A Meditation on the need for understanding that meaning is more important than Symbols

Christianity is not a club for sponsoring popular public opinion or a clique to rally around like teenagers seeking an identity. Christianity is the most challenging, radical, subversion of both societal and political reality ever presented to humanity; Christianity operates from the bottom up, not the top down.

Jeremiah undermined the popularism of Israelite belief by stating that the signifier of Jewish identity was circumcision of the heart (Jeremiah 4:4) and in doing so ends any justification for misogynistic religious practices. Further, he pronounced that associating the temple with the name of the Lord was a lie (Jeremiah 7). Jeremiah likely destroyed the Ark of the covenant (Jeremiah 3:16).

Jeremiah’s words are like saying baptism or membership in your local church does not make you a Christian. His words are like saying confessing Christ requires a life that grows into the confession or the confession is only lying words. Jeremiah was a nonviolent resistor to war, and he suffered both religious and political persecution. He was a prophet and a poet a sage of unprecedented insight not seen again until Jesus. Take note, a politically dominant Christianity is not Christianity.

Jeremiah also imagined a new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34) where access to the Lord was provided to all persons so that the instructive power of the Torah would live within their hearts. We are to become the people of God not the nation of God. A people of insight, free from the symbols of religion that allow the powerful to rule over us through abuse of the symbols; as priests and politicians always do.

Jeremiah was literate, educated, experienced, and grew weary, yet he was identified with Jesus (Matthew 16:14) because like Jeremiah, Jesus was a religious reformer who deconstructed Israel’s religious world of symbols, buildings, practices, and told them to love their enemies.

- Phillip Michael Garner –