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| We get stomped on, hurt, brutalized. We are the victims of greed and wrongful desire. And like the people of Judah, we may get slammed. Busted. Ruined beyond repair. The power of sin is awful. The consequences for Judah were almost unspeakable—the people would fall by the sword of their enemies and those who didn’t die would get so hungry they would eat the flesh of their own children. We think it could never get that bad for us. But what if it could? The destruction of sin can seem as un-repairable as broken pottery. “Then you shall break the jug in the sight of those who go with you, and shall say to them: thus says the LORD of hosts: So I will break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel, so that it can never be mended.” So is there no hope for those of us hardened by sin? Jeremiah 19 is not the end of the story. The people of Judah did suffer capture and exile and in one sense, it was the worst of all possible situations. Thousands died, if not in battle, then on the road to Babylonia. Everything that represented their status with God—land, king and Temple—was gone. It could not have been more horrible. And yet, in a foreign land, with nothing to trust in, they rediscovered—God. In their brokenness, they turned back to the stories of the Exodus and the wilderness. They rediscovered story. With no Temple, they moved from a yearly sacrifice to a weekly gathering to tell the story and to begin to write it down. The God they thought of as geographically bound, surprised them by showing up in Babylon. The God they thought could only be worshipped in the Temple, under the supervision of a Davidic king, surprised them by honoring their worship in humble homes, under a foreign ruler. The pot could not be mended. But something even better was taking shape. Even God’s judgment was really grace in disguise. The worst possible thing—exile—was a gift after all. Out of the death came new life. Out of the broken shards of an earthen pot came the beginnings of a whole new vessel, a vessel from which would come the new Davidic king, the Messiah (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Continued... |
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