Plans
Psalm 145:1-10; Jeremiah 23:1-6[1]
Over the course of the last 40 years, I’ve taken a number of
personality inventories. It’s something that most denominations require
pastoral candidates to do. I guess some folks must think pastors may be
“crazy.” Imagine that! If you’ve ever taken personality inventories, you know
that they measure things like whether you like being around people, how you
process information, and how you make decisions. One of them measures whether
you like structure or whether you prefer to improvise. You will probably not be
surprised to learn that I like structure. I’m a “planner.” I think I’ve shared
with you the fact that, at the ripe age of 31, as a new Seminary professor I
proceeded to plan the next 30 years of my career. Needless to say, my life
didn’t unfold “according to plan.”
If we’re honest about it, I think most of us would have to admit
that our plans for our lives don’t turn out the way we envision them when we are
young. I think it’s just a fact of life: we mortal beings predict the future
rather poorly. And yet, we make our plans. That’s not a bad thing. I think the
problem comes when we hold tightly to our plans as if our very lives depended
on them. When that happens, we can behave in ways that aren’t very
constructive: we can become tense, rigid, selfish, and even at times mean and
bitter. Planning is a good thing, as long as we have the wisdom to hold our
plans loosely.
The people of Judah whom the prophet Jeremiah addressed were
definitely not living out their lives “according to plan.” They had been torn
away from their homes, uprooted from their land, and forced to live in the last
place on earth they wanted to be—Babylon, modern day Iraq. The temple in
Jerusalem lay in ruins, and with it, their faith that God would never let an
enemy army destroy them. I would imagine they felt their lives were over.
It’s not that Jeremiah didn’t warn them. Like other prophets of
his time, Jeremiah confronted the people of Judah with the fact that they had
been “faithless” (Jer. 3:12) toward God. They had given themselves over to the
worship of false gods. They had broken the covenant with God with their blatant
disobedience. In spite of that, they assured themselves that they were safe because
they believed that Temple and the throne of David would protect them (Jer.
7:4).
In our lesson from Jeremiah for today, the prophet lays much of
the blame at the feet of the “shepherds” of the Lord’s people. In other words,
the leaders: both the religious and political leaders, both priests and kings. In
this, Jeremiah reflected a theme that is found in the books of Kings and
Chronicles: as the leaders went, so went the people. When the leaders did what
was right in the sight of the Lord, the people did also, and all was well. When
the leaders did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, so did the people, to
their mutual ruin. Of course, life isn’t always that cut and dried. But in the
case of Judah, Jeremiah made it clear that the “shepherds” were the ones
responsible for scattering the flock and driving them away into exile.
Despite the seemingly hopeless situation, the Lord promised
through Jeremiah that he would gather them from the foreign land and bring them
back. He would raise up leaders who would truly shepherd the people. And most
importantly, he would raise up a king who would practice righteousness, and
bring safety to both Judah and Israel. In another chapter, the Lord promises
through Jeremiah that “surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord,
plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jer.
29:11). Although their lives had not gone according to their plan, the prophet
Jeremiah assured them that God still had plans for them.
And yet, the fact of the matter was that they were going to have
to live out their lives in exile, far away from anything they knew to be
“home.” The people who had been taken captive to Babylon would not live to see
the return to their own land. That’s why Jeremiah gave them some very practical
advice. Instead of wasting their lives in grief over broken dreams and
unfulfilled hopes, he instructed them to build homes, get married, and have
children, and to see that their children built homes, got married and had
children (Jer. 29:5-6). The lives they had may not have looked much like their
plans, but they could still find meaning and purpose in the lives they were
given.
Our confession of faith today affirms that there is nothing that
can happen to us that “God does not bend finally to the good.” I would imagine
that plenty of us have been through experiences that make that hard to swallow,
let alone believe. When that happens, I think we need more than just the
shallow comfort that “it’s for the best,” or “it’s God’s will.” We need to know
that God will not abandon us, and our lives still have meaning.
When all of our plans have been thwarted, we need a way to hold
on to the confidence that God truly is the one who “keeps faith forever.” We need
something to reassure us those words mean something real to us right here and
now. The real challenge when it seems that all is lost is how to see that our
lives still have meaning and purpose. We need the courage to hold onto the
faith that, even when our plans fail, God promises to fulfill “plans for our
welfare …, to give us a future with hope.”
[1] ©
2018 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 7/29/2018 at
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
