Jeremiah 3:6-18 • “Confession Is Good for the Soul” • Doug Dortch
Series: “Plans for God’s Good Future”
January 19, 2020
I couldn’t help but do a double take the other day when I came across the story of a man who returned a library book past its due date…by 47 years! Robert Nuranen recently handed the local librarian in Hancock, Michigan a book that he had checked out for a ninth grade assignment, along with a check for 47 years’ worth of late fees. Nuranen explained that his mother had misplaced the library’s copy of Prince of Egypt while cleaning the house, and though the family had come across it every so often, they only set it aside again, not giving it much thought whatsoever.
He found it, however, while looking through a box in his attic, which led to his decision finally to return the book. As he said, “I figured I’d better get it in before we waited another ten years; after all, 57 years would be embarrassing.” And so he did, along with a personal check for $171.32 in late fees. The book, with its stamped due date of June 2, 1960 was part of Nuranen’s fascination with Egypt, a country that he eventually was able to visit, along with 54 other countries and all 50 states, though Nuranen admits he never finished the book.
There’s a lot we can appreciate about his story, but surely all of us can agree that what impresses us most is Robert Nuranen’s willingness finally to own up to something in his past that most people would have continued to ignore. Would you not agree that most folk would have found a way to get around acknowledging such a mistake? “It was my mother’s fault, not mine.” “There’s been too much time that’s passed and too much water that’s gone over the bridge.” “I’ve got too many irons in the fire now.” “Let sleeping dogs lie.” I can tick off ten or so rationalizations off the top of my head to excuse a lapse like that; can’t you?
But what Robert Nuranen came to see is what each of us knows in his or her heart of hearts – we must acknowledge such missteps in life, great or small, because our missteps matter to God and therefore should also matter to us. Whenever we find ourselves coming across something we know is wrong and we choose it nonetheless, we have missed the mark in terms of what God created us to be about and we have overstepped some boundary that God has established for our very own good. Whether it be something as simple as an overdue library book or something far more sinister that only the darkest crevice of your heart might harbor, it mars God’s image in you and demands that you turn from it in order to position yourself for the mercy that only a turn to God can make possible. In theological terms, we call this faithful process confession and repentance, and together they make up the two sides of the “salvation coin.”
It’s that faithful process to which the prophet Jeremiah felt inspired to call the people of Jerusalem. By now you know that Jeremiah’s ministry began during the heyday of King Josiah’s reforms and extended into the downfall of Jerusalem and the exile of God’s people into the far country of Babylon. This part of the book of Jeremiah represents the early years of his ministry, when to the casual observer everything looked exceedingly promising as far as Jerusalem’s future was concerned. Josiah had instituted religious reforms. The people of Judah had been able to avoid the threat of both the Egyptians and Assyrians, nations to the left and right of them, which her kinfolk in the Northern Kingdom of Israel had not been able to do. The economy was booming. Things couldn’t be better, or so the people thought. But God thought otherwise.
This section of Jeremiah’s prophecy describes a conversation with God in which God invites His prophet to pay exceedingly close attention to how Judah has not in fact learned from her “older sister” Israel’s mistakes, which Israel had made a hundred years before. While Judah may have gone through the motions of devotion to God, her commitment has fallen woefully short of what God has expected from His people. In fact, Judah can’t even claim to have been more faithful than Israel, so great has been her pretense and deceit. If anything, God has now considered Judah even more faithless!
So, now God has commissioned Jeremiah to call the people of Judah back into relationship with Him. “Return,” declares the LORD. “Return and I will frown on you no longer, for I am faithful,” declares the LORD. “Return and I will choose you.” God’s most earnest hope is that His people will turn to Him so that His name might be honored throughout the world and Jerusalem be seen as the place where His rule is established forever.
I read this passage and ask the question, “What is it that would keep anyone from turning to God after they’ve veered from Him for so long?” “What is it that would compel them to continue to drift from God until they find themselves at a place where they have put so much distance between them and God that they find themselves in peril and distress? And the only answer I can come up with is that they have allowed other things to occupy the place in their lives that should only belong to God, which Jeremiah calls “idolatry,” or they have found a way to project the blame onto something else or someone else so that they don’t have to own up to their complicity. “It’s not my fault. It’s my upbringing or my circumstances or my lack of financial or emotional support.” Who was it that said that in life, “it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s where you place the blame?”
