I’ve been Jeremiah’s scribe for many years now… I’ve seen him do some strange things—sign prophecy it’s called…
Once he threw fresh underwear into a stream and left them there until they got
moldy and disgusting, then he marched them around telling the people that they
were just like moldy underwear…
More recently, he shackled himself to a yoke and wandered the streets warning
everyone to shackle themselves to the Babylonian yolk or face God’s wrath…
Honestly,
he almost lost me with that one. After all, the Babylonians are vile pagans.
Their empire is an attempt to overawe and overpower so many peoples, including
us. We don’t want to send tribute to them, or affirm their chaotic gods as akin
to the one true God…
They were besieging us, the enemy was at the gate and Jeremiah was out there blubbering
about the Babylonian yolk—it was treasonous…
prophets…
so often their words sound like treason, because they love only God…
After
that sign prophecy—the yoke, I almost called it quits. If I’m his scribe and
lawyer, the prophet Jeremiah’s right-hand man, I am complicit in his
seditious behavior. The enemy was at the gate and I was siding with them! I
looked like a Babylonian lackey!
Maybe my parents were right, I
thought, maybe Jeremiah is a bad influence, maybe I would meet a bad end
because of him.
But then,
then he called for me, he needed a lawyer to make something nice and legal; a
land deal as it became clear that the land was no longer ours
—buying and selling property at a time when it was obvious all property was
going to belong to the invaders…
such prophetic audacity drew me in, I would be his lawyer again,
I would write down his words, come what may!
He did
the right thing, redeeming his relatives property, even at a time when it was hopeless
and the property was worthless.
He did
the right thing, and it became something more, a sign! A message from God!
“God says “Take these deeds,
both sealed and open, and put them in earthenware jars, so that they’ll last a
good while, for thus says the LORD, the House and Fields and Vineyards shall
again be bought in this land.”
In the
face of famine, in the face of the largest nation in the world crushing the
coalition we were part of, overcoming our armies, occupying our land, and pressed
hard against the capital city’s very walls and gates.
In the
face of Jeremiah’s own prophecies, “doom doom doom!”
In the
face of immense evil, a couple of legal documents, sealed in a jar, buried in
the back yard.
A small
thing that proclaimed God’s Word:
“All is going to go to hell, but have hope!
“I will bring them back to this place and I will settle them in safety!
I brought disaster, so I will later bring good fortune!
Fields shall be bought in this land and deeds signed and sealed again, for God is
the restorer of fortunes!”
Amen.
