Comments on Luke 11:5-13

The Good Samaritan. The Prodigal Son. The Parable of the Talents. The Wedding Feast. These are some of the well-known parables that Jesus taught. They make good Sunday School stories, and we hear them all the time. But not the parble from our passage this morning. It's called the "Friend at Midnight," and it's not too well known. Part of the reason for that is that this parable gives us some problems. It gives us some images that don't sit very well. But instead of forgetting it and ignoring it, let's struggle with it.
The first problem we have is that it seems to be saying that God is like a lazy friend. We get uncomfortable with this parable because it casts God in the role of a neighbor who is more concerned about waking the kids or unlocking the door than about a friend in need. That doesn't sound like the God I know. But of course, that's the whole point of the story. God is not like a lazy neighbor. He's much more loving than that. And if a selfish person like this neighbor will eventually do the right thing, how much more will God do it! That's the point that Jesus is making. But there's still a problem. If God is not a lazy slob, why do we have to keep asking? If the neighbor would have been concerned about the friend at midnight, he would have opened his door right away. So if God really is loving and concerned, why should we persist in our prayers? Why can't we just pray once and forget about it?
Christ tells us to persist in our prayers. Keep knocking at the door. "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you." Now, these words do not mean, "Ask once, and forget about it." They mean, "Ask, and keep on asking. Seek, and continue to seek. Knock, and don't stop knocking." Keep it up, and God will hear you. That's what this parable tells us.
And then we remember another passage in the New Testament, from the Sermon on the Mount. "When you pray, don't keep on babbling like the pagans, for they think that they will be heard for their many words." [Matt. 6:7] Don't keep on babbling like the pagans. But that's what we feel like when we pray for something over and over. You may have heard of the monks in Tibet, who use prayer wheels. A prayer is written inside the wheel, and every time the wheel goes around, the prayer has been said. So the monks spin wheels, attach wheels to windmills, and hook them to waterwheels. All so their prayers will be repeated. Surely God doesn't want us to do things like that, does He? So why does He tell us to persevere in our prayers?
Whether we need to or not, we have to admit that we do lift up prayers repeatedly. I suppose that many of us can recall a certain petition that we have persisted in. What is it for you? What is that one prayer you say every evening? Is it a prayer for the healing of a friend, or for some struggles they have? Is it for the welfare of a particular part of the world, or maybe for a struggle that you're going through? Just so we have an example to use, let me tell you about one of my persistent prayers. My prayer was for a friend of mine from college. I don't know how we got to be friends: while I was going to Bible studies and leading a youth group, she was working as a cocktail waitress and living with her boyfriend. She'd go to church with me every now and then, but it didn't seem to mean much to her. I started to pray for her, that she would be able to commit her life to Christ. For some reason, that was a prayer that I made almost every day, for four years. I went to New Jersey, she went to California, and we lost touch with each other. Then, four years later, I heard from her. She was attending an exciting church, and her faith seemed to be making a difference in her life. Since then God has continued to do wonderful things in her life and her faith has been growing by leaps and bounds. She’s now working as a Christian family therapist. My four years of praying had been answered. But why did it take so long? Why does God want us to keep at prayers like that? There are many possible answers to that question. Let's look at a few.
First is an image that we have lurking in the backs of our minds that we never really think about. We have a notion that by praying we're building up some sort of cosmic juice. Each prayer is a chalk mark on some celestial blackboard, and when you get enough marks, God will answer your prayer. After four years I got enough marks, so God led my friend to accept him. And of course, some prayers need more marks than others. I've been praying for someone else for seven years; maybe it'll take eight years of chalk marks for him. Now in all honesty, I don't think we can accept that, for at least two reasons. First, it seems as though we're trying to put God over a barrel. "Now look, Lord: see how many times I've asked you to do this? You've got to answer my prayer!" The problem, of course, is that we can't force God to do anything. Remember, this is God we're talking about! And it also seems that we're trying to earn an answer to a prayer. If we put enough effort into it, eventually it'll pay off. But we can't earn anything. No matter what we do, we can't deserve an answer to our prayers. Everything we have is a free gift from God. So we have to give up the idea of a heavenly scorecard.
Well then, maybe we need to repeat prayers because God is so far removed from us. It's so hard to get in touch with him. Praying to God is like making a phone call to a busy executive. If you make enough phone calls, maybe one of them will get through the pool of secretaries. Maybe eventually he won't be in a meeting when you call. Maybe that's why we should persist in our prayers. But the God that I know is not a business executive surrounded by a crowd of attendants who screen his communication. No, God is very near to us. Even before a word is on our lips, He knows it altogether. Or as the Sermon on the Mount says, "Your Father knows what you need before you ask him." [Matt 6:8] Businessmen may be too busy, but God can always hear us. We only have to pray once, and God answers us. So why do we need to keep on praying?
