Today's
Scripture Reading (March 26, 2020): Jeremiah 1
Neil Gaimon, in his book "American
Gods," writes that "everything that is, casts a shadow." Everything.
I know a lot about shadows. I have spent all of my life casting one, and it
seems most of my life I have lived in the shadow of other people and things
with which I have been connected. All my life, I have lived in the shadow of
the greatest modern Empire on the planet; the United States of America. People
often ask me why I am so interested in American politics, to which I usually
remind them that I am an American, just not a United Statesian, and that I live
in the Shadow of the Empire. And when you are mouse, sleeping next to the
elephant, every dream of the elephant carries with it the potential to end or
seriously change the life of the mouse. Who the next President might be has a
profound effect on life where I live, a cycle of which Western Europe has also learned
that they need to be aware.
We think of Jeremiah as the prophet
of Jerusalem. In our imaginations, we can see him wandering around the city,
calling the people to repentance, and prophesying about the end of the city and
the nation, an event that would take place during his lifetime. But the opening
words of his written prophecies add a bit of flavor to the story. Jeremiah was
not just a prophet; first, he was a priest. And he was the son of the priest Hilkiah
and had responsibilities for carrying out priestly duties in Temple at
Jerusalem. It seems likely that Jeremiah was the son of the same Hilkiah that held
the position of High Priest during the reign of Josiah, and it was near the end
of that reign that Jeremiah's ministry as a Prophet would begin. If he was the
son of Hilkiah, the High priest, then he was likely that youngest of at least
three brothers, two of whom we know from extra-biblical sources. He was the
brother of Azaryah, who would hold the position of High Priest after his father's
death, and Haran, another prominent priest of the era.
But Jeremiah was not a child of
Jerusalem. He was a child of Anathoth, a priestly town in the province of
Benjamin. Part of the significance of Anathoth was that from the edge of the town,
you could actually see the walls of Jerusalem. Anathoth existed within the
shadow cast by Judah's capital city. And while the inhabitants of the town did
not inhabit the city, they would have been greatly influenced by whatever was
taking place in the capital.
And the sad truth that Jeremiah understood
was that, when the day came for destruction of Jerusalem, the great city would
not go down alone. His beloved Anathoth would also fall, along with all of the
other towns standing in the shadow of Jerusalem. That is the end result for all
of us who reside even just "in the shadows."
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Jeremiah
2
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