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For Jeremiah’s act of high treason, he was put on death row (ch. 26). His life was spared only because a few elders remembered the words of Micah, a prophet from over a hundred years before Jeremiah’s time, who had also had harsh words for the Temple itself, and had been spared.
Unfortunately, Jeremiah’s words didn’t cut through the noise. Since the Jerusalem establishment refused to heed Jeremiah’s calls to transform their oppressive ways (5:26-29), Jerusalem was eventually plucked up and overthrown by the Babylonian imperial army (52:1-30), which inaugurated the time of the Exile. It was a traumatic and dislocating time; a time of deep grief and lament.
Surprisingly, after the traumatic events of the destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah changed his tune. He never said a bad thing about Jerusalem or its leaders again. He started to offer words of comfort to the suffering people of Israel (30:1-31:40). In Jeremiah 31:10-14, the prophet calls the nations of the world to witness the great shepherd YHWH ransoming and redeeming Israel from the clutches of the ravenous imperial powers of the world (31:11). Then, Jeremiah claims, God will once again dwell with the people, and the entire community will remember how to laugh and dance together (31:12-13).
As Jeremiah predicted, though, with enough faithful lamenting, the people began to heal. And then they even began to grow, and change, and develop in ways that they couldn’t have imagined. After years, there were new houses, and gardens, and children, and eventually a place they felt comfortable. Jeremiah was right: even death itself could not swallow up the life that God had given the people whom God loves. There is a path beyond the destruction. God will lead the way. All we have to do is hope in the midst of hopelessness.
Jeremiah also said that God has promised to transform even our experience of life itself: hearts calloused by hopelessness will suddenly overflow with joy and happiness. God once again calls the people “my people,” evoking the traditional covenant formula (31:14). A few verses later, Jeremiah tells the people that a new covenant is on its way—and that with this covenant, God will inscribe divine instruction directly on the people’s hearts (31:31-34). The people will know God intimately, Jeremiah says, and no one will have to teach each other right from wrong ever again.
It’s no coincidence that, when he was hosting his final meal, Jesus lifted the cup and reminded his disciples of Jeremiah’s promise of a new covenant (Luke 22:20). Yet again, in a time of hopelessness and desperation, it was a prophet calling for an unexpected transformation—a sudden explosion of newness and revived life in the midst of a world that could not even imagine such a change. This is, of course, the gospel message in miniature, and it remains our proclamation today. Even in the midst of hopelessness, and even in the face of a system that is set on “terror all around” (Jer 6:25). I pray that, like Jeremiah, we may remain hopeful as we wait for our shepherd to arrive and announce that the time of terror is over… and that the time of building and planting has come.