I found this piece to fit in with a discussion in bible study this week. Does God bring about punishment - knowing that God will step back and love no matter what happens?
Hope belongs characteristically to Israel, and its most acute practice occurs in exile. If we fully credit the articulations of judgement in the texts contemplating exile, we may believe that YHWH's intention is to end things with Israel, who is like a pot that 'can never be mended' (Jeremiah 19:11). It is no credible, in my opinion, that the sovereign judgment of YHWH was a strategic ploy to be followed predictably by pathos-filled love. The judgment is not for instruction or chastening or improvement. It is simply judgment of a sovereign who will not be mocked.
It is not our job to decide why God has done what God has done. Was the judgment to teach - no. Was the judgment to bring about improvement - no. It was to show that the people of God cannot simply turn their God into whatever we would want God to be. For when we do that, we -as Brueggemann notes - mock God. When we mock God, we pretend to dismiss God and make ourselves into gods who have a strange way of changing everything. Too often, religious people look to have their lives in control. When that happens, we seem to be able to create a God that follows our lead. What a tragedy. God does not play games with us and we are not expected to play games with God. In times that look and feel like judgment, it might be good to sit back and simply wonder how our lives might be mocking the God in whose image we are to be living.
Connection: The simple reminder that God will not be mocked is instructional. It makes me wonder how that happens and what happens to a people who claim to be beloved but do not follow in that light.
O God, who watches how we turn away and follow other powers, when we walk away from you it is not with the understanding that we are mocking you. And yet, as we look at ourselves, it is mocking. Forgive us when that is who we become. Amen.
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