This week's sermon...

Jeremiah 2:4-13

It is difficult to listen to such harsh words of accusation, isn’t it? This is the beginning of the prophet Jeremiah's warning to God's people. Even if you aren’t familiar with the book of Jeremiah, perhaps you’ve heard the term “jeremiad”? It comes from this book, this prophet. Maybe you think of a jeremiad as an angry rant, the bitter harangue of a crazy person. But it actually describes this particular literary form first offered by the prophet Jeremiah… a distressed lament over the state of society, and a solemn warning about where things are headed if they continue as they are.

Can we hear this jeremiad as words of warning to us as well?

Last week we talked about what it means to be a prophet. We learned that a prophet is someone who speaks for God, who dares to speak truth, maybe even to predict what will happen in the future. Listening to God’s call to Jeremiah last Sunday, we were reminded that God calls each of us, and equips us for whatever we might be called to, at whatever age and stage of life we might find ourselves—even if it is advanced age, even if it is the place of loneliest exile and hopelessness. I said “God doesn’t call the equipped; God equips the called.”

From the intimacy of God’s call, today we move toward the theme of exile, of displacement, of distance from God. Because Christianity finds itself today in something like a place of spiritual and cultural exile, I believe that through the prophet Jeremiah God is still speaking to us today.

What we have here is a courtroom scene. God is both the accuser and the judge. Jeremiah frames God’s argument in the language of a lawyer setting out her case. It’s a lawsuit, really. God is seeking justice because the people of Israel have broken their covenant with God. Recalling all the good things that God has done—laying out God’s innocence and the sense of harm done, the lawsuit charges that God’s chosen ones have turned their backs on God. The counts are spelled out one by one…
• The people have strayed from God
• Pursuing worthless idols, they have become worthless themselves
• They have forgotten the God that brought them out of Egypt and led them through the wilderness, bringing them safely to a good land
• They have even spoiled that promised land
• Worst, none of those entrusted with leadership … from the priests to the lawyers to the political rulers and even to the prophets… none of them have sought the will of God or recognized God’s presence among the people.

Jeremiah stands aghast, on God’s behalf, and expresses God’s utter incredulity that the chosen people have chosen against the Almighty. It’s as though they have willfully sided with the losing team.

Their sin boils down to two things, says God, in verse 13:

They have forsaken me, the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

We don’t really want to hear it! Finding ourselves accused and indicted by God is not a sentiment any of us have cross-stitched and framed on the living room wall! But hearing God is the beginning of healing when we have strayed. Listen! God is not interested in condemning his people; that is not why God has kept promises and provided a fresh start time and time again. God wants God’s people to live—in the words of scripture, “to feast in heaven” with God. Yet in order for this to happen, we must listen for God. We must listen to God. We must stretch our minds and hearts, making ourselves vulnerable even to the words that can hurt because they name our truth.

The land of Israel in the time of Jeremiah was much like the land of Israel in the time of Jesus, and much like us, here in North America are today, despite the obvious differences in the particulars of the political and economic conditions: People worked hard for a living. They married and raised families. They sought, as best they were able, a piece of the pie and some had more of it—much more of it—and some had much less but, all in all, the dynamics of society remain much the same from one era to another. We are social creatures with a social pattern. We are creatures of the flesh, with fleshly needs. Naturally we want to find a place higher on the social pyramid where our needs will be more amply met and we won’t have to strive so hard to maintain a certain level of comfort.

But these needs can conflict with the other thing that we are, which is that we are spiritual beings as well. We call ourselves “people of God,” meaning that we understand ourselves to be formed in God’s image and living in relationship to the Creator. We are spiritual beings with a spiritual destiny.

That conflict, between our “creaturely” needs and our spiritual reality, are at the crux of this divine lawsuit: forgetting God and God’s goodness, and relying on our own efforts—our own technology and science and inventiveness—to provide our ultimate security. Jeremiah described it with these very poignant words: “They have forsaken me, the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” By implication, the solution to the spiritual and crisis is very simple. You are in a deep hole that you have dug for yourselves. IF YOU WANT TO GET OUT OF A HOLE, STOP DIGGING!

