In the first part of this essay I pointed out that fire was one the root metaphors that our spiritual ancestors employed to help them discern the character of God. The metaphor depicted how power flared forth from God and both generated the various systems that sustain life in the world and sanctified the hearts of communities and individual believers. In part two, our attention turns to the prophet Jeremiah, who offers a remarkable account of the fire of God burning in the human heart and the painful process of sanctification.   

A Lament of Pain

The book of Jeremiah is unique because it contains not only laments for the people of Israel but also laments for the prophet himself, the oft-called personal laments. These provide one of the few examples of spiritual autobiography in the scriptures. One of these personal laments is especially noteworthy because Jeremiah put into words what he experienced when the Lord took possession of his heart:

O Lord, you have enticed me,
    and I was enticed;
you have overpowered me,
    and you have prevailed.
I have become a laughingstock all day long;
    everyone mocks me.
 For whenever I speak, I must cry out;
    I must shout, “Violence and destruction!”
For the word of the Lord has become for me
    a reproach and derision all day long.
 If I say, “I will not mention him
    or speak any more in his name,”
then within me there is something like a burning fire
    shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in,
    and I cannot. (20:7-9)

Normally when we describe the presence of the Lord in our hearts, we become rhapsodic. I remember singing in Sunday School about “floods of joy o’er my soul like sea billows roll since Jesus came into my heart” along with the “joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart to stay.” But Jeremiah did not cry out in a rhapsody of joy. He cried in a lament of pain.

He railed at God for mistreating him and complained: “You have enticed me.” Jeremiah was just getting started. In his frustration, he fulminated, “You have overpowered me, and you have prevailed.” Jeremiah experienced the Lord as his adversary, and he framed his encounter with the Lord as a Jacobian wrestling mismatch in which he was being mauled.

Jeremiah bewailed that God had taken possession of his heart and control of his voice. Words came out of his mouth that he did not want to say: “For whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout: ‘Violence and destruction.’” The presence of a loving Lord in his heart revealed the violence of the elites and their destruction of decency in Judean society. Love compelled him to cry out:

They have grown fat and sleek.

They know no limits in deeds of wickedness;

   they do not judge with justice

the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper,

   and they do not defend the rights of the needy. (5:28)

The Shunning

Jeremiah bemoaned that the word of the Lord had become a disgraceful and contemptible thing. Because he constantly shouted “Violence and destruction,” Jeremiah was embarrassed to walk the streets. Everyone mocked him; he had become a “laughingstock all day long.” Think about that—among the deepest needs we know as human beings is our need to belong and among our deepest fears is shunning by those whom we consider our people.

There was no question in Jeremiah’s mind that he belonged to the Lord. The Lord had appeared to him when he was a young boy and said that he had formed him and known him while he was in the womb. But belonging to the Lord brought Jeremiah no comfort because it came at the expense of belonging to his own people. As Abraham Joshua Heschel has suggested, they considered him an unpatriotic insurgent. How, in their minds, could he suggest that violence and destruction were coming to a nation chosen by the Lord, with a priesthood ordained by the Lord? To a nation fair and trim where so many deeds of charity were done, where decency and good order radiated day and night, to a nation with a gilded temple and the pageantry of worship? Surely he was hysterical. Jeremiah’s people went beyond shunning him; they were waiting for any misstep so that they could assassinate him!

Jeremiah’s desire to belong to his people was so overwhelming that he tried to renege on his calling to be a prophet of the Lord and become a prophet of the people. They had tried to silence him, and he obliged them by trying to silence himself, but the word of the Lord was a fire burning in his heart and bones. Jeremiah tried to hold it in, but he could not. The fire burned too intensely and consumed his will to resist: “I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” A burned out Jeremiah would finally speak, and the word of the Lord would take flight from the ashes of his heart.

