Texts: Jeremiah 11:18-20 and Mark 9:30-37
Beloved
in Christ, can you believe what Jeremiah is saying? “Let me see Your
vengeance upon them.” That’s just wrong. That’s wrong and unchristian.
Someone needs to sit down and have a little talk with Jeremiah and warn him
that that is not how Christians talk. We are not to ask God’s vengeance to fall
upon anyone. We are never to complain about injustices that we see or
experience. Instead, we are to be happy and cheerful, no matter what happens.
We are to smile and be tolerant of everything. But maybe we should give
Jeremiah a pass. After all, he is from the Old Testament—you know, that
benighted age when they didn’t know anything about grace or forgiveness or
Christ.
I
dare say that’s what many Christians would say. But that is because of our
prejudices about the Old Testament and the New Testament. We think that God was
angry in the Old Testament, but mellowed out by the time of the New Testament.
But that is just not true. Our Lord Jesus Christ had far more to say about hell
than you will find in the entire Old Testament. And in the Revelation, one of
the newest of the New Testament books, you see the martyrs crying out to God to
do something about those being slaughtered for Christ’s sake. Meanwhile, the
prophet Jeremiah himself would go on to write eloquently about the forgiveness
God would impart to His wayward people and the new heart He would implant in
them. So maybe our prejudices about both testaments is getting in the way of us
hearing God’s law in the New Testament and His gospel in the Old Testament—and
thus of understanding what God is about.
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| Jeremiah Lamenting over the Destruction of Jerusalem by Rembrandt van Rijn Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Home : Info. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - SK-A-3276.jpeg |
We
in our post-modern society struggle to pray the words, “Let me see Your
vengeance upon them.” But there are two reasons why we might decline to
pray this kind of prayer. One is that we are cold-hearted robots without a
shred of human empathy in our teeny, tiny hearts. We have no time to consider
anybody else’s sorrows and problems. If they are the victims of injustice,
well, they should just suck it up and soldier on instead of asking us or God to
get involved in their troubles. The second reason is that maybe we do not want
to be called out for our injustices. If we complain too much about the
injustices that we ourselves experience or that we see going on around us, we
might become the target of God’s avenging wrath. And so we pretend that God has
no reason whatsoever to be concerned with the injustices in this world.
But
God does not shrug off injustice the way we do. You must understand that in both Greek and Hebrew there is only one word that means “righteousness” and “justice.” They are not two separate concepts, as they are in English. Thus, God is opposed to injustice even as He is opposed to unrighteousness. At most, He may delay His
punishment until people have shown themselves to be fully guilty. He warns Cain
about the anger and hatred lurking in his heart, but He doesn’t intervene until
Cain has shown himself to be the murderer that he was. And so we shouldn’t
assume that God is indifferent to the injustices of the world. Instead, He is
giving enough rope to people to see if they will hang themselves with it.
Nowhere
do we see God saying that injustice is okay. And so we do well to consider the
injustices of our day, that is to say, the injustices that are praised by our
society and that we have a hard time avoiding. You see, every era, every
culture, and every ideology is marked by some kind of injustice and we are no
exception. We are unjust to the elderly, whom we are willing just to stick in
some corner and neglect. We are unjust to the unborn, whom we are willing to
kill because they are inconvenient. We are unjust to children, because we
prefer to hop from one bed to another rather than create a stable household
with a lifelong mother and father for our children. We are unjust to the poor,
whom we despise for not having made it in our land of plenty. We are unjust to
the gullible, whom we try to exploit for our advantage and then excuse it with
“Buyer, beware!” We are unjust to people who do not look like us or talk like
us or think like us. Injustice is not to be found just on the Left or on the
Right or in the Middle. It taints our whole society.
Now
you might say, “But I do my best to respect and help the poor, the unborn, the
elderly, the weak, and the vulnerable. I try not to be part of the problem, but
part of the solution.” Good! That is a fine and Christian thing to do. But it
is not always easy to extricate ourselves from the injustices of the world in
which we live. Think, for example, how in our country the people in early 1800s
New England were quick to denounce the evils of slavery in the South and
bristled at all of its horrors, but they didn’t think much about using the
cotton in their mills, even though the cotton had been planted and harvested by
slaves. And they didn’t think much about forcing children to work long hours in
their mills and putting them at risk of losing life and limb on the dangerous
machinery. Often we find it difficult to extricate ourselves from the evil and
injustices around us, and we find it easy to see other people’s injustices, but
not our own.
