Week (1-22-10), p. 35; Jay Alabaster, "Double Atomic bomb survivor dies in Japan," Associated Press, (1-6-10).
[2] Lamentations 3:25-26.
[3] Psalm 27:13.
[4] Isaiah 30:15.
[5] L. B. Cowman, ed. Streams In The Desert (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 287.
[6] Lamentations 3:22-33.
[7] Eric Liddell, “Disciplines of the Christian Life,” Christianity Today, Vol. 38, no. 9.
[8] Lamentaions 3:21-24.
[9] Jeremiah 29:10-14.
[10] Kenneth W. Osbeck, 101 Hymn Stories (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1982), 189-191.
[11] United Methodist Hymnal, No. 480.