30 November 2025 LSUMC 1124

Jeremiah: Fire Bones

Jeremiah 20:7-10, 14-18

Last week in Jeremiah, we saw him nearly get killed by a mob after a sermon. The crowd was talked out of killing him, but he did get banished from the temple. Now I’m not sure how long that banishment lasted – or if he ever got to go back – but the ban was certainly still in effect four years later. In that year, the fourth year of King Jehoiakim, Jeremiah called a friend over: Baruch, son of Neriah. Baruch was a scribe, and Jeremiah dictated to him a scroll full of denunciations of Israel’s idolatry and condemnation of the king. Then Jeremiah said, “Now, I’m not permitted in the temple. So, you go, stand in the temple court, and read this aloud.” Baruch was a good friend, because he went to do it, but ended up giving a private reading to a group of priests. They said, “This is from Jeremiah, isn’t it? Come with us.” They took him to some of officials from the king’s court and had him read it again. The officials looked at each other and said, “The king needs to hear this.” So one of them, named Jehudi, said, “I’m going to go read this to the king, but I’m going to wait two hours. In that time, you and Jeremiah find somewhere you can hide for a few months.” The king listened, but inasmuch as he cut off sections from the scroll with his knife as it was read and tossed them in the fire, it didn’t seem that he was going to heed Jeremiah’s words. When it was done, he sent officers to arrest Jeremiah and Baruch, but didn’t find them.

Another time, it wasn’t the king who threatened Jeremiah’s life, but a group of men from his hometown of Anathoth. It doesn’t say why. Maybe they felt he was giving the town a bad name. Maybe the king, unable to find Jeremiah, had punished his town instead. That would be very king-like behavior. Either way, some men of Anathoth tried to kill him. Again, Jeremiah escaped. Or then there was the time – after all this had died down and Jeremiah could show his face in public again – when Jeremiah took a clay jug out in the streets of Jerusalem and smashed it, saying, “This is what God will do to this city if you don’t change your ways!” This time Jeremiah didn’t get away, though. A high-up priest named Passhur heard him, had him arrested and placed in the stocks all night to reconsider his words. After he was freed in the morning, Jeremiah went home and began to pray. We read Jeremiah 20, verses 7-10 and 14-18.

7 O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed;
you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed.
I have become a laughing-stock all day long;
   everyone mocks me.
8 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 derision all day long.
9 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.
10 For I hear many whispering:‘Terror is all around!
Denounce him! Let us denounce him!’
   All my close friends are watching for me to stumble.
‘Perhaps he can be enticed,
   and we can prevail against him,
   and take our revenge on him.’ 

* * *

14 Cursed be the day on which I was born!
The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed!
15 Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, saying,
‘A child is born to you, a son’, making him very glad.
16 Let that man be like the cities that the Lord overthrew without pity;
let him hear a cry in the morning and an alarm at noon,
17 because he did not kill me in the womb;
   so my mother would have been my grave,
   and her womb forever great.
18 Why did I come forth from the womb
   to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame? 

I don’t really have a coherent sermon at this point: just a few loosely-connected thoughts. First, this is what persecution looks like, if you were wondering. That’s worth noting as we enter the Christmas season, because generally at this time we begin hearing about how Christians are being persecuted in America today. It’s the whole “War on Christmas” thing, where people get offended by store greeters who say “Happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” and by seasonal Starbucks cups that don’t acknowledge the birth of Christ. It’s true that this represents a change in our society. Many of us can remember a time when stores put up nativity scenes along with all the tacky glitter decorations. Whether the owner believed anything or not, it was just good business to toss that bone to the Christian market. But as the power of the Christian shopping dollar has waned, that performative religiosity has faded. We just don’t have the influence we used to. But loss of privilege because of social and demographic change is not persecution. 