The prophet Jeremiah, who lived in the sixth century before the birth of Christ, used the image of cracked and broken cisterns to describe the dire situation in the ancient Kingdom of Judah. With the expansionist Babylonian empire on the rise to the east, an inconstant ally-of-necessity like Egypt to the south, and a corrupt religious/political establishment at home in Jerusalem, Jeremiah foresaw disaster looming over the nation. The problem, from God’s viewpoint (which is what Jeremiah was supposed to speak, after all), was that bad religion had resulted in bad political decisions, that have led to the breakdown of social harmony and justice at home and disastrous foreign policy decisions abroad.

Now our situation in North America is fundamentally different, isn’t it? Religious leaders are not also our political leaders as they are in some overtly religious nations. In the United States, religion and politics are supposed to occupy completely different spheres of life. We talk about the wall that separates them. Yet that is not the reality. Since the time of Constantine, in the fourth century, politics and Christianity have been closely intertwined in the West. The era of Christendom began in the fourth century when a dying emperor asked to be baptized, and Christianity was established as the official religion of the empire. And ever since, ideas about citizenship and discipleship overlapped and blurred. Our nation, in fact, has lived its own version of Christendom. From the founding days of our country, Christianity has functioned informally but thoroughly as the presumed religion.

But something has changed. Christianity is no longer the de facto established religion. What we call “mainline Protestantism” is no longer the dominant religion, nor even the dominant expression of Christianity in North America. Few religious scholars doubt that the long era of Christendom is over. It’s a settled question. The church no longer holds the position of influence that most of us grew up taking for granted. True, in some places, congregations carry on as usual, as if nothing has changed, despite the fact that our denominations repeatedly downsize and restructure with their sources of funding steadily drying up. We only need to look around this room to realize how drastically things have shifted in our life time! We are now a religion in exile. Vestiges of Christendom remain… there are aspects of Protestant Christianity which so thoroughly permeate our culture—from our representative form of government to ideas about art and education and literature and music—that, as one theologian writes, “Even those who have long since ceased to have anything to do with the church may be heard to express sentiments, values, biases, and… prejudices that have their origin in Christendom.”

A lot of people view our present situation as a crisis of world-ending proportions. “We’re no longer in charge! What will become of the world?” Is there a prophetic word for us here? The problem Jeremiah decried centuries ago was the problem of IDOLATRY… the substitution of other gods for the one true God. And haven’t we done the same thing? Our idolatry has to do with the church and politics. Christians have often tried to use government to achieve their goals. In the process, the church has been seduced by power. When the church sits down with presidents, it often begins to believe too much in their power and too little in God’s power, to believe too much in politics and too little in prayer. And that, friends, is idolatry.

And to us, God still speaks through this ancient prophet…

• Jeremiah might say that our religious leaders have led us stray.
• Jeremiah might say that our political leaders have led us astray.
• Jeremiah might say that rather than lament the end of a period of dominance, we should ask where God is leading.
• Jeremiah might say, “The world for which you have been so carefully preparing is being taken away from you… by the grace of God.”

The solution, friends, is very simple. We are in a deep hole that we have dug for ourselves. IF YOU WANT TO GET OUT OF A HOLE, STOP DIGGING!

Our problem isn’t much different from the ancient Israelites. We continually set our hearts’ desire on things that cannot save us. We forsake God’s fountain of “living water” for cracked cisterns we have dug for ourselves that cannot hold water. And in so doing, we become practical atheists; we live as though God does not exist, even though we give lip service to God’s reality by becoming members of churches. But if our heart is given to something else, then we have forsaken “the glory” of the really Real for that which does not ultimately profit. When we love anything… money, prominence, politics, or even our health… more than we love God, they will betray us. When we trust in secular power more than we trust in God’s power, it will betray us. They are cracked cisterns.

