9/26/2021 Prophets – Jeremiah’s Dirty Underwear, Jer. 13:1-11

           What is it that mothers are famous for saying to their children as they head out of the house?  “Make sure you have on clean underwear in case you’re in an accident!”  Humph.  After doing my clinical work in a Level 1 trauma center I can tell you they don’t care one bit about your underwear!   They’ll likely cut it off.  I guess at least the fragments would be clean!  I can see it now, a nurse in an emergency room saying, “Oh, this man had on dirty underwear.  Send him to the non-sterile operating room for surgery!”

There’s also the saying, “cleanliness is next to godliness.” 

Hopefully without undermining parents’ quest to make sure their children put on clean clothes, or the struggles of any homemaker who is trying to get a slobby family to tow the line, we have God instructing Jeremiah to make use of dirty underwear.  While the word “underwear” doesn’t show up in our Bible translation (in fact the concept of underwear wasn’t even invented in Jeremiah’s time) the linen loincloth that Jeremiah is instructed to buy, then wear, then hide by a riverbank, and retrieve probably for a public display, was indeed underwear.

Before we go further I do want to make a textual note.  Our translations follow the ancient manuscripts and say that Jeremiah hides the underwear in the cleft of a rock along the Euphrates River.  That would mean a 400 mile trip from Jerusalem to hide it, and a second 400 mile trip from Jerusalem to retrieve it.  That’s a lot of walking, or perhaps a very big Uber bill for the donkey ride!

The Hebrew word translated as Euphrates is “Perat.”  However within five miles of Jerusalem is a place called “Parah”.  When you consider there are no vowels in ancient Hebrew the two words are only one letter apart.  And so, far more likely is that Jeremiah travels just five miles each time with the loincloth.

The fact that Jeremiah was told to purchase a garment made of linen possibly carries many layers of meaning.  Indeed any number of materials could have been used as undergarments, as long as they weren’t too scratchy!  But while linen was used for many things – clothing, sheets, curtains, and burial shrouds – hear these words from Leviticus 16:3-4.  This is God giving instructions to Moses for his brother Aaron as Aaron does his priestly duties, “Thus shall Aaron come into the holy place… He shall put on the holy linen tunic, and shall have the linen undergarments next to his body, fasten the linen sash, and wear the linen turban; these are the holy vestments.  He shall bathe his body in water, and then put them on.”
            When the priests were doing their holy duties all of their attire was to be of linen.  Their garments were not to be made of wool or animal skins, but of linen.  As you may know, linen is a fabric woven from flax yarn.  It was considered to be a luxury good.

(Just a bit of historical trivia, it appears as if humans have been making things of linen for about 10,000 years; which is longer than we’ve been making pottery!)

Though the text does not overtly say it, as I suggested in the children’s sermon, many biblical scholars think the insistence on the undergarment being linen is a reference to the priests.  And so, God is critiquing the priests, who instead of leading the people the right way, are filthy and leading people the wrong way.  If the people don’t have good leadership they are hardly fully responsible for their actions.  Also, bad leadership means that the basic needs of the people are not being met.  All in all then, the main thrust of this critique is against the leadership.  However, the overall critique is against the stubborn sinfulness of the people.

The image of dirty underwear is pretty vivid.  Underwear is literally close to us.  It protects and supports our most intimate parts.  Whether or not your mother told you to put on clean underwear in case you’re in an accident, I think we’d all agree that wearing clean underwear is preferrable to wearing dirty.  Without getting too graphic, how would it feel to step out of a bath or shower and put on dirty clothes?  What would be the point of bathing at all!

Thus Jeremiah wants the people to know how God feels about the situation.

We often think of God as being high and mighty, above us, pure and holy.  We think of God looking down upon the dirtiness of sin from a safe and clean height; and thus able to throw lightning bolts or a scowl of condemnation upon the sin.

But realize the message God has sent through Jeremiah.  This is where this oft overlooked passage carries its powerful word.  What if human sinfulness is like God having to wear dirty underwear?  What if those who are to be representing God are actually embarrassing?

I like the way Patrick Miller, Professor of Old Testament Theology at Princeton puts it:

“It is not difficult for us to think of our fate as being tied to what God does.  This texts reminds us, however, as do the prayers of Moses [in Exodus and Numbers] and the community laments [like Psalm 44], that God’s reputation is tied to what human beings do.  That is, the one who has chosen to make the loincloth cling so closely is genuinely affected by what happens to it.  God’s glory depends in some fashion on what the community of faith does.  How the Lord is perceived and responded to by the world is determined in no small measure by how the Lord’s way is revealed through the life and work of those people who bear the Lord’s name.”  (New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 6, Pg. 686)

Indeed there have been plenty of scandals in the last decades about church leaders; we may think especially of Catholic priests.  Those are high profile wrongs, but I think it is a lot more. 

Christians have long been criticized as being hypocritical; talking about love but being holier-than-thou and looking down their long judgmental noses at others.  Or being apathetic about the wrongs of the world while staying safely in their lives of comfort.  Christians long have the reputation of preaching justice but not rolling their sleeves up and getting their hands dirty in the messiness of the world.

But God says that we are like a linen loincloth, an undergarment.  Would you like God to have to show up to the world in dirty underwear?  Yet how does your life reflect upon what being a follower of is?

From that perspective the dirty underwear message is one that makes us feel bad.  But it is also a message of grace from God; again this is a many-leveled image.

We often feel our hopes dashed when others do not life up to our expectations of them – maybe it’s a co-worker, or a friend, or a family member.  When people fail us we are saddened.   Hopes and dreams that were grand seem lost.  Let’s apply that to God then.

From one perspective the Bible is a story of humanity’s ongoing rebellion against God.  We often see it that way.  But it is also a story of God’s dashed hopes.  Over and over again God tries.  Over and over again humans fail.  God is disappointed.  But God keeps trying.

God will put on the dirty underwear of humanity and live another day with us.  And then do it again tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.  I hope we are not foul creatures in God’s thoughts.  Indeed the Bible says otherwise, but God is long-suffering with us.  Dirty underwear isn’t nice.  But God will do it in order to be with us.

We all look forward to the time when we can be clean and fresh and forever unsoiled.  Until then we are thankful for God’s grace which will wear us close, no matter how foul we may be.