The outward proclamation and the inner scream
August 1, 2013
From God's Prophet, God's Servant by John Goldingay
I have heard many people whispering –
There is terror on all sides.
“Report him, let’s report Him!”
All my friends are watching for my downfall.
“Perhaps he can be persuaded and prevailed over,
then we can catch him and take vengeance on him.
- Jeremiah 20:10
Curse the day I was born!
May the day my mother bore me never be blessed!
Curse the man who brought the news to my father,
“It’s a boy! You have a son!”,
making him glad.
May that man be like the cities
that Yahweh overthrew without pity,
may he hear a cry in the morning and an alarm at noon,
because he did not kill me at birth,
so that my mother would have become my grave,
and her womb would have been enlarged forever.
Why did I come out of the womb,
to see trouble and affliction
and end my life in disgrace?
- Jeremiah 20:14-18
“Why is there recorded in Scripture the personal and private agonizing of the man of God with God? One reason may arise out of the fact that it is obviously not easy to be hard as a rock outside when you are being torn apart inside. The tension between the outward proclamation and the inner scream itself threatens to rend the man apart. The scream, indeed, cannot finally be stifled or repressed. It has to receive expression. So writing it down helps to give expression to it in the only way that is possible. It gets it out of the system. That may be the reason why Jeremiah put it in writing…
“I remember once noticing a poster on Nottingham Railway Station: ‘There is a religion which sees life as a challenge to be met, not as a cross to be born.’ If there is, then it is not the religion of Jeremiah, nor of Jesus. Nor is it a religion I am very interested in. Because a religion that is worth following has to be able to cope with the fact that life is not always a thrilling challenge; it is sometimes an experience of crucifixion. And being a prophet, or being any kind of faithful servant of God, is not always a thrilling challenge. Sometimes, the experience of the cost, in isolation and opposition, in the loss of any right to run one’s own life, in being torn apart even as one is as hard as a rock outside, is rather an experience of crucifixion.”
