Chaos, the Rhetoric of Hate, and the Way of Jesus
Proper 20 (25), Year C
Jeremiah 8:19-9:1 [Amos 8:4-7]
“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense
of the indefensible... Thus, political language has to consist largely
of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness...
Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder
respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
Let us go in together,
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint—O cursèd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let's go together.
Shakespeare, Hamlet I.5.186-190
It’s difficult to write these days without commenting on the state of the world, which is, within and beyond the United States, awful and daily becoming more so. Russia’s unjust war of aggression against the Ukraine continues with no end in sight. The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza continues to claim innocent civilian lives, with Gaza having been rendered all but uninhabitable and often without power, food, water, or medicine. Somalia continues to teeter on the edge of famine.
Here in the United States we continue drifting toward chaos, evidenced by policy-level climate change denial and accelerating ecological destruction, an economy ordered toward the enrichment of the already wealthy, military personnel patrolling city streets in the name of “law and order,” people being snatched up without due process by masked government agents, legislated neglect and abuse of the poor, vitriolic and often violent rhetoric, ideologically motivated murder, and an aspiring totalitarian regime with a disregard for truth that would make George Orwell sit up and take notice.
It seems that we, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, live in a “time out of joint.” And although this state of things is new to us, it is in the light of history far from unprecedented. Governments of many countries have long, checkered histories of manipulating, lying to, stealing from, threatening, beating, imprisoning, kidnapping, and killing sectors of their populaces, invoking the name of God in defense of their policies and blaming their political opponents for the chaos that ensues. History, as Hegel suggested, is indeed a slaughter bench, and we don’t know the half of it.
So how are we to take all this rottenness—what does it mean, and how should we live in its midst? Although the lectionary readings for this week don’t offer anything like complete answers to these questions, they give us a place to start.
The first reading, from Jeremiah 8, and the Psalm (79:1-9) share an historical concern and an understanding of its meaning. As Jeremiah and others prophesied, the Babylonians have besieged Jerusalem, breached its walls, razed the city, and destroyed the Temple. They killed many of the people of Judah and deported many others to exile in Babylon. Both the prophet and the Psalmist rue the apparent fate of their people and call upon God to explain himself: “How long, O LORD? Will you be angry forever? Will your jealous wrath burn like fire?” (Ps. 79:5).
Neither author is ignorant of how the situation of God’s people came about, or why. The book of Jeremiah is filled with the prophet’s calls for the people of Judah and their leaders to turn from their corruption and idolatry and return to their role as a witness-bearing beacon to the peoples of the world. Both texts concede that the people and their leaders have strayed from the way articulated by their covenant with God, chasing instead after wealth unjustly obtained by way of a piratic economy and pleasures cheaply enjoyed as a perquisite of their idolatry. And both hold on to the hope that God will restore the people and their land if they repent and once again take up the way of the covenant. Jeremiah went so far as to prophecy such a return (Jer. 30:1-33:26).
But the possibility of return is not so much as alluded to in either lectionary text. Rather, they are filled with anguish, confusion, and not a little indignation, all interwoven with a stubborn faith in the goodness of the God who not only stood by and watched the fall of Jerusalem, but in some sense engineered it. Both are expressions of lament.
In The Message of the Psalms, Walter Brueggemann counts Psalm 79 among the Psalms of communal lament, and attributes whatever awkwardness or discomfort we may experience praying it to our “privatistic inclination.” Because we have little in the way of communal sensibility, we struggle to think of ourselves as members before we think of ourselves as individuals. Consequently, “We have nearly lost our capacity to think theologically about public issues or public problems” (67). Thus he commends these Psalms to us both as reminders of our essentially social natures and as expressions of the fact that privations and calamities more often than not befall us as a people, rather than as individuals.
The focal point of the Psalms of communal lament is the sense of loss created by the destruction of the Temple. Psalm 79 calls on God to remember what is at stake because of what has happened: “the nations,” a euphemism for Gentiles, have not simply destroyed the Temple, but by their very presence defiled it. They have mistreated those they killed by refusing them burial, and made the people of Judah the laughingstock of the region. Brueggemann describes the earnestness of this description as the attempt of the people to get God to feel what they feel. Their call for empathy seems to be based on the sense that God’s understanding will give way to God’s action, to their being forgiven and restored and their enemies “put in their place”—that is, for the proper order of things to be restored. To grasp this hope for and vision of restoration in its fullness, it’s important to consider the entire Psalm—all 13 verses—and not just the 9 verses of the lectionary text.
But what does Psalm 79 have to do with us? How can it show us what we should do and how we should live as we face what seems to be an inflection point in our lives, our churches, and our society? Although there is nothing in our experience that matches the desolation created by the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, we may identify what Brueggemann calls “dynamic analogies” that allow us to pray the Psalm with reference to our own situation. This is an act of the imagination, and we must remember that our commitments and sensibilities are not those of the Psalmist or the prophet.
The Psalm ends with what Brueggemann calls a “new orientation.” Its imagery is decidedly pastoral, and designed, he suggests, to call to mind other Psalms, beginning with Psalm 23: “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want… Surely your goodness and love will follow me… And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” However, his consideration of the Psalm does not end on the pastoral note, but with an important reminder:
New life is never a gift in a vacuum. It is wrought in profound and dangerous struggle as we bring to visibility the deep incongruity that marks our life. Our life is one in which all that is finally holy is violated, day by day. Yet, we dare hope for pastoral possibilities that move us beyond the wrenching, venomous indignation (74).
Evil never has the last word. Hatred, violence, exploitation, bigotry, and greed reoccur again and again, but cannot endure. Love will always triumph over them. Our fundamental calling as Christians never changes; it is simple, but seldom easy. Love God. Love your neighbors. Love your enemies. Speak truthfully and act mercifully. And remember that all appearances to the contrary, the kingdom of God is within your grasp. Thanks be to God.