Jeremiah 17:5-10

Sometimes the Lectionary avoids the harsher parts of the Old Testament and sometimes it highlights them without giving us any context. This is a case of the latter. If you read only this Lectionary entry, you might get the sense that God thinks this way about everyone and no one should trust in their fellow humans. By reading the Lectionary layout, you also miss that this was written in the form of a poem. If you read the first four verses of the chapter/poem, you will see he is talking about Judah. Just what his problem with Judah is can be harder to figure. Jeremiah, like many prophets, goes on long screeds about how everyone is going to suffer because they turned away from God but is short on exactly why. The conversation begins many chapters earlier and says a lot about sins and not obeying.

The beef that Jeremiah had may have been primarily about religious differences, but it can be hard to separate the rulers from the priests. Judah was a pawn to the power politics of that time. This also influenced their forms of worship. The priests wanted to stay in the good graces of whoever might be their next emperor. Also, people would rather hear a message of peace and a prosperous future with their neighbors instead of demands they worship in a certain way, a way that might not be welcomed by those more powerful neighbors. So Jeremiah was not very popular. In return he compared people to shrubbery.

1 Corinthians 15:12-20

"First fruits" is covered extensively in the Old Testament. They are the first of the harvest, a precious commodity, which makes them all the more special as a sacrifice to God. Here, it is offered as some sort of proof for the resurrection. This is in the form of a logical argument, but there isn't much logic here. The logic is something like, "if we're wrong, that's really bad, so we're not." This wouldn't need to be addressed if there weren't people who thought otherwise, so we know, right here in Corinth, there were early Christians who had other ideas about the resurrection and who or what Jesus was.

Although it may not serve as a logical proof, we do get one of the strongest statements that Paul has about how Christianity hinges on the resurrection. Verses 13 and 14 can be condensed into; if there is no resurrection, your faith is in vain. Since he is asking for faith, he is suggesting proof is not required or maybe not even possible. You can argue all day long about evidence via miracles, testimony of those who saw him, and extra biblical citations, but even if you win all of those arguments, faith is still an option and is essentially the foundation of Christianity.

Luke 6:17-26

These are sometimes referred to as the "blessed be's" or the "beatitudes", sort of a preamble to the Sermon on the Mount. They are nice thoughts that things will get better, and truth is, sometimes they do. Most of the people hearing this probably died as slaves or in poverty, but eventually the world did get better. Other times it has been worse, at least for some. Encouraging words like this are just too simple to attach to any particular events in history.

The reference to prophets would include Jeremiah from this week's passage and others like him who were persecuted when they tried to get people to return to God. That Jeremiah was remembered as a prophet while the others, the rich ones, who laughed at him are not, is taken as evidence that you should do the same. If you can see this sermon as a prescription for focusing on those in need and working to bring them up to a higher standard by creating a world of equality and of sharing resources while sharing the work, then there is some value in these words.

What I see here though, is where Christianity failed. They spoke in platitudes and prophesied that the order of rich and poor was going to change but spoke very little of how to bring that about other than by looking to heaven or doing things like looking to an ancient prophet who was criticized who turned out to be right. There are some good conversation starters in this chapter, but when questions of nuance or moral dilemmas arise, the Bible usually has little more to offer than "be good". The answer to what "good" is, "it's in the Bible."