Text: Jeremiah 36:1-8, 21-23, 27-28; 31:31-34

We’ve spent a couple of weeks now with Biblical prophets. People called by God to a particular task. Me met Jonah, who was (very) reluctant but eventually did proclaim a call to repentance in Nineveh. And both Nineveh and Jonah received God’s mercy. We met Isaiah, an eager prophet, who was call to proclaim a hard truth to a people facing judgment and find hope in the resolute remnant. 

Even back when we were reading the stories of David and Solomon, we had their court prophets like Nathan, making sure (at least ostensibly) that the king was held to the standard of God and not his own. Sometimes that worked. And today we meet Jeremiah. Jeremiah is our most experienced prophet. At the point when we encounter him he’s been at this work for 20 years, naming injustice and persisting in adversity.

Having read and discussed these guys for a few weeks now, I figured it might be worth talking about what prophets do, their role. Then and now, prophets are called to speak truth to power and hope to the oppressed. They challenge leaders to justice and righteousness. They invite those active in oppression to “change their hearts and lives” – which is how the CEB translates “repentance.” 

I say then and now because prophecy didn’t stop in the Bible. We too have prophets, modern day truth-tellers who continue to remind us to act right, who point out realities of contemporary life and culture that are unjust, who call communities to awareness and repentance.

There are lots of folks I could point to but the ones I’m thinking of this week are authors. I’m a fiction reader, so I’m especially thinking about how authors of fiction are playing this role. I’m thinking in particular of those might be hashtagged #ownvoices on social media, the authors who are writing from their experience of being people of color or queer or from immigrant communities. 

These authors, whose stories expand our understanding of the world and of our country and of the human experience; these authors who have experienced first hand both the injustices that come with those identities and the resilience and strength they or their communities have shown. These are the same authors who are most often taken out of libraries, pulled from curriculums, and argued over at local school boards.

It was these authors that I thought of when I pictured king Jehoiakim taking the prophecies that Baruch has transcribed for Jeremiah, slicing them off and throwing them on the fire. That cold cruelty and disregard, blatant use of power to care so little for what he is called to as a leader, as a privileged person – the most privileged person!

Jehoiakim is the king. He could simply have just ignored it! He could have told Baruch, who had written the words and Jehudi, who was reading the scroll, to leave. Instead he took the sacred words – the accumulated experience and prophecy of Jeremiah’s 20 year prophetic history – and he threw it in the fire. I’m imagining how small and grief stricken and maybe frightened Baruch might have felt in that moment.

Honestly, what was brought to mind was the glee with which they burned books in Nazi Germany. There’s this picture I found online of some Hitler youth throwing books on the fire with delight in their faces. And we don’t so much have that now, but we do have fierce fights at local school boards about “Critical Race Theory.”

Jerry Craft, is an author who has written a number of graphic novels for middle grade readers, including New Kid about a black kid at a mostly white private school and his experience of bullying and micro-aggressions. Craft has been accused of peddling critical race theory and has said he had never heard of it until he was accused of it, and of trying to make white kids feel bad. 

He also says this about the attempt to ban his writing in schools:

In the thousands of emails and letters I’ve received since I self-published my first book way back in 1997, not once have I ever heard from a kid who said they felt bad after reading one of my books. They look at the characters from New Kid such as Jordan and Drew (both African American), and Liam (white) as kids they would love to hang out with. These are characters who they dress up as for Halloween or “dress like your favorite book character day” in school. They are characters who inspire their readers to be better and kinder. Characters who even have inspired teachers and librarians to look at their interactions with their students of color in order to improve their relationships. (reference)

Craft has used his writing to prophetically name the truth of his own experience as a young person of color through the characters he creates

Sonya Douglass at Columbia University says about authors like Craft, “We want to make sure that children learn the truth, and that we give them the capacity to handle truths that may be uncomfortable and difficult,” (reference) And yet, like Jehoiakim, people with power – parents and educators – prefer to make this prophetic truth in accessible.

Here’s the thing about book bans, though. They only increase the circulation of those books, attention to the authors and to authors whose work is similar but less well known. (reference) A prophetic word of truth cannot be banned. And it cannot be burned.

Well it literally can be both, but God’s word does not disappear because it has been removed from a library or thrown into the fire. After Jehoiakim pulls his little show of slicing and dicing and torching the scroll, Jeremiah received another word from God: write it down again. Keep going.

Another graphic novelist who I’ve appreciated recently is Mike Curato. His book Flamer is about a 14 or 15 year old Philipino American boy at scout camp trying to sort out his queerness in the context of a hyper masculine environment. Curato gave a really moving interview to the folks at NPR’s CodeSwitch. Speaking about a young person who came to see him at an event and gave him a letter, he said, 

And I feel like I’m both scared for that youth, and I have so much hope for them. And there’s someone that I think about when I hear all this book-banning BS. Like, I think about them, and I think about other people who’ve written me. And that is what makes it all worth it. It’s like, you know what? If I had to listen to someone calling me a pedophile every day for the rest of my life, but the book gave that teenager, like, the strength to keep going, then that gives me strength to keep going…

So I think it’s very much about centering the narrative on the people that we’re rooting for – right? – and not the naysayers. And it’s a very difficult thing to do, but that has – it has become a new practice for me of just looking where the love is and trying to focus on that. (CURATO)

Curato is focusing on the message of love and hope that is delivered through the truth of the experience expressed in his book. Jeremiah is focused on the word of hope and justice he’s received over is decades of work. Those things have not changed, have not gone anywhere. 

The experience of God’s word has not disappeared. God is still there and speaking. The people are there to receive it just as they did the first time, even if Jehoiakim will burn it again.

And not only that, it won’t matter how many times the scroll is burned, God word is written within each and every one of God’s people. This might be one of my favorite passages in the bible. 

this is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my Instructions within them and engrave them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. They will no longer need to teach each other to say, “Know the Lord!” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord; for I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sins. (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

I don’t know if it’s the hope contained within that, the intimacy of the heart, the idea of printing or etching, which is an art form that I love, the relationality of belonging between God and people. It’s all of it together. 

None of that can be destroyed by fire. None of that can be banned or disappeared. With God’s word within us, we have the strength to continue as God’s people. We know what we are called to and we know who we belong to. God’s signature is right there on our heart. May it be so. Amen.

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image: Hitler Youth members burn books. Photograph dated 1938. World History Archive.

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