Occasionally the evening news brings us word of someone's bizarre protest. Anti-war demonstrators pour pigs' blood ona sidewalk. A young evengelist carries a heavy wooden cross from California to Florida. Monks set themselved on fire. Marchers paint their faces black. Such protests leave many people feeling uneasy. We can't imagine a serious political figure, or a respectable pastor, acting that way.
But Jeremiah's life was full of such protests, at the express command of God. He made an ox yoke and wore it everywhere until the falso prophet Hananiah took it off and broke it in the temple one day. (Jeremiah prophesied Hananiah's death, and within two months he was gone.) Jeremiah's point? He wanted to emphasize the yoke of captivity the king of Babylon would put on Judah's shoulders. The story is in Jeremiah 27-28.
On another occasion (Jeremiah 35) Jeremiah invited a group of well-known teetotalers into a room in the temple and offered them wine. They refused, and that made another sermon. If they could remember their vows not to drink, then why couldn't the people of Judah and Jerusalem remember the words of the living God?
Nothing Was Too Undignified
Jeremiah bought a beautiful linen sash and buried it in a hole until it was ruined (chapter 13). He invited the rulers of Jerusalem on a trip outside the city, and in the midst of a sermon about God's anger smashed a pot to smithereens (chapter 19). And in his most famous "enacted parable," Jeremiah bought a farm while the Babylonian army was knocking at Jerusalem's door (chapter 32). He might as well have been a Jew buying property at Auschwitz during World War II, for all the hope he had of using it. But his action practically demonstrated hope. Someday his family |
