Thomas J Parlette
“The Days Are Surely Coming”
Jeremiah 33: 14 -16
11/28/21, First Advent
One of Juliet’s childhood friends is an accomplished Broadway actress and singer. In fact, she just got cast in the Broadway revival of Music Man coming up this season.
Whenever we see her around the holidays, she has wonderful stories to tell about the theater world. One of our favorites is about the time she was performing in a touring company doing children’s theater all over the country. She had been cast as Cinderella, and in one particular scene, her Prince Charming was singing about his love for her. The lyrics spoke of the burning love inside of him, but in the middle of the song, the words just flew out of his head and he got stuck on the phrase “I’m burning… burning… burning. I’m burning… burning… burning,” until the music director finally shouted out the lyrics and got him going again.
Actors live in fear of that happening, “going up” on their lines, as they say. You try to have something in your back pocket, some way to get out of a situation like that, but it doesn’t always work out – and as poor Prince Charming learned, you get burned.
Actress Jennifer Laura Thompson recalls how her cast mates in a production of Wizard of Oz tried to improvise when the set machinery broke down. Thompson was playing the role of Glinda, the Good Witch, who was supposed to descend to the stage in a large bubble. But as Thompson began her descent, the bubble stopped working. She was stuck 40 feet in the air as her cast mates down below ad-libbed, “She’s coming… it’s Glinda… she’s coming… she’s almost here… do you see her… Glinda’s coming,” until finally the crew was able to lower her down manually, albeit a bit quicker than expected, but still, just short of a crash landing.(1)
If you can put yourself in the shoes of those actors, improvising and acting excited as they nervously waited for the crew to fix the problem, then you can probably muster up some sympathy for the prophet Jeremiah as he tried to point the nation of Israel to the coming of their Messiah. Israel was hurting. They needed a savior. That savior was coming. But they couldn’t wait. They needed hope now. In the last days of ministry, Jeremiah gave them that hope.
In his book The Rest of God, Pastor Mark Buchannan tells of counseling a young woman who was struggling on two fronts; she had never healed from a childhood of abuse and neglect, and those painful experiences fueled her present bad choices that were messing up her life. Nothing he said could heal her past or undo her present situation. And it was in this moment of despair that Pastor Buchannan realized that God still had plans and promises for this woman’s future. Her hope lay in trusting her future to the God who promised to be our Wonderful Counselor, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.
Pastor Buchannan writes, “Since that day, this is mostly what I do when I counsel – I help people anticipate… What I do best is describe, as much as human words allow, the hope to which they have been called, the glory we are to receive. I describe how Jesus has the power to bring everything under his control.”(2)
I help people to anticipate. That was the message of Jeremiah to his people and to us as well.
“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. I shall cause a righteous branch to spring up for David, and he will execute justice and righteousness in the land…”
It’s kind of sad that Jeremiah is most remembered as the “weeping prophet.” He always seemed to be on the unpopular side. His inability to hold his tongue really cost him dearly. He was banished for a time from the priesthood. He was physically beaten and publicly humiliated on more than one occasion for expressing his unpopular convictions. But he just couldn’t keep quiet. The voice inside him, the voice of God, just wouldn’t allow him to remain silent.
When we first meet Jeremiah, he is a preacher of righteousness – he is a real firebrand, telling the people how they were greedy and disobedience and God had forsaken them. Ho wonder he got beat up a lot.
But by the time we encounter Jeremiah in this last chapter of his book, he has turned to words of comfort. Some would say that he had mellowed. Perhaps so – but the situation had changed as well. Before, his people needed to be confronted, now they needed to be comforted. Before, they needed words of judgment, now they needed words of grace. Before, they deserved condemnation, now they needed hope. So instead of offering a word of punishment, Jeremiah offers a word of promise.
“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring forth from David – and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land… And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”
Sixteen times in his book Jeremiah uses the phrase “the days are coming.” He is announcing the coming of Jesus. He didn’t realize at the time just how God would fulfill the messianic promise, but it was an announcement of Christ’s coming just the same. And like all of God’s promises, it would be fulfilled. It took 600 years – but that’s like an afternoon in God’s time. The important words are these – the days are surely coming.
And that is what this first Sunday in Advent is all about. The days are coming when there will be justice. That is the first promise Jeremiah reminds us of. There will be justice.