Resisting the Word of the Lord

Jeremiah’s examination of the depths of his heart invites us to respond with a similar self-examination. When I accept the invitation, when I slow down and try to fathom the murky depths of my heart, I find resistance there. 

I know that the word of the Lord is love, that Jesus is the embodiment of that love, and that the Spirit implants love in my heart. I know instinctively what Jesus meant when he told us to love one another, even to love our enemies. When I lift my grandchildren to my cheek and their eyes shine with joy and their toothless mouths break into a smile, my heart glows. In those moments I know what love is and what love demands. I would do anything to guarantee their safety and happiness.

I recognize this as a gift of God, and I recognize the love of the Lord implanted in my heart compels me to cherish life and defend it. It moves me to expand my circle of care beyond my family to my community and world, as far as I am able. Love opens my heart to the reality that all people are my brothers and sisters; all children are my grandchildren; the whole created order is my home.

Here is where the resistance comes. Such love would call into question the violence of the current economic and social arrangements and expose the destruction being inflicted on the created order. To really be faithful to God’s love, I would find myself constantly crying out with Jeremiah, “Violence and destruction.” Instead, I silence myself. I fear being shunned. I am so embedded in the current economic and social arrangements, so comfortable in my purchasing power, so content with my place in society, that I make my peace with soft religiosity. As Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote to believers when Hitler was consolidating his power:

We are moved by soft religiosity, and would like to think that God is lovely, tender, and familiar, as if faith were a source of comfort, but not readiness for martyrdom (Prophets, v. II, 76). 

The Irresistible Word of the Lord

I resist, but Jeremiah testifies that the word of the Lord is irresistible. It is a raging fire, and it wears him out:

There is in my heart, as it were, a burning fire

  shut up in my bones,

and I am weary with holding it in,

  and I cannot.

We experience weariness as a state of exhaustion which can lead to slowly losing hope that all ends well. For believers, weariness is accompanied by a sense of the absence of the Lord. Paradoxically, weariness for Jeremiah came with a profound sense of the presence of the Lord. His heart was tempered by the fire of God. Jeremiah’s weariness was in reality his sanctification.

Sanctification

There’s not much focus in the Reformed tradition on sanctification—the process whereby we become more like Jesus (essentially better lovers)—these days. We used to see justification and sanctification as the seamless robe of salvation. God’s free gift of grace (justification) was our enlistment in God’s work of salvation in the created order (sanctification). Now this gift of grace has been reduced to our personal salvation and our work has been reduced to keeping our hearts pure until we receive our heavenly reward.

I wonder whether our failure to talk about the process of sanctification, about a love tempered in the fire of testing, is rooted in the knowledge that our churches have been in decline for many years and we fear that such a gospel is off-putting. For the last several decades we have tried to grow the church with a gospel of soft religiosity. This has not worked, and the result is un-tempered and brittle hearts. I believe our current focus on doctrinal certainty and purity is really doctrinal brittleness. We see this brittleness when the church breaks apart as soon as any tension is applied.

Weariness and the Presence of the Lord

I am weary, and I walk among a people in a dry and weary land. The systems that sustain life in my body are breaking down, and at the same time, the systems that sustain life in our church, nation, and the created order are also breaking down. I begin to lose hope that love is the power we say it is and that the arc of history bends toward justice. I begin to lose a sense of the presence of the Lord in the unfolding of the created order. This weariness is neither to be gainsaid nor borne alone. After all, Jesus said: “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Jeremiah’s lament gives me pause and invites me to consider that my state of weariness may be more multifaceted than I have imagined. It invites me to consider that one facet of my weariness is the work of the fire of the Lord burning away my resistance to the word of the Lord and compelling me to love more deeply, to stand for the weak and powerless, to give voice to the all the voiceless species in this grand and wondrous created order.

As odd as it sounds, my weariness offers comfort that the Lord is present in my life and offers hope that the arc of history while long does bend towards justice. Like Jeremiah, perhaps I too will become weary of holding in the word of the Lord.