By Jim Brenneman, president
Scripture: Jeremiah 33:14-16 (NRSV)
Our hearts broke when we saw the little child, face-down in the sand, washed ashore, as part of the tragic flight of some four million Syrian refugees from their war-torn homeland. Even as I write this devotional, we still behold hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing economic impoverishment and political oppression the world over. These flights to freedom are, sadly, true-to-life enactments of Advent without the edits found in our “living” Christmas pageants. It’s way too close for comfort.
Indeed, one hears in these real-life cries for freedom, the cries to God of the Hebrew slaves under Pharaoh’s ruthless regime or the cries of parents when Herod slaughtered their infants. Joseph and Mary were swept up in that refugee crisis in order to protect their little son, Jesus. Jeremiah describes the land of Judah much like we see in newsreel footage of parts of Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere today: “The streets of Jerusalem are desolate,” he writes, “without inhabitants, human or animal” (33:10), and all that can be heard is “Rachel weeping for her (slaughtered) children” (31:15). Heart-wrenching!
To such bleak and troubling circumstances, to greater and lesser heartaches, and to all life-altering sorrows, suffered by us or anyone else, the prophet Jeremiah proclaims that God makes a promise. God will fulfill the “good promise” of a new regime, new beginnings, new life, led by “a righteous Branch,” also called “the Lord our righteous savior.” God promises to “do what is just and right in the land” such that Judah and its capital, Jerusalem, and by extension all who call on the name of the Lord “will be saved” and “live in safety” forever and ever (33:14-15).
Christians everywhere celebrate in this advent season the beginning of the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s good promise, born in Jesus Christ, “the Lord our righteous savior.” It is not God’s intent that there be any refugees of any kind, any time, any place. It is God’s promise to ensure just and equitable, safe and secure homelands of the heart and body, for all God’s children. Period. Therefore, let us sing with “mirth and gladness” alongside the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah and all those for whom a better world is yet a hoped for promise or a promise already fulfilled (33:11):
“Give thanks to the Lord of hosts,
for the Lord is good,
for the Lord’s steadfast love endures
forever!”
Scripture: Jeremiah 33:14-16 (NRSV)
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 15In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 16In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”