There is an old Arabian story about a wealthy prince who claims the land of a poor widow so that he can expand his palace gardens. The poor widow brings her complaint before a local judge, a man known for his character and integrity. But the judge is also smart enough to know that the wealthy prince could ruin him. So rather than summon the prince to his court, the judge loaded a large sack on his back and went to the palace. The judge asked the prince if he could fill his sack with dirt from the palace garden. The curious prince agreed. After the judge had filled the sack to the brim with dirt, he asked the prince to lift it. The prince said, “That sack is too heavy even for both of us to lift.”
And the judge replied, “This sack which you think too heavy to bear, contains only a small portion of the land that you took from the rightful owner. How then, at the day of judgement, will you be able to support the weight of the piece of land.”(3)
We have an innate need for justice, don’t we? We want to see the bad punished and the good rewarded. There is something built into the very fabric of our being that yearns for justice. Until the Messiah comes, what is our role in creating justice? All we can do is pursue righteousness – doing the right thing.
Tom Long writes, “Righteousness is not a sweet virtue that everybody in the world desires. Those who take advantage of others for their own gain do not want the world to be fair and just. Those who benefit from the weakness of others do not want the world to be compassionate. Much money and power are invested in maintaining injustice. If every wage were fair, if every person were honored as a child of God, if every human being were safe from exploitation, many would lose their grip on status, self-gratification, and affluence.”(4)
We might squirm when we hear those words – but prophetic words are meant to be uncomfortable, they are meant to challenge us. They are meant to wake us up. Life is not fair. Nevertheless, the days are surely coming, says Jeremiah, when the playing fields of this world will be leveled. The days are coming when that which is unfair will be set right. For when the Bible speaks of justice, it is not merely talking about individual justice. God’s call is for a just society. God’s call is for basic fairness for all people. God’s call is for a new kind of society – a society where all people will live with dignity and freedom. That is what justice is all about.
Jesus said the days are coming when the last will be first and the first shall be last. During Advent we need to take those words seriously and ask ourselves whether we are contributing to a just society or whether we are one of those who are contributing to the status quo. The days are surely coming when there will be justice.
The days are also coming when there will be righteousness. Justice refers to the state of our society. Righteousness refers to the state of our individual souls.
A Yiddish term for “righteousness” is zaddik. It refers to a saintly person, someone whose character and actions are aligned with the will of God. Dr. James Qualben tells a story to illustrate the meaning of this word.
A few years ago, his car’s fuel-injection system was malfunctioning, so Dr. Qualben took his car to a mechanic. The mechanic happened to be an orthodox Jewish man. He listened carefully to the engine, then took apart the fuel injection system, carefully cleaned each individual piece, and put the whole thing back together again.
The car worked perfectly. The mechanic closed the hood and announced with a satisfied smile – “Zaddik!” The fuel injection system and the engine were working precisely as the engineers had created them to work. They were in perfect harmony with their creators intent.(5)
Justice and righteousness – we can’t choose one over the other. We have to have both. Righteousness on a personal level and justice in our society - they go hand in hand.
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when justice and righteousness will prevail. It’s not enough on this First Sunday of Advent to focus on the peripheral elements of the season – the lights, the decorations, the trees, the cocoa and the cookies. We need to think about the very heart of the Advent message – the coming of the Messiah, who brings justice and righteousness. The redemption of our society as well as the redemption of individual souls.
Ruby Bridges was just six years old when, in 1960, she was chosen as the first Black child to integrate the William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. Photos show the incredible courage of the little girl who was escorted to school each morning by federal marshals to protect her from the angry white parents who shouted curses, insults and threats at her each day.
Dr. Robert Coles, a child psychiatrist from Harvard, interviewed Ruby Bridges in an effort to determine how young children learn to cope with such frightening and dehumanizing abuse day after day. In the interview, Ruby told Dr. Coles that she prayed for the people who threatened her, insulted her and spat at her. Her mother and her minister had told her that God was watching over her each day, and it was her duty to pray for and forgive the people who opposed her.
When Dr. Coles asked Ruby if she thought this advice was correct, she said, “I’m sure God knows what is happening… He may not do anything right now, but there will come a day, like they say in church, there will come a day. You can count on it. That’s what they say in church.”(6)
There will come a day. You can count on it. That was Jeremiah’s message more than 2000 years ago. And it is the church’s message still today. Jeremiah the prophet was a lonely man, but he had a burning in his bones. Jeremiah had a passion for righteousness and justice. He announced the coming of the One who would bring righteousness and justice into the world. Surely the days are coming. You can count on it.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3, p57.
2. Ibid… p57.
3. Ibid… p58.
4. Ibid… p59.
5. Ibid… p59.
6. Ibid… p59-60.
