AVOIDING HEAVENLY WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

Jeremiah 4: 11-12; 22-28

The Rev. Clyde Fant, respected former Dean of the Chapel at Stetson University, endeavored to once describe the delivery and content of, perhaps, the most famous sermon ever preached. Fant describes the 18^th century preacher, Jonathan Edwards, who was a strong Calvinist with Puritan persuasion. From a pulpit in Enfield, Massachusetts, a frail, soft-spoken, weak-eyed, sickly man scared the wits out of his congregation one day with his address to them ominously called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” This was the text of his sermon: Deuteronomy 32:35: “Their foot shall slide in due time.” That was it. The congregation he was addressing was, from the youngest child to the oldest man or woman, “apathetic and unconcerned about spiritual matters. At one place in the sermon Edwards referred to Suffield, a town in the neighborhood where he had earlier preached, and asked the people of Enfield if they were not equally concerned about entering the kingdom as were the people of Suffield, ‘where they are flocking day and night to Christ?’ … At one point the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and desire silence, that he might be heard! At another point in the sermon a minister sitting behind him became so overcome with distress at the severity of Edward’s presentation of God’s judgment that he tugged upon his coat and cried, ‘Mr. Edwards! Mr. Edwards! Is not God merciful?” [20 CENTURIES OF GREAT PREACHING, Vol. III, Word Publishing, pp. 51-52] As far was we know, Edwards neither stopped preaching nor turned to answer him, creating even more dread in the congregation as this little man was reminding men, women, and children personally by pointing them out, that they were sinners in the hands of an angry God. No sermon title has been as etched in the annals of history as that one. His sermon’s first sentence could be our first sentence: “In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked, unbelieving Israelites,” except our text is Jeremiah and the vengeance is aimed at the inhabitants of Judah who just took God and the commandments too lightly, as if they just had advisory authority. Every Presbyterian who knows the Book of Order realizes that there are those who have the power to cast a vote at a meeting, called the power of vote, and others who just have the power to discuss and advise, called the power of voice. Surely God’s Word is not to be taken into the lives of Jews in Jeremiah’s day, or into the lives of Christians in our day, as just being treated as moral advice, with the same authority as Dear Abby, Dr. Phil, or a horoscope. Surely NO!! But that’s the level of complacency that had swept over Jerusalem and the surrounding area like a plague. And that’s the kind of complacency that sweeps not only across this nation, but across this community; not only across this community but, in corners of even this congregation! And so Jeremiah, perhaps as a frail young man with a Jonathan Edwards thin voice, that seemed as diabolical as if coming from a maniacal Hannibal Lecter, had had enough of trying to plead with his people. That day long ago, his blood ran cold; his eyes grew dark and menacing, and with the measured voice of one someone might mistake as a madman, said these words according to former Union Seminary Professor Dr. John Bright, in his translation from the Hebrew. Verse 23: “I saw the earth—lo, chaos primeval! The heavens too—its light was gone!! I saw the mountains—and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills rocked too and fro. I looked—and behold, no human was left, and the birds of the skies had all flown. I looked—and behold, the tilled land was a desert before Yahweh, before his fierce anger. And Yahweh said: ‘A waste shall the whole land be; for this, let the earth lament. The Heavens above don mourning clothes, for I’ve spoken … and not relented; I’ve purposed, and will not turn back.” In modern terms we might call such a barrage, “God’s weapons of mass destruction.” They are terrifying and awesome, not like Alfred Hitchcock horror, but like Orson Wells’ frightful broadcast of “War of the Worlds” on Halloween eve of 1938. Or in non-fiction terms, one recalls Elie Wiesel’s Short account he called NIGHT about the annihilations he witnessed in Auschwitz; or even what was in the mind of the spiritual writer of our introit today, who moaned those words in fear of the power of that dreaded night for unbelievers: “My Lord, what a morning; my LORD what a morning; MY LORD what a morning: when the stars begin to fall.” And one of you, too frightening to ask it, considers in his mind: “I thought God was gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” And the answer is that God is not, not to those with flippant, arrogant, or indifferent attitudes: could YOU be among those for who grace is not offered by God? Are you, brother or sister, one who has muttered, “I can do without you God, leave me alone!” God has no use for people who treat the Almighty like a pesky fly or like a vending machine where money is put in and products drop down from Heaven as if mechanically determined to do so. God will not be made to orbit your life, or yours or yours or mine!!! The sun will not orbit planets; the source of all light will not be at the behest of planets that would be dark and lifeless without them. Jews in Jerusalem were treating God like that as Jeremiah preached, and Christians in Massachusetts were doing it as Edwards preached. No one should fall in to the trap of thinking that God will grade arrogance on a curve, or give self-sufficiency his pleasure, or fail to see that we deserve God’s condemnation. The Bible reminds us that destruction is what we deserve; getting something besides destruction takes a different approach. How do you rebuild a broken relationship? Does it work to go to the family member, friend, or boss and say all the ways they are wrong and you are right? Does it build bridges to explain that you walked away because you were tired of all the rules, or that you just can’t stand being around the other person? Those tactics bring on Heavenly Weapons of Mass Destruction if you try them on God by offering excuses, defending of your position, or with backtalk. Conversely if, hat in hand so to speak, and head bowed, and a lowered voice, and a remorseful heart, you say you can’t make it alone, and you are ready to try it God’s way, then in the glare of the porch light that has been turned on for your homecoming, with the aroma of roast beef wafting in from the grill, with trails of tears making cheeks shine, and arms that open wide, there is forgiveness offered in countless ways, by a Heavenly Father who sent his son so that we could clearly know the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

There are two sides to every story; there are the “heads or tails” sides of a coin, and there are two sides of the love of God: judgment and grace. Even when I was being spanked as a child, I was been corrected, not destroyed; even when I was rewarded as a child, it was to encourage and not to spoil. Our Lord still wants to hear us say something like Jesus said: “Father, I need you. ‘As the song once put it: melt me, mold, me, fill me use me.’ Guide my unruly life. I am moving from the driver’s seat of my life and asking Jesus to take the wheel. I’m tired of driving in the glare and rainstorms of life through which I cannot see well. I am glad to have Jesus running things now. Thank you for Him. Amen.” The God who longs to have a relationship with you never forces his Son into your heart. He stands at the door and knocks; some here today will invite him in, and others already have, but others need to stop back-seat-driving for Jesus! Either let him drive, or you drive! You can’t say you’re a Christian and then call all your own shots. Still others think that prayers are for the weak, that church gets in the way of life, and that God is just needed when it is time to be sprinkled with water, sprinkled with rice, and sprinkled with dirt. If you think that, my friend, then you will need far more protection than man made devices can give you, for you yourself will face Heavenly weapons of mass destruction.

The choice, today, is yours.

Jeffrey Sumner September 16, 2007