A Future and a Hope

Charles Whitehead, chairman of the English NSC, encourages us to turn back to the Lord when things go wrong and not try to simply fix things ourselves

I've always liked these verses from Jeremiah - they're positive and very encouraging. So when I was invited to speak on verse 11 at a conference in Austria last summer, I looked forward to preparing the talk. I began, as I always do, by looking at the verses in context and then tried to see what they might have to say to us today, but I was not prepared for the very clear way the Lord used them to speak to me personally. Let me begin by looking at them in the context of our situation at the beginning of the new millennium, then at problems facing Jeremiah's audience, and finally at what I've learned through all this.

In what does our security lie?

Many people today are losing confidence in the traditional institutions of our country, and it's not difficult to see why. After promising so much, successive governments seem to lose their way and to be as fallible as those that have gone before; the courts make mistakes at enormous public expense; the Royal Family lurches from one crisis to another, and the ongoing scandals of child abuse only add to the problems of the seemingly unrelenting fall in the numbers attending church. If our security lies in our institutions, it's not hard to understand why there's a definite loss of hope as they suddenly appear flawed, vulnerable, and unable to sort out the problems confronting us. This has caused some to look elsewhere for answers, and others to take matters into their own hands, deciding what is right and wrong for themselves.

The reaction of some church-going Catholics to the situation that followed the second Vatican Council was very similar. Faced with unexpectedly radical changes in a Church they regarded as a rock in the midst of the storms of life, they panicked about the future, losing hope and their faith in the process, and went their own way. The only conclusion we can draw is that they did not have Jesus Christ as their corner-stone, but trusted in the outward observances of their faith. For all those losing hope in the future, no matter what the reason, the answer never changes - turn to the Lord.

"I will be found by you" (verse 14)

The above reactions to uncertainty are nothing new - the prophet Jeremiah was called to address similar problems 600 years before Christ. The message he brought to the exiles from the nation of Judah living in Babylon was a simple one expressed in the verses above - however bad things may seem don't lose hope, God is there for you. In looking at the context in which Jeremiah prophesied, I hope you will allow me to over simplify it by saying that the problem the Lord wanted to address was the fact that the security of the nation of Israel lay in their land, the Temple, their kings, and in the city of Jerusalem - not in the Lord himself. So the exiles from the southern kingdom, Judah, expected the restoration of the nation to come through those who

had been left behind in Jerusalem. Jeremiah is sent by God to prophesy the fall of Jerusalem, and to tell them that hope for the restoration of the nation lay with those living in exile in Babylon, but only when they turned back to him. What they had seen as their security in the past would no longer be there - they must look to the Lord again. The future lay with those who would turn back to the Lord, accept his purification, and trust him again - not surprisingly they found it hard to accept such a radical message. But it seems that all their problems came from the same root - the belief that they could handle things without God's help. This is a lesson we still need to learn more than 2,500 years later.

Turn to the Lord

So does Jeremiah have something important to say to us today? Yes, I think he does. In the midst of the relentless changes we are living with, when the old ways are being rejected and there are so few certainties, we need to hear again Jeremiah's message of hope: "If you look for me in earnest, you will find me". What I have taken from this Scripture for myself is the conviction that when the old ways are no longer working, I mustn't try to fix things myself, but must turn to the Lord. I've discovered that separation from the old ways is producing a new freedom - the freedom to seek God again, to meet him in my poverty and weakness, to experience again my need for on-going conversion and renewal. It's easy to say, but difficult to do. When something isn't working any more, my first instinct is to try to fix it. If I can't fix it, then I'm tempted to live in the memory of how much better things used to be. I know that a lot of people I meet seem to talk more about the past than about the future. I don't think I do that - I haven't got the time! - but I'm often tempted to try to sort things out in my own strength instead of turning to the Lord again. Pope John Paul II warns us of this danger in Novo Millennio Ineunte, section 38:
"There is a temptation which perennially besets every spiritual journey and pastoral work: that of thinking that results depend on our ability to act and to plan."
Let's make sure we heed the Pope's warning, and don't go on making this same old mistake.

The primacy of grace

We are people of the New Covenant - an Easter people, alive in the Holy Spirit. We know that at the heart of the Christian message is the primacy of grace, so to hope means to put our trust in the Lord and in his promises. This calls for faith, but we also have to put that faith into practice. So at the beginning of this new year let's accept the challenge - let's trust the Spirit of God and go beyond our comfort zones. Let's put out into the deep water, and show that we are people of faith - prophetic, courageous, committed, and charismatic. After all, that's our gift to the Church. But we must never forget that if things aren't working, we're called to turn to the Lord and not make the mistake of living in the past or trying to sort them out in our own strength - that's just a recipe for even more of the same old problems.