Another idea is that a persevering prayer shows how much the request means to us. And that makes sense. You commit yourself to an persistent prayer only if it is important to you. So we can endure to show how much it means to us. But who are we showing? God already knows. He knew before the first prayer was said. No, we are showing ourselves how important it is. I had no idea how concerned I was for my friend until I realized how long I had been praying for her. So we continue to pray to show ourselves how much it means. But God already knows. Some people say that by persisting in prayer we are thanking God in advance for the answer. At first, that sounds pretty odd. How can you thank someone for what you haven't received yet? Should I thank someone for a Christmas present when it's still July? But the idea is that we should pray in faith. We should pray, believing that we have been heard and that we will be answered. And if we have that kind of faith, we can thank God for something we have not yet received. Now, that makes sense. But, why does Jesus tell us to continue to ask and to keep knocking? If this is the reason for persisting in prayer, why didn't he tell us to pray once, and then thank him, instead of continuing to ask Him? Why didn't he say, "Ask once, and then thank God until it comes?"
Alright, let's try again. Perhaps we should persevere in prayer because we need to adjust ourselves to God's plans. He knows when it's best for something to happen. So we must wait for that greater, larger purpose. The best time for my prayer for my friend to be answered was four years after I began to pray. And the time for my seven-year old request has not yet come. God can answer our prayers immediately; He has that power. But he frequently chooses to operate through channels that are weaker than himself. God was working slowly and gradually to change my friend's heart, so that she would come to him. And that takes time. But, why did I have to be praying the whole time that the process was going on? Why couldn't I make my request and then go on with my life? If I order something from Sears, I wait four to six weeks for order to come in. While I'm waiting, I don't keep writing to the company to ask over and over for what I want. So why do I have to pray and keep on praying?
Another idea is that prayer is helpful because it holds us up while we're waiting for the final answer. David Willis, one of my professors from Princeton, wrote that "Prayer is part of the equipment by which the disciples sustain their hope 'in the meantime.'" Prayer is an expression of our hope, of our active waiting for God to reach down to us. But how much hope do we get from continuing to seek and from constantly knocking? Every time we ask again, we remember that we have asked the same thing for months, and nothing has come of it. That sort of prayer gives more frustration than hope. Prayer does give hope, but not when our prayers are filled with petitions that have been asked over and over and over.
We must continue to ask, because it takes us so long to hear. This whole time, I've been talking about prayer as though it is something you do. I've made prayer sound like letter-writing and phone-calling. Prayer is not something we do; prayer does something to us as well. We must continue to pray, not because God is hard of hearing, but because we are so deaf. When we pray, we aren't the only ones who are talking. As we speak to God, God speaks to us. Our prayers go in two directions. God can hear us perfectly well. We're the ones who need the hearing aids. We need to reverse the way we've been looking at the parable of the Friend at Midnight. We've said that it makes us feel uncomfortable because it makes God look lazy. But we are the ones who take so long to hear God. God stands at our doors and knocks. He calls out to us, "I have a friend who needs to be fed. Can you give me a loaf?" It is us who must rouse ourselves from our beds, who must risk waking our children, who must unlock the door. It is us who must give in to God's cries for justice. Our prayers are not passive things. Our prayers also instruct us for what we should do to have them answered.
But once again, this answer is not enough. We can't answer all of our prayers. I had nothing to do my friend coming to accept Christ. I was at the other end of the continent. She never even knew that I was praying for her. If God was waiting for me to hear Him tell me to do something for her, He didn't wait long enough. Oh, he was certainly talking to my friend and guiding her. But why did God want me to keep asking all the time? Why did I need to pray while he was softening her heart? And even more important, what about the prayers that no person on earth can have any part in answering? Why do we continue to pray for healing in a situation that no doctor is able to do anything about? We are hard of hearing, but that doesn't answer all the questions.
So what are we left with? Why do we persist in prayer? Not to chalk up marks on the board, because we cannot earn an answer to prayer. Not to reach God, because he is near to us. Not to show God how much it means to us, because he already knows. Not to thank Him in advance, because that's not what Jesus was talking about, and that's not what we're talking about. Not to wait for God's timing, because we can do that without continuing to ask. Not to give us hope, because because unanswered prayer is more of a frustration. And not always because we're hard of hearing, because some prayers do not need a response from us.
Why should we continue to pray? I don't know. But no matter what we do, we can't help but to cry out. It is natural for us to keep on praying. We are like children who ask our Father for a fish. And you parents know what that's like. The child asks, "Give me a fish!" And the mother says, "Alright. Wait while I fry it for you." And the child keeps on crying and asking for the fish. The child cries while the fish fries. And so do we. But the loving mother reassures the crying child, "Don't worry. I'm making it. Just be patient." And that soothing voice is the on ewe hear from God when we pray. That soothing voice is the one we hear in this parable. "Don't worry. The answer iscoming. Just be patient. If a lazy neighbor eventually does the right thing, you can count on me. I'll answer you:I've already started."