Moreover,
we tend to rely on force (whether real or threatened) to end injustice, and this
often leads to further injustices. The Communists in Russia claimed to be
avenging the wrongs the tsar had done, but they ended up creating a bigger
gulag than had ever existed in human history. The Nazis claimed to be helping
Germany when it was being picked on unfairly by its neighbors, but they ended
up killing millions of innocents. To be sure, there is such a thing as
righteous indignation—and Jeremiah and the saints in the Revelation are
examples of that—but it is a rather rare phenomenon. Usually our righteous
indignation is soon channeled into unrighteous directions.
But
the good news is that God has come to put an end to the injustices of the world
and to do so in a most unusual manner. Christ didn’t overcome evil by the
ballot or the bullet. Instead, He Himself became a victim of the world’s
injustices. He was falsely accused. He was framed. He was given a show trial.
He was executed, though He was innocent. But it isn’t just that He was a victim.
No, He took on both our injustices and the vengeance God wreaks upon those
injustices. We cannot reconcile victim and victimizer, but Christ did so
through His body on the cross. For there He was the victim but He also endured
the just vengeance God poured out. Jeremiah’s prayer was heard. Injustice was
ended. Righteousness was established. Peace began to reign.
And
that affects the way that we live now. Christ gives a new future to both victim
and victimizer. Justice is rendered to the victim as evil is dealt with once
and for all, and forgiveness and new life are offered to the victimizer—and
both at great cost to our Lord. But this opens up to us all sorts of new
possibilities. We are not bound to continue in the same old pattern of
perpetuating injustice or excusing it or overlooking it. Instead, we show what
God’s true justice looks like in the way we treat other people.
The
people who are victims of injustice are almost always the weaker people. Most
people don’t pick fights with someone who can overpower them, since they don’t
want to be hurt. That’s why it is the weak and the vulnerable and the lonely
and the outcast who are most vulnerable to injustice. And that is also why we
strive after power and try to be the greatest, because we know that we will be
picked on mercilessly if we are a nobody. But if we understand that Christ has
come to defend the weak and to turn the hearts of the mighty away from their
pride, then we can look at ourselves and other people differently.
That
is what our Lord was doing after the disciples argued about who was the
greatest. He held a child in His arms and said that the greatest person was
someone who would receive such a little child. On another occasion, He would
hold up a child as an example of the greatest person in the kingdom of God.
Here He is saying that the greatest person is someone who would receive such a
child and in so doing receive and honor Christ. These two ideas complement each
other. The humble and lowly are great, and so are those who receive the humble
and lowly and care for them.
The
child was apparently small enough to be held in Christ’s arms. We’re not
talking a twelve year old or so. This is a small child. What can such a child
do in God’s kingdom? Not much—just receive the gifts that Christ gives. But what
use are even the best of us to God? Not much. All we can do is receive His
gifts. But what makes the child and us valuable to God is that He loves us.
And, therefore, we are the greatest in the world to Him. But so too are our
fellow believers in Christ. The best thing we can do then is to love and to
help our brothers and sisters in Christ, especially the weaker ones.
If
we counted others as our betters and received in humility whatever gifts God
gives—in other words, if we acted with the humility of a small child who knows
how dependent he or she is upon others—we would stop many of the injustices in
the world. It would hold us back from participating in those injustices ourselves.
And if all Christians would live their lives consistently this way, it would
change the world.
Yes,
I know that we have not yet attained a perfect world nor will do so ever as
long as the world lasts. We will remain part of the problem until the day we
die. But Christ has come to listen to the pleas of Jeremiah and to take up his
cause—and that of all who suffer unjustly at other people’s hands. Therefore,
let us pursue humility and let the love of Christ flow through us. In Jesus’
name. Amen.
