17 August 2025 #notsurprising
I just love the Old Testament. It’s so…. real. There’s a variety of heroes and heroines, the good and the bad rub elbows, sometimes evil is celebrated while holiness is punished, and some things really surprise you. Like today’s reading from Jeremiah.
It’s not surprising that Jeremiah is thrown into the cistern and left to die. He’s demoralizing the men preparing for battle and there’s a lot at stake here. The Babylonians are fast approaching Jerusalem; in preparation for a David-vs-Goliath-like battle, the Israelites are searching for their proverbial five smooth stones. Our Israelites are under-trained, out-numbered, over-whelmed, and a good many of them have already defected to the dark side. Amid this prelude to war, their very own holy man bursts in shouting gloom-and-impending-doom from the Lord: “Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague, but whoever goes over to the Babylonians will live… This city will certainly be given into the hands of the army of the king of Babylon, who will capture it.” Yikes. I totally get why King Zedekiah allows the princes to toss Jeremiah into the pit. No surprise there.
What is surprising is that our intrepid hero Ebed-melech is a Cushite. The Cushites come-and-go throughout the Old Testament narratives… as enemies of the Israelites. Here we have one as a court official in the house of Zedekiah; it seems Zedekiah is one of those leaders who keeps his friends close and his enemies closer. Ebed-melech is precariously positioned as an outsider on the inside of the court and everyone knows it. And he speaks up for Jeremiah, against those peers in power. Surprising.
In the end, of course, the Babylonian king and general-extraordinaire Nebuchadnezzar does wage war and emerge victorious over the Israelites. Jeremiah was right. Nebuchadnezzar sends all our Israelite ancestors, including Jeremiah and his scribe/friend Baruch, into exile - and inadvertently ushers in a new era of clarity amongst the spiritual confusion.
And Ebed-melech? The Lord sends a message through Jeremiah for him: although Jerusalem will be taken, the Lord will rescue him. He will not be given into the hands of the Babylonians and Ebed-melech will not fall by the sword. Why? Not because he rescued Jeremiah. But because he trusted in the Lord, in the words the Lord spoke through Jeremiah. Surprising.
In our own efforts to bring people to the Lord we might be like Jeremiah, talking amongst friends and acquaintances, encouraging them to return to the faith with repentance and conversion. We might even be the bearer of the radical message of the Gospel to ‘our own’ who think they know more than the Church. But we also might be like Ebed-melech, precariously positioned as an outsider-on-the-inside at an event where the faithful are ridiculed, persecuted, and maligned. It might be up to us to defend the wrongly accused or rescue those who speak the mind of God. Just as it should be. #notsurprising