Matthew 6:5-8 – Close Your Door and Close Your Mouth

There’s a difference between religion and discipleship. Religion can easily become focused on what you do: rituals and activities. And far too often, the whole reason for these religious practices is to be noticed. Discipleship is different: it’s not about what you do, but who you are becoming. And discipleship, in the best sense, doesn’t give any thought being noticed. I was at a pastor’s meeting this week, and during our prayer time one of the ministers seemed to be preaching a sermon while the rest of us had our eyes closed. I’m not sure whom he was trying to convince: us, God, or himself. I don’t know this fellow very well, but I’m sure that he has a deep and abiding faith and is striving to live a life of discipleship. But his lengthy, “preachy” prayer sounded more religious than faithful. (And I acknowledge that I’m at risk of sounding judgmental here. That’s not my point: only to share an example of the danger that we all face.)

Whether it’s the person who shouts “praise the Lord” at the drop of a hat, or catching Christian bumper stickers, there are lots of examples around us of religion that seeks to be noticed. Sharing our faith and reaching out to others in Christ’s name is certainly part of our Christian call. But it can easily become a way to draw attention to ourselves, instead of pointing to God. There is a time and place for sharing and showing faith. But this passage reminds us that there is a time and place for not doing so.

In order to understand the difference, Jesus directs our attention to the hypocrites: people who are different from the way they show themselves to be. What they say and how they act isn’t what they believe and think and feel. Put simply, they show a faith that doesn’t exist. Jesus tells us not to be like them: but in what way? He doesn’t simply say “don’t be a hypocrite,” although that’s certainly a good lesson for us to learn. He could be telling us to have a genuine faith, and to let our prayers reflect who we really are. Of course, this is exactly what we should be doing. But Jesus’ point here is different. He didn’t say, “don’t be a hypocrite;” he said “don’t like the hypocrites,” or “don’t act as the hypocrites act.”

So what is it that hypocrites do? How do they act? The answer is simple: they draw attention to themselves. Have you ever met a quiet hypocrite: one who just sat back quietly? Probably not: the whole point to being a hypocrite is to make people think that you’re someone different from who you really are! And that takes a lot of work. If you want to be a hypocrite, you’ve got convince people that you’re the person you’re pretending to be. And you can’t do that by sitting in the corner quietly. Hypocrites focus on their appearance, to make sure others notice them. So when Jesus tells us not to act like hypocrites, he’s telling us more than to be real and genuine in our faith: to let our faults and weaknesses be noticeable. In addition to that, Jesus tells us not to worry about what we look like, what others think of us, to see if they’ll notice us. He tells us to do the exact opposite: live your faith quietly, and don’t show it to others.

“But,” you may object, “What about being witnesses? Aren’t we supposed to share our faith, and tell others the good news? Aren’t we supposed to be examples and role models of what the Christian life looks like?” The answer is simple and emphatic: yes! But then we have to ask ourselves another question: what is it that you are modeling, or witnessing to? Perhaps you’re thinking, “I want my family and my co-workers to see my example of faith.” If you are, then what you’re modeling, what you’re being an example of, is showcase Christianity. And that’s exactly what Jesus complained about! However, if you’re thinking “I want to serve the Lord, to dedicate all I have to him, and to seek his guidance in all things,” then your life will look very different. When you’re seeking God and living for him, your example will come naturally. You don’t have to make sure people get the point. When you do, the point gets lost. If it’s real, it will make itself known without any extra work on your part.

