Twenty-Third Sunday after Penetcost

By The Rev. Dr. Carolyn J. Sharp
Professor of Homiletics at Yale Divinity School

(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Oct. 27, 2024)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, oh Lord, our rock and our Redeemer. Amen. Sing. Shout for gladness. Give praise to the Lord. Jeremiah urges believers to rejoice. Hope is on the horizon. God is about to show compassion to all who have been exiled, gathering them and leading them home. No more struggling to survive in hostile territory. No more dehumanizing treatment as outsiders, unwanted strangers. This beautiful oracle sings restoration, comforting Judeans who'd seen Jerusalem fall to invaders and thought they'd been abandoned by God. Jeremiah was there during the onslaught. He barely escaped with his life. This prophet has seen intense suffering. So even in oracles of consolation, he doesn't hold back on truth-telling. He gives us straight talk about the trauma his people have endured. This morning, Jeremiah draws us into a landscape saturated by tears and haunted by loss.

Even as Judean refugees are guided to freedom, they will weep, imploring their Redeemer, "Save your people." These are traumatized survivors of the Neo-Babylonian Empire's relentless assault on Judah. Babylonian troops laid siege to Jerusalem for 18 terrifying months. This was January 588 to July 587 B.C. And they finally breached the city walls. Jerusalem was set ablaze, and its temple plundered. Thousands of Judeans were taken prisoner. Others fled to shelter in neighboring countries. The promise, the promise we hear this morning is that those who survived the remnant will be gathered by God from the farthest parts of the earth and returned to their homeland. Jeremiah paints a vivid picture of the aftermath of trauma and forced displacement. The sound of this great multitude reaches our ears, but it is not singing. "With weeping, they shall come," our text says, "and with supplications."

The NRSV's consolations, which you heard read so beautifully, is not actually the best translation of the Hebrew. [Hebrew 00:03:33] always throughout the Psalms and everywhere else in the Bible means supplications and treaties for mercy. Jeremiah's people witnessed horrific violence that reduced Jerusalem to rubble and ash and obliterated Judah's leadership. Shock and grief have overwhelmed the survivors. As they move toward home, they cry out to God. Their woundedness is audible. This oracle immerses us in a soundscape of loss. A few lines after our lesson this morning, Jeremiah will render a truly haunting moment. We'll hear Rachel, the matriarch who lived centuries earlier. You know Jacob, Leah, and Rachel. Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be consoled because they are no more. Grief sweeps through the Book of Jeremiah like a flood.

Years after the disaster, Judean survivors' post-traumatic numbness has worn off, and their emotional pain is intense. They beg God for mercy, overcome by what they have endured. Jeremiah, a brilliant poet, has the weeping exiles approach the viewer. Did you catch that? They're returning here, [Hebrew 00:05:22] in Hebrew, here toward us in Jerusalem. We're given to imagine the blind and the lame among the throngs, and we see some who are pregnant pressing on, even those in labor. So urgent is their need to get away from captivity, away from threat and violation and hopelessness. Some in this great company are beaming with joy. But others, others limp toward us with tear-stained faces. Some have scars visible on their bodies. Some walk in stunned silence, haunted by memories of what they witnessed. Still, others look utterly exhausted, bodies bent by the stress of surviving inhumane conditions.

They approach us. Jeremiah's artful poetry creating solidarity. We are meant to welcome them home. What do you see when you imagine Jeremiah's refugees moving across this landscape saturated by tears and haunted by loss? I see the radiant glory of God leading them, and I glimpse the trauma they carry. And something else. I see some faces I know. Years ago, I worked in refugee services in this area, first for the International Institute of Boston, then on Beacon Street, then for a Cambodian mutual assistance association in Chelsea. Looking on Jeremiah's refugees, I see Pala among them. I'm changing the names for confidentiality. Pala is someone with whom I worked who was a dedicated community leader. He had witnessed unthinkable atrocities back in Cambodia. He'd gone into the forest to gather wood and had to hide there, watching as the Khmer Rouge came and killed his entire family.

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Among Jeremiah's refugees, I also see Quinn, a kind, extroverted woman, always smiling and laughing as she helped refugees find jobs in the Boston hotel industry. Quinn had fled Vietnam by boat and had endured many, many assaults by pirates on that harrowing journey. I look again and Vanna is there, a woman I tutored in English who took excellent care of her seven children, even as she struggled with depression and searing grief. I see her sobbing uncontrollably. I'll never forget it because she'd been forced to leave her elderly mother behind in a Thai refugee camp. And just as Jeremiah says, "Those with child and in labor," verse eight of our lesson, Vanna had to walk for many days through a dense tropical jungle while eight months pregnant, staying hyper alert for land mines and venomous snakes to bring her family to safety.

Jeremiah teaches us the reality of trauma, showing us what countless refugees have endured in the cauldron of war, the brutality of forced migration, and the assaults and indignities of life in detention centers. In Jeremiah's multitude, we can see not just Judeans, but millions of refugees over the centuries. Some singing, but many weeping as they emerge from places of fear, shock, and despair. Friends, this is our community, for we too are gathered by a Redeemer who proclaims release to the captives, who lets the oppressed go free, and who says, "Follow me." Look once more at the stream of refugees. Among the blind and the lame, Bartimaeus is there. The Gospel of Mark makes visible the suffering of those within the community, not the enemy within, those within the beloved community. Those living with disabling conditions or disease, those set upon by evil spirits, those ostracized and silenced.

Can you imagine crying out to your Messiah for help? Jesus is just a few yards away from Bartimaeus. And being told by those around you to be quiet about what you need, to be silent, to stay invisible. A politics of cruelty, that's what that is. A heartless way of organizing public life, callous and morally bankrupt, whether targeting a blind man in Palestine 2,000 years ago or folks disenfranchised in our political discourse today. In stark contrast to that politics of cruelty, Jesus responds with a politics of compassion.

He calls Bartimaeus and all who suffer, beckoning us together into God's healing love. Today, Jeremiah teaches us the reality of trauma, and Jesus teaches us the compassion that makes us who we are as His disciples, always on a journey toward healing, grieving something, refugees from something, every one of us. We follow our Redeemer, even when tears roll down, becoming His beloved community in solidarity with all who suffer. So whether you're singing praise to God or praying in a voice, trembling with outrage, or hushed by grief, know this for certain. Your Redeemer is calling you out of captivity, calling all toward healing in the expansive kingdom of God's grace. That's the gospel truth. In the name of the one who is love and life itself, Jesus Christ, to whom we all honor, glory, and praise now and forever. Amen.

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