Daily Bible Reading: Jeremiah 42-43 and Romans 8:18-39

Jeremiah 42 - The leaders of the remnant, Johanan and Azariah, beg Jeremiah to intercede for them with God. They sound as if they are REALLY ready to be obedient to whatever the Lord wants from them. Jeremiah takes ten days to consult with the Lord, but when he returns and tells them they must not go on to Egypt, they disobey YET AGAIN. They give in to their fears: their fear of the Chaldeans, their fear of starvation and battle. The message of Jeremiah is ever the same.  The word of God runs counter to the natural inclinations of men—their sense of what they ought to do, their reasoned judgment about what is wise.  God always seems to advise us not to pay attention to immediate fears - what we might even say is common sense - or to the things we might want the most.  When you run away from what you fear, disaster always overtakes you. Obedience is counter-intuitive because our intuitions are not tuned to God.  Azariah and Johanan cannot believe that this is what they ought to do.  So they defy him. 

Jeremiah 43 - They will not obey and stay in Judah.  They accuse Jeremiah of being the pawn of Baruch in encouraging them to stay.  Instead, they go to Egypt and they take both Baruch and Jeremiah with them to the city of Tahpanhes, on the Nile River. Here Jeremiah predicts Nebuchadnezzar’s expedition to Egypt in 568-56 and his victory over it. There is no running away from what God brings.

Romans 8:18-39 - Paul is at his most difficult in verses 18-21.  I do not understand it very well, but perhaps I am not alone.  Paul seems to be saying that the consequences of the fall—futility, in particular—is something only partly overcome, even by faith. 

“For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; . . . all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.  For in hope we were saved” (8:19-24). Our bodies do not yet partake of the redemption Christ has gained for us.  I don’t know if this is true.  Early Friends thought it could be FULLY EXPERIENCED.

But the fruits of the redemption are richly offered to us in this life, in all kinds of ways, spiritual and physical.  I think I understand what he means when he says that  the hope -- the less than rational optimism we feel as Christians -- cannot be for what we already enjoy but must be for a something we only dimly sense now, something in a dimension we have no clear access to right now or perhaps something in the future.  Now, whether this thing we hope for is an anticipation of heaven (after life) or something that pertains more to this creation—its full restoration perhaps—this I do not know.  Sometimes I think the thing I hope for more than any kind of “heaven” is for a “restoration” of human fullness in this creation, that somehow the faithfulness that we offer through our lives, our work, our testimony to the world, etc—that these things somehow, incredibly, will inspire and move people distant from us in place and time to a kind of life more in keeping with what God always intended for us than what we live today.

The mystery continues.  The Spirit groans in pain for us (8:26).  “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.  For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (8:28-29).  This is an interesting idea.  I guess Calvin must have liked this passage. Maybe Paul didn’t have everything just exactly right either.  Jesus as the first-born of the redeemed creation—this I understand, and feeling called to be his sister, this I understand too.

Then the chapter ends with this lovely passage: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?  Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (NRSV, 8:35-39).