Reaping the fruit of others’ sacrifice (Jeremiah 45)
Jer 45:1-5
Growing up in Communist Hungary, whenever I saw a plane flying overhead, I wished that one day it might be me. As I reflect on those hopes today, it strikes me how our lives have changed. Many of my generation work overseas today or at least had a stint abroad. We were given a future our parents never had. I think of my Dad, who was barred by the regime from the career he would have dearly loved, of young men and women in the post-war years whose bright hopes turned to ashes. They were locked down, as it were, in their own country with little to no contact with the outside world. Their news, their opportunity to engage with thoughts and events in other places was censored so that their whole world narrowed down and was controlled by the state. And yet, those who looked beyond their own circumstances, like my parents, were doing everything to prepare their children for a different future in the hope that one day things would change. We reaped the fruit of their sacrifice.
Baruch in the story
Looking at the story of Baruch (and Jeremiah), I cannot help noticing the similarities. They were caught up in events out of their control that took them where they did not want to go and shattered their hopes for a different future. We only meet Baruch fleetingly as the one who wrote down Jeremiah’s words and read them out in the temple courts, then re-wrote the scroll when the king burnt the original (Jer 36:1-8, 32). He probably drew up the deed of purchase when Jeremiah acquired his cousin’s field during the final siege of Jerusalem (Jer 32:9-15) and he was accused by the Jewish contingent fleeing to Egypt of inciting the prophet against them (Jer 43:3). Given how little we know about him, we may picture Baruch as a lowly scribe slavishly writing at Jeremiah’s dictation.
Limited career but ongoing legacy
However, scribes had an extensive education and a socially elevated position. Kings relied on them for drawing up legal documents, writing royal correspondence, explaining aspects of the law and so on. Baruch then had the potential for a government career. In fact, his brother, Seraiah, was King Zedekiah’s quartermaster (Jer 51:59-64). However, by openly throwing in his lot with Jeremiah, Baruch suffered the consequences. His woes may have been caused by his own thwarted ambitions and the terrible fate of his country (Jer 45:3). If he had hoped for a reversal of either, God shattered those hopes (Jer 45:4-5). Yet, like Jeremiah and Ebed-melech (Jer 39:11-18) and in contrast to the Babylonian exiles and the Egyptian refugees, God would preserve his life, if only that. Baruch’s hopes for a career may have been dashed, but we probably have him to thank for writing down most of the Book of Jeremiah, a part of Scripture whose influence reaches to the far side of the world today.
Faithfulness where God placed us
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian and pastor and vocal critic of the Nazi regime, reflected in prison on God’s words to Baruch.
If we can save our souls unscathed out of the wreckage of our material possessions, let us be satisfied with that. If the Creator destroys his own handiwork, what right have we to lament the destruction of ours? It will be the task of our generation, not to ‘seek great things’, but to save and preserve our souls out of the chaos, and to realize that it is the only thing we can carry as a ‘prize’ from the burning building. ‘Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flows the spring of life’ (Prov. 4.23). We shall have to keep our lives rather than shape them, to hope rather than plan, to hold out rather than march forward. But we do want to preserve for you, the rising generation, what will make it possible for you to plan, build up and shape a new and better life.[1]
Whether we are the ones like Baruch or Bonhoeffer, who suffer for their faith in God yet live so that others may benefit from their sacrifice, or the ones who can have a meaningful future because others paid the price for it, may we live for God in the circumstances and opportunities that the Lord had given us.
[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (London: SCM, 1971), 297.
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