God says through Jeremiah, “Stop!” “Just stop!” In other words, God is not surprised by our failure. God knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows that we are more sinful and more rebellious than we could ever imagine. And yet He loves us. He loves us so much that He gave His Only Begotten Son, our Lord Jesus, to be the means to our salvation so that if we confess our sins, He might cleanse us and forgive us of all our unrighteousness that we might have a future worth living. But when we confess our sins, we’re not informing God of anything that God doesn’t already know. And we’re not just offering up to God a laundry list of our transgressions. When we confess, we simply are acknowledging that we’ve been turned in a most terrible direction, a direction that is contrary to God’s purposes for us, and now the cover up game is over and we are ready to turn to God in order to live more authentically and more abundantly than we have ever lived before.
Can you make that confession this morning? Can you acknowledge how you have not trusted in God as fully as you should have and that by turning now to Him you are believing that His steadfast love in Jesus Christ might restore you to the place of favor and fortune that God wills for you to know? If so, then you will experience what some have called “the gift of confession and repentance.”
Her name was Jeanne and she was a hospital chaplain, which is without question a ministry that requires a true sense of calling, perhaps the truest. One day as she was about to walk into a new patient’s room, a group of floor nurses stopped her. “Don’t go in there, Jeanne. He’s rude. He’s obnoxious. He kicked us all out of his room and it wasn’t pretty.” “So be it,” Jeanne answered. “I’ll be the next booted out…or not.”
When she entered the room, the shades were closed and the patient was sitting on the edge of his hospital bed, staring at the floor. The urine jug was sitting on the tray table, half full, which gave Jeanne pause that it might serve as a possible weapon in his anger. His name was Butch and he was wearing a Harley Davidson T-shirt under his hospital gown.
Jeanne looked at him and asked, “So, you have a Harley? From what I’ve been told they’re the best motorcycles out there.” She thought to herself, “I’ve just exhausted everything I know about motorcycles.” So, she asked Butch, “So which model do you have and how did you get started riding?” With a lot of colorful language, the kind of language that congregational pastors never get to hear, the conversation began to unfold. Butch told her about all of his Harleys, bragging about their power and the thrill he always experienced riding them.
So, she decided to get out on that limb she had started out on a bit farther. “Have you ever been to Sturgis to the Harley festival?” “You bet,” he answered. “In fact, I should be out there right now riding, drinking beer with my buddies, meeting up with my friends. Instead,” he paused. “Instead I’m here with you. I’m here fighting a disease I never thought I’d have.” Butch then went on to talk about how he contracted AIDS and had been going through all of the repercussions of that horrific disease. “I lost my job. I’ve lost 50 pounds. I have to take these drugs that make me weak and nauseated. I don’t have the strength to be on my own. I’ve had to move in with my parents. I’m weak and useless and a walking shell of who I used to be.”
About 40 minutes into the visit, Butch looked at Jeanne and her name tag and asked, “Who the hell are you, anyway?” She held out her hand to shake his and introduce herself. “My name is Jeanne and I’m the chaplain. And it’s been a delight to get to know you.” And then as she was walking out the door, she turned back and said to Butch, “There are a lot of things you have to do here to feel better and control your disease, but my visits are optional. I’ll stop by tomorrow and pop my head in, and you can say yes or no. It’s your choice.” Butch stared for a moment and then said, “You can come back.”
Jeanne says she visited Butch most days of his two stays in the hospital. Butch continued to share with her his story and his feelings of anger and longing and frustration. Once, after a sleepless night, he whispered to Jeanne,“Do you know what I do when the pain is so bad I can hardly stand it?” Jeanne held her breath, given his past coping mechanisms. “I turn to him,” nodding to the crucifix on the wall.
“I didn’t know you knew him,” Jeanne answered. “Oh, yes,” replied Butch. “I went to church as a child. And he comforts me. He really does.” And then after another pause, Butch went on to say, “I guess I’m returning to my childhood faith, ain’t I?” And Jeanne put her hand on his thin arm and said, “Yes, Butch. Yes, you are.” And Butch nodded, with a tear in his eye.
Jeanne said that Butch died two days later. And a nurse told her that his last expression was a smile.
How was it that St. Augustine prayed? “O Thou, from whom to be turned is to fall and to whom to be turned is to rise…”
“’Return faithless people,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will frown on you no longer... Return and I will choose you – one from a town and two from a clan – and I will bring you to Zion.’”
If that doesn’t cause you to break out in a smile, then I don’t know what will.
Jeremiah 3:6-18
