Jeremiah and the Terrible, Horrible,
No Good, Very Bad Day
Text: Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
I have to admit that this week was a difficult week in terms of trying to figure out what God was calling me to preach on. It doesn’t come as a voice from above in a deep booming voice that says “THOU SHALT PREACH JEREMIAH!” It doesn’t work like that. Much of the time it comes from something that emerges from my own study and reflection that meshes well with the the week itself. In terms of a personal discipline, there are a series of suggested readings that become a starting point. I don’t always follow it, especially if there is another story, or another text that bubbles up as I am preparing things… but how can I say this? We should not move on to other scripture readings if we don’t happen to like the set of suggested readings. It shouldn’t be a case of “Oh, I don’t like that… let’s pick something more familiar!” –or in today’s case, something that’s much more uplifting.
But that’s not a good reason to skip over a text and replace it. I have found that God often has as much to teach us through these more difficult and challenging texts.
So when I was checking this week’s readings, the very first thing I read was Jeremiah. It starts out, “My joy is gone…” and it seems to get even more depressing from there. My first instinct was to keep going, find something happier. After all, we want to go home from worship with something that will help us get through the week… and what do we get? Jeremiah bearing his soul on one of the worst days of his life… or at least it seems that way. Yet the Psalm is tied to Jeremiah, so it won’t be much more help… 1st Timothy offers a prayer for the well being of others, and Luke’s gospel is the parable about a crooked manager who gets congratulated.
It’s not exactly inspiring is it? Pick your poison so to speak. So maybe we should go back and sit with Jeremiah a bit… and see what’s really going on here… because there’s a lot more than meets the eye. Some of it came into focus when Sarah mentioned to me that one of her favourite books when she was a kid was called “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day.” I remember this one from my childhood too, and it’s a children’s story about a boy who is having a particularly bad day. It starts off with “I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” –And it goes downhill from there.
And yet this is a favourite children’s book. It has endured for decades because it actually speaks to children when they are having a particularly bad day. So if children are able to read, enjoy and want to repeatedly listen to a story like this, why can’t we approach Jeremiah the same way?
Jeremiah and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day…
Jeremiah’s a bit of an odd duck if you think about it. These words of his are a lament, but they are a personal lament in the midst of a time where things were going well. The economy was good, trade was good, the land was producing, and the people were basically happy. So Jeremiah’s words seem even more out of place than they do in the readings on Sunday morning!
What was going through Jeremiah’s head when he wrote this? This is his own personal lament here… and he begins it by saying “My Joy is gone.” If you’ve every heard the term “Killjoy” this may actually be where we got the term from. We opened with “joyful, joyful, we adore you.” today – I hope the irony isn’t lost on us.
But here’s where it begins to make sense. Jeremiah looked around at his country, and where everyone else saw wealth and prosperity, he saw those who had been forgotten and left behind. The poor, the widow, the orphan… the vulnerable people in society… there is no trickle down economics going on here. They had seemingly forgotten the core of who they were, of who God called them to be, and this is what Jeremiah saw… this is what he was lamenting over. The whole purpose of the nation of Judah was to further the kingdom of God… not to further the kingdom of whoever happened to be in power. Furthering the kingdom means that nobody is too small, nobody is to be forgotten in all of this.
The upshot, is that this isn’t sustainable. If Judah forgets who they are, if we forget who we are, then it’s going to fall apart. The way all of this erodes at Judah’s integrity and ability to take care of its own, sooner or later it’s going to collapse. Jeremiah could see the storm gathering on the horizon in the form of Babylon… It wouldn’t take much, because things had so badly eroded the foundation’s of Judah’s society, that when the Babylonian armies inevitably came, Judah’s collapse would be complete. As the book Proverbs is often quoted in saying “Pride goes before a fall.”
Jeremiah was mourning the loss of everything around him, even as it still stood. This is why he was saying “my joy is gone!” because he could see what was coming... and yet nobody would listen to him. There is a figure in Greek Mythology – Cassandra – who was gifted with a perfect vision of the future, and yet was cursed in that nobody would listen to her. Jeremiah, it seems, suffered a similar curse. Through this lament, he knows what’s coming, and wonders if anything he says is going to be listened to.
Which is why Jeremiah is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day...
So after all of this, where is the good news?
As I mentioned earlier, Jeremiah is a bit of an odd duck. When things appear to be going well in Judah, he is very much a killjoy... proclaiming Judah’s doom because the society is rotten to the core. Yet when things do fall apart, when Babylon destroys Jerusalem and flattens the temple, suddenly Jeremiah’s tone becomes far more optimistic. He then begins preaching a hope for a future restored, that Israel would not be lost to history. All of the rot and corruption that Jeremiah lamented would be gone, and there would be a new opportunity to rebuild and be the people that God was calling them to be.
As depressing as Jeremiah seems in this passage, we can’t just take him isolated and alone here. This prophet’s message is ultimately one of hope, trusting God sees beyond all the bad stuff. Remembering the story of Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, the last line goes like this. “Mom says some days are like that.” Even in the midst of that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, God still wants to be in a relationship us. Even when we abandon God, God will not abandon us. Some days may be like that, but God loves us anyway.
On a personal level, all of us have those terrible, awful days where it is hard to see the forest for all the trees standing in the way. It does not mean that God has left us to our own devices. We may not be able to see or feel that God is with us in the midst of those times of personal despair and sadness, but it is a matter of faith that God remains with us in the midst of our darkest hour... not to spare us from the realities of life, but to give us strength when we need it the most.
