The Flimsy Scarecrow
This sermon was given at our Evensong service on Sunday 24th June 2018. There had been much in the news that week about the US's policy of child-detention camps. The Old Testament reading that evening was Jeremiah 10:1-16 . Our Old Testament reading tonight is taken from the Book of Jeremiah. I don’t often go into historical detail about our readings, but I think – tonight – a brief overview would be helpful. The Book of Jeremiah was written somewhere around 625-585 BC, so roughly about 2600 years ago. It was written mainly in Hebrew, and was written when the Jewish people in Judah were a subject state, being ruled over by the Egyptians, and then – after a war between Egypt and Babylon – by the Babylonians. Judah rebelled several times against Babylonian rule, but was, each time, defeated, until finally, Babylon crushed Judah, destroying Jerusalem and its temple, and sent the Jewish people into their famous Babylonian exile. Given that background, our reading seems som...