Jeremiah 8:18=9:1; Weeping for Israel..and America

"18 My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. 19 Hark, the cry of my poor people from far and wide in the land: “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” (“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols?”) 20 “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” 21 For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. 22 Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored? 9: 1 O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!"

Introduction

The prophet Jeremiah is weeping for his people because he is faced with an impossible conundrum: (1) he loves the God of Israel and he loves the people of Israel; but (2) the former is going to bring about the destruction/exile of the latter. Jeremiah has "seen" this. He knows it is going to happen. He already "understands" it even before it has taken place. He feels it deeply. He feels the shattered dreams of the people, the dislocation they will face, the grief of it all. It is almost too much for him to bear. What is the purpose of being a prophet if you can't keep the people from suffering the worst possible fate? What is the joy or power of the Word of God if it doesn't lead to healing and reconciliation? Sometimes the vocation of prophet seems to invigorate Jeremiah. It gives him a clear message; it lets him unequivocally point to the source of Israel's problems. But other times the pain of it all overwhelms him and all he can do is weep--for himself, for the people, for the times. The lesson for today is one of those times.

I am no prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I am feeling the same way these days with respect to my own country. I am feeling this way about America. On the one hand I love my country and its people, but on the other hand I see that we are in such a conundrum of partisanship and deep division that our wound is unhealable. The purpose of this meditation today is to tell you why I weep for America today, and why any prophets of optimism are just plain wrong. The issue has to do with the War in Iraq, an issue we all wish would go away but really, if you are a thinking person, is front and center in our political agenda. I speak about politics because the prophet we read and honor today spoke about politics--big time.

Our dilemma in America arises because both sides in the debate (if there are only two) are right; both cannot be fully honored; and compromise will be seen by both sides as betrayal. Let's talk about each briefly.

I. Both Sides are Right

At this time in our political history we are evaluating whether the "troop surge," i.e., the addition of about 30,000 American troops to Baghdad and other trouble spots between Feb and June 2007 (to bring the total American troop presence in Iraq to about 160,000-Why aren't we hearing about the "coalition of the willing" anymore? Where are the other nations when we need them? Was this "coalition language" just a charade?) is "working." As might have been expected when the "surge" began about seven months ago, the results have been mixed. "Progress" has been made, depending on whom you consult, on three of the 18 or seven of the 18 "benchmarks"--a list of security and political goals that would indicate that "progress" is being made in "resolving" the issues of the war. Some of the security benchmarks are to reduce the overall level of violence in Anbar province and in Iraq generally; the political objectives (always more elusive) are the passage of an oil law distributing revenues throughout the country, a new policy on "de-Baathification" (i.e., we concluded that we were too hasty in elminiating all of Saddam's people from the government formed after 2003), achievement of national "reconciliation."

The philosophy with which we entered the "surge" was that increased troop presence would bring about increased security and that this would give the Iraqi government time and space to begin the tough process of national reconciliation. The problem is that even if deaths and violent attacks have been reduced in "8 of the last 11 weeks" (to quote Gen. David Petraeus), there seems now to be little connection between the goals of security and political reconciliation. We, in a sense, put our eggs into the basket of connection between the two. It did make sense, didn't it? Once people stop killing each other, they must want to live peaceably and amicably with their neighbors. Right? Well, not really. It could be that they are peaceful with each other now (or relatively more peaceful) because we are holding most of the guns and then can't retaliate. But they can "wait us out" and then get back at the animosity after we have left.

Well, this gets us to the problem of Iraq. Both sides, Republican and Democrat, are correct now with respect to what we should do. Republicans argue that since we "broke" the country (i.e., by entering in, deposing their leader, destroying their infrastructure and overseeing the creation of a new military and political process), we have a "moral obligation" to stay until we "fix" it. They certainly are right. It you promise to make a situation better (which is what we were doing in 2003--when we blissfully expected democracy to rise up out of the ashes of Saddam Hussein's regime), and you need to break down before you build up, then certainly you can't leave once you have broken things down. You have to stay until things are "built back up." There are massive problems with this analogy, but this is the basic point made by many Republicans--and they are surely right.

The Democrats are no less right. They, in general, want a pullout of our troops from Iraq. Or, at least, a timetable when this will be accomplished. Their point is equally compelling. We didn't "count the cost" when we entered Iraq; we were misled in some of the justifications for invasion; we now see that the war has changed in its focus, from a war of liberation to a domestic struggle between long-entrenched religious groups; we are caught in the middle and are the target for both sides; we are in "over our heads"; we are losing people and pouring billions of dollars into a war that is yielding nothing for us; let's admit that we have gone far enough and that we should withdraw.

The next essay makes my two other points.

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