And I will give you
shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and
understanding. And when you have
multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, declares the Lord, they
shall no more say, “The ark of the covenant of the Lord.” It shall not come to
mind or be remembered or missed; it shall not be made again.
(Jeremiah 3:15-16)
Well, Jeremiah really nailed it on that one. When was the last time you heard someone say,
“The ark of the covenant of the Lord”, Indiana Jones notwithstanding? What a remarkably odd thing to say. What exactly did he mean by that?
The clues are, as is usually the case, elsewhere in the
text. Jeremiah chapter 3 is a ringing
condemnation of “treacherous Judah”.
Israel and Judah became separate kingdoms after the death of
Solomon. Jeremiah is preaching perhaps
some 300 years later. In those
intervening years the two nations have gained “reputations”. To oversimplify, Israel was the bad child and
Judah the good one (relatively speaking).
In truth, if you look at the books of I and II Kings and I and II
Chronicles you will note that Judah didn’t exactly get an “A” in
faithfulness.
Israel ran wildly after other gods and had little
faithfulness to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob according to the Biblical
witness. But in Jeremiah 3 Judah is
compared unfavorably to Israel – “And the Lord said to me, ‘Faithless Israel
has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah’”. (Jeremiah 3:11) And why?
It would appear that at least Israel was transparent about
running around on God. Shameless,
perhaps, but transparent. (Perhaps this
was why Jesus seemed to prefer the company of tax collectors and sinners over
the Pharisees of his day. At least they
were open about their failings.) Judah,
however, was doing just the same, but mouthing the right words and holding to
the right practices. After all, the
temple and the ark of the covenant of the Lord were in Judah – the real goods,
not the abominable travesty that was the temple in Samaria.
But here is Jeremiah’s point – they shall no more say, “The
ark of the covenant of the Lord”. So you
have the ark. Congratulations. Do you have the Lord whose ark it is?
This is the
problem. My problem, actually, and quite
likely yours. I, like treacherous Judah,
tend to hold to some external thing as a sign of the Lord and get it confused
with the Lord himself. It may be an
object, like the ark, which has historically been the thing in which or the
place where we have known the power and the presence of the Lord. The temple in Jerusalem itself was another
example. But we are reminded in
Revelation: “And I saw no temple in the
city, for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb.” (Revelation
21:22) Note the same correction – it is
not the temple, but the Lord whose temple it is, that is the point.
Always the thing or place that becomes our idol, for that is
what it is, was once or perhaps even regularly a source of the true and living
presence of God. And as such, it was and
is a good thing. But again, we confuse
the heat with the fire. The heat is the
way in which we know the power of the fire.
But it is the fire that is the real deal.
Someone with a deeper understanding of the physics of it all
may object saying that the fire and the heat are the same thing and can’t be
separated. If so, I would say, yes. And all the more it is the same. Who can properly distinguish between God and
the benefits of his presence? But I
would also remind us all that once there was a fire which had no heat – see
Exodus 3. And yes, I digress…
Sometimes it is an object or a place. Sometimes it is a form of worship. I was a member of a church once where there
had been a significant revival of faith a decade or so before my time
there. Sounds good, but it wasn’t
entirely. Eventually the revival, which
was associated with the worship music of that time, became equated with that
music. It wasn’t a true worship of God
unless you sang “Freely, freely” or “Shine, Jesus, Shine.” (There are those, of course, who would say it
isn’t real worship unless you sing traditional hymns, or don’t sing at all, or
have communion, or don’t have communion – you get my point).
One last point before I close. And this is important. When we realize that something, or place, or practice,
has taken the place of the Lord, we are wont to denounce the said thing as a
trap which must be avoided at all costs.
There are so many babies littered about with oceans of bathwater. The things in themselves are not bad. After all, who gave the command to build the
ark and the tabernacle, for example?
Yes. The Lord.
All of these things are and can be aids in drawing near to
God. The people of Israel saw and knew
the presence and power of the Lord in the ark and the temple. They were aids in bringing them to the saving
knowledge of God.
All of these things, places and practices are the same. Until they are not. Until we get them confused with the Fire
Himself. That means sometimes we need to
readjust our perspective. Repent in
sackcloth and ashes. Return to the Lord
with all your heart. Rend your heart and
not your garments. Sounds very Lenten,
doesn’t it?
Holy and merciful Father, show me the things, places and
practices that I have confused with you.
Give me grace not to hate the things, but rather the idolatry of my
heart, that I may truly return to you with all my heart. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and
reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, on God, world without end. Amen.
