Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good. – Jeremiah 10:5

Today’s Scripture Reading (April 4, 2020): Jeremiah 10

Polish poet Stanislaw Jerzy Lec wrote that “Every scarecrow has a secret ambition to terrorize.” Anyone who has stumbled into one in the dark, or watched a horror movie, knows that they are sometimes very good at what they aim to do, even to those of us who understand what it is that they are. Even in daylight, the presence of a scarecrow presents an eerie feeling to those who see them. But the truth is that, while the ambition of the scarecrow might be to terrorize, in reality, they can do nothing but play imaginary games with their victims. Someone had to place the scarecrow in its perch. And for a scarecrow to move, it needs the assistance of a human partner, and it was only that partner who had the real power to terrorize. The voice that the scarecrow uses is merely a reflection of our own.

Jeremiah compares the scarecrow, standing alone in a field among the ripening cucumbers, and the idols inhabiting the homes of some of the households in Jerusalem. Some of the people feared what these idols might do in the coming crisis, or they depended on these gods to deliver them from the impending invasion. And Jeremiah needed to stress that both the fear and the hope are misplaced. There was nothing that these idols could do to help. These gods were made with human hands and then sold at a price to human buyers. The idol was put in its place in the home by human worshippers, must be cleaned by human cleaners, and they will not move again until a human comes and moves them. And when they speak, they speak with a human voice or a human imagination. Like the scarecrow, they might have a secret ambition to terrorize, but they can only do so utilizing our imaginations.

Jerusalem did not need an idol who could not accomplish anything, either for the good or the bad. The idols, like the scarecrow, would be inconsequential in the coming battle. What Jerusalem needed was to lean on the reality of the living God and his divine interaction. What God had decided to do, he could accomplish. And no human effort could disrupt the action that God had decided to take.

It was not that there was nothing that the people could do. They needed to place their faith in the creator of the world, and not in the works of their own creation. They needed to lean God’s help, the one who had called them, rather than on the gods that they had conjured up in their imaginations. They needed to take their attention off of the scarecrows, who had the ambition to terrorize, but no power to support their aspirations, and turn to the God who could save. It was time to leave the scarecrows in the field to take care of the birds. Jerusalem’s need was for something more substantial.  

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Habakkuk 1