Jeremiah 6 and Matthew 2 – The Enthusiasm to Ask
V. S. Naipaul of the New Yorker says of a particular reading experience, "I did so in a state of exaltation. It is perhaps," he suggests, "how all writers should be read, if we are to seize their essence and understand what the writing meant to them."
His words are fitting, since reading is often trial run for how I want to approach life away from pages of polished paragraphs. Recent Scriptural stops actually encourage me in this initial optimism. Even someone as straightforward about human treachery as the prophet Jeremiah charges me in Jeremiah 6:16, "Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; then you will find rest for your souls."
Other people have experience I don't. Their accumulated acumen is of value. The path people have marked off seeking humanity's mutual objectives deserves just consideration. In fact, as Naipaul suggests with reading, it merits that we start with a state of gratitude and exaltation. We get to benefit from the ways others have walked. We don't have to start from scratch. We don't have to begin, as Gene Edward Veith, Jr. has called wholesale rejection of our heritage, artificially primitive.
What postures to elite status in me, though, preens for an exception. Surely the common path has often led to misdeeds. Surely those blessed with a better education, a more discerning mind, can avoid the inefficiency of asking what others have done.
The wise men don't model this for us in the first two verses of Matthew 2. Matthew records, "Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, 'Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.'”
Thus, a culture, all the way up to its wisest representatives could benefit from being more curious. We could approach what people made in the image of God have to offer with the humility and the exaltation open to the possibility that we might be wiser for the encounter. We need not treat each of our experiences and our need for insight as entirely new.
Neither, both the passages in Jeremiah and Matthew show us, should we mindlessly drift with the currents of a given culture. We can heed Jeremiah and ask widely where the good way is, but we would be well to also embody his discipline with respect to responding to the answers we get.
Even the rest of Jeremiah 6:16 shows willfulness is as easily inherited as any accumulated wisdom, as the voice of the culture in response to the established good way is, "But they said we will not walk in it." This disposition toward legitimate, proven authority is as easily caught as taught.
Likewise, the same wise men who showed us a willingness to ask of others' experience of Christ were not thereby dupes of any and every answer. By the grace of God, they were also open to subsequent, countercultural instruction. Matthew 2:12 reads, "Then, being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way."
Proceed circumspectly, and a culture's rejection-for-the-sake-of-rejection roots show. Proceed circumspectly, and find that not every immigrant figure in a culture who can speak the biblical language would yield his or her influence to honor Christ.
Having gotten through this on one hand, on the other hand weighing out process once, I would tend to use the end result to justify the leanings of my flesh. If I want to be left alone to think Great Thoughts, I would jump to conclusions that confirm the harshest the experience of Jeremiah and the wise men.
This isn't Scriptural. Jesus sends His out to engage, even with the caveat that we will sometimes need to knock the dust from our feet and move on to the next opportunity. As often as he experienced the latest rejection of the Christ he saw and preached, Paul still went through the book of Acts propelled by faith-filled obedience into each encounter.
His words are fitting, since reading is often trial run for how I want to approach life away from pages of polished paragraphs. Recent Scriptural stops actually encourage me in this initial optimism. Even someone as straightforward about human treachery as the prophet Jeremiah charges me in Jeremiah 6:16, "Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; then you will find rest for your souls."
Other people have experience I don't. Their accumulated acumen is of value. The path people have marked off seeking humanity's mutual objectives deserves just consideration. In fact, as Naipaul suggests with reading, it merits that we start with a state of gratitude and exaltation. We get to benefit from the ways others have walked. We don't have to start from scratch. We don't have to begin, as Gene Edward Veith, Jr. has called wholesale rejection of our heritage, artificially primitive.
What postures to elite status in me, though, preens for an exception. Surely the common path has often led to misdeeds. Surely those blessed with a better education, a more discerning mind, can avoid the inefficiency of asking what others have done.
The wise men don't model this for us in the first two verses of Matthew 2. Matthew records, "Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, 'Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.'”
Thus, a culture, all the way up to its wisest representatives could benefit from being more curious. We could approach what people made in the image of God have to offer with the humility and the exaltation open to the possibility that we might be wiser for the encounter. We need not treat each of our experiences and our need for insight as entirely new.
Neither, both the passages in Jeremiah and Matthew show us, should we mindlessly drift with the currents of a given culture. We can heed Jeremiah and ask widely where the good way is, but we would be well to also embody his discipline with respect to responding to the answers we get.
Even the rest of Jeremiah 6:16 shows willfulness is as easily inherited as any accumulated wisdom, as the voice of the culture in response to the established good way is, "But they said we will not walk in it." This disposition toward legitimate, proven authority is as easily caught as taught.
Likewise, the same wise men who showed us a willingness to ask of others' experience of Christ were not thereby dupes of any and every answer. By the grace of God, they were also open to subsequent, countercultural instruction. Matthew 2:12 reads, "Then, being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way."
Proceed circumspectly, and a culture's rejection-for-the-sake-of-rejection roots show. Proceed circumspectly, and find that not every immigrant figure in a culture who can speak the biblical language would yield his or her influence to honor Christ.
Having gotten through this on one hand, on the other hand weighing out process once, I would tend to use the end result to justify the leanings of my flesh. If I want to be left alone to think Great Thoughts, I would jump to conclusions that confirm the harshest the experience of Jeremiah and the wise men.
This isn't Scriptural. Jesus sends His out to engage, even with the caveat that we will sometimes need to knock the dust from our feet and move on to the next opportunity. As often as he experienced the latest rejection of the Christ he saw and preached, Paul still went through the book of Acts propelled by faith-filled obedience into each encounter.
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