Murray Haar On Religion: Jeremiah's Underwear

Friday, May 18, 2018

Jeremiah's Underwear

There is a funny and not so funny story about underwear in the 13^th chapter of Book of Jeremiah. After the Babylonian exile, God tells Jeremiah to go and buy some underwear, go down to the local river, and bury the underwear under some mud. Now, if God tells you to go and bury your underwear, what do you do? You go and bury your underwear! The Biblical prophets used odd, vivid and concrete illustrations to get their points across.

After some time went by, God tells Jeremiah to go back to the river, retrieve your underwear, which he does, and behold, it was dirty. God explains to Jeremiah, when Israel was young she was as close to God as a person is to his or her underwear. In those days she was faithful and clean. But since then, Israel has been disobedient, she has become like this dirty underwear, gross and nothing to which you want to get close.

I love this story because it talks about how intimate God is with Israel. In our time we are puzzled as to the whereabouts of God. I get it. I understand. But in this story, God is closer to Israel than underwear. Think of how close you are to your underwear right now.

God lives among the clean and dirty, the light and the darkness of our existences, in what is apparent and what is hidden, God is intimate with us, as close to us as our underwear.

But here is the surprising thing: In this story, though distressed by Israel’s behavior, disappointed in their forgetfulness, God does not forsake them. God accompanies Israel into exile. God is pictured as being married to Israel and Israel is married to God. Their fates are inextricably woven together. And God is present and intimate with them regardless of what they do. Jews call this “hesed” or kindness. Christians call it “grace” or unmerited love. Either way this story of Jeremiah’s underwear tells us something about the character of God. God is intimate with us regardless of the way we act. And, by the way, we are intimate with God despite the way God acts. Exactly what this means and how it plays its way out in our history is, I grant, mysterious and puzzling, to say the least.

Jeremiah’s point in telling the story about underwear was to get Israel to repent, to change, to come back to her husband, who loves her unconditionally. The word repent means to turn around and live your life differently. Jeremiah and all the prophets, including Jesus, call on people to change at the root, to repent.

This weekend is the Jewish holiday of Shavuot or Weeks or Pentecost, that day when Jews remember and relive standing again at Sinai to receive God’s teaching on how to live life, the Torah. The poetic instructions of Torah create a wedded intimacy between God and the Jewish people that can never be divided, not even by dirty underwear.

So, when and if you wonder about the whereabouts of God, remember Jeremiah’s underwear! God may be closer to you than you think.

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Notes from The Door

Whenever you care for the neighbor in pain, at that very moment, God is real. At that very moment, the Messiah has returned. In every situation where there is pain and injustice do what you can do to stop the pain. Murray Haar
Religion was not created by God but by people. What God thinks of our religions only God can say. If your religion teaches you to love God and to stand with your neighbor in pain, it is a good religion. If it teaches you to hate and to be indifferent, it is a bad religion. Murray Haar
Get Busy livin or get busy dyin (Shawshank Redemption)
The Holocaust teaches us that it is possible to be alive but no longer human. Murray Haar
I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know. Socrates
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good. W. H. Auden
For the most part, Christian pastors and priests are not taught to think but to transmit. They go to a vocational school called a seminary where they are taught how to transmit and proclaim the gospel but not how to teach their people to think critically about what they believe. They do not know how to teach their parishioners that Christianity could be wrong. Pastors and Priests are not prophets; they are religious functionaries who care about people and love Jesus. They themselves are usually nice people, will visit you in the hospital and give you bread and wine but they are not, for the most part, great thinkers. So, to expect them to reform the Church is just not realistic. Occasionally though, pastors show up who can think and believe at the same time and it is in them that there is hope for a reformation. I have met them. They are real and I have hope in them. Murray Haar
We do not believe in the Bible. We believe in God. The Bible is a vector toward God and the neighbor. When the Bible points us toward God and the neighbor, it is true. Whenever it does not, it is not true. We have to learn not only to read the Bible but to argue with it. Then the text will become real. Murray Haar
“In religion, the question is more important than the answer to the question.” A Midrash
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas
“He who saves a single life, saves the world entire.” The Talmud
“We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, or the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live: courageously or in cowardice, honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or adrift. We decide what is important and what is trivial in life. We decide that what makes us significant is either what we do or what we refuse to do. But no matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, these choices and decisions are ours to make. We decide. We choose. And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed.” Joseph Epstein

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Friday, May 18, 2018

Jeremiah's Underwear

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