Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination.”
NL Daily Devotion for Thursday, December 5, 2019
by R. Fergus Moir, Clergy Stuff
When Jeremiah speaks, it ain’t pretty. No wonder he kept complaining to God that everyone wanted him dead. His is the thankless job of going to the Israelites and telling them just how rotten they are—so much so that God is furious and plans to let the Babylonians trample them completely.
No one likes to listen to prophetic voices, those speaking the truth no one wants to hear. Greta Thunberg speaks of environmental crisis and men of power ridicule her—a child!—out of their refusal to accept the truth. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of racial equality, and was murdered for it.
As a result, who would want to be a prophetic voice? Who wants to be ridiculed or murdered or any number of reprisals in between? Yet God is clear to Jeremiah that the people have taken all God has given them and perverted it. And God is clear to us that this continues today. We may not have the ability to be a Greta Thunberg or a Rev. Dr. King, but we are called to be prophets. We cannot remain silent in the face of injustice and oppression. Jeremiah had no confidence in his ability to be God’s prophet—God told him that God would tell him what to say. God’s promise stands for us. When we speak the truth, we are not alone. God speaks through us.
God of Justice, tell me what to say in order to proclaim your truth. Amen.
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