There are some people, many people, in our church who are serving God devotedly, and whose faith is powerful and obvious. But if you tell them that, they get embarrassed. They’ll make excuses and disagree with you. They are examples of the faith without even trying. But there are other people that I encounter who want to make sure that I know how faithful and dedicated they are. The more they talk, the more I wonder if it’s God that they’re dedicated to, or if it’s their own reputations. I frequently meet people like this at what I call “rent-a-preacher” funerals. From time to time one of the local funeral directors will call and ask me to conduct a funeral service for someone who has no church connections at all, but still wants a “Christian burial.” It can be kind of awkward to spend time with a family that I don’t know at all during one of their most difficult times. But I think it’s awkward for them to have me there as well: I’m sort of a living reminder to them that they’re not church-going people. So sometimes they’ll try to convince me that they are. The more they try, the more obvious it is that God, and God’s church, really aren’t part of their lives. One of my favorites was the time when a grieving family member said to me, “My favorite book in the Bible is Psalms. I forget the name of my favorite psalm, but it’s the one where Jesus promises that he’ll always be with us.” (If you don’t get it, think about it for a minute and it’ll come to you.)

Jesus reminds us to do two things when praying.
1st: Close the door: don't display your prayer to the world.
2nd: Close your mouth: don’t babble on and on when you’re praying.

Some people worry about using the right words when they pray. As I’m working with people to coach them in their prayer lives, I hear the common complaint they “don’t know how to pray.” What they generally mean is that they don’t know the right words to say. They rely on devotional guidebooks and the words of others to lift up prayers for them. Now prayer books and devotions have their place: there are many wonderful resources to direct us to God. In fact, one of our Year of Prayer spiritual exercises was to use some of these prayers on a regular basis. But it becomes a problem when we think that these wonderful prayers are the only way to pray, and that if you can come up with a prayer like that on your own, then you don’t know how to pray.

Look at it this way: imagine you’re trying to express your love to someone in your family, or to that special someone who’s come into your life. Hallmark and company have some wonderful products out there that can give you the perfect words to say. But would you count on them alone to do it for you? Would you go up to your loved one, hand them a card, say “here ya go,” and walk away? No! Your own words, no matter how goofy and weird they may be, will mean so much more. The same thing is true when it comes to prayer: let your words be real. Don’t worry about sounding "churchy" by sprinkling a bunch of thee's & thou’s into what you’re saying. A version of this that I personally find annoying is what my seminary president called the “evangelical just” prayer. It goes something like this: “Lord, I just want to thank you for saving my soul. I just want you to bless everyone.” Just?! Is that all?! Another version is when the pray-er has to say God’s name over and over. “Father God, I just want to thank you, Father, for all that you’ve done in my life, O Father. Holy God, I worship you, Lord Jesus, for your grace and your mercy, O God.” Are they worried that God will quit paying attention, or that they’ll forget who they’re talking to?

The point that Jesus makes here is very similar to the one we find in Ecclesiastes 5:1-7. When you pray, allow time for silence. Don't fill your prayers with words, and prattle on just to fill the space between you and God. Take time to listen, not just speak. While prayer is an expression of our deeply intimate relationship with God, it ought also to demonstrate our respect for him: our sense of his place in the world, and in our lives. If we clutter our prayers we what we want to unload on him, then we lose our sense of awe and wonder for the great Lord of the universe. If we truly remember who God is, it may be a good idea to listen to him sometimes.

And that's what this passage is all about. Close your door: don't turn your prayer life into showcase to display to the world. And close your mouth: recognize whose presence you're in. Let your humility guide your prayers, and don't try to impress other people, or God.

Comments on Matthew 5:43-48

Many of the prayers we’ve looked at thus far have pushed the envelope because they don’t seem to be the kind of prayers we’re “supposed” to offer. We’ve heard Jeremiah and Job and Moses express their anger at God, and we’ve heard the psalmist call down curses upon his enemy. And we’ve had at least one prayer that we don’t like for a different reason: no one wants to admit that they were wrong, and that’s what you have to do if you want to pray a prayer of confession like Psalm 51. This passage is different. It’s not as though Jesus is telling us to do something that we really don’t think that we should do. And it’s not as though we have to admit to some weakness or deficiency on our part. This is a prayer that we don’t want to pray. Plain and simple.

