Tuesday, August 29, 2023

Wednesday prior to Proper 17

 

Jeremiah 15:15–20 - The faithful prophets, such as Jeremiah, suffered persecution and rejection in anticipation of Jesus’ Cross. Yet the Lord did not abandon them; He remembered them, and He was with them to deliver them.

Jeremiah calls upon the Lord to deliver him from the assaults and slander of his enemies. On what basis—his own righteousness? No; like David in the psalm for Sunday (above), Jeremiah pleads on the basis of his trust in the Lord: ‘I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.’ We can call upon the Lord in our times of trouble for the same reason: we belong to Him. Though the proclamation and preaching of His Word, and through the holy Sacraments, God makes us His own and delivers us from the tyranny of sin.

In Jeremiah 15:19-21 God offers a response to the prophet’s complaint. As is often the case in Scripture, God answers the prayers of the people not with the response they want to hear. We are offered this reminder, “The hazard of such honest prayer, as we shall see, is that Yahweh can be equally honest and therefore abrasive in response to prayer.” [1]

Jeremiah 15:20 is nearly a verbatim quote of 1:18-19, “And I for my part have made you today a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall, against the whole land -- against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land. They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the LORD, to deliver you.”

A Prayer for patience: O God, by the patient endurance of Your only-begotten Son You beat down the pride of the old enemy. Help us to treasure rightly in our hearts what our Lord has borne for our sakes that, after His example, we may bear with patience those things that are adverse to us; [2]



[1] Walter Brueggemann, A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 114.

[2] Lutheran Service Book © 2006 Concordia Publishing House, St, Louis

3 https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2189

4 Woodcut “The Crucifixion:  by Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld, copyright © WELS for personal and congregational use

 


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