God keeps sending prophets for some reason

Jeremiah 7:1-11

Most of the time when I go back and read the sermon I preached on certain scripture four years earlier, there’s not much I want to reuse. Too much has changed—mostly, I read myself four years ago and think, “Man, that’s really not what I feel compelled to say today,” and sometimes I think, “Boy, was I an idiot.” However, today, I found some nice notes on Jeremiah 7 and a sermon with three themes from four years ago, which I am not going to re-use… not completely.

Theme 1: Generational warfare, Theme 2: Who is the alien? and Theme 3: A loss of monoculture is messy but also good.

            I can easily preach on those again today. #1: Generational Warfare. Not a week goes by that I don’t hear about millennials killing some industry. Yesterday, it was that millennials are killing the turkey industry by cooking smaller turkeys. Business Insider is keeping a running tally of things millennials are killing, including eating out at restaurants, starter homes, beer, and napkins. Personally, I think half the things millennials are killing deserve to be killed, but that’s maybe just because I am one. On the other hand, not a week goes by that I don’t hear fellow millennials complaining about boomers. Millennials are lazy; boomers are the worst—pretty much the usual stereotypes. Sometimes, I want to point out to people that generations create the next generation, ya know? So if one generation is terrible it’s maybe because they were raised to be that way, but whatever, that’s neither here nor there. Yep, generational warfare is alive and well, and Jeremiah is low-hanging fruit for a millennial who might want to point out that God calls the ones who are too young—or too old. So, I’ll let that be for now.

Not life, liberty, and happiness; but justice, kindness, and humble-walking

Micah 6:6-8

Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God.

It starts with justice. Wow, justice. This is one we have a hard time wrapping our heads around. We live in the country with the most prisoners in the world—with over two million people locked away. What is justice for us? And as a country who celebrates Veterans Day but so often fails to provide adequate services for veterans upon their return to society, what does it mean to do justice? For that matter, when we talk about justice, are we talking about criminal justice? Is it God’s justice, or is it something else?

I think we need to jump to the end of this passage from Micah in order to get at this question.

Walk humbly with God—now there’s the pivot point for the entirety of the ethical Christian life. What does it mean to walk humbly with God?

In Philippians 2, it says that Jesus “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” I think that’s the best example we get of what it looks like—humble-walking means walking toward the cross. Be obedient not to the powers of this world that tell you it is this way or that—black or white—left or right—red or blue. Instead, humble yourself, trusting God far more than you trust your judgments.

We are told in a million ways every day of our lives that the world out there is black-and-white; it is me versus them; good versus evil; and—funny—I’m always the good one. Humble-walking with God requires us to see we are not just victims but perpetrators. It’s not relativism; it’s not saying everything is the same and the world is grey. Rather, it is saying that everything is far more colorful than I gave it credit, and I can’t possibly understand it all. I won’t understand every nuance of what it means to be human; I won’t be able to put myself in your shoes—never completely. So, I will choose to fear God, rather than other people; I will choose to fear my own capacity for evil, rather than things I don’t understand. Again, humble-walking is trusting God more than I trust my judgments.

This judging—that’s the problem. It’s hard to be humble and to do justice at the same time, but in order to live in this world we have to make judgments—both snap judgments and those carefully considered. How can we judge not, lest ye be judged, be humble, and still get by in this world? That’s the question.

In order to get at that, I want to talk a little about my family:

Politics, Cynicism, and the Foolishness of Grace

2 Kings 5:1-14

The books of Kings takes place in a time that’s a bit depressing to look back on, to be honest. It was a time when people assumed the worst of one another, when leaders led through threats of violence, when poor nations were ravaged by the rich and their people were turned into politic tools, when entire nations became refugees, and most of all, this was a time when everybody in leadership assumed the worst of one another. Good thing none of that happens today!

In the days when Naaman was a commander of the army under Aram, the world was predicated on violence. The law of the day was the law of the sword. It was very much a game of thrones world out there. This is dream world for the military leaders, who could freely judge one another with suspicion, and justify themselves based on conquests alone. Leadership in that age was defined more or less exclusively by how many battles you won and how many people you killed. It was a world of “us versus them.” In a world like this, what room is there for a prophet? Well, Naaman is going to have to find out, because Naaman is in need of healing, and no amount of war is going to solve that.

            The world in which Naaman lives is the worst of the world that we live in today. It’s a world that assumes violence is justified, politics means doing whatever it takes to make your side “win,” and that the only thing that matters is power. It’s a hard world to combat through persuasion, because it becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Suspicion breeds suspicion, and pretty soon we assume that everybody is just like me—suspicious and cynical and out for themselves. Then, nothing else matters, because—if we assume everybody is the devil-incarnate—we can elect whatever leaders we want, even those who exemplify the very opposite traits of what it means to be a Christian in the world. Meekness and humility have no place in politics, we might believe, because we have made it so—because we have hardened our hearts and assume the worst of everyone.

I don’t have any advice on how to vote in such a world, but I do know this: The kingdom of God is not like this. Not at all.