Jeremiah and John Lewis, Prophets

MORNING
Psalm 119:145-168 • Jeremiah 11:18-23 • Matthew 10:16-22

EVENING
Psalm 122, 125 • Isaiah 65:17-25 • Hebrews 12:12-24

But let justice roll down as waters
and righteousness as a mighty stream.
Amos 5:24 (KJV)

I started thinking about writing this reflection the day after John Lewis died, and when I did, today’s reading from Jeremiah immediately caught my eye. I had been reading a recently published book about Lewis,* and the more I reflected on that Old Testament prophet and the twentieth century civil rights leader, the more alike they seemed.

Jeremiah was born and raised in a village called Anathoth, which was less than three miles from Jerusalem. He expressed his call to ministry this way: “Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jer. 1:4-5) 

John Lewis was born near the town of Troy, Alabama, about fifty miles from Montgomery. (Martin Luther King would tease him as “the boy from Troy”). As a teenager, Lewis also experienced a call to ministry, which he first exercised by preaching to the chickens in the farm yard, and which later deepened into a call to preach and to practice social justice in the name of Jesus.

Prophets, then and now, spend a lot of time getting in trouble. After Lewis’s death we were reminded of his admonition to “get into good trouble” in the cause of social justice. Following his own advice almost cost Lewis his life, not once but several times. Similarly, we hear Jeremiah complaining to God of a plot to kill him. Even friends and family members from Anathoth were in on the plot! Although the passage we are reading today doesn’t say so, what probably got him in trouble was reminding the Temple crowd, time and time again, that if they memorized all of scripture but did not take it to heart, their memorization would be of no account.

Finally, both Jeremiah and Lewis were prophets of the here and now, not just of the hereafter. Both men acted prophetically in history, not just predicting what was to come. Lewis started his post-secondary education at the age of fifteen, and quickly discovered a way of reading the Bible that changed his life. In class he read the works of Walter Rauschenbusch, the great American interpreter of the Social Gospel. Outside of class he heard on the radio—and later met in person—Martin Luther King, Jr. King spoke in the cadences of the King James Bible (close your eyes and hear King recite the words from Amos at the top of this reflection), but he left behind the sterile arguments of literalism for the gospel of social justice. Lewis, still a follower of Jesus, became a protégé of King and served as an exemplar for many of us.

Jeremiah was a prophet, no doubt about it. And so, I think, was John Lewis. Grant him eternal rest, o Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon him.  

*Jon Meacham, His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope (2020). Meacham’s book is not a full-scale biography but connects Lewis’s life with aspects of the civil rights movement up until the deaths of King and Robert Kennedy in 1968.

Written by Bob McMath

Bob is glad to see St. Paul’s taking the first steps toward reestablishing our in-person life together, beginning with the Blessing of the Animals. Our dog Sid enjoyed it and was very well-behaved.