7/22/18 “Gathering the Remnant” by Nancy Petty

Text: Jeremiah 23:1-6

It is wise to never underestimate the power of words, and/or one’s relationship to words. One word can change someone’s entire day. Words—even one word—can help or harm, heal or hurt, bless or curse. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: “All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down. The power of words. Some would say they are the most powerful weapons on earth. And it is my experience that words also extend beyond the moment and context in which they are spoken. They carry memories. One small word can transport us to a time and place and experience long past.

Take for instance the small three-letter word that our First Testament text begins with this morning: w-o-e. Woe. Immediately, upon reading that word, I was taken back to an experience that happened over some twenty years ago. Some of you have heard me tell the story. It was the first day of a Pullen staff working retreat. We had just arrived at Emerald Isle and had stopped at the Food Lion to gather our groceries for the two and half day retreat. Mahan and I set out to shop for the essentials: bread, cereal, yogurt, nuts, pimento cheese, milk, peanut butter, and chips—all things that are needed for healthy breakfast and lunch. It was our custom to eat out for our dinner. The rest of the staff set out to shop for anything specific they might want for the next two days. The word spread that Mahan and I were checking out and everyone needed to bring their items to the checkout. Mahan was standing at the front of the line and I was behind him taking things out of the cart and placing them on the counter for the young teenage girl who was our clerk. The bread passed by, then the cereal, yogurt, nuts, pimento cheese, milk, peanut butter, chips and then, next, a six pack of beer. I saw Mahan look at it with a bit of a curious look but he didn’t say anything so neither did I. Behind it followed another six-pack of a different kind of beer. With that, he looked at me and I shrugged but he still didn’t say anything. But as the next six-pack and two bottles of wine rolled by, it was as if God (or Jeremiah) descended into the Emerald Isle Food Lion and spoke. “Whoa, folks!” Mahan sternly and loudly spoke. At which everyone, including the teenage checkout girl, froze. If there was any question before that moment, it was made clear then. Three six-packs and a couple bottles of wine exceed the limit for a two-and-a-half day church staff retreat. Jeremiah’s w-o-e took me back to Mahan’s w-h-o-a.

Now I know that the “whoa” Mahan used “w-h-o-a” is different from the “woe” w-o-e that Jeremiah spoke but when I read Jeremiah’s opening words in chapter 23, “Woe to the shepherds…” I heard Mahan’s voice saying whoa with woe and my antenna went up and I paid close attention to what came next. Words are like that. They carry our memories.

The word “woe” (w-o-e) is most often used to express things that cause sorrow or distress or trouble. (Really not that much different from whoa.) Merriam-Webster defines the word “woe” as: “a condition of deep suffering from misfortune, affliction, or grief; ruinous trouble.” The word is often used when a feeling is beyond description, when other words fail us, almost like a groan.

When used in the biblical text, both in the Hebrew scriptures and in the New Testament, the word “woe” is more than an expression of a feeling. Woe is a judgment; most often it is signifying impending doom and God’s judgment on God’s people. [Spoiler alert!] I know, as progressive Christians, we don’t like to talk about a judging God or God’s judgment. That’s the stuff of the “old” testament. It’s the theology of our fundamentalist cousins. We are a people of the social gospel, of Jesus. Our theology affirms God’s compassion and forgiveness and grace, not divine judgment or a judging God. But before we jump and think that it is mostly the Hebrew prophets and the fundamentalist that speak judgment on God’s people, you may find it interesting to know that Jesus uses the word “woe” more than anyone else in the Bible. So when Jesus says “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees…” he is following the prophetic speech of the prophets before him who dared to speak God’s prophetic judgment on the leaders of the day who were doing evil things. In Luke’s gospel, when Jesus says, “Woe to you who are rich…woe to you who are full now…woe to you who are laughing now…woe to you when all speak well of you…” he, like God’s prophets before him, was speaking God’s judgment on the people.

I get that talking about judgment probably makes all of us tense up a bit. It feels icky. It makes us uncomfortable, as it probably should. But if we are going to honestly engage our faith narrative, it seems important for us to, at the very least, wrestle with the theological question of God’s prophets speaking judgment on God’s people. Not because our faith gives us the right to go around judging people. It doesn’t. Let me say that again. Our faith does not give us the right or permission to judge others. Period! But our faith does hold us accountable to the values and principles by which we live our lives. And when we lose sight of living by the values of our faith—love, compassion, forgiveness, hospitality, inclusion, justice-love—our faith itself, or lack of, lends judgment.

This is the context by which Jeremiah addresses the shepherds—that is the leaders of his day. And it is the context by which the prophet is still addressing the leaders of God’s people today. Imagine Jeremiah standing here today speaking these words to us. Might he say, “Woe to the senators and legislators and congress representatives; and woe to you president and vice-president; woe to you evangelical and progressive and liberal preachers; woe to all who destroy and scatter God’s people!” Might God’s word still be speaking to us through the prophet Jeremiah?

At the heart of Jeremiah’s woe—his prophetic judgment—is the leadership of those in charge of caring for and tending to God’s people. It seems that the leaders of God’s people have abandoned what was required of them: requirements laid out in Psalm 72, a certain song that was sung at the coronation of a king. “We have no way of knowing when the psalm was written or for how many coronation ceremonies it was used, but we can be sure that it enshrines within its words the deepest hopes that Israel, in the sight of YHWH, had for its leaders.

Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to the son of the king.
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice (Ps. 72:1-2).

So there it is, as plainly as it can be stated: the king/leader’s primary concern is with righteousness and justice, most especially for the poor, the marginalized of the land. Kings/leaders, says the psalm, are judged on these capacities, not on the size and success of their armies, the splendor of their courts, the beauties of their oratory.” (John Holbert, Reflections on Jeremiah 23:1-8) But rather on how they treat people, especially the poor.

To understand the book of Jeremiah, and specifically chapter 23, is to understand two things, the first being the importance of speaking a prophetic word of judgment for what continues to fail to “tend” to and care for God’s people, most specifically for the poor and the marginalized, the outcast and the stranger. There is judgment, serious judgment, for that which scatters God’s people, for that which drives them away, for all that does not go into the care and tending of God’s people, especially the vulnerable. Jeremiah reminds us that judgment is a necessary word when speaking God’s prophetic voice.

Now let me stop here because confession is sometimes necessary. There are those moments when the text—whether it is the bible or some other sacred truth-telling piece of literature—convicts the reader. Has that ever happened to you? You’re reading along feeling all good about how you are not the person the writer is writing about in some not-so-favorable way when all of the sudden a light comes on and you realize, “Dang, they are talking about me. I am that person.” I must confess, in reading Jeremiah 23:1-6, I wondered if I am, have been, one of those leaders who have participated in scattering God’s flock. Have my words and actions driven people away from God? Have my judgments about what is right and wrong, about what is moral and immoral, about what is good and what is bad scattered God’s people? Have I failed to tend to the vulnerable, the marginalized, the poor? Have I failed to tend to God’s people by judging someone else’s theology as being less than mine? Have I participated in scattering God’s people with my words? I can feel Jeremiah’s glance in my direction when he speaks his prophetic woe. We have no right to judge others. But our faith has every right to judge us! It is a humbling, confessing moment to realize that at times my words and actions have been a part of the scattering of God’s people when what I want is to be one who gathers together the remnant of God’s people. Gathering the remnant.

The second thing one needs to understand about the book of Jeremiah is this: the prophet always reminds us of the promise of God’s refusal to let the results of “evil doings” be the last word. Jeremiah reminds us that God gathers the remnant, whatever is left that is good and just and loving and compassionate and forgiving and God creates something new, something just, something righteous. Jeremiah reminds all of us, for we are all leaders, that the need for judgment is not to judge how we look, what size we wear, what’s in our bank account, where we live, who we know or what we know, the color of our skin, the country we are born in, the wealth of our nation, the religion we practice, or the faith we proclaim. Rather, prophetic judgment is about our faith asking us how much we are willing to risk and how far we are willing to stretch to gather the remnant of God’s people together. And you can’t gather God’s people and you can’t tend to God’s people when you are always beating up on them for who they are, and who they love, and what they believe or don’t believe, and the human mistakes they make. Can you think of anything our world needs more right now than a little prophetic judgment? The kind that says, “Woe to you who scatter God’s people. Woe to you who fail to tend to the poor and the marginalized and the vulnerable. Woe to you who build walls that separate God’s people. Woe to you who deny health care to sick people. Woe to you who chose hostility rather than hospitality. Woe to you who choose greed over generosity. Woe to you who sees another’s faith as less than yours. Woe to you who care more about ideological positions than flesh and blood human beings. Woe to you who care more about a person’s political affiliation than about the suffering they have/are enduring.” I have asked myself all week the question, “How open am I/are we to practicing a remnant theology? A theology that gathers people in instead of scattering them. A theology that truly gathers in those who are different from us—theologically, politically, ethnically, racially, religiously, and economically.

Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them… I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.

A remnant theology. A remnant community. A remnant kingdom here on this earth. What would need to be true for us to welcome all? Yes, I’m talking about welcoming the stranger, especially the poor. But what about welcoming the Republican? Can we do that? Are we capable? What about welcoming the conservative evangelical. Is that possible for us? What would it look like? What would it require of us? Do we even believe it is our call to do? I don’t know. But what I do know is that remnants aren’t the chosen pieces, they are the pieces that are present. As we think of building a remnant Pullen, how do we, the shepherds/leaders of this place, need to hear Jeremiah’s judgment of woe, and move from exclusion to inclusion, from hostility to love, from fear to acceptance – for all of God’s people.

My grandmother was a quilter. In her home was a closet filled to overflowing with pieces of cloth of all sizes, shapes, colors, and textures. She had gathered it all from worn-out clothes, tattered old curtains, and scraps from material she had bought at the store to make a new dress or a new shirt or a new set of living room curtains. Most, if not all, were lefts overs, small pieces saved from larger pieces of fabric. I watched her on many occasions pull from the remnants box at the fabric store. I was present when her friends would drop off grocery bags of old fabric that they no longer wanted. She would take it all in and add it to that overflowing closet. Honestly, as a child, I can remember opening that closest door and an avalanche of material covering me as I lay on the floor. My grandmother was a gatherer of remnants. But she didn’t just gather them and put them away in a closet. She would take those leftover, discarded, imperfect, and scattered pieces of fabric and she would put them together making a new and beautiful creation. Like this and this and this. [Show my grandmother’s quilts.]

Think about what a beautiful creation we might create here if we went all in and put into practice a remnant theology.