June 21, 2026 - Jeremiah 20:7-13 - Proper 7

Words like “weariness” or “exhaustion” mean slightly different things in different contexts. There’s a kind of weariness that comes when things are working the way they are supposed to. You get this kind of weariness after a good workout. Your body has done the things it was designed to do. You might be a little stiff and sore. You are probably tired, maybe worn out, but you feel good. The weariness will pass and you’ll feel better. Your body will improve and it will take just a bit longer to weary in the future.

There’s a similar kind of weariness from mental workouts, meticulously designed puzzles or complex problem solving of more practical issue can give you a similar kind of thrill and leave you feeling a bit spent when you finally get done.

There’s also a weariness that comes from things not going the way they’re supposed to. When you’re sick or injured, your body is spending much of its energy on dealing with the problem and can’t spare much more for other things. A few years back when Laurie and I got COVID, it was all we could do to just stand up. Mostly we just slept through the illness, days going by where neither of us had the energy to do much of anything. There wasn’t anything to be done about it either. It wasn’t a refreshing sleep. Not like you get when you take a short nap and wake up feeling reenergized. You’d wake up and still be just as tired as you were before you closed your eyes.

Mental weariness often shows itself as an inability to focus, anxiety, frustration. Something isn’t working. Something has made you afraid. Something has mentally taxed you to the limit and you can’t deal with it anymore. If a problem refuses to be solved, sometimes you just have to step away from it and come back to it fresh, assuming you have the option to do so.

Jeremiah faces weariness more than a few times. There are times he gets beat up and abused. His body has to deal with that. He has to find ways to keep going. More often, though, his weariness is of a different sort. Not a physical weariness or even a mental weariness. His weariness is spiritual. He is weary of trying to care for God’s people. He is weary of trying to do what he has been called to do. He is weary of watching them repeatedly reject every opportunity they are given to be saved.

There’s no doubt Jeremiah lives a tough life. While the Israelites are not actively hunting down and executing God’s people, as they do in some places in the world today, he is still very much in the minority. He has no support network, no ministry team to help share the burden. He has no cozy retreat, no spa days, no fishing trips, no place to go to relax and feel restored.

There are times where you might face this kind of situation for your own sake, crippling poverty or some unrelenting disease has you wondering every day if you’ll live to see another. But, Jeremiah’s focus isn’t on himself, but on the people around him. He probably has some concern for his own wellbeing. He does get a lot of people threatening violence against him. More often, he’s just tired of the evil all around him. He’s tired of seeing his people, God’s people, opening supporting the evil, reveling in it. He’s tired of watching his driving in the fast lane straight to hell.

As Christians, we’ve been facing this same culture for a while now. As society encourages us to turn inward, to feed our inward desires and to consider ourselves more important than anyone or anything else out there, we naturally turn away from God in the process. Our society gets progressively more and more disordered. The “free love” culture of the 60s and 70s doesn’t need to stand out and be rebellious anymore. It’s become so engrained in our society that no one thinks twice about people living together or bouncing from relationship to relationship without any concern for commitment. Abortion, which was once held up as something we needed to support because it would be “safe, legal, and rare” has shown itself to be anything but those things. People are more than willing to justify the centrality of their own lives, even at the direct expense of the lives of others. Now, not only is abortion still ubiquitous, but you also have people who gleeful announce how they are living child-free lives, free from the responsibility, free from the financial burden that all comes with raising kids.

There are many other destructive currents at work in our society. The only good point to the transgender movement is that its disorder is so glaring and so public that it has forced many people to become active in dealing with our society’s ills. Still, even if actual headway is made in improving our society, there is a vast amount of work to be done before our country is anything resembling healthy.