Amen.
I have to admit that this week was a difficult week in terms of trying to figure out what God was calling me to preach on. It doesn’t come as a voice from above in a deep booming voice that says “THOU SHALT PREACH JEREMIAH!” It doesn’t work like that. Much of the time it comes from something that emerges from my own study and reflection that meshes well with the the week itself. In terms of a personal discipline, there are a series of suggested readings that become a starting point. I don’t always follow it, especially if there is another story, or another text that bubbles up as I am preparing things… but how can I say this? We should not move on to other scripture readings if we don’t happen to like the set of suggested readings. It shouldn’t be a case of “Oh, I don’t like that… let’s pick something more familiar!” –or in today’s case, something that’s much more uplifting.
But that’s not a good reason to skip over a text and replace it. I have found that God often has as much to teach us through these more difficult and challenging texts.
So when I was checking this week’s readings, the very first thing I read was Jeremiah. It starts out, “My joy is gone…” and it seems to get even more depressing from there. My first instinct was to keep going, find something happier. After all, we want to go home from worship with something that will help us get through the week… and what do we get? Jeremiah bearing his soul on one of the worst days of his life… or at least it seems that way. Yet the Psalm is tied to Jeremiah, so it won’t be much more help… 1st Timothy offers a prayer for the well being of others, and Luke’s gospel is the parable about a crooked manager who gets congratulated.
It’s not exactly inspiring is it? Pick your poison so to speak. So maybe we should go back and sit with Jeremiah a bit… and see what’s really going on here… because there’s a lot more than meets the eye. Some of it came into focus when Sarah mentioned to me that one of her favourite books when she was a kid was called “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day.” I remember this one from my childhood too, and it’s a children’s story about a boy who is having a particularly bad day. It starts off with “I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” –And it goes downhill from there.
And yet this is a favourite children’s book. It has endured for decades because it actually speaks to children when they are having a particularly bad day. So if children are able to read, enjoy and want to repeatedly listen to a story like this, why can’t we approach Jeremiah the same way?
Jeremiah and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day…
Jeremiah’s a bit of an odd duck if you think about it. These words of his are a lament, but they are a personal lament in the midst of a time where things were going well. The economy was good, trade was good, the land was producing, and the people were basically happy. So Jeremiah’s words seem even more out of place than they do in the readings on Sunday morning!
What was going through Jeremiah’s head when he wrote this? This is his own personal lament here… and he begins it by saying “My Joy is gone.” If you’ve every heard the term “Killjoy” this may actually be where we got the term from. We opened with “joyful, joyful, we adore you.” today – I hope the irony isn’t lost on us.
But here’s where it begins to make sense. Jeremiah looked around at his country, and where everyone else saw wealth and prosperity, he saw those who had been forgotten and left behind. The poor, the widow, the orphan… the vulnerable people in society… there is no trickle down economics going on here. They had seemingly forgotten the core of who they were, of who God called them to be, and this is what Jeremiah saw… this is what he was lamenting over. The whole purpose of the nation of Judah was to further the kingdom of God… not to further the kingdom of whoever happened to be in power. Furthering the kingdom means that nobody is too small, nobody is to be forgotten in all of this.
The upshot, is that this isn’t sustainable. If Judah forgets who they are, if we forget who we are, then it’s going to fall apart. The way all of this erodes at Judah’s integrity and ability to take care of its own, sooner or later it’s going to collapse. Jeremiah could see the storm gathering on the horizon in the form of Babylon… It wouldn’t take much, because things had so badly eroded the foundation’s of Judah’s society, that when the Babylonian armies inevitably came, Judah’s collapse would be complete. As the book Proverbs is often quoted in saying “Pride goes before a fall.”
Jeremiah was mourning the loss of everything around him, even as it still stood. This is why he was saying “my joy is gone!” because he could see what was coming... and yet nobody would listen to him. There is a figure in Greek Mythology – Cassandra – who was gifted with a perfect vision of the future, and yet was cursed in that nobody would listen to her. Jeremiah, it seems, suffered a similar curse. Through this lament, he knows what’s coming, and wonders if anything he says is going to be listened to.
Which is why Jeremiah is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day...
So after all of this, where is the good news?
As I mentioned earlier, Jeremiah is a bit of an odd duck. When things appear to be going well in Judah, he is very much a killjoy... proclaiming Judah’s doom because the society is rotten to the core. Yet when things do fall apart, when Babylon destroys Jerusalem and flattens the temple, suddenly Jeremiah’s tone becomes far more optimistic. He then begins preaching a hope for a future restored, that Israel would not be lost to history. All of the rot and corruption that Jeremiah lamented would be gone, and there would be a new opportunity to rebuild and be the people that God was calling them to be.
As depressing as Jeremiah seems in this passage, we can’t just take him isolated and alone here. This prophet’s message is ultimately one of hope, trusting God sees beyond all the bad stuff. Remembering the story of Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, the last line goes like this. “Mom says some days are like that.” Even in the midst of that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, God still wants to be in a relationship us. Even when we abandon God, God will not abandon us. Some days may be like that, but God loves us anyway.
On a personal level, all of us have those terrible, awful days where it is hard to see the forest for all the trees standing in the way. It does not mean that God has left us to our own devices. We may not be able to see or feel that God is with us in the midst of those times of personal despair and sadness, but it is a matter of faith that God remains with us in the midst of our darkest hour... not to spare us from the realities of life, but to give us strength when we need it the most.
Amen.
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