Adult Teachable Moments

A Lenten Meditation

Mar 03

By Bert Montgomery

Scripture: the Book of Jeremiah

According to the Church calendar, we’re in the season of Lent. As a life-long Baptist, I’m new at this party and still learning my way around such things as “the Church calendar.” One thing of which I’m fairly confident is that Lent is a season for personal reflection, confession, repentance, and prayer.

If that is true, then poet/singer Derek Webb clearly expresses the meaning of Lent in his song “Wedding Dress.” The song is perfect for Lent, and it is captured in this pivotal line, “I am a whore, I do confess.” That’s right—Lent is essentially about acknowledging our own unfaithfulness.

That’s what Jeremiah tells us, isn’t it? The Prophet likes to compare God’s people to a bunch of wild harlots looking for lovers behind every nook and cranny; and, other than the addition of a lot of technological and bureaucratic ways we can be unfaithful, not much has changed since Jeremiah’s time. We still run after little gods here and little gods there who promise us immediate satisfaction, immediate comfort, immediate productivity, immediate prosperity, immediate power, and immediate attention.

And yet, God still takes us back time and time again, only for us to turn right around later the same night, climb out the window with another little lover god, and do it all over again, and then again, and yet again. We just can’t help ourselves. We’re constantly being seduced by marketing, business, politics, whatever—“I’ll make you more successful, wealthier, and more powerful, if you just give yourself to me; I’ll show you paradise by the dashboard light!”

The Prophet wonders, When in the world is God simply going to give up on creation? When in the world is God simply going to give up and STOP loving us? He complains and yells at God; he wishes God would just leave him alone; and he wishes that God would just forget the rest of us—let us unfaithful cheaters go our own damned way (that’s in the biblical, not the expletive, sense—or, perhaps, it is in both senses).

No wonder Jeremiah is so sad and depressed. It’s like listening to George Jones (affectionately known as “The Possum”) cry out that heart-wrenching story of a cheating wife who leaves her faithful and loving husband—that husband who lovingly and longingly waits for her to come home again. Until that one day when he finally stops loving her:

You know, she came to see him one last time,
and we were all wonderin’ if she would.
And it kept runnin’ through my mind,
“this time he’s over her for good.”
He stopped loving her today,
they placed a wreath upon his door.
And soon they’ll carry him away.
He stopped loving her today.*

Yep. Jeremiah says we’re that cheating wife. But, and he seems mad at God for having to say it, Jeremiah also promises us that God is ALWAYS waiting and ready to welcome us back home again, because God is good, and His love endures forever!

The Prophet fights with this truth tooth and nail, but reluctantly acknowledges that, unlike the rejected husband in The Possum’s song—whose love only ends when he finally dies—the eternal God is beyond death, and so God’s great and patient love for us never ends!

God never stopped loving us yesterday!
God doesn’t stop loving us today!
God will not stop loving us tomorrow!

Even when, in all of that love, God comes in the person of Jesus Christ and lives among us; even when we doubt him, ridicule him, abandon him, and betray him; even when we reject him and crucify him;

even when we carry him away and bury him,
and even when we place that wreath upon his stone…

EVEN THEN all of our countless rejections and habitual affairs cannot keep Him from loving us, any more than they could keep Him in the tomb!

Yes, we are still jumping into bed with every little god promising us whatever the “big thing” is at the moment. But, with Jeremiah gritting his teeth in resistance from having to tell us this truth—God, whose love endures forever, will welcome all of us cheating, hell-bound harlots back as we sing God’s praises.

So with thanks to the Possum and the Prophet for the promise of hope in the faithful, loving God, let us spend this season of Lent reflecting and admitting with our hearts and our mouths the honest truth as worded by Derek Webb: “I am a whore, I do confess.”

And thanks be to God who never stops loving us and taking us back…

Questions for Reflection
• What, if anything, does the season of Lent mean to you?
• Does Jeremiah still speak to us today? Are we unfaithful to God, turning to our idols left and right? How? Why?
• Do you think there is line you can cross from which God will never take you back? What does the Bible say about that? What does Jeremiah say about that?
• In the spirit of Lent, reflect: how have you been, and how are you now unfaithful? With honest reflection and a willing heart, confess and return to the God who never stops loving you and waiting for you.

George Jones’ 1980 masterpiece of country music, “He Stopped Loving Her Today” (written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putnam).