Never Forget
NL Year 3 • Sermon • Submitted
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Many of you know that I have a deep love of Star Wars and I have talked a lot about that, but another universe that I have always enjoyed as well is the Marvel Universe. To be honest I didn’t get too much into the moves that came out other than a few here and there until a relative of mine convinced me I needed to watch them but that I also needed to watch them in what he considered chronological order and not just when they came out in theatres. He actually put that list together for me and in my free time I would watch a movie here and there. If you haven’t seen the movies I apologize but I feel they have been out long enough that it’s ok to talk about them.
As I watched them the character that fascinated me the most was a character by the name of Thanos. Now Thanos is one of the big bad guys if not THE big bad guy in the later movies. What fascinated me the most about him is that in almost every situation that you seem him in he seems cool and collected. His desire to wipe out half the universe is a mere fact to him not some diabolical plan in his mind. From what I remember he always speaks with a calm voice and he doesn’t seem too affected by anything else that happens so long as his plan continues to move forward toward the goal of removing, as I said, half of the population of the entire universe. A plan which does succeed at the beginning. He is able to collect everything he needs and at the end of one of the movies does in fact snap his fingers like you see on the screen and causes half of everything to disappear, including half of the heroes that are trying to stop him and save everything.
As I mentioned though it is that calm nature and what seems to him as a simple fact of what needs to happen that really fascinates me. I’m sure there are other examples in books, tv shows, and even history itself of people who are calm and matter of fact about these kinds of things but this was the one that first came to my mind. The reason why this was on my mind was that kind of matter of fact, and calm demeanor about doing something terrible is exactly what I felt when I read this story from Jeremiah and we see King Jehoiakim sitting in front of his fire listening to Jehudi read the scroll that Jeremiah and Baruch had written down as God had instructed them to do, and the king takes the penknife and starts cutting it apart and tossing it in the fire every few lines.
The king shows no sign of being furious at the words that he reads; he shows no sign of emotion whatsoever. He simply sits and listens and every few columns takes that knife, cuts the part just read off and throws it into the fire like it’s kindling. What makes this worse is that the kind of knife that the king is using the the kind that a scribe would use to cut out an error, since there were no erasers back then. Jehoiakim is cutting the Word of God apart and the symbology in my mind with that type of knife in his hand is that he views the whole thing as a mistake and is cutting the mistake out of existence with the knife and then throwing it in the fire to ensure it isn’t around anymore. At other points in the Bible including a text we heard a few weeks ago about Jonah, we see the king, who isn’t even a believer in God, tear his clothes and order everyone in sackcloth at the Word of God proclaimed by Jonah. Also, Jehoiakim is the son of Josiah who we talked about last year. Josiah is famous for finding the Law of God stashed away with a bunch of stuff piled up in the temple. When Josiah heard the Word of God he, like the King of Nineveh tore his clothes and had the scroll read to the people of Israel and they all agreed to obey the Word of God and that began Josiah’s reform. It just seems like such a huge step backward for Israel that the son of the King that brought everyone back to a good relationship with God would in what seems like a cold and emotionless way, destroy the very word that God asked Jeremiah to write down and share with the people. Such carelessness in what seems like such an important time in the life of the southern kingdom of Judah.
We hear God instruct Jeremiah and Baruch to re-write everything again and they do, but that must have taken so much time to write about 20 or so years of prophecy not just once but twice. What this says to me about God’s instruction to do it and to do it again to make sure that it is written down is the importance of having a record of what God is doing in the lives of God’s people and the world. The written word of God is very important and it needs and will endure past the life of a man who chooses to try to undo it. What is also important also about it, is that once you hear the Word of God or any word really it is something that stays with you. Whether you want to intentionally remember it or not. Think about a situation or image that you saw and we have famously been told that once you see it or hear it you can’t unsee it or un-hear it again. Even if its not something that is in the forefront of your mind you won’t forget it and may remember it again. By writing it down and proclaiming it to the people it is out there and it can’t be undone. Much like Luther and the printing press as we talked about on Reformation back at the end of October. His words and his theology was out there thanks to the printing press and no matter how hard those pages were attempted to be suppressed it couldn’t be removed from the memory of people.
Which leads us to the last part of the text which does back five chapters in Jeremiah. One thing to note about Jeremiah is that the book is not always chronological. It’s not series of events that happen in a specific order but more of a series of topics that are grouped together. So even though we are going back through the book the words line up perfectly with what we have already talked about and read, which is why it’s included in today’s readings. This famous passage is a new covenant, a new promise made by God and given to God’s people. We remember when God rescued the people from slavery and the law was placed on stone tablets while they wandered in the wilderness. That covenant was the law of the 10 commandments and others that were both broken and forgotten, unfortunately. Now God is declaring that God’s word will be written on the hearts of all people. There will not be a person who doesn’t know God. There will not be a need to teach people the law of God because God will be in such a close and loving relationship with God’s people and the world that everyone will know God and that God will no longer remember their sins or their iniquity.
This is the exact opposite reaction and emotions being displayed compared to that of Thanos from Marvel and King Jehoiakim. While they displayed an emotionless and careless sense of what was happening in the world and universe around them, God deeply cares. God cares so much so that God doesn’t want anyone to not know God. God is so passionate that God says let’s not have a world where this disregard for my word and people exists. God wants everyone to be able to have a relationship with God. God doesn’t want our humanness, our brokenness, our sinfulness to get in the way of being a part of the family of God. The day surely came most profoundly in the life of Jesus. We see in our Gospel text the New Covenant made through the body and blood of Jesus and that came through his sacrifice where his body was given and handed over and his blood poured out so that we truly would have our sins no longer remembered and that we are now and forever labeled as children of God and that God’s own Spirit lives within us. The word of God is very important as a written form and just as imporant is that Word written in our hearts and known in our very being and that was all made possible by God. It is not our own doing but by the very God who created us that we are saved and redeemed now and forever. Amen.