Rev. Jean's Bible Study

photo by Swapnil Dwivedi on unsplash There are a few stories in Jeremiah about how an everyday occurrence gave Jeremiah an idea about God’s message for the people.  In Chapter 18:1-11 , he saw a potter shaping clay.  The vessel didn’t turn out the way the potter wanted it to so he shaped it into a ball again, threw it onto the wheel and started over.  I had some conversation about this passage on Sunday with a few of the youth who came to church.  They didn’t like the image of God smashing them up and shaping them again.  This iconic passage has a troubling aspect for me as well.  It occurred to me that in this image the clay is completely passive.  The image of God renewing my life, shaping it as a potter working with clay, might work on an individual basis (if one has really screwed up) but when it comes to reshaping the world, I think God expects us to do more than passively spin around on a wheel. We need to the potter's instrument, hands...

  Chapter 14    So many experts, so many opinions, so many facts that seem as fluid and fleeting as air.   How does one know what is true?   Jeremiah was not the only prophet of is time.   Proof of the truth of his message is evident now (it is Jeremiah whose words are remembered 2500 years later) but at the time, his word was one of many and he had a hard time convincing people that he had the truth.   Many people preferred to listen to those prophets whose message was not quite so drastic, not quite so demanding, not quite so damning of their way of life.   We all want to hear that we are doing OK, that our lives will not be disrupted, that we will have peace and prosperity.   We cling to that message even when we see all around us evidence that tells us that message is a sham.   The deep truth hasn’t changed much since Jeremiah’s time.   When we neglect God’s way of justice and mercy, of compassion and love, when we put our own...

  Chapter 8   Jeremiah spent his life warning the people of the coming disaster and the cause of it, but it seemed that no one would listen.   Thirty years ago my children were in a music performance at school called, “Driving Miss Lazy”.   We were concerned about fossil fuels, plastics, forest destruction, excess consumerism and income disparity back then in 1990.   Why has it gotten worse and not better?   What keeps you working for change when it just doesn’t seem to be happening?   Like Jeremiah, those of us who hear the call of God and the see the pain in the world just can’t help speaking out.   There is balm in Gilead and we can and will sooth our wounds. I do believe that God hasn’t deserted us. The question for me is: how bad does it need to get before we really take action?    photo by Ksenia Makagonova (unsplash) The Blind Perversity of the Whole Nation 4  You shall say to them, Thus says the  Lord : When peo...

Lamentations 3   Along with his prophetic words and deeds, we have a record of the heart-wrenching anguish that Jeremiah experienced in the Book of Lamentations.   In his laments, Jeremiah described being walled about so that no escape is possible, (he was at times imprisoned), of sitting in darkness without any light, of being a laughingstock and the target of taunts, of living with a soul bereft of peace. But in the midst of this serious depression, still Jeremiah had hope because “the steadfast love of God never ceases.”     Now it is true that the verses of anguish far outnumber the verses of hope in Lamentations, yet still there is hope.   Is hope the one thing that we cannot live without?   As we celebrate a Thanksgiving with little to none of our usual celebrations, we can be thankful that our faith gives us hope, in ourselves, in our human creativity and compassion, and in our God whose steadfast love never ends.   17  My soul is be...