Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent, February 21, 2016

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent, February 21, 2016

Solemn Evensong

By the Reverend Stephen Gerth

Year 2: Jeremiah 1:1–10; Romans 6:3–14; Matthew 13: 31-33, 44–46

The readings for the Daily Office in Lent are primarily organized around the reading of Genesis and Exodus because we Christians understand Jesus’ death and resurrection as an exodus from the slavery of death to eternal life in Christ, not through the Red Sea, but through the waters of baptism.

The Daily Office Lectionary,[1] as you probably know, is on a two-year cycle. We have been reading Genesis at Morning Prayer since the day after the First Sunday after the Epiphany. We will be in Exodus very soon.

The Daily Office for Advent is organized by the reading of Isaiah—a very large book. There is always a break from Isaiah in Christmastide. Then we pick up Isaiah and continue with it until the Last Sunday after the Epiphany. But tonight we started a new book, Jeremiah.

Isaiah is an extremely important book, collection. It's probably three books, from three different important periods in the history of Judah and Jerusalem, which were put together as one in the period of the return from exile in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC.[2] Luke tells us that Jesus himself read aloud from it in a synagogue. (Our Wednesday night Bible study group will receive medals when they complete their extended study of the book this year.)

Isaiah ends with a powerful note of hope that is echoed in the next to last chapter of the Revelation to John.[3] From Isaiah, “The new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before me, says the Lord . . . and Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall some to worship before me, says the Lord.”[4]

Yet both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament follow Isaiah with the book of Jeremiah, the beginning of which we heard tonight. Jeremiah will continue to be read at Evening Prayer in this year of the lectionary cycle until Palm Sunday.

Jeremiah may have been born in the last years of the reign of Manasseh, about 645 BC. He then lived through the reigns of the last four kings of Judah, Josiah who picked and followed up on the religious reforms of his great-grandfather Hezekiah.[5]

But Josiah was followed by four kings who were faithless: Shallum, who reigned only one month, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, who was carried off in the first deportation to Babylon,[6] and Zedekiah, who tried and failed to escape from the city with his sons. Zedekiah’s eyes were put out after he had watched his sons being killed by their captors. He died in captivity in Babylon.[7] There would be no more kings of Judah.

Tonight we’ve just heard the call of the young Jeremiah to be the Lord’s prophet. His life will not be an easy one. He will come close to starvation and to death, but he survives. Sadly, the people of Judah will be in exile in Babylon and Jerusalem will be in ruins by the time he dies as an exile in Egypt.[8]

But it didn’t have to be that way. In Jeremiah, interwoven with God’s judgment and displeasure is a call from God for his people to return to him. It’s in Jeremiah that God is the potter and Israel the clay. The city will be destroyed, but in Jeremiah God promised it would be rebuilt on “its rightful site.”[9] God said through Jeremiah to Israel, “You shall be my people, and I will be your God.”[10]

With respect, you and I are not God’s prophets, but you and I are God’s people. So far this year I am thinking the Scriptures we hear are about us being clear about who we are. God invites us to read his words, to tell him our stories, and to seek an awareness of his will for our daily lives.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[1] The Book of Common Prayer [1979], 934–1001.

[2] Martin A. Sweeney, “Isaiah,” New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, An Ecumenical Study Bible, ed. M. D. Coogan, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 965.

[3] Revelation 21:1.

[4] NRSV, Isaiah 66:22–23.

[5] Rodney R. Hutton, “Jeremiah,” New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, An Ecumenical Study Bible, ed. Michael D. Coogan, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 1057.

[6] Bernard W. Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament, 3rd Ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975), 339.

[7] Ibid., 391.

[8] Hutton., 1057.

[9] Jeremiah 30:18.

[10] Jeremiah 30:22.