Jesus tells us here to pray for those who persecute us. Double-check me if you don’t believe me: it’s right there in verse 44. It’s set in the midst of a larger passage (verses 38-48) that deals with treating our enemies well. There’s a lot that we can say about the rest of the passage, and we should. It’s a call to lead a different kind of life: being kind to people who aren’t kind to us. But since our focus right now is on prayer, it’s this part of the passage that I want deal with. We are supposed to pray for our enemies.

Earlier this year, as part of the Year of Prayer at Old Union Church, we were supposed to pray one day for North Korea. Someone came up to me and asked me about that: what does it mean to pray for North Korea? After all, it’s about as bad of a country as they come, with a self-indulgent psychotic dictator ruining the lives of everyone in the nation, and threatening warfare and destruction against the rest of us. Why should we pray for them? The person I talked with could only think of two options for how to pray for North Korea. The first choice is to pray for God to attack them and wipe them out. And the other choice was to pray for God to bless them. This person really didn’t think that the first choice was what we Christians should be doing, and he didn’t want to do the second one. My suggestion at the time was to pray for God to change North Korea: to help the people suffering under its oppressive government and to open ways for the nation to improve.

So between the two of us, we had come up with three ways to pray for our enemies:
1. To pray for God to punish your enemies.
2. To pray for God to bless your enemies.
3. To pray for God to change your enemies.

Given the context of this passage, I don’t think that the first choice is the one that Jesus had in mind. The whole point of this part of the Sermon on the Mount is for us to be kindly disposed to people who don’t repay us in kind. We are to seek what is best for them, even if they’re not doing the same thing for us. So what is the best thing for our enemies? Maybe it is for them to be blessed: choice #2. Or maybe it is for them to be changed: choice #3. Personally, when it comes to North Korea, I think the best thing for the nation as a whole would be change: a government that cares for its people and respects the international community of nations.

That’s all fine, but as long as we talk about North Korea, we’re not really feeling the full impact of Jesus’ command here for us to pray for our enemies. Sure, North Korea and the United States don’t see eye to eye, to put it mildly. But we’re not in open conflict with them: neither of us is lobbing missiles or throwing troops at each other. To call North Korea our enemy is relatively theoretical. It doesn’t really hit us where we live. So perhaps we can think of other examples: people or situations that really cause problems for us. The shock of Jesus’ command for us to pray for those who persecute us only hits us if we consider someone who is actually persecuting us, making our lives a living hell. It wasn’t theoretical to the people that Jesus was preaching to: the Roman soldiers could force you do to just about anything, they could take whatever they wanted from you, and there wasn’t anything you could do about it. These are the people that Jesus told his followers to pray for. And about a generation later, when Matthew recorded Jesus’ words into the form that we now have, it wasn’t theoretical for his readers either. The early Christians were being attacked and hounded on all sides: by Jews and by pagans. There were official legal persecutions and informal local attacks. Jesus preached his sermon, and Matthew wrote his gospel, to people who knew what it was like to have people do their level best to ruin their lives. So before we can really understand this passage, we need to identify a situation like that in our lives. Who are our real enemies: either personally or collectively? Who is it that is threatening your well-being and opposing your efforts to improve life?

Two weeks ago we studied Psalm 109, which was written by someone in this same situation. But the prayer was very different: it was an appeal for God to treat his enemy brutally. When we looked at it, we said that while we are not to treat people harshly, it’s OK for us to express those feelings about them to God. In a sense, prayers like Psalm 109 can be pressure release valves. If we vent how we feel with God, then we can move along with our lives. God’s not going to curse someone just because we asked him to.

That may be fine, but that’s not far enough for Jesus. The standards that Jesus sets for us as his disciples are incredibly, ridiculously high. It’s a good thing that our salvation doesn’t depend upon us living up to them, to being “perfect,” as Jesus commands at the end of this passage. But to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ, we can’t hold bitterness in our heart against someone, but just be careful to express it in safe ways, like prayers to God to curse someone. Jesus wants a deeper change in us, so that this bitterness against our enemies doesn’t even exist anymore. It’s not about directing in a helpful direction; it’s about not having it or feeling it at all. Jesus wants our lives to be so transformed by his grace, by the Holy Spirit, by the new life of the resurrection that he brought to us, that we don’t even want our enemies to be cursed.

