Pentecost 3 (NL3) John B. Valentine
Sermon Series: Jeremiah 8:18 – 9:6 June 29, 2025

“ATTENTION ... AUTOPIA DRIVERS”

How many of you folks have ever been to Disneyland?

How many of you have been to Disneyland more than ten times?

And how many of you have NEVER been to Disneyland?

Now ... admittedly ... this is going to be a bit tough for those of you in the “never been there” crowd ...

But there’s a ride in Disneyland ... back behind the Submarine Cruise in Tomorrowland ... called “Autopia”.

Wherein you clamber into a little gas-powered go-kart of sorts ... and you cruise along freeways ... and endure a few traffic jams ... and hope like heck that the persons in the car behind you don’t decide to smash into you at top speed.

Autopia is one of the oldest rides in Disneyland ...

It has actually been there ever since the park opened in 1955.

And Autopia is one of the most polarizing rides in the park.

Either you love it ... or you hate it.

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Anyhow ... given the fact that the little cars at Autopia have a steering wheel and a gas pedal ... you CAN control them to some extent when you sit behind the wheel ... the steering wheel does work and the accelerator does operate ...

But ... ultimately ... those cars are limited by a center rail ... so you can only control them so much.

Which means that there are two ways to approach driving at Autopia .......

• One is to work diligently to be a good driver and keep your car centered on the rail ... which makes for a nice smooth ride for both you and any passengers you may have.

• The other is to constantly test the limits ... and over-correct ... which means you are bouncing against the center rail all the time ... and your ride is as herky-jerky as one can possibly imagine ... as you swerve your way down the track from left to right.

Now that second one is the methodology preferred ...

• by four year olds ... who don’t know any better ... and
• by adolescent boys ... who want to spice things up ... and at least occasionally
• by cantankerous parents and grandparents like me ... who really should know better but just can’t resist.

That second way ... that “test the limits” and “constantly over-correct” way may be fun ... or at least “funny” ... for those behind the wheel ... but it is absolutely misery for the others in the car .... trust me!

Because what the passengers get out of it is mostly sore necks and sore backs and a fervent prayer that this ride might be over as soon as possible.

Now ... it may take a while to get there ... but be patient ... because it seems to me that Autopia is just about the perfect imaginative metaphor both for what’s going on in this morning’s Bible lesson and what’s going on in this world in which we live.

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Let’s start with the second of those two ...

THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE.

Think about the society in which we live and the direction of our nation in the past quarter-century.

• We started this new millennium off with a president who favored steering to the left ...
• Then we had another president who tended toward the right ...
• Then another one who favored the left ...
• The one who corrected it hard to the right ...
• Followed by one who corrected it hard to the left ...
• And now we have the fellow who had us headed hard to the right over-correcting once again.

Now ... while we may disagree ... and legitimately disagree ... about what the best policies may be in this nation in which we live ... “of the people, by the people and for the people” ...

Can we not at least agree that all this bickering has been awfully tough on the passengers?

I mean ... if you didn’t know better ... you’d think that this nation has been ... and is being ... guided either:

• by a bunch of four year olds ... who don't know any better ... or

• by a gaggle of teenaged boys ... who just want to spice things up ... or perhaps

• by a bunch of cantankerous oldsters ... who really should know better but just can't seem to resist.

And all that "testing of the limits" and "constant over-correction" may seem wise to those behind the wheel ... but it is absolutely misery for the passengers in the car ....

And I suspect that ... as we approach this “Fourth of July” weekend ... a whole lot of us would confess that we are pretty sore ... and that we’re praying that this painful ride might be over as soon as possible.

I mean ... just in the news this week ... there’s been a flurry of Executive orders and Supreme Court decisions and congressional discussions that have jerked the nation’s steering wheel hard to the right ... just as in years past there’s been some folks who have jerked it hard to the left.

And those orders and decisions and discussions that have left a whole lot of marginalized folks in our country even more marginalized than they were before ... and ... from what I observe ... some of them are getting awfully sore.

But it also seems to me that our nation ... in these times ... is not the only life-situation to which that Autopia metaphor applies.

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You see ... if we flip back to THE WORLD OF THIS MORNING’S BIBLE LESSON ... back to like about the year 600 B.C.E. ... as Pastor Pam told you a couple of weeks ago ... and Vicar Meagan did last week ... there was this fellow named Jeremiah ...

A prophet ... a spokesperson for God ...

Who was called by God to deliver a message to God’s people.

