In Telling
the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairytale the American
theologian, Frederick Buechner, writes “the Gospel is bad news before it is
good news.” That is certainly true for Jeremiah whose long career as a prophet
is characterized by weeping. From the beginning his was the kind of ministry
that no one appreciates because he was a truth teller to those who fabricated
and lived by lies. But his was the voice that could not be silenced though like
the Truth that would one day come Jeremiah was despised and rejected, a man of
sorrows and familiar with grief. In the end Jeremiah will die in exile and the
last words of his book will describe the burning and looting of the temple in
Jerusalem. But despite the overwhelming bad news for Judah and the suffering
that will ensue as the consequence of unfaithfulness God speaks a greater truth
through the tears of the weeping prophet. On the other side of mourning is joy;
on the other side of sorrow is gladness. The young will dance and the old shall
be merry for the Lord who scattered them will bring them back to life like a well-watered
garden. But this greater truth can only be experienced if one accepts the
lesser truth, the first truth about ourselves. That we like Judah prefer an
easy word to a hard one and have perfected the art of living illusionary lives
believing secret sins can be confessed without being acknowledged. In the end
captivity will come if it hasn’t already. But that is the good news for only
from captivity do we listen to the greater truth. That in His weeping the Truth
dried our tears for His pain purchased our joy, His death our life. And knowing
that the Truth has set us free makes it much harder to go back to living a lie.
And that is good news indeed.
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