The church fights and fights. The church, our Lutheran church, watches as other churches, those who are supposed to be our allies in all of this, turn around and openly support the evil. We are buffered from the rising tide of evil here somewhat, but we are far from exempt. There’s a fair chance you know someone who has had an abortion. It’s almost a certainty you know people who treat relationships as purely matters of their own comfort or pleasure and for whom commitment just isn’t in the cards. You probably know people who have made a point to avoid children at all costs, thinking they are better off without them. You probably know people who, good though they may be, are not Christian.

Having all of this stuff pushed on you day after day eventually becomes exhausting. You get weary of dealing with it. Laurie and I like watching movies, but it’s been increasingly the case that watching movies is like navigating a minefield. We get excited about a movie, but then hear about how some of this stuff is a major feature in the movie and that’s the end of it. We’re constantly having to monitor what Paul watches and especially what he reads so he doesn’t have to deal with this stuff. Someday, when he’s older, he’ll have to. For now, we want him to be able to be a kid and enjoy a simpler and less confusing world.

You may not think much of the wide world and it may not bother you that much. It’s all out there somewhere. Other people have to deal with it and it’s unfortunate for them, but none of that impacts your own life all that much. That’s one of the benefits of living where we do. However, Jeremiah’s words are not just directed at the people as a whole. They are also directed at each person he deals with. How many people have you dealt with in your life who struggle, who try to strike out on their own and do everything themselves, who don’t want your help, who say they know you care and you want to help but they’re just fine? It could be money problems, work stress, relationship issues, or just simple godlessness. Loving them, trying to help them and care for them, trying to get them to a better place ends up exhausting. It can be spiritually wearisome, draining you of the desire to care for anyone else or see the value in any of it.

Jeremiah frequently asks for strength and guidance, for the tools necessary to do the job given to him. He is sent to a people he knows won’t listen to him, but he has to preach to them anyway. God declares his own weariness with their idolatry and manifest evil as well, but he wants to give them every chance to listen and change. He still loves them.

The weariness that comes when our love for others fails to have any meaningful impact can easily turn into apathy or despair. If they aren’t going to listen, then what’s the point? We give up or we come to the conclusion that it’s all meaningless.

The people you love may not listen to you. They may continue to seek their own path that leads to their own destruction. They may heap consequences on themselves over and over again, terrible repercussions that they never learn from. They may keep at it to the day they die, but they might not.

It is a wonder and a testament to God’s love that he does not deal with us in the same way we deal with others. We don’t know if any listened to Jeremiah and repented, but if even one did, then that is one person who joyfully entered into eternal life. Even if no one there did, God’s justice would prevail. The ancient nation and people of Israel would forever be an object lesson as to what happens when you turn your back on God.

God loves his people, collectively and individually. There are many who seek our destruction, but they will be greatly shamed and will not succeed. We sing praises to the Lord for he has delivered the life of the needy from the hand of evildoers. Jesus did not hold back the condemning Law but spoke it boldly. We heard it and repented and now hear his message of forgiveness and life. Satan can do what he wants, but he can’t change what God has given us.

The spiritual weariness we feel in caring for others becomes a reflection on God, the God who promises to forgive as many times as his people repent, the God who gave the life of his Son in exchange for us. It reflects on the merciful Father who loves his children and promises to do so without fail. Even when his children repeatedly mock him and insult him, he still loves them and would do anything to save them if they would listen and return.

Our failures reflect back on him, but his mercy is also reflected through us. God doesn’t send a message to people who are beyond redemption. All can be redeemed. The price is steep. It’s out of our reach, but he is willing to pay it. He is willing to pay the price to bring his people back and the gift is given to all. He will always deliver his people.

Just as Jeremiah saw, God’s deliverance comes as both salvation from sin, but also salvation from all of his enemies. Those who reject him and attack us will not prevail. If they will not listen to him and will not return, then God will deliver us by casting them out. The filthy and destructive ways of this world will not rule the day. We do grow weary under the assaults of this evil world, but we see God’s justice and his vengeance. We, like Jeremiah, will be singing God’s praises forevermore.