Jeremiah 30:18-22
“And you shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Jeremiah 30:22)
One of the earliest rules in writing is that you don’t begin a sentence with a conjunction. Yet here it is, in sacred scripture, just ripping apart all grammatical guidance. Since God is not a capricious rule-breaker, there must be a reason.
First, just a little English major nerd-fun for you. There are four types of conjunctions, but only two – coordinating and subordinating – are worth noting here (correlative and adverbial are the other two, just in case you were curious). A coordinating conjunction does what it sounds like; it coordinates in relationship to one another two clauses, phrases, or words. Most popular examples of these include “and” and “but.” In fact, see that second “and” in the previous sentence? Perfect example. It coordinates the relationship between the first “and” and “but” by noting that they are equally versions of “most popular examples.” Subordinating conjunctions also do what they sound like – they set in subordinate relationship (that is, where one word/phrase/clause is primary and the other secondary) two words/phrases/clauses. Probably the most popular example of this is the word “because.” So, for example, “The readers of this devotion were really bored, because Pastor Jeff was droning on about grammar.” In that sentence, the independent clause (or primary idea) comes before the word “because” and the dependent clause (or secondary idea) is everything from “because” onward. If I just wrote “Because Jeff was droning on about grammar,” you wouldn’t know what I was talking about because the independent clause carries the main idea and that fragment is dependent upon it.
Okay, if you’re still reading, you get three extra Jesus points for today. Good job! All of that is helpful prologue (I hope) to helping us look at the above-quoted sentence: “And you shall be my people, and I will be your God.” That first “and” that begins the sentence implies that there is something that must necessarily exist prior to the declaration “you shall be my people.” Or, put differently, “you shall be my people” is in equal relationship to whatever existed prior. As you’ll see in the reading, that something prior is God’s declaration to care for His people and to reestablish them after a time of (Babylonian) exile. Yet that’s precisely where it gets confusing, because God hasn’t actually done those actions yet (He will when the Persian empire overtakes the Babylonians and the king of Persia – Cyrus – sends all the exiled Israelites back to Jerusalem; you can read all about that in Ezra and Nehemiah), but this history is still in the future at the time Jeremiah is speaking.
And this is the precise moment that we learn that we are God’s people not only because of past actions, but also because of future-past actions. Or, put differently, because God promises us a future that is as sure as His Word (and His Word is sure!), we can already live as if God has fulfilled His promise. So, when we read words in Revelation about how God is bringing about a new heaven and a new earth where no one is hungry and all sorrow is wiped away, we can start living that way now. It is our – to coin a phrase – our future-past. In fact, this future-past is the true motivation of all our mission work in and through the church. It isn’t that we’re trying to make the new heaven and new earth happen (that is waaaaaay above our paygrade), but that because we’re already so convinced of the validity of that new heaven and new earth, we can begin to reflect its character in the world now. This is why we are witnesses – that is, we witness to what is, even if it is still technically what will be.
“Conjunction junction, what’s your function?” Well, at least in this instance, reminding us of a God who will claim us and already has. Amen.
