Jeremiah 31:24 – Community Around a Common Confession
23 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “They shall again use this speech in the land of Judah and in its cities, when I bring back their captivity: ‘The Lord bless you, O home of justice, and mountain of holiness!’ 24 And there shall dwell in Judah itself, and in all its cities together, farmers and those going out with flocks. Jeremiah 31:23-24, New King James Version
There have been times when my class came out of my mouth, and not necessarily when I showed my fondness for compound sentences and relished resplendent vocabulary. As I taught students in the poorest counties in three states, they would make assumptions at which I would bristle. Referring to the government benefits that were the lifeblood of many of these communities, they would ask, "You get a check, don't you?"
Teacher that I was, I would consider this a Teachable Moment, but really am sure what it conveyed was my pride that, as a man in a wheelchair, I was working. I was Producer rather than Recipient, Helper rather than Help. I doubled down on every effort to distinguish myself based on my station and acumen.
On the same theme in another chapter as a job counselor for people with disabilities, I would emphasize the same gulf. If they even thought about being content with benefits, I would admonish with certitude, "Just think about filling your mind with daytime TV. I've never known anybody to get better in idleness, but I've known a lot of people who got worse."
I summoned my sermon again while out of work, perhaps all the louder because I lacked the title to which I could retreat, a network of people to reinforce my value. Knowing how much of my life and sense of well-being I was consuming trying to thread the needle of what the shifting labor market could offer within the limitations of cerebral palsy and age, my brother asked candidly and calmly, "I'm sure there are benefits for which you could qualify. Why are you chasing work?"
I trumpeted work's value and burnished it with the biblical authority of theology, for at the time he was lost. Work, I said, was crucial to my testimony. It was how people could relate to the difference Christ made.
Actually receiving those benefits in a tougher economy and as age and inflexibility have increased the energy it takes to get through essential daily routines, and finding broader life purpose which they support, I now recognize how narrow my previous perspective was. I see something of a Jeremiah 31:24 dynamic. I sense how essential a common confession is and how it eradicates pretenses based around class and role.
God predicts in Jeremiah 31:23 the impact of His restoration of His people on their hearts and on the fullness of those hearts spilling out in their confessions to one another. Having been brought back to the land by means only God could manage and master, they convey God's blessing one to another. Having seen Him fulfill His promises, they will remind each other that the locale to which He brings them back is the home of justice and that each of them operate in the shadow of the mountain of holiness.
As God has been just to fulfill His Word to them, we should not be surprised that this realization transcends the barriers they might have made and maintained beforehand. Centering on their own strengths, the urbanites could condescend to the yeoman farmers, and the yeoman farmers could look with well-trained suspicion on the somewhat shiftless shepherds.
With each of them being recently brought back to these roles by the grace of God essential for any and every one, the word TOGETHER in Jeremiah 31:24 takes on a binding significance of more than location. "Grace knits together," connects Spurgeon in his sermon "Spiritual Resurrection" "the ties which sin has loosed."
His people will be, God predicts, a community centered on a confession. They each need Him. They are what they are by His grace. In the exile, they have experienced some portion of what their sins deserve, and by His reprieve they have been restored to blessings they have previously taken for granted.
We, then, as Christians, are in the process of a similar realization, consumed by a similar confession. "We are so poor," inventories Brendan Manning in The Ragamuffin Gospel, "that even our poverty is not our own." God has been faithful and just, we say, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That collective realization of brokenness among God's covenant people will have runoff results for the entire community.
"If a group of people in the city are truly living 'righteously,' describes God's Wisdom for Navigating Life by Tim Keller, "they will be such benefits to the public good of the whole city that the entire populace will exult, feeling that their prosperity is a victory for everyone."
The city-dwelling merchant, the farmer, the shepherd, and the pensioner, we all have what standing we have, and what role we have, by the ongoing grace of God. We have different angles from which to watch the fulfillment of His promises, but we are all equally dependent on His volition to fulfill those promises, to shine His mercy on us with every sunrise and to provide our clothing and daily bread. Our dependence, having mortally wounded our self-sufficient pride, is His glory.
