Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-march-28-2025
Jeremiah 13:1-11
A Linen Belt
1This is what the Lord said to me: “Go and buy a linen belt and put it around your waist, but do not let it touch water.” 2 So I bought a belt, as the Lord directed, and put it around my waist.
3 Then the word of the Lord came to me a second time: 4 “Take the belt you bought and are wearing around your waist, and go now to Perath and hide it there in a crevice in the rocks.” 5 So I went and hid it at Perath, as the Lord told me.
6 Many days later the Lord said to me, “Go now to Perath and get the belt I told you to hide there.” 7 So I went to Perath and dug up the belt and took it from the place where I had hidden it, but now it was ruined and completely useless.
8 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 9 “This is what the Lord says: ‘In the same way I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. 10 These wicked people, who refuse to listen to my words, who follow the stubbornness of their hearts and go after other gods to serve and worship them, will be like this belt—completely useless! 11 For as a belt is bound around the waist, so I bound all the people of Israel and all the people of Judah to me,’ declares the Lord, ‘to be my people for my renown and praise and honor. But they have not listened.’
You might remember that I’ve admitted in the past that I get a big kick out of this story. It’s from Jeremiah, which is in Old Testament book that doesn’t get a lot of attention from most followers of Jesus. But this story from Jeremiah appeals to me so much that I’ll probably devote a day’s reflection to it when it comes up in the lectionary every two years as long as the program goes on.
I guess if I’m honest about it, the story appeals to me because it seems to show God demonstrating a sense of humor. In this story, God uses a comical situation as an Old Testament version of an ‘enacted parable’ to make a point about our relationship with him. This story provides a little comic relief after the series of very serious readings we’ve been reflecting on lately. Some of them have been from Paul’s letter to the Romans, which is theologically dense and dripping with the apostle’s extreme seriousness. The rest of the readings lately have been coming from the Gospel of John, which kind of takes a lot of deep theological reflection — a lot of mental hard work — to make sense of. By contrast, this story from Jeremiah tells about a time when God revealed a sense of humor in pointing out the sins of the Hebrew people.
Jeremiah’s ministry took place during the reign of King Josiah, who was probably the most religiously faithful king to have sat on the throne in Jerusalem since his ancestor David himself. Josiah led the nation in a period of reform and purification, when the people got rid of their foreign idols (at least for a while), and went back to faithfully worshipping God alone.
But after King Josiah died, the country went right back to its idol-worship. Not long afterward, Judah was invaded and Jerusalem was besieged by the Babylonians. During the siege, Jeremiah walked around the city preaching that it was destined to fall to the Babylonians as punishment for the sins of the people. It comes as no surprise that Jeremiah was arrested and imprisoned as an ‘enemy of the state’ – he obviously represented a serious morale problem for the authorities during the siege.
The story we’re thinking about today seems to have taken place sometime after the death of Josiah, but before the Babylonian conquest.
Getting to the real point of this story requires wrestling with a couple of translation issues. Our NIV Bible text says God told Jeremiah to go buy “a linen belt” and put it on. But many Old Testament scholars think the phrase that’s translated as “linen belt” actually referred to a loincloth – basically, underwear.
So God tells Jeremiah buy this underwear and put it on. Then, after some unspecified period of time, God tells Jeremiah to go to Perath. The scholars aren’t sure where Perath was. But wherever it was, Jeremiah is ordered to take off this underwear and bury it in the rocks there.
Later, God tells Jeremiah to go dig up the underwear, which by this time is pretty gross from being buried in the ground. And Jeremiah is commanded to use the underwear as a symbol of God’s relationship with the chosen people.
The point seems to be that nothing is closer to God than the covenant people. They’re as close to God as underwear. But when the people refuse to obey God’s laws, when they lead sinful lives and worship idols, they become so foul in God’s eyes that they become like underwear that’s been buried in the ground.
Who in their right mind would want to put on underwear that had been buried in the ground? (You might remember that in the past, I’ve suggested that you could try this as a Lenten discipline. Shockingly, no one has ever taken me up on it. Or maybe someone has, and just hasn’t mentioned it to me. If that’s the case, someone deserves a lot of credit for following Jesus’ commandment keep your ‘acts of piety’ private.) But all joking aside, the point of this story is pretty clear, isn’t it? We can cause God a lot of irritation by our sinful behavior and lack of faithfulness.
This story strikes me as a really interesting and effective example of an “enacted parable.” You don’t have to be a theologian to get the point – it’s easy to understand and literally ‘gritty.’ I’ve always thought that God’s “friends” cause him a lot more distress than his enemies, and this story seems to illustrate that point in an unforgettable way.
It would be easy to make the mistake of thinking about this story as an example of how sinful the ancient Jewish people could be. But for those of us who follow Jesus, the truth is no doubt that our sins are just as gritty and gross to God as the sins of the people of ancient Judah were. But because of the death of Jesus, we are made clean again in God’s eyes – clean enough that God is willing to have us close to him again.
Let’s pray. Lord, you know that we sometimes fail to think about how gross and disgusting our sins must seem to you, and how much discomfort we cause you by our disobedience. Thank you for providing a way in Jesus for us to be made clean enough to be close to you again. Amen.
Have a great weekend, and may you worship joyfully on Sunday!
Henry
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