Jeremiah 26:14-15 – Identity in Deep Time
14 As for me, here I am, in your hand; do with me as seems good and proper to you. 15 But know for certain that if you put me to death, you will surely bring innocent blood on yourselves, on this city, and on its inhabitants; for truly the Lord has sent me to you to speak all these words in your hearing. Jeremiah 26:14-15, New King James Version
"A refugee spirituality does not make false promises for the present," clarifies James KA Smith in On the Road with Augustine. "It is not a prosperity gospel of peace and joy in the present. It warns of the allure of mentioning one could settle in and for the present. An émigré spirituality is honest about what is not granted to our generation, so to speak – what is not granted to the human condition in this vale of tears."
The prophet is centered there in Jeremiah 26:14-15. His words come from a recognition of refugee spirituality. Jeremiah knows he could die. He knows he could die unjustly at the hands of the very contemporary cultural leaders before whom he has tried to convey God's righteousness toward their repentance. He accedes to this, yet he won't succumb to meaninglessness or self-pity.
He carries something like the plucky resilience to which Switchfoot aspires in "I Don't Belong." They sing, "I will carry a cross and a song where I don't belong. I don't belong here." That is, their recognition, declaration, that their identity is rooted in deep time rather than in the recognition of their contemporaries is part of their song, part of the distinctiveness of their testimony. Is the refrain they want their peers to know beyond all doubt.
My friend Joel's default email signature pledged in this same spirit, "If you have missed knowing me, you have missed nothing. If you have missed Jesus, you have missed everything." Jeremiah warns his hardhearted peers of this same cost.
His own fate, large as it would appear in any ordinary mortal's eyes at this crisis moment is subsumed in a larger story. It is with Jeremiah as neededtobreathe phrases Christ's confession in "Garden," "Who I am is not just me." With eyes of faith that Christ makes possible retrospectively, Jeremiah uses even his own possible expiration as a teaching moment for his persecutors.
There will be consequences, he pleads. In advance, he channels Romans. The wages of sin is death. His sense that his flesh may be killed but that his legacy will live on is a lasting rebuke to the supremacy of present expediency.
The heirs to Jeremiah, and, better, the heirs by grace to Christ can likewise live in such a spirit of surety and surrender. Paul declares it in 2 Corinthians 4:11. By our willingness to let death, even death, be woven into our testimony, an irrepressible life wish is planted in those we leave behind.
"A refugee spirituality does not make false promises for the present," clarifies James KA Smith in On the Road with Augustine. "It is not a prosperity gospel of peace and joy in the present. It warns of the allure of mentioning one could settle in and for the present. An émigré spirituality is honest about what is not granted to our generation, so to speak – what is not granted to the human condition in this vale of tears."
The prophet is centered there in Jeremiah 26:14-15. His words come from a recognition of refugee spirituality. Jeremiah knows he could die. He knows he could die unjustly at the hands of the very contemporary cultural leaders before whom he has tried to convey God's righteousness toward their repentance. He accedes to this, yet he won't succumb to meaninglessness or self-pity.
He carries something like the plucky resilience to which Switchfoot aspires in "I Don't Belong." They sing, "I will carry a cross and a song where I don't belong. I don't belong here." That is, their recognition, declaration, that their identity is rooted in deep time rather than in the recognition of their contemporaries is part of their song, part of the distinctiveness of their testimony. Is the refrain they want their peers to know beyond all doubt.
My friend Joel's default email signature pledged in this same spirit, "If you have missed knowing me, you have missed nothing. If you have missed Jesus, you have missed everything." Jeremiah warns his hardhearted peers of this same cost.
His own fate, large as it would appear in any ordinary mortal's eyes at this crisis moment is subsumed in a larger story. It is with Jeremiah as neededtobreathe phrases Christ's confession in "Garden," "Who I am is not just me." With eyes of faith that Christ makes possible retrospectively, Jeremiah uses even his own possible expiration as a teaching moment for his persecutors.
There will be consequences, he pleads. In advance, he channels Romans. The wages of sin is death. His sense that his flesh may be killed but that his legacy will live on is a lasting rebuke to the supremacy of present expediency.
The heirs to Jeremiah, and, better, the heirs by grace to Christ can likewise live in such a spirit of surety and surrender. Paul declares it in 2 Corinthians 4:11. By our willingness to let death, even death, be woven into our testimony, an irrepressible life wish is planted in those we leave behind.
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