The Lord is our Righteousness

December 1^st, 2019   “The Lord is our Righteousness”    Rev. Heather Jepsen

Jeremiah 33:14-18

         It is not uncommon for the life of the church to be out of sync with our contemporary culture.  Be it our focus on generosity in a world focused on selfishness, our calls for peace in a world bent on military might, or our stories of grace in a world of unjust justice.  At no time is the church more out of sync with the world then in Advent.  Today is December 1^st and the world around us is full into Christmas mode.  Celebrations have begun and will continue on into the New Year. 

But here in the church we are telling a different story.  Here in the church this is not a time for celebration.  Instead this is a time for darkness, for reflection, for prayer, and for quiet preparation.  God is doing something new in the relationship with the people of Israel, something wonderful and powerful, and these days of Advent are days when we prepare for this moment.

         Throughout this fall season we have been following the story of God’s love for God’s people through the relationship of God and the people of Israel.  Things have not gone well.  The people are hard hearted and selfish, and like us they are often led astray by the idols of their day.  The people are broken, and God’s heart has broken along the way.

         Last week we read about Josiah’s period of reform.  He attempted to lead the people in a religious reformation.  The nation celebrated the Passover and the people recommitted to following God again.  But it would not be enough.  The tidal wave of suffering that sin had set in motion could not be stopped, and after Josiah’s death the nation will be destroyed by Babylon.

         Our prophet for today, Jeremiah, is writing during this same time period.  Jeremiah was alive during Josiah’s reform and for the time of suffering that follows.  The kings after Josiah are not good and the nation falls into sin once more.  Most of Jeremiah’s preaching is negative bitter words, as God again declares God’s heart break and sadness at the result of this special love and this holy people.  Days of great suffering are already present at the time of Jeremiah’s writing and things will only get worse.  We are on the cusp of the destruction of Jerusalem and the last remnant of the nation of Israel.

         It is into this world of darkness, it is into this impending suffering and death, it is into this gloom and unrighteousness that Jeremiah preaches the word of hope we have for today.  Destruction is on the horizon, but even in the midst of that darkness there is hope.  “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.”

         The nation will be destroyed, the people will go into exile, but God has not forgotten God’s promises.  “In 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.”  God is preparing to do something different.  Like our reading a few weeks ago when we heard that a shoot shall spring up from the stump of Jesse, today God offers the hope that once again a ruler will come from the line of David, and this ruler will follow the ways of the Lord.

         It can be hard for us to understand this word of hope and to imagine how long it took for this word to be fulfilled.  In the time of Jeremiah’s writing, there still was a king on the throne in Jerusalem, King Zedekiah.  He is not a good king but he is a king from the line of David.  At this point in the story, there has been a king on the throne in Jerusalem for 400 years.  But all that is about to end.  Babylon will come and the king will be removed.  And then no king will sit on the throne again.  It will be over 500 years until Jesus is born.

         There is no way for the people of Israel to understand or comprehend what God is doing in this story.  All they have is a word of hope.  They have not been forgotten.  God remembers the promise.  But God is doing a new thing and it will be hard to see.  We know now that Jesus will be born, and as we heard in our first reading from the gospel of Mark, he will be called the Messiah.  But Jesus does not sit on the throne in Jerusalem in the manner of a traditional king.  In fact, to this day, there has not been a king on the throne in Jerusalem from the linage of David since that Babylonian exile.  That’s 2500 years, an awfully long time to wait.

         It’s become clear in our narrative readings that the people of Israel really aren’t capable of being the people that God wants them to be.  We too are in the same boat.  We can’t seem to muster the sinless loyalty, love, justice, and righteousness that God demands.  As Paul will later write, “we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  So where does this leave us?  And how do we find hope this Advent?

         Jeremiah promises that “In 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’”.  Remember from Isaiah a few weeks ago that God wanted the people to be righteous.  In the vineyard song the Lord expected justice but got bloodshed, righteousness but heard a cry.  The Lord wanted the people and the city to produce righteousness, but they couldn’t.  So now, the Lord will be our righteousness.

         This is the deep word of hope for the people of Israel and for us.  God wants righteousness and we can’t do it, so God will step in on our behalf and God will do the righteousness for us.  God will make things right.  This is the word of hope from Jeremiah.  Setting things right is what God does, and now God is setting things right in a new way.  A righteous branch will come, a shoot from the stump of Jesse, a ruler like no other, who will sit on the throne of David forever.

         The thing about God making the world right is that it is hard to see and it is hard to know.  We can’t guess what God is doing each day to make things right in this world. Jeremiah couldn’t guess that 500 years after he preached this word that somehow a baby would be born and that would be God’s righteousness.  The disciples couldn’t have guessed that the teacher they followed would be executed by the state and that somehow that would be God’s righteousness.  The early church couldn’t have guessed that this misfit group of sometime believers and most of the time doubters would be filled with the Holy Spirit, travel far and wide preaching the word, and that this would be God’s righteousness.  And we cannot guess what the next thing God is doing is, what surprising action or turn of events will show us that the Lord is our righteousness.

         When God is busy setting things right, that work is not obvious to us.  We cannot see or imagine or know or even guess what it is that God is doing to make the world right today.  But we can trust in the promise that Jeremiah offers, “The Lord is our righteousness” as well as the word that God remembers God’s promises.  God will not forget us and our longing for justice and peace in this world. 

         The season of Advent is about awaiting the coming of Jesus.  We focus on the Old Testament story and the coming of the Messiah to fulfill the promises to the nation of Israel.  But we also remember the promises made to the people of Jesus’ time.  That someday Jesus would come back.  That the world would be completely healed.  That God would reign supreme, wiping sin away forever, and bringing an era of complete justice and righteousness.  We live in an already and not yet time.  The kingdom has come in Jesus Christ, and we look ahead to the day when God will fully heal our world and the kingdom will fully be realized here on earth as it is in heaven.  Even now God is working to make things right.  Even now God is bringing this healing about.  But like the people of Jeremiah’s time, we will never be able to guess what form this healing will take.

         And so the story of God’s love for God’s people continues.  Even though the people are unfaithful in their love, even though they fail and sin, still God does not let them go.  Jeremiah preaches a word of hope in a world filled with darkness.  The troops are amassing at the border and the destruction of Jerusalem is imminent.  It is into this setting of ongoing devastation that Jeremiah preaches a word of hope.  God will not let this people go, God will not abandon them forever, and God will remember God’s promises.  And finally, when the people fail at righteousness, God will step in and be righteousness for them.  God will be busy at work, behind the scenes, making things right. 

         In Jeremiah’s time there is no obvious sign of hope.  There is nothing on the horizon but devastation and destruction, and yet Jeremiah hopes on.  As the trees are cut down and chaos reigns, the power of God waits just below the surface.  The bud is coming now to flower, the stump sends out its shoot, a righteous branch is growing, from the very lineage of David.  This new king will reign in justice and peace.  This new king will be like no other.  This new king will make things right in a way that no king before him ever could.  This world will be called “The Lord is our Righteousness”.  Amen.