Jeremiah 16:5-8 – Grief As Identity
5 For thus says the Lord: “Do not enter the house of mourning, nor go to lament or bemoan them; for I have taken away My peace from this people,” says the Lord, “lovingkindness and mercies. 6 Both the great and the small shall die in this land. They shall not be buried; neither shall men lament for them, cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them. 7 Nor shall men break bread in mourning for them, to comfort them for the dead; nor shall men give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father or their mother. 8 Also you shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink.”
On the classic sitcom Cheers, barfly Norm Peterson is usually on the periphery of the working world. He sneaks out early to find his real community and identity at Cheers. Ironically, it's when he is punished for such indiscretions that he finds what is close to a calling. He is consigned to fire employees at his accounting firm. The task so break him up that he tends to spend all day with the employee who is soon to be fired. When he breaks the news to them, they end up comforting him.
But even in a comedy, such sensitivity is emotionally expensive. Diane sympathizes that Norm can't continue to wring himself out in this one emotionally intensive task. To ask him to do so because he is wired sympathetically is, in fact, a form of cruel manipulation.
Not surprisingly, God proves a better boss than the faceless powers at Norm's accounting firm. He knows Jeremiah the weeping prophet and Norm are wired similarly. He heard when the prophet pleaded at the beginning of Jeremiah 9 that if he ever began to grieve for this people, he couldn't stop. God didn't grant Jeremiah's request for retreat from the collapsing culture which would weigh on his soul, but He does keep the contours of Jeremiah's emotional makeup in mind in Jeremiah 15:5-8.
Don't, He tells Jeremiah in that passage, enter into the house of mourning. Don't partake of the all-consuming pagan grief ceremonies which typified the land before God gave it to His people. As much as God has equipped and empowered Jeremiah to engage this people where they are, He plans ahead with respect to national grief. Go this far, Jeremiah, to the threshold, and no farther. Otherwise, as mourner-in-chief your message of demanded repentance and Gospel hope on the other side of it will be subsumed in tears.
God's caution here is instructive. He sent His Son as Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief. Jesus sweat great drops of blood. Yet Jeremiah, who is so often a laudatory type of Christ, is told not to carry the country's burden in this way. Here we have the difference between God's emotions and ours.
He can grieve completely and purely, and then move on just as purely to consolation in Himself and assurance in the triumph of His glory. His creations in His image, even those at the forefront of awareness of His redemption like Jeremiah, encounter extreme difficulty doing that.
We must beware, then, the lure of extreme emotions owning us and becoming our banner and identity. Should we enter into the house of grief or anger, we run the risk of inertia there. Should we begin in the habits associated with those feelings and that company, we may not so easily be able to disassociate ourselves. We may not be able to just as emphatically point to Gospel hope on the other side. As with so much else, Stephen Covey's counsel in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is helpful: begin with the end in mind.
Chesterton in Orthodoxy re-centers us. "Man is more himself, more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing and grief superficial.” For us to enter into certain emotional states, to take up with certain company, is as unhelpful as an alcoholic entering into a bar, as, according to the phrasing of God's Law, keeping an ox who is known to gore without taking precautions against that tendency. Undertake the beginning, and we are responsible for the end.
Best, then, to take even the initial sparks of our intense emotion to Christ. I feel grief, Lord, what do You want me to do with it? I feel depression, Lord. You felt it. You mastered it. You wove it into the glory of the Godhead. What do you want me to do with it? I feel anger. It's scarlet colors have their place on Your banner, but they are not the whole banner. I give them over to You, for Your Word says mine is the mind of Christ. I would that my emotions would be perfectly obedient servants to thinking Your thoughts.
On the classic sitcom Cheers, barfly Norm Peterson is usually on the periphery of the working world. He sneaks out early to find his real community and identity at Cheers. Ironically, it's when he is punished for such indiscretions that he finds what is close to a calling. He is consigned to fire employees at his accounting firm. The task so break him up that he tends to spend all day with the employee who is soon to be fired. When he breaks the news to them, they end up comforting him.
But even in a comedy, such sensitivity is emotionally expensive. Diane sympathizes that Norm can't continue to wring himself out in this one emotionally intensive task. To ask him to do so because he is wired sympathetically is, in fact, a form of cruel manipulation.
Not surprisingly, God proves a better boss than the faceless powers at Norm's accounting firm. He knows Jeremiah the weeping prophet and Norm are wired similarly. He heard when the prophet pleaded at the beginning of Jeremiah 9 that if he ever began to grieve for this people, he couldn't stop. God didn't grant Jeremiah's request for retreat from the collapsing culture which would weigh on his soul, but He does keep the contours of Jeremiah's emotional makeup in mind in Jeremiah 15:5-8.
Don't, He tells Jeremiah in that passage, enter into the house of mourning. Don't partake of the all-consuming pagan grief ceremonies which typified the land before God gave it to His people. As much as God has equipped and empowered Jeremiah to engage this people where they are, He plans ahead with respect to national grief. Go this far, Jeremiah, to the threshold, and no farther. Otherwise, as mourner-in-chief your message of demanded repentance and Gospel hope on the other side of it will be subsumed in tears.
God's caution here is instructive. He sent His Son as Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief. Jesus sweat great drops of blood. Yet Jeremiah, who is so often a laudatory type of Christ, is told not to carry the country's burden in this way. Here we have the difference between God's emotions and ours.
He can grieve completely and purely, and then move on just as purely to consolation in Himself and assurance in the triumph of His glory. His creations in His image, even those at the forefront of awareness of His redemption like Jeremiah, encounter extreme difficulty doing that.
We must beware, then, the lure of extreme emotions owning us and becoming our banner and identity. Should we enter into the house of grief or anger, we run the risk of inertia there. Should we begin in the habits associated with those feelings and that company, we may not so easily be able to disassociate ourselves. We may not be able to just as emphatically point to Gospel hope on the other side. As with so much else, Stephen Covey's counsel in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is helpful: begin with the end in mind.
Chesterton in Orthodoxy re-centers us. "Man is more himself, more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing and grief superficial.” For us to enter into certain emotional states, to take up with certain company, is as unhelpful as an alcoholic entering into a bar, as, according to the phrasing of God's Law, keeping an ox who is known to gore without taking precautions against that tendency. Undertake the beginning, and we are responsible for the end.
Best, then, to take even the initial sparks of our intense emotion to Christ. I feel grief, Lord, what do You want me to do with it? I feel depression, Lord. You felt it. You mastered it. You wove it into the glory of the Godhead. What do you want me to do with it? I feel anger. It's scarlet colors have their place on Your banner, but they are not the whole banner. I give them over to You, for Your Word says mine is the mind of Christ. I would that my emotions would be perfectly obedient servants to thinking Your thoughts.
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