That’s a tall order. But if we think that we can just channel our anger and bitterness the right way so that it won’t affect us, we’re fooling ourselves. Sometimes we think that the best way for us, or our children, to deal with anger or rage is to go into a private room, hit a pillow, and scream at the top of our lungs. But as good as that may feel, psychologists tell us that it doesn’t work that way. All that does is reinforce our anger or bitterness. It’s not a matter of venting or channeling it. It’s a matter of resolving it and moving past it or out of it.

Being a Christian, a disciple of Jesus Christ, means that you are in the process of becoming a different kind of person. Jesus isn’t looking for us to change our lifestyles or to behave differently. He’s a very demanding Lord: he wants our entire being to change. He wants us to change to the point that prayers like Psalm 109 don’t work for us anymore.

ADDITIONAL POINTS FOR THOUGHT:
We’re called to a higher standard: more than what the average person does.
Our enemies are not necessarily God’s enemies. Don’t be quick to assume that you’re getting it right.
And we may not be on God’s side as much as we think that we are. Humility can be a good thing.
Remember that other people may consider us to be their enemies. Be grateful for the prayers that they’re lifting up for you!

Comments on Jeremiah 20:7-18

Jeremiah was a whiner. Plain and simple. Sure, he was one of the great prophets of Jerusalem, and he proclaimed God’s message faithfully during a difficult and dangerous time. But he complained and whined around all the time. Maybe you know some people like Jeremiah: they’re never satisfied and constantly complain about something or other. In fact, the Dutch have even turned his name into a verb; it mean “to complain.” When a child is fussy or whiny, the frustrated Dutch mother will exclaim, “Jeremiah je niet so!” Or, “Quit your jeremiahing!” I gave my mother plenty of practice with that line.

God should have known what he was getting into with Jeremiah. His whining started at the very beginning of his career, when God called him to be a prophet. Picture the scene: the very presence of the Almighty Lord of the universe enveloped Jeremiah and gave him these profound words of commissioning: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Wouldn’t that just blow you away if the Lord ever said something like that to you? Before Jeremiah had even been born, God had great plans for him: to be his messenger to the world. But how does Jeremiah respond? “Oh, God, you don’t want me to do that. I’m just a kid; I don’t know how to speak well.” So God has to go on for nine more verses to convince Jeremiah that he would fill him with the power and ability to do great things in his name. Instead of receiving his prophet’s commission with gratitude, Jeremiah argued. God had to convince him to take the job.

I wonder if God ever regretted it. Sure, Jeremiah did a great job of being a prophet. All of Jerusalem listened to him. Everyone from the king and the high priest down to the foot soldier in the army and the man in the street listened to him. But Jeremiah hated his job. He kept complaining to God about what he was doing. The Bible records at least five or six of his complaints. Well, when it’s in the Bible we give it a fancy name. They’re called “laments.” Doesn’t that sound so much nicer? Well, don’t let the label fool you. Jeremiah whined, complained, and bellyached his way through the chores that God had in store for him.

Now, maybe I’m not giving Jeremiah enough credit. To be fair, he had a remarkably difficult task in front of him. The nation of Judah had lost its spiritual moorings and had drifted away from faithful devotion to the Lord. Oh, they still went through the rituals at the temple in Jerusalem. But it had become an empty meaningless ritual. The gods and idols of the neighboring nations were so much more interesting, and so the people followed them as well. So at first, Jeremiah’s job was to tell everyone to get back to God, to give him the honor and worship he deserved. But it didn’t take long for it to be obvious that the message wasn’t sinking in. So Jeremiah got a different message. Now, because the people had abandoned God, Jeremiah had to go around telling everyone that God was going to wipe out their nation. The pagan empire of Babylon would conquer them, with God’s blessing. That was bad enough. But then, when the Babylonian army attacked and surrounded Jerusalem, Jeremiah went around telling everyone that they should surrender. If they would surrender to the Babylonians, God would spare their lives and help them rebuild. But if they didn’t, he would wipe them out.

