“Try a Little Tenderness”
Psalm 37:1-10
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Luke 1:78-79
In the days of the prophet Jeremiah, when the elite of Israel had been conquered and captured by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and marched to exile in that foreign land, there were at least two kinds of false prophets.
One false message to the displaced, disoriented, and despairing people was, in essence, Don’t worry. This will be over soon.
A second message of denial and deception was, Hey, this isn’t so bad.
Things could be worse!
The biblical condemnation of this kind of message is severe and to the point:
You say “peace, peace,” when there is no peace.
I don’t know that most false prophets were necessarily bad people. Chances are they just wanted to make people feel better—and, if offering encouraging messages that didn’t reflect reality brought them fame and influence, well . . . all the better.
The people who believed such nonsense may have shared responsibility for the harm it caused. No one, after all, wants to hear bad news, and no false prophet makes it to the big time without the support of lots of people too scared or stubborn to face the truth.
Jeremiah had been called by God to tell the truth at a time when the news was particularly bad, the current situation was dire, the future was bleak, and there was no guarantee that God’s people would ever go home again.
Sound familiar?
Jeremiah had been called by God to both tell and embody the hard truth when no one wanted to hear it. The false prophets might have been lying through their teeth, but at least they made people feel better.
Sound familiar?
Some might say that even false hope is better than no hope at all, as if those are our only choices.
But Jeremiah knew better—and so should we.
Jeremiah knew—and so should we—that even when the news is bad, the truth need not be brutal. Jeremiah, the great prophet of lament, knew that we find real hope not in our circumstances but in the tender mercies of God, which are new every morning. Jeremiah, who suffered for God’s people perhaps more than any prophet before Jesus, came to know the hopeful power of trust, and the healing power of tenderness.
And so the word of God through Jeremiah to God’s oppressed, disoriented, and bereft people was not a word of false hope. Nor was it an angry word of rebuke, saying, “You brought this calamity upon your yourselves!”—even though the Israelites had continually disobeyed God by oppressing the poor, abandoning the weak, and choosing the power of weapons and kings over the power of God and the peace that comes from justice.
Instead, the word was one of tenderness and encouragement:
Keep living your lives. Keep building a new world. Keep creating family and community. Keep enjoying the fruits of the earth.
Oh, and one other thing: Work for the good of your enemies, and pray for them. For when they do well, you will do well. Care about this place and its people as if it were your home. Seek the welfare of the city, the nation, where you live in exile. When you invest in the welfare of others—even strangers, even enemies, even those who lord your suffering over you, you will begin to find healing. It is in loving your neighbors and your enemies, it is in caring for others and discovering their light, that you will know I am still with you.
What, you might be wondering, does this ancient word have to do with us?
Oh, I don’t know—maybe that in these times when a cruel and lawless government is going after our neighbors and flagrantly violating laws and systems designed to protect us, that it is hard to find hope. Maybe that on our worst days we vacillate between rage and fear. Maybe that on other days we vacillate between denial and despair. Maybe that on many days we feel utterly powerless and just hunker down, trying to survive.
Maybe that we, too, as the song says, need a little tenderness.
Maybe that we actually need a lot of tenderness.
There can be a fine line between tenderness and false hope. There is a fine line between trust and toxic positivity.
In this situation, God’s tenderness is not saying, “There, there, it’s okay. Everything will be fine.”
Faithful tenderness says, “Yes, this is awful. Yes, this is really scary. And I understand your anger. I see your despair. But try to be still and let God be God. Try to trust that God is still with you. Remember that God is yet at work. Remember God’s mercies, God’s kind forgiveness and love? That mercy is brand new every morning, and God’s love for you will never end.”
Godly tenderness echoes the psalmist, and says, “Don’t let the evil steal your peace. Don’t let them take your joy. The more time and energy you spend working yourself up over their lies and cruelty and what looks like success, the more they win. Instead, trust in the love and goodness of God. God has not and will not abandon you. God is a lover of justice, and justice will be done.”
Hopeful tenderness remembers what God has already done for us and rejoices in the trust that—through love, solidarity, and faithful presence—God will work wonders yet again. It echoes the song of Zechariah, saying, “Because of God’s tender mercies, a new day is coming. Its light will shine in the darkness. Its new life will vanquish the power of death. Its compassion will guide us in the ways of peace.”
Now, I understand that this may sound like false hope to you. This may sound like so many irrelevant spiritual words in a fierce and unfair battle of powers and principalities. I understand.
But if the life of Jesus teaches us anything, it is, it seems to me, first, the power of love, and that, second, to access that power we must stay grounded in God’s goodness, love, mercy, and—yes—tenderness. We are made in the image of God, which is to say, we are created to be instruments of love and peace. We are bearers of light, and we have to let our love-light shine. Our peace, our power, our joy comes from being true to who we were made to be.
The life of Jesus teaches us that tenderness is not weakness, and that nothing is more powerful than love.
Whenever we let ourselves be pulled away from Love, whenever we give ourselves over to rage and hatred, whenever we forget that the people doing horrible things to our neighbors and our country are also children of God, we have lost our way.
But the tender mercies of God still show up.
Seek the welfare of the city where you live, Love whispers. LIVE! it almost shouts. Build, plant, produce, bloom. Turn from evil. Love what is good. Work and pray for the welfare of your community, work and pray for the welfare of creation, work and pray for the welfare of your nation and all the world—for it is in its thriving that you will thrive, in its flourishing that you will find peace.
Try a little tenderness, God says.
In these cruel times, may we be as tender with one another as God is with us.
