Today's Scripture Reading (August 27, 2026): Jeremiah 30
One of the ugliest scars that we have
inflicted on our planet has absolutely nothing to do with strip mining or any
of the other ecological disasters that we insist on inflicting on this planet
on which we live. There are scars even worse than the ecological ones (as if
what we are doing to our ecology were not bad enough). The worst scars come
from our insistence on behaving in a bigoted way. The discrimination that we inflict
on people because of their race, creed, gender, health, or even sexual
orientation is unconscionable. In the midst of our hate, we seem to forget that
these people are the creations of a living God; they are the recipients of the
most important gift God could give to us, life, and they are the objects of God's
biggest sacrifice, his only son, so that they could live the life he had given
to them to the absolute fullest extent possible. Our discrimination belittles both
us and our belief in God.
Jeremiah prophesies that the exiles
from Judah will one day return to their native land. And historically we
understand that prediction. In about sixty years, depending on when we date
this passage, the once mighty Babylonian Empire would lie in pieces, and some
of the people of Judah would begin to return home. But Jeremiah does not just
say that Judah will return home; he also says that Israel would return home.
In popular culture, we seem to believe
that this prophecy remains outstanding. We speak of the lost ten tribes of
Israel, meaning the tribes of the Northern nation who were carried into
captivity by the Assyrians a century and a half before Judah was carried into
exile by the Babylonians. But the tribes were never really lost. The children
of the northern ten tribes slowly filtered back into their homeland. The
insidious plan of the Assyrians was to intermarry with the captives from
Israel. As a result, the descendants of the Northern tribes who returned to
their homeland were no longer genetically pure. They were half-breeds. Israel
was never lost; it was just watered down. In the Christian writings, the last
Ten Tribes of Israel are represented by the despised Samaritans.
By the time of Jesus, the Samaritans
were routinely discriminated against by the people of Judah. For the Jews, the
Samaritans represented something that was almost less than human. They were a
people created as the children of God, but they had traded that position in for
something less. Yet Jeremiah reminds us that God doesn't see half-breeds when
he looks at the Samaritans of Jesus's time; all he sees is his children, a
truth reflected in Jesus's conversation with the woman at the well in John 4.
Whatever it might be that we see in
the people around us, God still sees his children. Children worthy of his love,
and because they are worthy of God's love, they are also worthy of ours. And we
know that one day God is going to bring us all home to the land that he has
given to his children; all of us: regardless of race, creed, gender, health, or
even sexual orientation.
Tomorrow's
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 31
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