Sometimes The Winners Lose; Sometimes The Losers Win

On July 23, 2012, I posted “Two Oppressors: The Palace and The Temple.” In that piece I said, “Comfort and hope and restoration will come for only a few and only after the present ruling regime has been crushed.” Downtown Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s day crawled with powerful leaders from inside the palace and from inside the temple. Leaders of government and leaders from the temple joined hands and lifted them together against the true prophets as well as against the weak. Government leaders and temple leaders are members of the same club.

A cluster of verses, Jeremiah 5:26-28 nails red-handed the members of this downtown club, their Fruit of the Looms gather right at ankle level. These three verses in the New International Version read, “Among my people are wicked men who lie in wait like men who snare birds and like those who set traps to catch men like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the cause of the fatherless to win it; they do not defend the rights of the poor.”

Anyone who knows the boot of the “fat and sleek” loves the less gentle translation that substitutes the words “wicked men” with the word “scoundrels.”

Louis Stulman writes the following on the emergence of hope that is promised in what I like to call Second Jeremiah, “From the literary arramgements of the second half of the book, as well as from its recurring motifs, we find that hope is rooted in suffering. Every buoyant overrture appears against a backdrop of exile. Hope requires letting go of the old world and its systems of security. To hang onto the old leaves little room for the new workings of God. Hope is found on the margins and not at the center. That is, it is found among the “losers” and not the “winners.” Hope involves building genuine community in a place of risk. Ironically, the community established in Babylon became one of the three great centers of Jewry in the ancient world. Hope takes shape in the form of a new spirituality based on internal renewal, forgiveness, and an awareness that God cares deeply about suffering people and their disappointments….Hope looks forward to homecoming.” (Louis Stulman. JEREMIAH. p. 235.)

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22:16
July 25, 2012

Twin Oppressors: The Palace and The Temple

The Book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible contains 52 chapters. The first 25 depict gloom and doom for the city of Jerusalem and the country of Judah. Chapters 26, 27, 28 and 29 toss a hint of hope that follows in chapters 30 through 52. Four chapters, 30 through 33, form what commentators call The Book of Comfort. Louis Stulman in his JEREMIAH, Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries, calls Chapters 30-33 the “centerpiece” of the last half of the book. Comfort and hope and restoration will come for only a few and only after the present ruling regime is crushed.

And why is the devastation of the Palace and the Temple necessary? The false prophets chronicled in these pivotal chapters, 26-28 tell lies from their pulpits, work primarily for paychecks and join hands with the safe establishment. Palace Politics and Temple Theology rule Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s day. When the power brokers of the palace and the money changers of the temple crawl in bed together, the fruit of that union results always in the corruption of the system and the oppression of the weak.

Jeremiah 26 looks at two prophets, two true prophets, who run counter to the wishes and commands of the folks in charge, the status quo, the cherished belief systems and the long-standing prejudices. Kings despise true prophets, and Jerusalem’s downtown octopuses lay traps for them. Both the indomitable Jeremiah and the faithful Uriah expose the draconian policies of the palace and the arid theology of the temple. By themselves, the policies of the palace smell bad. By itself, the theology of the temple putrifies. Merge these odors, and there follows a smothering stench that reaches the very nostrils of God.

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22:16
July 22, 2012

Harold Bloom On The Destruction Of Sodom

I have known a few homophobes in my day. Most of them look to the Bible as backup for their attacking gay people. The twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah connote wickedness that brings on destruction. Our word “sodomy” comes from the name Sodom. Genesis says that Yahweh destroyed Sodom for its sinfulness. And what was its sin? Was it, as is so often promulgated, its sexual orientation No! It was something else. What sin so heinous caused Yahweh to destroy two cities?

Harold Bloom in his THE SHADOW OF A GREAT ROCK A LITERARY APPRECIATION OF THE KING JAMES BIBLE (p. 39) counters the unfounded premise that Sodom’s destruction came about because of its homosexual practices. Bloom writes, “Though Proust would have been surprised to think it, Sodom is not destroyed on account of sexual orientation but rather for inhospitality and contempt, toward strangers and also toward Yahweh.”

Would homophobes be surprised to think that their contempt for human beings is the very sin that destroyed Sodom?

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22:16
July 20,2012

A Soft Rain

A soft rain falls on my Atlanta garden this July afternoon. Its moisture nourishes cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, egg plants, a cantaloupe, two watermellons, red strawberries, a blackberry bush, blueberries and muscadine vines, heavy on thirty feet of fence.

A spirtual aura hovers over a flourishing garden. That spirit rivals and surpasses Dickenson’s heft of cathedral tunes. A healthy garden negates failed projects, shattered dreams and the years that the locust have eaten away. Looking back with A. E. Housman many can say with him:

I hoed and trenched and weeded
And took the flowers to fair
I carried them home unheeded
Their hue was not the wear

The clause “A soft rain falls” brings to mind the title, SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS. In that novel a young man is despised, maligned, hated and accused of murder. The venomous attacks leveled against him come not from anything he has done but only from his ethnicity. He is a Japanese American. Miraculously, he is found not guilty and is completely exonerated.

The snow that covers the cedars sympolizes his exoneration, his restoration. The setting of this story is the northwestern United States. Perhaps, the rain that falls on Atlanta these days foreshadows an exoneration of people in the southeastern United States excluded because of their ethnicity.

James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22:16
July 19, 2012