Jeremiah 20 – Jeremiah enters the
court of the Temple to prophesy his message of disaster, and he is taken into
custody, scourged and chained near the northernmost gate, the Benjamin Gate. On his release the next morning, he
prophesies against the chief officer responsible for his sufferings. Jeremiah
is anxious about the hate closing in on him—as perhaps Jesus was too. “Whenever
I speak, I have to cry out and shout, ‘Violence! Destruction!’ Lord, I am
ridicules and scorned all the time because I proclaim your message. But when I
say, ‘I will forget the Lord and no longer speak in his name,’ then your
message is like a fire burning deep within me. I try my best to hold it in, but
can no longer keep it back” (20:8-9).
How
dreadful it must be to have a message so hard for people to hear from God that
it undermines the prophet’s ability to live any kind of normal life with his
people. Jeremiah knows the ultimate power of God to vindicate his (Jeremiah’s)
reputation, and he knows that the tests God burdens us with are just in the
long run, but the pain of it is overwhelming at times. For now, Jeremiah is
desolate: “Why did I come forth from the
womb, to see sorrow and pain, to end my days in shame?” (20:8)
2 Corinthians 3 - Paul commends the
community for being such a great witness. But he actually doesn’t need to
commend them. They themselves are “letters
of recommendation . . . written on our [Paul’s and the church’s] hearts for
everyone to know and read . . . [letters] not with ink, but with the Spirit of
the living God, and not on stone tablets but on human hearts” (3:2-3).
Everything
of importance for Paul rests on the Spirit – his commendation of them, his
“qualifications” or credentials to be and “administrator of this new
covenant" (3:6). He goes on to compare the salvation offered by Moses
through the outward letter of the Law with the salvation offered by the
Spirit. He calls the one that came
by Moses a “ministry of death” (3:7), not because it was bad — it wasn't. It
was glorious (3:7). But it was transient, but the ministry of the Spirit lasts
forever (3:11).
The
understanding the Jewish leaders have of God’s will, their obsession with the
outward Law, veils their minds in Paul’s view. But the “veil is removed only
when a person is joined to Christ” (3:14). When Moses “turned to the Lord”
(3:16) – the Spirit – the veil was removed. This happens with all people, Paul
assures us, not just with Moses. He ends the chapter with this: “Now this Lord is the Spirit, and where the
Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, with our unveiled faces
reflecting like mirrors the brightness of the Lord, all grow brighter as we are
turned into the image that we reflect; this is the work of the Lord who is
Spirit” (3:17-18).
This language is
beautiful, but it is also complicated. I think I get it. What we "turn
to" to guide us in our spiritual journey, and the power of the Spirit that
illuminates it for us, determines in large measure what we ourselves become. We
are "the image" of that "looked-to reality," the mirror
that reflects it. The eyes we bring to that reality have a large part in
determining exactly how transformative the "reflective" experience is
in our lives.
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