Now let’s be clear ...

• Jeremiah’s wasn’t an easy message to deliver ...

• Jeremiah’s wasn’t a popular message to deliver ...

• But Jeremiah’s message WAS a message that God’s people needed to hear.

Because the people of God ... and particularly the leaders of the people of God ... had been driving the car like a cantankerous adolescent trying to spice things up ...

• Testing the limits ...

• Over-correcting ... and

• Generally avoiding the adhering to the instructions ... the ‘commandments’ ... that had been gifted to them back in the wilderness years and years earlier.

As Vicar Meagan so adeptly pointed out last Sunday ... God’s reaction all this bad driving was less one of ‘scolding” than it was a declaration of God’s deep sadness at a relationship that had gone so very far awry.

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I mean ... consider the text we heard read a little bit ago ... it articulates this whole litany of “feelings”:

• “My joy is gone” ...
• “Grief is upon me” ...
• “My heart is sick”.

• “For the brokenness of my people I am broken” ...
• “I mourn” ...
• “Horror has seized me”.

• “My head is a spring of water” ...
• “My eyes are a fountain of tears” ...
• “I’m weeping day and night”.

Jeremiah isn’t saying that God is “angry” ...

He’s saying God is heartbroken.

Jeremiah isn’t saying that God is a scold.

He’s saying that God is just plain sad.

Jeremiah isn’t saying that God couldn’t care less anymore.

He’s saying that God couldn’t care MORE!

But WHY is God heartbroken?

• Because God’s people “bend their tongues like bows” ...
• Because “they have grown strong in the land of falsehood” ...
• Because “they have shied away from the truth” ...
• Because “every neighbor goes around like a slanderer” ...
• Because “they all deceive their neighbors” ...
• Because “no one speaks the truth” ...

God is heartbroken because God’s people have embraced delusion and lies from the greatest of them to the least of them ... all the way down.

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Speaking of embracing delusion and lies ...

I read a fascinating book a while back by a gal named Barbara Ehrenreich ... entitled “Bright-Sided” ... in which she laid out the dangers of “positive-thinking” and “possibility thinking” ... of the pervasive assumptions about optimism that absolutely dominate our national culture.

• “Turn your frown upside down“ ... motivational speakers love to tell us ...
• “Don't worry; be happy!” ... singers declare ...
• “If you dream it, you can do it” ... preachers would encourage us to believe ...

Stuff like that.

“Bright-Sided” cited countless illustrations of how we delude ourselves into thinking that if we just have the right attitude ... we can beat cancer ... or overcome Alzheimers’ ... or somehow make ceratin that our kids turn out okay.

And it was both a spot-on critique of how optimistic naivete has pervaded our society ...

And a warning that people facing tough times need to hear the truth ... not some spin-doctored version of the truth that simply confirms their preferred assumptions.

And she warned that we’re far better off being told the truths that we may not want to hear ... rather than some rosy set of “alternative facts” that aligns with our preferred viewpoint.

“You shall know the Truth” ... Jesus said ... “and the Truth shall set you free.”

Now it seems to me that Jeremiah was called by God to be just such a truth-teller.

That his people ... facing the tough times that they were ... needed to know the truth ... not some alternative “spin”.

That it is better for them to be honest than optimistic.

That maybe there was “no balm in Gilead” and “no physician there”.

I honestly think that this is the thing that most bothers me about this age in which we live ... folks.

We are just like these people to whom Jeremiah is speaking!

If we don’t like what we hear on the news ... what do we do?

Do we change our attitudes and our behaviors?

Do we address the climate crisis ... or this, that or the other injustice ... or work to overcome the things that divide us?

No! We just go and get ourselves a new source of news

And it would be hard for us not to see that God is as heartbroken for us and God was for the folks in Jeremiah’s day ...

Because we have embraced delusion and lies from the greatest of them to the least of them ... all the way down.

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I’d LOVE to end this sermon on a bright note ... but I’m not going to do that today ... because Jeremiah’s message didn’t really end on a bright note either.

And because we’re in as much of a mess as Jeremiah’s people were back in the day.

But it is critically important that we remember that those words “My joy is gone, my grief is upon me, my heart is sick” are an articulation of God's words ... God's grief ... God's heartsickness ....... not simply the feelings of a human prophet.

When God says "For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me" ... we need to hear the hurt ... but we also need to hear the love ... the hurt of someone who is deeply in love ... in love with us.

May we hear and know that truth ...

And may the Truth set us free to be people of God.