Even jackals offer their breasts to nurse their young, but my people have become heartless like ostriches in the desert. – Lamentations 4:3

Today’s Scripture Reading (April 4, 2014): Lamentations 4

As soldiers began to return home from the Crusades in the early 11^th or 12^th Century, they began to return with a legendary story to tell alongside of their own adventures. The story took place in Silene, Libya. Because it was there, in a pond close to the town, that there lived a dragon. The dragon had poisoned the water supply for the town and he had brought plagues on the town, and was generally causing havoc in the surrounding area. According to the story, a knight known as Saint George happened to be passing by the town. A princess tried to warn the saint off, to stay away from the town, but he persisted on coming close to the lake. When the dragon showed himself, Saint George charged the dragon – and eventually was even able to tame the dragon.

The story spread as it was told at parties and anywhere else where people were willing to listen. Part of the attraction was that there was probably nothing feared more than the presence of a dragon. It is thought that the legend of the dragon probably arose from a number of factors – the presence but not clearly understood Nile crocodile, the fire-breathing version of the dragon may have risen from the spitting Cobra – and all of this is augmented by bones of whales, or even dinosaurs to create the mythical creature.

And while the NIV chooses to translate the Hebrew word “tanniyn” as jackal, a better translation of the passage might be dragon. Jeremiah’s description is that even a dragon, one of the most feared animals on the face of the earth, knew how to care for its young. The idea is that the most fierce beasts that this world has ever imagined, these beasts that have captured the imagination of a planet and have been long feared by the human race - even these beasts know how to care for their young.

Judah desired to be a dragon, they wanted to be a force that had to be dealt with in the world. And so they had picked up some practices that they thought made them strong. And one of the practices seemed to be a lack of care for the weak of the society. Somehow they had come to believe that caring made them weak. But Jeremiah pushes back. He says to Israel that they are not dragons, they are ostriches. An ostrich lays its eggs and then leaves the eggs unguarded to be trampled on by whatever happens to come by. Jeremiah looks at his nation and says “you want to be dragons, but all you really are is ostriches.”

The Bible continually raises the image of the weak among us. God wants us to be strong, but the reality is that if we are really strong, we will not overlook those who are weak – the young and the old and the challenged that we share this planet with. And I am convinced that this is one of the places where the contemporary church is failing. We know that the weak are among us, but they test our patience. We don’t mind if they worship with us, but we don’t want them to interfere with us because they don’t think the same way that we do. We draw a very clear line between the weak and the strong, but God says that there is no line. Our community will always contain the week and the strong. And sometimes we will be the strong – and sometimes we will be the weak. But the good news is that God has created us to be dragons, and not ostriches. And that means that we will be strong, and part of being strong is that we will care for those that are weak. This is the reality in which we are designed to live.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Lamentations 5