There have been times when my class came out of my mouth, and not necessarily when I showed my fondness for compound sentences and relished resplendent vocabulary. As I taught students in the poorest counties in three states, they would make assumptions at which I would bristle. Referring to the government benefits that were the lifeblood of many of these communities, they would ask, "You get a check, don't you?"
Teacher that I was, I would consider this a Teachable Moment, but really am sure what it conveyed was my pride that, as a man in a wheelchair, I was working. I was Producer rather than Recipient, Helper rather than Help. I doubled down on every effort to distinguish myself based on my station and acumen.
On the same theme in another chapter as a job counselor for people with disabilities, I would emphasize the same gulf. If they even thought about being content with benefits, I would admonish with certitude, "Just think about filling your mind with daytime TV. I've never known anybody to get better in idleness, but I've known a lot of people who got worse."
I summoned my sermon again while out of work, perhaps all the louder because I lacked the title to which I could retreat, a network of people to reinforce my value. Knowing how much of my life and sense of well-being I was consuming trying to thread the needle of what the shifting labor market could offer within the limitations of cerebral palsy and age, my brother asked candidly and calmly, "I'm sure there are benefits for which you could qualify. Why are you chasing work?"
I trumpeted work's value and burnished it with the biblical authority of theology, for at the time he was lost. Work, I said, was crucial to my testimony. It was how people could relate to the difference Christ made.
Actually receiving those benefits in a tougher economy and as age and inflexibility have increased the energy it takes to get through essential daily routines, and finding broader life purpose which they support, I now recognize how narrow my previous perspective was. I see something of a Jeremiah 31:24 dynamic. I sense how essential a common confession is and how it eradicates pretenses based around class and role.
God predicts in Jeremiah 31:23 the impact of His restoration of His people on their hearts and on the fullness of those hearts spilling out in their confessions to one another. Having been brought back to the land by means only God could manage and master, they convey God's blessing one to another. Having seen Him fulfill His promises, they will remind each other that the locale to which He brings them back is the home of justice and that each of them operate in the shadow of the mountain of holiness.
As God has been just to fulfill His Word to them, we should not be surprised that this realization transcends the barriers they might have made and maintained beforehand. Centering on their own strengths, the urbanites could condescend to the yeoman farmers, and the yeoman farmers could look with well-trained suspicion on the somewhat shiftless shepherds.
With each of them being recently brought back to these roles by the grace of God essential for any and every one, the word TOGETHER in Jeremiah 31:24 takes on a binding significance of more than location. "Grace knits together," connects Spurgeon in his sermon "Spiritual Resurrection" "the ties which sin has loosed."
His people will be, God predicts, a community centered on a confession. They each need Him. They are what they are by His grace. In the exile, they have experienced some portion of what their sins deserve, and by His reprieve they have been restored to blessings they have previously taken for granted.
We, then, as Christians, are in the process of a similar realization, consumed by a similar confession. "We are so poor," inventories Brendan Manning in The Ragamuffin Gospel, "that even our poverty is not our own." God has been faithful and just, we say, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That collective realization of brokenness among God's covenant people will have runoff results for the entire community.
"If a group of people in the city are truly living 'righteously,' describes God's Wisdom for Navigating Life by Tim Keller, "they will be such benefits to the public good of the whole city that the entire populace will exult, feeling that their prosperity is a victory for everyone."
The city-dwelling merchant, the farmer, the shepherd, and the pensioner, we all have what standing we have, and what role we have, by the ongoing grace of God. We have different angles from which to watch the fulfillment of His promises, but we are all equally dependent on His volition to fulfill those promises, to shine His mercy on us with every sunrise and to provide our clothing and daily bread. Our dependence, having mortally wounded our self-sufficient pride, is His glory.
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