Jeremiah 26:13 – Relating Reconciliation
Now therefore, amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the Lord your God; then the Lord will relent concerning the doom that He has pronounced against you. Jeremiah 26:13, New King James Version
On an episode of the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Will Smith as a college student seeks to get his uncle to choose a new car based on collegiate considerations rather than more practical aspects. As he paints the picture of the purchase accordingly, the dealership's manager is impressed and offers Will the chance to use his persuasive acumen as an employed car salesman. As Will succeeds in this, the manager challenges him further.
He tells Will that real leadership in accordance with his gifts involves more than endorsing what people already want and adding alluring details. He needs to be able to deliver bad news. A leader needs to be able to fire people.
In the sitcom truncation of life and 22-minute increments, we don't really see the transformation, but we do see its results. Momentarily, Will is firing people with gusto. They can't succeed where he has, so they're gone. He wears new roles as judge, jury, and executioner of careers so lightly and completely that the veteran manager affects being frightened.
This is not a role which God's prophet is subsumed by. Though God has steeled His man for years to the focus needed to deliver bad news to his contemporaries, Jeremiah 26:13 shows someone who hasn't lost his humanity in the process. His sense of himself is not tied up in the certainty of most ominous consequences, as happened with Jonah. Long in the delivery of hard Truth, Jeremiah is longer yet in the unmerited Presence of the Lord from whom that Truth comes.
He has absorbed, then, the Lord's long-suffering, and conveys it faithfully. To the same population which has rejected both him and his God, he holds out the possibility of mercy on the other side repentance. Jonah groused to God about this possibility, but Jeremiah flies it on his prophetic flag before his adversaries rather than attempting to hide it in the fine print of his message.
The same man who conveys the reality of judgment would be an instrument of reconciliation. He isn't simply a rubberstamp for "firing" people from God's service. He trusts and has experienced resilience in God to such an extent that He is prepared to be rejected and disappointed by men, again. God can, he knows, blow on the coals of his graying hopes.
What of us? Once we get the knack, the taste, anything close to our rightful sense as Christians of our identity and authority as distinct from the world's fate, do we forget to leave the ladder of repentance behind us, point to it, and even extend our hand to help others climb it by grace?
For many of us, the transformation from salesman of the Good News to honest broker relating the wages of sin to a particular life is an awkward one. We don't easily get into character, and once we do, we don't easily get out.
The difference, says my friend Harold on a day when it would have been especially easy for him to seek recourse in his own righteousness, is our sense of connection with those we correct. Those who carry out this art with grace, he says, "was that they were in the trenches with those they expected to influence and inspire."
"They were invested in and engaged with the people," he connects, "not casting commands from afar, and seeing rough edges as an opportunity for constructive criticism and feedback and growth through their leadership — rather than seeing people as disposable commodities. If one cannot love and respect," warns Harold, "he will condemn instead of convict — and he might correct but never inspire change."
Oh, the inestimable value, then, of Christ our Kinsman Redeemer. He ever knows the breadth of the breach between our sin and His glory. He reaches across it. He pays for our sins as Christians, and He imparts His righteousness. Anything even vaguely approximating this stretch in men elicits cold condescension, but He exudes encouragement.
He, foretells Isaiah, is SATISFIED with the results of His redemptive efforts. He could see, even from the cross, His finished effort. That note still resonates in candid and compelling invitation. The Father's readiness to relent is as sure as His Son's Resurrection and Ascension to prepare a place for His own.
On an episode of the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Will Smith as a college student seeks to get his uncle to choose a new car based on collegiate considerations rather than more practical aspects. As he paints the picture of the purchase accordingly, the dealership's manager is impressed and offers Will the chance to use his persuasive acumen as an employed car salesman. As Will succeeds in this, the manager challenges him further.
He tells Will that real leadership in accordance with his gifts involves more than endorsing what people already want and adding alluring details. He needs to be able to deliver bad news. A leader needs to be able to fire people.
In the sitcom truncation of life and 22-minute increments, we don't really see the transformation, but we do see its results. Momentarily, Will is firing people with gusto. They can't succeed where he has, so they're gone. He wears new roles as judge, jury, and executioner of careers so lightly and completely that the veteran manager affects being frightened.
This is not a role which God's prophet is subsumed by. Though God has steeled His man for years to the focus needed to deliver bad news to his contemporaries, Jeremiah 26:13 shows someone who hasn't lost his humanity in the process. His sense of himself is not tied up in the certainty of most ominous consequences, as happened with Jonah. Long in the delivery of hard Truth, Jeremiah is longer yet in the unmerited Presence of the Lord from whom that Truth comes.
He has absorbed, then, the Lord's long-suffering, and conveys it faithfully. To the same population which has rejected both him and his God, he holds out the possibility of mercy on the other side repentance. Jonah groused to God about this possibility, but Jeremiah flies it on his prophetic flag before his adversaries rather than attempting to hide it in the fine print of his message.
The same man who conveys the reality of judgment would be an instrument of reconciliation. He isn't simply a rubberstamp for "firing" people from God's service. He trusts and has experienced resilience in God to such an extent that He is prepared to be rejected and disappointed by men, again. God can, he knows, blow on the coals of his graying hopes.
What of us? Once we get the knack, the taste, anything close to our rightful sense as Christians of our identity and authority as distinct from the world's fate, do we forget to leave the ladder of repentance behind us, point to it, and even extend our hand to help others climb it by grace?
For many of us, the transformation from salesman of the Good News to honest broker relating the wages of sin to a particular life is an awkward one. We don't easily get into character, and once we do, we don't easily get out.
The difference, says my friend Harold on a day when it would have been especially easy for him to seek recourse in his own righteousness, is our sense of connection with those we correct. Those who carry out this art with grace, he says, "was that they were in the trenches with those they expected to influence and inspire."
"They were invested in and engaged with the people," he connects, "not casting commands from afar, and seeing rough edges as an opportunity for constructive criticism and feedback and growth through their leadership — rather than seeing people as disposable commodities. If one cannot love and respect," warns Harold, "he will condemn instead of convict — and he might correct but never inspire change."
Oh, the inestimable value, then, of Christ our Kinsman Redeemer. He ever knows the breadth of the breach between our sin and His glory. He reaches across it. He pays for our sins as Christians, and He imparts His righteousness. Anything even vaguely approximating this stretch in men elicits cold condescension, but He exudes encouragement.
He, foretells Isaiah, is SATISFIED with the results of His redemptive efforts. He could see, even from the cross, His finished effort. That note still resonates in candid and compelling invitation. The Father's readiness to relent is as sure as His Son's Resurrection and Ascension to prepare a place for His own.
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