Now, how do you think that message was received?! At the point of greatest crisis in the nation’s entire history, Jeremiah is telling everyone to give up. What do you think Winston Churchill would have done if the preachers of London told everyone that they should lay down their arms and surrender to the Nazis? How do you think Scarlett O’Hare would have reacted if Rhett told her to welcome General Sherman to Atlanta? How would we have responded seven years ago if someone told us to give up, convert to Islam, and hand control of our nation to Osama bin Laden? It’s ludicrous even to imagine doing such a thing, and it’s enough to make your blood boil to think that someone would suggest such a thing. But that’s exactly what Jeremiah did. He marched around the fortifications of Jerusalem, shouting out to the soldiers: “Give up! Put down your weapons! God wants you to let the enemy win.” He went up to the king and demanded that he sign a surrender with the Babylonian general. He stood on the steps of the temple, where everyone was going to ask for God’s deliverance from the enemy, and told them that God had abandoned them and wouldn’t pay any attention to them. To put it mildly, Jeremiah was not a popular fellow. He was arrested, beaten, and thrown into prison. People mocked him and spat on him when he walked down the street. His own family conspired to kill him. Most scholars think that Jeremiah was a relative of the king, partly because that’s the only thing that would have kept him from being executed for treason.

No, maybe Jeremiah had a right to complain. I suspect he had lots of second thoughts about agreeing to become God’s prophet and putting up with all the grief and frustration that it had caused. If we want to understand his prayer of Chapter 20, we need to keep in mind everything that he went through that led to it.

Translation is a funny thing. When we move from one language to another, we can tweak our word choices to make them more acceptable. The opening line of Jeremiah’s prayer is a classic example of translating the teeth out of a message. In the NIV, his prayer begins “O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived.” In the NRSV, Jeremiah complains that God “enticed” him. Other translations say that he overpowered or seduced him. No matter how shocked you may be to hear Jeremiah complain about being deceived, enticed, seduced, or overpowered by God, it’s nowhere near the shock you’d feel if you could read the original Hebrew. Let’s put it this way: the word that Jeremiah used here is the same word that we find in Exodus 22:16, when a man “seduces” a woman and makes her sleep with him. A better translation might be rape. Or, a four-letter word that begins with f. That’s what Jeremiah thinks about being a prophet. He has been violated by God in the most degrading way. In a way that we don’t want to talk about in polite company. So our accommodating Bible translators softened the blow by using nicer words.

But the fact remains. Jeremiah agreed to do what God wanted him to do, and now he was paying the price. He felt used by God. His life would have been so much easier if he could have just done what he wanted to. But instead, because of God, he was living in constant torment and ridicule. God had suckered him into a raw deal with all that sweet talk about being called and set apart from before he was born, about all the glorious things he would do in the name of the Lord.

But the worst of it for Jeremiah was that he couldn’t just quit. He was a prophet, whether he wanted to be one or not. The Lord’s message burned inside of him, trying to get out. Jeremiah couldn’t help but to proclaim it, to do exactly what God wanted him to do. He was in a no-win situation. If he acted like a prophet and proclaimed God’s message, even his closest friends would try to kill him. But if he didn’t, the agony of holding in the message was just too much. No wonder Jeremiah ended his prayer by wishing that he had never even been born.

But in the midst of his prayer, even though he was in such turmoil and distress, even though he was so outraged at what God had done to him, Jeremiah blessed the Lord. He praised God for his might and prayed that his enemies would be vanquished. Even though being faithful had cost Jeremiah so dearly, he committed himself once more to God. He didn’t do it with joy and happiness; he was miserable and wished that he could die. But Jeremiah’s faithfulness didn’t depend upon his emotions. His commitment to God had nothing to do with the “goodies” that would come along with it: riches, honor, joy, peace, eternal life, or whatever. Jeremiah the complainer is for us a shining example of faith: following where God leads, no matter how terrible the path will be.

There are those who try to attract people to faith in God with descriptions of how much better life will be for them if they believe. But Jeremiah’s story seems to fly in the face of these promises. Following God may at times be the toughest kind of life of all. But if we’re like Jeremiah, we do it anyway because we recognize that there’s something more important than having a good life. It’s not about us; it’s about God. Our task is to do whatever it takes to glorify him.

So what do we do if we come upon times when we feel like Jeremiah, when it seems like God has duped us, overpowered us, or even worse? How do respond when life just seems to come apart for us, when God seems to let us down, or even turn on us? At such times, Jeremiah continues to be an example for us. His prayer can be our prayer. Don’t worry about being rude to God, or using nasty language. This is God we’re talking about, after all. If he can create the world by saying a word, if he can redeem the human race on a cross, surely his shoulders are big enough to take anything we hand to him.