Jeremiah is called the “weeping Prophet”. With good reason he should stand as a great example of someone heroic and consequential for those who want to be faithful witnesses and mission minded confessors. So compelling is his message that a word was invented out of his name – Jeremiad. The word means a long, mournful complaint or lamentation; a list of woes. Listening to the candidates we have an example of jeremiads. Part of the reason that things are so strange this election cycle in my opinion, is that people are hearing the jeremiads from folks that have been in charge for years or decades. There is something surpassing strange about individuals that recite a long list of grievances that they will fix when they have been elected when they have been in positions to fix those grievances for years. It is a strange phenomenon.
“When Jeremiah beheld this strange phenomenon that a fallen people did not get up, that an erring people did not amend (8: 4), when he noted how even the scribes who recorded the Sacred Record perverted the texts (8: 8), he was tempted to run off to the wilderness ( 9: 2 ) . “He might have become the patron saint of monasticism” (Th. Laetsch) had he done what he wanted to do. But the Lord needed him as His warner. Instead of running to the wilderness, he was to tell his people to run through the streets of Jerusalem and see if they could find one faithful person there (5: 1 ). Instead of shunning society, he was to seek out
people. As the gleaner searches for grapes that have been overlooked, so the prophet was to carefully glean the remnant of Israel (6: 9 ) . He was to serve as an assayer, or tester, who would find out the true character of his countrymen (6: 27); he was to listen in on their conversations and find out whether there was any
evidence of repentance in them ( 8: 6). As the potter made a new vessel out of the one that was spoiled, so Jeremiah was to tell his people that there was still hope that the Lord would make a new people out of them if they repented (18:3-6), that the way of man is not in himself (10:23), that his glory should not be in wisdom, power, or wealth, but rather in the knowledge of a gracious, just and righteous God (9:23,24). ” (“Let Jeremiah Speak Today”, Von Rohr Sauer, CTM November 1955)
