Looking Forward
Jeremiah 7:23-28
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “This command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.’ Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels, and looked backward rather than forward. From the day that your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day; yet they did not listen to me, or pay attention, but they stiffened their necks. They did worse than their ancestors did. So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. You shall say to them: This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.”
The role of the prophet is to share messages received from God with God’s people. The prophet’s task is not one that typically leads to popularity. Their messages are often condemnations or exhortations to live more justly and in accordance with God’s will. In Jeremiah 7, the Lord gives the prophet a message to share that calls to mind the Israelites’ time in the wilderness following their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. The Israelites’ initial exultation over their liberation quickly gave way to the struggles of their long wandering in the desert. God commanded his people to obey, and instead they did not listen and stubbornly walked in their own ways. The Israelites “looked backward rather than forward” (7:24). After the wonders that God did in freeing them from the tyranny of Pharoah, the Israelites were all too quick in judging their new situation in the wilderness to be worse than their previous enslavement. Before they even made it to the Red Sea, the Israelites already told Moses that it would have been better for them to remain in slavery in Egypt (Exodus 14:11-12). Soon after God’s wondrous deliverance at the Red Sea, the Israelites again complained and suggested that life in Egypt was preferable to their new freedom wandering in the wilderness (Exodus 16:3; 17:3). They were looking backward rather than forward, as this text from Jeremiah puts it.
It is an attitude that we, like the ancient Israelites, often adopt when we are being led into unknown territory or situations. It is easy, natural even, to prefer what we know to the unknown that lies before us, even, paradoxically, if the thing we know is undesirable, not life-giving. Being led into unknown places, into the wilderness, feels insecure, often frightening. It takes courage and demands we trust in God.
In such times we can take on a different sort of looking back that helps us look forward: remembering God’s presence, protection, and provision in the past and trusting that God will do the same for us in the future. That is not easy work, but it is the work of faith, trusting in God who never leaves us and always provides: “I will be your God, and you shall be my people.”
prayer
Keep watch over your Church, O Lord, with your unfailing love; and, since it is grounded in human weakness and cannot maintain itself without your aid, protect it from all danger, and keep it in the way of salvation; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
(Lesser Feasts and Fasts, 2006, p. 47)
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