Jeremiah called the people of Israel to love God and to put God first in their lives. Today Jeremiah calls us to love God and to put God first in our lives. It isn’t easy, because other things always pull our hearts in another direction. But God, with love we can only dimly imagine, will give us everything we need if we first give God our hearts. Give God first place in your heart today.

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Who we are...

We nourish spirits:

In addition to inspiring services every Sunday we offer several special services throughout the year… Thanksgiving eve, candlelight Christmas Eve, Maundy Thursday supper, Good Friday and others. Adult education takes place on Sundays before worship and Thursdays at noon.

We nourish our local community:

Following in the small town tradition of the church as community center, our buildings are used for Girl Scout meetings, support groups for Alzheimers Caregivers, Alcoholics Anonymous, and others. More importantly, we have been the catalyst for bringing together the community to help children in need through our Food4Kids program.

We nourish our wider community:

Whether through special offerings or as part of our annual budget, we support disaster relief and development projects around the world as well as providing food and clothing for needy families right here in Alachua.

We nourish bodies:

Of course, we could be the most loving and food-oriented community of faith you’ll find. In addition to delicious Fellowship Hour repasts each Sunday, we enjoy frequent luncheons and covered dish suppers, picnics, pie socials…and let’s not overlook the annual Easter egg toss!

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Food 4 Kids of Alachua



Hunger and under-nutrition contribute to a number of negative health issues and can seriously impact a child's ability to learn.

Food 4 Kids of Alachua is a pilot program during 2008-2009, in partnership with Alachua Elementary School, to provide hungry children with food each weekend during the school year.

Every Friday, children who participate in the program will take a home a backpack on wheels with food for the children in that family. Every Monday they return the backpack to the school empty.

Contact Rev. McDaniel to learn how you can help.

Remember...

• You can sponsor one child for $6 a week
• You can sponsor a family for a contribution of $20 a week

What goes into a backpack:

• canned meat (tuna, chicken, etc.)
• canned pasta
• canned soup
• canned vegetables or beans
• milk (shelf-stable)
• juice boxes
• macaroni and cheese (boxed)
• pudding cups
• fruit cups
• peanut butter
• cereal (single-serving boxes)
• snack bars
• cheese or peanut butter crackers

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Newsletter

JANUARY 2010

The Session has been considering how our church can best respond to the challenge laid down by the Office of Church Growth for individual congregations to reassess their commitment to transformational ministry.

Philip Lotspeich, national coordinator for the “New Church Development and Church Transformation Network” asserts that the future of the church will hinge on the ability of its current congregations to transform. “The Presbyterian Church must once again understand itself as ‘sent’ by God to do God’s mission in the world.” He continues, “We are not seeking to transform the church so that we can once again revel at our place in the culture, nor are we transforming so that our beloved institution will survive. We transform so that others might come to know the saving grace of Jesus Christ as we have.” 

The Session believes there is a lot to be gained by committing to a year-long discernment process. Our goal is to break ground to prepare for a new season of fruitfulness. When we plant seeds or annuals in our gardens each spring, we first need to break up the soil that has been hardened through a winter of cold and rain. Applying this image to the church, it is a regular part of our seasonal “flow” that we need to break up what has become hardened and tired for new life to be born and to bear fruit.

At its December meeting, however, the Session decided that the whole congregation should be involved in the discernment process. It was determined that the best way to achieve this objective was to hold each “Gathering” session (as we are calling them) during the sermon time on the last Sunday of each month for the next year. (“The Word” will include all our individual words as we reflect together on scripture and what it means for us.)

Discussion materials will be provided to the congregation in advance of each Gathering. Pastor Ginny or one of the elders will lead the conversation. The first Gathering, on January 31, will look at John 15, “Bearing Fruit.”

The Session hopes that we will emerge from this process a stronger, more faithful congregation as we seek to do Christ’s work in our midst and in our community.

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