Broken Cisterns

Jeremiah 2: 4-13
John 7: 14-31, 37-39

Broken cisterns. What are the broken cisterns in our own lives, the false idols we create to worship instead of God?

Jeremiah is prophesying not only to tell the people of today why God was angry, but to warn them that if they continue down the paths that their own ancestors had begun that grave things would happen. God is getting angry at their insolence and their idolatry. God is no longer feeling tolerant toward them. There is only so much that even God can take of being pushed and ignored and walked upon. Jeremiah is trying to tell the people that they have broken the commandments of God and they are so oblivious they do not even realize they have walked way from God. Are we sometimes too oblivious as well, thinking we have all the answers?

So God is angry, but he is also hurt. You can almost hear the bewilderment in his voice as he says, “Didn’t I save them? Didn’t I bring them through the harshest deserts and wilderness to a land of plenty and prosperity? Why do they turn from me and worship worthless idols instead of me? Their idols have done nothing for them”.

We can shake our heads and think we are smarter than the Israelites but the truth is that we are not smarter at all. How often do we stay in jobs we hate because we fear leaving for greener pastures? How often do we stay in a relationship that is going nowhere because it is safer than looking for another person to care for? How often do we ignore the problems we have with our children so that we do not rock the boat of our relationship? We take the easy way out. We would rather suffer than change. But even worse than that is we build up a false image of our lives and we get incredibly angry if anyone tries to point out the incongruities of our life.

It is no wonder that Jesus had such a hard time being heard. It is no wonder that the people wanted to kill him so often in the NT. Jesus didn’t let things go. He didn’t accept the status quo just because it was a smooth ride and everyone knew when to get on or get off. Jesus broke the rules; he changed things and made everyone really think about their life and their behavior. One thing that hasn’t changed in thousands of years, humanity hates to self-reflect if it means we’re not going to be patting ourselves on the back. The only time we like to be introspective is when we get to say, “Well done.” But Jesus doesn’t give out praise, he gives instructions. He creates chaos because it causes us to think.

It had to really bother the Jews when they’d get angry at Jesus and then he’d turn and say that it wasn’t him doing it. Jesus would say these are God’s words, God’s teaching and he his merely the instrument that God has used to bring these words to the Jewish people. Oh, that had to really get them angry. How dare he say that God wanted them to change?! How dare he teach those disciples of his to pick grains on the Sabbath and to eat with dirty hands too? How dare he think he can teach like he is one with authority!

When we get so defensive, so angry it should be a warning sign. A little light bulb should go on inside of our heads and the word DANGER should flash in our minds. Anger can be a deceiver, especially so called righteous anger. Those Jews thought they had the right to be angry at Jesus. They thought they had the right to kill him and persecute him because he dared to go against everything they believed in. He was changing what they had decided was a good life and instead he was calling it a broken life. When we get so angry at someone for being different, for changing what we have always known, it should be a signal to us that something is wrong – with our extreme anger.

There was a woman who had been trying to have a baby for twenty years. She was now forty years old and finally, by the grace of God, she was pregnant. After years of turmoil and suffering and fertility treatments that weren’t so fertile and after all the tears and hurt she had endured, she finally had her little miracle from God. She told everyone in her excitement and they all congratulated her. She was so happy to be pregnant. Then, a few months into her pregnancy she got some bad news. The baby was causing her kidneys to fail and the doctor didn’t think the baby would survive the birth because its organs didn’t seem to be developing properly. She could have an abortion and save her life, or give birth and most likely she and the baby would die. The doctor told her she had only a day or two to choose because the longer she waited the more risk there was in an abortion.

She chose to have an abortion after a lot of talking with her husband and praying with God. She had never, ever thought she would be a woman to do that. When her friends, co-workers and acquaintances found out, they were all shocked. Some in the town called her a baby killer. Some threw things at her house and car. Others held up awful signs depicting abortions and how she was condemned to hell. They felt their anger was justified. How dare this woman kill her unborn baby? How dare she hurt an innocent child after she said she wanted one for so long?

They had condemned her without a hearing and without the facts. We do this all the time. We see a person, we think we know their circumstances and we judge them. We judge whether they are rich or poor by their clothing and jewelry. We judge success and power by the car a person drives and the cell phone they have attached to their ear and we pretend successful people are good people. We see a person that goes to church every Sunday and assume they must be a good person and judge the one that sits at home as unfaithful.

This is what God and Jesus are talking about when they say “They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water”. We create false idols and images to follow and we judge a person’s life by them. We judge our own lives by these false idols. We pretend it is better to be miserable at the job we have now than to be unemployed for a little while as we look for something that better suits us. We pretend the relationship we are in is exactly what we want or that it will get better (our spouse will change!), because it is better to be in a relationship and miserable than to be alone and maybe pitied.

We pretend we have the right to judge another person’s actions because we go to church or because we are older than them or we went through a situation similar to what they went through. The truth is we have created these rigid rules that we live our own lives by and we want others to tow that line. How dare someone be different? How dare Jesus Christ tell us we our living with false idols? How dare that person three rows up from me wear that gaudy jewelry with that tacky kitten sweater? We never ask if that kitten sweater or jewelry was a present or maybe just made the person feel good to wear it. We never ask if perhaps we HAVE created false idols, perhaps we are too stuck in our ways.

We all have broken cisterns. We all have ideas about life and love and family and the world. We think we have the answers. We’re sure our life experiences are enough to let us judge what is right and wrong. But what Jesus tells us is that as soon as we are sure of something, as soon as we carve it in stone; we’ve created a false idol. We have put up a wall between what we think we know and what God knows. What God is telling us is that we need to leave the judging to him, we need to think a little more about our own life and our own broken parts before we try to fix someone else’s brokenness.

We need to look inside of ourselves and see to the false idols we carry around with us, the things we think give us hope or help us, but really they only hold us back to a fulfilling life with Jesus Christ. The only rules we need to live by are the ones that come from God, the only water we need to drink is the living water that is Christ. The only judgment we are fit to do is on our own hearts. Give God’s job back to him. Let God be God, the one who will get you through the desert to a land of prosperity if only you’ll let go of those false idols you’ve been angrily guarding.

Amen.