Genesis 21:8-21; Jeremiah 20:7-13; Romans 6:1b-11;

Last month, I hope, you heard the story of Paul preaching to the Athenians at the Areopagus, where he says, “I know you are pious men because look at all of these statues” and points around. Today, without the statues, I feel similar: today’s readings all point to the stories of women and men who are (or are about to be) experiencing persecution. This is a theme often raised in Pomonal, with Martins bringing news of Pakistan or Ukraine from Voice of the Martyrs and Barnabas Aid. You know where the world is harsh for believers. This is the right word for you, and you are the right people to hear it.

We begin in Genesis, as we should, and particular in Genesis 21 and the second account of Hagar and Ishmael being banished from Abraham’s tents at the demand of a very stroppy Sarah. Did this eviction really happen twice fourteen years apart; or do two amongst the four authors who complied Genesis tell the story of same event in different ways? Abraham’s behaviour differs slightly across the two stories, this one and Genesis 16, but God is faithful to Hagar and to Abraham in both accounts.

In today’s second story from the Hebrew Traditions Jeremiah is the bearer of bad news. Sometimes the role of the prophet is not to predict a hidden future, but to foresee and foretell the obvious consequences of a present course of action: naming the elephant in the room, as it were; or perhaps simply reading ahead by a few pages. This fate oftentimes seems to have befallen the prophetic work of Jeremiah; today’s story is typical of his life and witness. Today we read how other court prophets, men of faith with the ear of King Zedekiah of Judah, have been selling false truth in the face of national crises. “Oh we’ll be fine, this is  Jerusalem after all,” they say, “God will look after us regardless.” Jeremiah, consistently, says “no, even The LORD will not save a Son of David if the king acts like a belligerent idiot.” Of course that message goes down like a cup of cold sick, and on this occasion Jeremiah spends a night in the stocks. In the morning he reiterates the Word of The LORD, calls out the High Priest by name as a  false prophet, and then goes off to sulk. This morning’s reading is the content of that sulk.

What we read from Jeremiah is pitiable. I was going to say pitiful, but pitiable is a better descriptor here. He has been called to speak the anger and disappointment of God to God’s Chosen Nation. Even when Israel went its separate way and established a new kingship in Samaria after the death of Solomon, God stayed faithful to Jerusalem and the Davidic line of kings. Now Jerusalem itself is threatened, David’s how many greats-grandson is, well, not very great at all, and God’s own ‘God Zone’ is heading for a spreading. And Jeremiah is the one, and it seems from his account he’s the only one, whom God has chosen to speak truth to power today. I just want to wrap Jeremiah in a hug at this point and kiss his forehead.

Oh LORD you have enticed me and I was enticed we read in Jeremiah 20:7: your Good News Bibles say deceived, but a better translation is something like “seduced”, perhaps even “raped”. “You forced me to prophesy against my will” says Jeremiah; that’s a pretty powerful fist to wave at The LORD. At the same time it is the fullest expression of Jeremiah’s calling; think about it, yes he’s claiming seduction, but he’s also claiming that the words are not his own. “I didn’t choose to say this, you chose me and you chose the words,” he tells God. So yes; in response to Isaiah 6 we hear Jeremiah screaming at God, “here am I Lord send someone else!” Jeremiah is a true prophet, unlike the sycophants around Zedekiah’s throne, the ones who in Jeremiah 20:10 are trying to shut him down, and as such he prophesies further. “I know this harsh word against the kingdom is the right word, LORD,” he says in Jeremiah 20:8-9, “even as it is against the Kingdom of Judah and the Kingship of a son of David. I cannot stop prophesying any more than a raging bushfire can stop burning”. “Therefore,” he says in Jeremiah 20:11-13, “I know that my cause is just, my security is secure, and The LORD is to be worshipped.” Having kissed and held Jeremiah in the last paragraph, now I want to hold his hand up in victory.