It’s ironic, though, because in a sense we Christians ought to be persecuted – not because we’ve lost our majority status, but because we express values and live lives that challenge the values of our society. We live in a culture that seethes with anger, hatred, and, increasingly, violence. We live in an economy that encourages greed and envy and diverts more of its wealth every year to those who have the least need of it. We live in a political world that is indifferent to character or public service because all that matter now is winning. In this world, we should stand out as a living challenge, a thorn in our culture’s side, and the fact that we don’t, that the only “persecution” we can come up with is secular people no longer pretending to listen to our stories does not speak well of us. Jeremiah was persecuted because he laid bare the compromises that the king and the priests had made in their faith. He was persecuted because he uncovered the idolatry and cruelty to the poor that was just below the surface. He was hated because he spoke truth. That’s what persecution looks like.

Second, I just want to draw attention to the language that Jeremiah used when speaking to God. And it’s actually a lot more shocking in the original. Our namby-pamby translators have him saying, “Lord, you enticed me!” Yeah, that’s not even close. It’s closer to, “Lord, you seduced me! You lied to me! You assaulted me!” Remember back in Jeremiah’s original call, God promised that he would be with him in hardships? Well, speaking objectively, I guess you could say that God has kept that promise – nobody has succeeded in killing Jeremiah yet – but Jeremiah doesn’t look at it objectively. Subjectively, his life is miserable. If this is what God’s protection looks like, then God’s protection sucks. “Why was I ever born? If this is what life holds for me, I’d rather be an unborn fetus in my mother’s grave. I don’t want to be your prophet anymore. I don’t want to ever mention your name again, God.”

What do you do with a so-called hero of the faith who speaks so disrespectfully to God? Well, I think if you look at closely, this is actually a mark of Jeremiah’s faith. You know how there are some people you have to walk on eggshells around? You have to watch every word, because one slip and they’ll fall apart? Maybe they’re always close to anger and will explode at the least opposition. Or maybe they store up imagined insults from careless words and burn with resentment for years. Or they’re so fragile that they’re always on the verge of dissolving in tearful apologies, assuming that everything’s their fault. Most of us know someone like that, someone we can only hold guarded conversations with. They’re exhausting to be around, because you can never relax. You can never just be yourself with them. Well, that’s how most of us treat God – as if the wrong word or the wrong tone of voice is likely to set him off. As if he’s going to go into a tizzy if a preacher says the word “sucks” in a sermon. So when we pray, we use formulaic language and moderate our tones and vocabulary as we submit formal requests. See what I mean? That’s how we speak to people we don’t know very well, or to people we can’t trust. The fact that Jeremiah hurls every insult he can think of at God is at heart an indication that he knows that God can take it, and in the morning God will still be there.

That’s probably why – as much as Jeremiah wants to get out of this whole prophet gig – he can’t. Verse 9 again: 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. To Jeremiah, the only thing more miserable than speaking for God … is not speaking for God. His life has been so conformed to God’s, so transformed by living daily in complete trust in God, that to turn away from God’s message would be to turn away from himself. If he tried to bottle those words up, they’d turn into fire inside. He’d explode. Remember another story about someone who wanted out? Who prayed for God to just leave him alone, to cancel his task, to “take this cup away from me?” But that man, like Jeremiah, could no more quit God than he could quit being himself. “But your will, not mine, be done.” I know I’m biased – I’ve already told you that Jeremiah is my hero – but I think he’s the closest thing we have to Jesus until Jesus himself. He was no conventional saint. He was often weak and depressed and angry and vindictive. But at the core of his being was a desperate love for and trust in God. Nothing else in his world compared to that. 

So how do I wrap up a sermon like this? I’ve been all over the board. Be different from the world. Be less angry, less greedy, more forgiving, more generous. Be a contrast. When people start to look askance at you, because you’re so different that you feel like a challenge to their own values, you’re probably doing it right. If that sometimes leads to unpleasantness for you – for instance, if you get excluded from some things – yeah, that’ll happen sometimes. And when you pray, be real. Just talk. Or, if you need to, just yell. You won’t hurt God’s feelings. God likes to be trusted, and he’s perfectly capable of sorting through your nonsense to hear what you’re really saying. Trust him. Then live and grow in that trust each day until it becomes inseparable from your very identity – becomes the warmth that sustains you, the bones that support you, the purpose that inspires you, the relationship you couldn’t give up if you had to. Amen.