Jeremiah 52: The Inverted Kingdom – Part XIII
Monday, January 29, 2024
Jewish captives with camel and baggage on their way into exile. Detail of the Assyrian conquest of the Jewish fortified town of Lachish (battle 701 BCE) Part of a relief from the palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh, Mesopotamia (Iraq)
Capture
Thus was Judah exiled from her land . . .
In this last Chapter of Jeremiah’s prophecy, we see the capture of mind, soul and body that results from enduring neglect and refusal to do what God asks of us. And we understand that we cannot sustain life when we practice this kind of internal death. We may want to renew ourselves with solutions we think palatable and we may believe that we know the best way to bring goodness out of evil, but we are children playing at being grown up when we prefer our ways to God’s.
Yesterday’s MAGNIFICAT Morning Prayer included a canticle from Isaiah (35:2-4, 8-10): [The faithful] will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God. Strengthen the hands that are feeble, make firm the knees that are weak, say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you. A highway will be there, called the holy way; no one unclean may pass over it. No lion will be there, nor beast of prey go up to be met on it. It is for those with a journey to make, and on it the redeemed will walk. Those whom the Lord has ransomed will return and enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy; they will meet with joy and gladness, sorrow and mourning will flee.
We have a simple lesson here about how to live in a world that constantly runs counter to what the Lord asks of us. The people of Judah are vanquished, their leaders captured, their possessions taken. They become disenfranchised from all that identifies them. They are slaves to another culture. This capture is seen as something bleak and stark, a life without promise; but Isaiah reminds them that – as with all things involving the Living God – what appears to be loss is gain, and what seems to be gain is loss. It is precisely when all that we have and know is taken from us that we are given the opportunity to turn to the font of life. When we are and have little or nothing, there is only God.
Isaiah tells us that in this new life into which we have stepped there is not darkness but rather light. God will announce God’s self with reversals; and a Way will open up before us that we will only see once we have replaced our pride with humility and our desire to be independent from the Lord with a desire to be one with God. Nothing can threaten us when we walk along this Way for it is holy, and once we throw off the values that the darkness of the world has to offer, we will be holy, too. Our step will be quick, our burden light for we will be carried by God. We will also understand that we have a journey to make, a journey of redemption itself.
We, the ransomed, travel not toward the very one who has ransomed us but with the Lord. During Advent and the Christmastide we heard Isaiah’s prophecy read out in which the prophet announces The One who is The Way. We have revisited the results of capture and the road beyond that imprisonment. Today we Christ followers know our savior’s name as Jesus. The ancient Judeans could only dream about Christ’s coming. How fortunate are we to travel this highway with him.
Tomorrow, beyond the highway of capture.
Adapted from a reflection written on June 4, 2011.
Cameron, Peter John. “Prayer for the Morning.” MAGNIFICAT. 4.6 (2011). Print.
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