Jeremiah 23:23–29
For the past month, I have been reading Jeremiah every morning, one chapter at a time. It largely makes for depressing reading, a lone and lonely radical railing against the leaders of a nation overrun by internal division and external invasion. As the structures of Judah’s civil society collapse, Jeremiah cries out, “How long?” And as the people despair and turn on each other, he seeks out clarity amidst the chaos: “Is not my word like fire, says the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”
My social media timeline is full of despair. Many of our movements struggle to maintain hope and a plan that can mobilize the people to action. White Christian nationalism solidifies its wins. Jeremiah might have felt very at home here.
But Jeremiah is not a nihilist, not a cynic who celebrates “being right” as the world burns. Because flickering under the ashes of Jeremiah’s grief is a fierce ember of hope. He still believes that it is worthwhile to speak the truth faithfully, damn the consequences. He still believes in the capacity of the people to do right. Jeremiah’s hope is not just in dreams of a better world, but in the truth of a word like fire, a word that can warm the spirit of the people.
Faith like this may seem small in the face of all this death and destruction. At the end of the book, Jerusalem is destroyed, the people displaced, and Jeremiah is in exile. What has he accomplished? Jeremiah himself wonders about this, constantly worrying, “Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back?” And yet his students and his descendants knew there was something here, some mustard seed-size faith that still has the power to break the rocks of oppression into pieces.
Rev. Jay Bergen is a pastor at Germantown Mennonite Church in Philadelphia, and a volunteer organizer with the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI), a campaign fighting to end life sentences and heal communities across Pennsylvania.