Sermon: ”Bottom Line Prophet” by Rev. Will Burhans on 9/18/22

Jeremiah 8 – 9:1

 

That is one intense passage, isn’t it, Sarah has laid on you this morning?! The words of the Prophet Jeremiah known as the Weeping Prophet and now you know why – “Oh that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears that I might weep day and night for my people.”

The Hebrew prophets were a remarkable group of people, mostly men, but the Tanakh says at least 7 women and probably more. The way we think of prophecy now is the foretelling of the future and while the original prophets did predict the future and their veracity was often dependent upon what they said, coming true, they are more importantly to be understood as the voice of moral conscience for the nation, speaking on behalf of God or in the words of God to the ways Israel had fallen away from God. The prophets were the original speakers of truth to power. And it was never very pleasant for them…speaking truth to power never is. Poor Jeremiah was one of the more tortured of the prophets required by God to ignite the flame of moral conscience of kings and rulers who frankly were at the top of the heap by ignoring their moral consciences.

Jeremiah was called by God as a teenager and like many of the prophets was like “uh, no thanks” and God was like “uh, yes thank you” And so began his miserable career as a prophet of God and we learn by reading the book of Jeremiah that he was - cursed by crowds, beaten and arrested, nearly lynched, thrown in a cistern, tortured, his hometown and friends came to hate him so much that they tried to assassinate him… remember Jesus saying a prophet is never welcomed in his hometown? There you go. And you might think, well at least he was close to God… but that really wasn’t so great either. He accused God of lying to him and failing him, saying “the God who was once a fountain of living water has become to me no better than a deceitful brook” and he became so utterly depressed that he not only cursed his own birthday. (from Westminster Guide to the Books of the Bible, William Ramsay, pgs. 201-202)

That’s all there in the book of Jeremiah. So you can understand why he was called, poor thing, the Weeping Prophet! And now you can also be grateful that God hasn’t called you to be a prophet!