It’s 586 BC and here’s the situation in and around Jerusalem. The Babylonian army, at the direction of Nebuchadnezzar, has the capital city under siege. In fact, the citizens of Jerusalem are in the midst of enduring a siege that would last at least 18 months. That’s a year and a half of nothing coming into the city (like food and supplies) and nothing going out. Everyone is scared, everyone is confused, and everyone is h-u-n-g-r-y. The king, Zedekiah, the officials, priests, and people are just plain out of ideas. Did this horrible circumstance come without warning upon Jerusalem, it’s rulers, and it’s people? Nope. Prophet after prophet had spoken of coming judgment for decades. God’s current prophet, Jeremiah, had been speaking in specifics since the reign of Josiah. 

So, where is Jeremiah, the anointed mouthpiece of God, in all of this suffering and confusion? He’s nowhere. Actually, he’s worse than nowhere. He’s up to his neck in muck at the bottom of a muddy, abandoned cistern in the king’s court of the guard, having been dumped there by the very religious officials who disdained his counsel. Every single word of what Jeremiah had spoken to them had come to pass. Every single warning about what was about to happen would, in fact, happen. Every bit of counsel was rejected and every plea for repentance was ignored. Now, here’s the thing that wears on us a little bit. When we read the account described above, we can’t help but have the following thoughts: Why has the keeper and bearer of God’s holy words of truth been thrown into a well? What exactly were the religious leaders of that day telling the people while God’s prophet, Jeremiah, was sinking into the drenched, black earth? But it’s what we think next that I want to make the focus of this essay. In biblical account after biblical account, it seems like it’s always this way. 

We’re right to have that last thought. Here’s what we know to be true from our understanding of Biblical history: God’s truth will always be marginalized. It will always be held in disrepute and despised by the wise in society, and the rulers of the day. However, the saddest and most consistent reality of all, is that it will always be rejected by the religious mainstream. 

Fast forward to the New Testament. Now Jesus is speaking in Jerusalem, in the temple, to his disciples and the crowd. He is literally days away from being crucified at the demand of the leading religious authorities of His time. And He is not mincing words. “Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees…you testify against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?” Ouch. That’s some negative preaching right there. In a more measured turn of phrase, He says the following, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.” So, throughout the ages, this is what has broken the hearts of God’s prophets. And, this is what breaks our hearts whenever we read the biblical narratives, old and new: Those who have taken it upon themselves to uphold and protect mainstream religious dogma, will, in essence, murder the prophets and shut off the kingdom of heaven from people.   

Now fast forward again – and let’s consider what this means to us; to you and to me. This principle is as true today as it was back then.  Sincere, careful, and honest respect for God’s authority and adherence to God’s messages in His word will earn you scorn in our increasingly secularized world.  That’s unsurprising.  But it will also rub against the grain of the majority of the religious intelligentsia.  And, nobody wants to be marginalized. Nobody wants to feel like they are a religious outsider. It’s unpleasant to be a Jeremiah; to stand up for God’s word when that word has been rejected by mainstream Christianity. It’s also a little unnerving. We wonder if we are being too legalistic – or negative. Sometimes the objections from the mainstream seem kinda – reasonable. The complaint against Jeremiah, the wrong that got him thrown into a well, was that his negative preaching was, “discouraging the men of war who are left in this city and all the people, by speaking such words to them; for this man is not seeking the well-being of this people but rather their harm.” Hmmm, Jeremiah must have thought, I don’t want to discourage the people… It’s much more agreeable to embrace religious thought broadly and it’s much more comforting to accept and be accepted by the group(s) that hold beliefs that are popular – and prevailing. But, if we want to be a Jesus follower, we have to be prepared to stand against, and outside of, the intransigence of mainstream religious thought – even though that may get us thrown down an empty cistern. 

An Ethiopian named Ebed-melech saved Jeremiah from his muddy fate by getting thirty men and lowering a rope of old clothes into the cistern to haul the prophet out. Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus’ body off the cross, to at least give him a proper burial. We take great consolation that we have some good folks around us to encourage us, strengthen our resolve, and even pull us out of the well, when necessary. And, we have someone even better to call our friend. Rewind to the sermon on the mount “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” We share a blessing with the prophets – even with Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, and for that we can rejoice and be exceedingly glad.