Fortunately, we end our readings here today; the mood dips again from Jeremiah 20:14 as he confronts the reality of what he has been told to say. Yes he speaks the truth yes the truth will win out and yes Jeremiah will be vindicated; but the truth is that Jerusalem will be razed to the ground. We’re not reading on today, but in summary what Jeremiah says, “I wish I wasn’t right about what is about to happen, and because I am, I wish I was dead”. “Cheerful” is not a word we ever attach to Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s prophecy is a lament, similar to the lamenting Psalms, and to Lamentations (which traditionally Jeremiah had a hand in). As a prophet it is always good to be truthful, but sometime when your message is one of destruction it can really suck to be right.

When we turn to the Christian Traditions and Romans 6 I wonder whether we actually get an answer to Jeremiah’s dilemma. As a preacher and paid reader of scripture I am aware this week of how careful I need to be. Paul does do not quote Jeremiah here, and I very much doubt that he had Jeremiah in mind when he wrote these words to the house churches across Rome. What the compositors of the Lectionary are playing at I’m not sure. Perhaps Genesis does go with the Psalms allocated, and Romans goes with Matthew, that’s the usual pattern. Even so, why pitch  Jeremiah 20 and Romans 6 in the same week? Hmm. Paul makes it clear in his letter that the free gift of grace is not a licence to licentiousness. Just because you will be forgiven doesn’t mean you get to sin freely. If your attitude to Christianity is “I can do what I like because Jesus has already died for my sin,” you have missed the point. Romans 6:2 suggests that if you do think that, then you’ve been missing the point since the 50s AD, as how can we who died to sin go on living in it? There is a lot about a life of righteousness in this passage that I am going to leave for another time, because I want to connect what we have read from Paul with what we have read from Jeremiah.

Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, writes Paul in Romans 6:4a. Quite simply Jeremiah, and youse mob here, you’re already dead. You can be put in the stocks or dumped down a dry well, you can be locked up or locked down, beaten up or beaten down, abused, dismissed, shunned, screamed at, whatever; choose your own adventure in adversity. If you belong to Christ then the world has already lost you, so, you may as well be faithful to your call. The evidence of your death is that you choose to live by grace through faith, to be faithful to the God who called you, who enticed you (in the Biblical sense) and who will not let you go. As did Jeremiah you will tell the truth because you have no other option, even if the truth is a word of correction or destruction on a world too far gone in itself to listen to the Word of God. We know we cannot save ourselves, we know that only God can save, and we know that God chooses to  save by invitation: when we call we will live. But if we lose the capacity or the wisdom to call, we cannot call, and we die. Even if we are Jerusalem with a grandson of David on the throne, even if we are Jerusalem with Christ The LORD preaching in our temple courts. Nothing can save us except The LORD, not even our ancestry in Abraham nor our residency in the Holy City. For Australians living in Pomonal, with neither of those fall-backs, we have only one hope: The LORD.

With the naming of God as El Roi in Genesis 16:13, and the designation of God in the name of Ishmael in Genesis 16:15 we understand that God sees and God sees the plight of the persecuted. This is so even when the victim of injustice is a slave-woman not from the Abrahamic line. Even when Abraham himself disparages Hagar God saves her and her child; and God gives Ishmael a portion of the promise made to Abram by making a nation of this son too. Isaac is the main character in Israelite history, but Ishmael and the Ishmaelites are not forgotten by God, nor by Israel. For Christians, the story is the same; we may discern and make selective choices about whom we assist and whom we prosecute; but we must not discriminate unduly nor act in preference to our own biases rather than the justice of God. We see the same message in the story of Jeremiah where it is the King of Judah and the temple prophets who are in the wrong, and the voice from the margins who speaks God’s truth. Given the choice of listening to me, or listening to God, even I would choose God. I pray that you, nor I, would never have to make that choice and that it is always The LORD you hear from me.

Speak LORD, your servants are listening. We want to obey, and we want to love.

Amen.