Not Quick and Easy (Fifth Sunday after Pentecost)

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So with the primaries over in Maryland and many other states, mid-term election season is now fully upon us!  I know that many people are excited about the mid-terms. And I realize that each election is an important opportunity for all of us to address issues and make changes in our government.  But for me, it often doesn’t feel that way.

And for me, at least, it often doesn’t feel that way because as I listen to candidates of both parties, many of them try to sell me the same story.  And that story – although perhaps different in tone and policy – is this:

• Our problems – as great as they are – are actually simple to solve.  Just vote for me (and of course, people of my party).  We’ll take care of it for you; and

• The solutions to our problems will not cost you a dime.  Somebody else may have to pay in one way or another, but don’t worry, it won’t cost you;

• And most importantly (because we have elections every two years), we can fix everything in the next 2 years, because we know if we don’t, you’ll be ticked off with us and vote for the other party again.  So, two years, tops!

I get it.  I know why this sells. I would love for all of our problems to be simple to solve.  It would be wonderful if they would all be fixed quickly.  And if it doesn’t personally cost me or people I like, that would be even better!  Call me skeptical, but I don’t think this is gonna work, because it hasn’t worked before.

Well, at least this morning I think I have Jeremiah in my corner!  Jeremiah, as you may recall, was a prophet who lived in Jerusalem just after the initial conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonians.

At first, this conquest was a “normal” take-over for the time.  The Babylonians conquered the city.  They deported the king and a good number of the people who could have organized resistance.  And of course, they looted the Temple of all the gold and silver and other valuable stuff.  And then they set up a puppet king whose main job was to ensure that tribute would be paid to them every year and that no uprising would occur.

This, of course, didn’t sit well with anybody in Jerusalem.  People wondered how they could get out of this mess, and what it would take and how long it would last.

But then, along comes the prophet Hananiah.  He enters the Temple, a few verses before today’s reading begins and he promises this: “Thus says the LORD … I have broken the yoke of king of Babylon. Within two years I will bring back to this place all the vessels of the LORD’s house … [and] I will also bring back … [the rightful King] and all the exiles from Judah who went to Babylon.”

It was a wonderful thing to hear! The LORD will fix everything for you, and there’s nothing you need to trouble yourselves with doing.  And, not only will you not have to pay any price, all the goodies of the house of the LORD will be returned to you, along with the rightful king.  And – I promise – this will only take 2 years!

It really was what people wanted to hear.  But at this point, the prophet Jeremiah steps forward and says, essentially “Amen!  I wish it were so! May God do these things, but it’s not going to be so quick or simple or cost free.”

And indeed, it wasn’t.  The Babylonian captivity (as predicted by previous prophets) would go on for another 70 years, not two.  The people of Jerusalem would get impatient and rebel.  And so the Babylonians came back and flatted the city and deported even more of them.  And when God did, finally break the yoke of the king of Babylon, the people of Judah and Jerusalem had a lot of hard work to do when they returned to rebuild both the city and their society.

These words of Jeremiah are remembered in our scriptures because, in spite of the fact that Hananiah was selling what people wanted to hear, it turned out that Jeremiah was right.  But this did NOT make Jeremiah popular in his day (eventually they threw him down into a dry well because they were tired of listening to him!)

But in the midst of difficult and longstanding problems in the society of his day, he did have some important advice that also got remembered, even if it wasn’t appreciated at the time. And so in the next chapter, Jeremiah hears the word of the LORD that counsels people, rather than buying quick and easy solutions, to be folks who:

• Trust in God’s help for the long haul, and not just for quick relief.  In the next chapter, Jeremiah writes to the exiles in Babylon, and he tells them that God says, “build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.” And then he even says, “Seek the welfare of the city where the LORD has sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”  God will help the exiles, and eventually bring them home.  But in the meantime, they have work to do, both for themselves and even for the people they probably don’t like …

• Are willing to do the hard work of rebuilding what’s been lost.  This will not only be 70 years from now when some of them go back and have a building project on their hands.  Instead, they also have work to do right now.  Prophets like Jeremiah interpreted the exile as punishment for people giving up on the covenant with God.  And that covenant involved both their relationship with God and their relationship with each other.  This is why the prophets criticize people both for their worship of other gods – and for their reliance on performing the Temple sacrifices while ignoring other commandments; but also (and mostly!) for the ways that people have mistreated one another – cheating one another; oppressing widows and orphans; and being indifferent to suffering neighbors.  Part of the “work” of exile was to learn to live more compassionately with one another as well as to learn to build their relationship with God without the Temple…

• Are committed to the long haul.  And part of that is to simply realize that quick and easy solutions – while seductive – often miss what God is doing, and they miss opportunities God is calling them to in order to grow and work and be part of the answer to the prayers they pray.  It is good, says Jeremiah, to rely on God because God can do the things that we can’t.  But relying on God doesn’t mean sitting back and expecting God to quickly put everything in your lap…

So in the midst of the many quick, easy and cost-free solutions that people often offer us (because they’re not just coming from politicians in the mid-terms), Jeremiah’s words also remind us to be people who:

• Trust in God’s help for the long-term, and not just for quick relief.  Indeed, if our hope is in ourselves and our own ability to fix our problems and make the world into our own ideals, we’ll be disappointed every time.  Consider, for example, the people we learned about during Juneteenth who couldn’t change the world by themselves, but knew God was going to bring about change.  They didn’t sit back and do nothing, but they worked and they sang praises and had hope because their hope came from outside of themselves…

• Invest ourselves in the work God gives us to do to re-build things that have been lost.  And perhaps for us, those words of Jeremiah to “pray for the welfare of the city” are important in times like these, because they remind us that God cares for everyone around us – including the people we don’t like and the people who don’t vote like us.  Part of what’s been lost is our ability to have relationships with people we disagree with, and from ancient times, that’s been a hard but essential part of re-building society…

• Are committed to the long-haul, not just the next election cycle. And part of that means being people who are committed to being people who invest ourselves in the communities in which we live to be agents of God’s change in the world, instead of simply hoping somebody else will come along and quickly do things for us…

Jeremiah is often considered one of the more depressing prophets, often because he doesn’t tell people what they want to hear.  But Jeremiah is actually a prophet of hope.  And that’s because Jeremiah’s words remind us to have confidence that God really is with us and really will help us, even and especially when things are bad for a really long time.  Jeremiah’s words remind us that, even and especially when we feel stuck, God is working in our lives and giving us important work to do to build our relationship with God and with others in our world.  And mostly, Jeremiah’s words call us to be committed for the long-haul, precisely because God is committed to us for the long-haul as well.

Amen.