“Foolishness” - September 15, 2013

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

The schedule of Bible readings that we use every week is on a three-year cycle.  That means that this passage from Jeremiah was the one that came up at this time twelve years ago.  The date then was September 16, 2001.  Five days earlier, the World Trade Center had fallen, the Pentagon had been attacked, and another plane had been brought down by courageous passengers over western Pennsylvania.  Bodies were still being pulled from the rubble.  Air traffic was still restricted.  People were stranded in foreign lands.  Part of Manhattan was deserted.  Washington was being guarded.  War was in the air, but nobody was certain who the enemy was.  Most of us here remember those days.

“I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled.  I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger.”  [Jeremiah 4:25-26]

I cannot hear the words of Jeremiah that I read out that morning without feeling again their sheer weight:

“A hot wind comes from me out of the bare heights in the desert toward my poor people, not to winnow or cleanse— a wind too strong for that.”  [Jeremiah 4:11-12]

I cannot hear this passage without sorrow at how human beings take our tremendous abilities and twist them to horrible purposes.

“For my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good.” [Jeremiah 4:22]

            Very good friends of mine were waiting at that time for the birth of their first child.  Her father was working in the Capitol Building when the Pentagon was attacked and the Capitol Police came through, telling everyone to evacuate immediately.  He started back to his office, and then turned around and headed home, walking miles and miles to Maryland, all the time (he later told me) thinking, “I’ve got to live to see my daughter born.”

            Now she is twelve, soon to be thirteen, and I’ve seen her grow from the tiny thing she was when she was born the next month, to learn how to walk and to speak and to reason, until now she’s at the edge of adolescence.  I would never have called her “stupid”, but in twelve years she has gained all kinds of understanding and has left behind the “childish” stage.  She’s moved on from unicorns and “My Little Pony” to whatever the latest boy band is and an interest in real horses.

            So, if in the years since the attacks, a human being, and millions like her around the whole world, can go from birth to the point of responsibility that we assign to someone who is not quite an adult but still expected to know the difference between right and wrong and to be able in large part to govern her actions and decisions, then what has humanity as a whole learned, or how have we grown in that time?  Surely that cannot be an unreasonable expectation, can it, that we move forward?  But I look at the history of war and terrorism and faction fighting against faction that the past twelve years have held and again I hear the voice of God speaking through Jeremiah:

“my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good.” [Jeremiah 4:22]

Two years ago, on the tenth anniversary, September 11^th was a Sunday, and I was at church talking with the parents of a little girl whose birthday was that very day, and by that I mean that while the towers were trembling and firefighters were rushing into the smoke, this girl’s mother was in labor.  Like all parents, they had discussed names and had chosen before that day, but when the moment came to write on the birth certificate, they gave her a middle name they hadn’t planned on until that moment.  Her middle name, they said, would be Hope.

There is hope.  There is hope for those two little girls, not so little anymore, and hope for the kids born after them.  I believe there is even hope for those of us born decades before them.  Despite the history of the last twelve years, despite the history of the 2600 years since Jeremiah, I believe that there is hope.  What Jeremiah saw at the base of our troubles was, as he called it, “foolishness”.  The opposite of that would be “wisdom”.

If I look into the scriptures, what I see there is that

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” [Proverbs 9:10]

That’s what the book of Proverbs, compiled even before Jeremiah’s lifetime, declared.  Interestingly, when I was in college and took Arabic, and we had to translate portions of the Quran, one of the verses that I read there was “Ra’as ulhikmati makhafat ’ullahi” which means (guess what?): “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God.”  “Fear” in both cases, means less the unreasoning fear that grips, for instance, a nation under attack than a healthy awareness mixed with respect and honor.  That has to be learned, however, and all too often the hard way.  It has to be learned, too, generation by generation, over and over.  Or maybe I should say, “It has to be taught,” or even, “It has to be taught by example.”

            I have hope for that wisdom to prevail because there is a community where that respect is taught and learned and lived out.  We ourselves embody hope.  Here we are as God’s people, gathered together again, yet another week, doing what we do, which is to confess our sins, recognize our inadequacies, learn about God as he came to us in the life of Jesus, and accept with joy the activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives. 

I have hope because I get to stand next to the baptismal font and on behalf of the whole Church ask questions that invariably receive the answer “I do”:

“Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness,

reject the evil powers of this world,

and repent of your sin?

I do.

Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you

to resist evil, injustice, and oppression

in whatever forms they present themselves?

I do.

Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior,

put your whole trust in his grace,

and promise to serve him as your Lord,

in union with the Church which Christ has opened

to people of all ages, nations, and races?

I do.”

I have hope because Christ calls together and creates a community that is freed from the bondage to sin.  We recognize it as a reality in our lives, but no longer as an inevitability, and certainly not the last word.  That last word is always forgiveness.  That last word is always God’s love.