"Thus said the Lord to me, 'Go and buy yourself a linen loincloth, and put it on your loins, but do not dip it in water.' So I bought a loincloth according to the word of the Lord, and put it on my loins. And the word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, 'Take the loincloth that you bought and are wearing, and go now to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a cleft of the rock.' So I went, and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord commanded me. And after many days the Lord said to me, 'Go now to the Euphrates, and take from there the loincloth that I commanded you to hide there.' Then I went to the Euphrates, and dug, and I took the loincloth from the place where I had hidden it. But now the loincloth was ruined; it was good for nothing.
Then the word of the Lord came to me: Thus says the Lord: Just so I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own will and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be like this loincloth, which is good for nothing. For as the loincloth clings to one's loins, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, in order that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory. But they would not listen." (Jeremiah 13:1-11)
Let's just appreciate this story for a moment. Basically, God tells Jeremiah to buy new underwear and hide it in the rocks, and then God compares the people to dirty underwear. Really. We think of parables as Jesus things, but clearly God used daily images to help people understand well before Jesus was born.
Yesterday we visited Aigues-Mortes, a remarkably well-preserved (and still lively) medieval fortified port city near here. A couple of things happened here to make it noteworthy. From here, King Louis IX (later St. Louis) sailed off to the Crusades. 1500 ships sailed from the port in 1248. Both the 7th and 8th crusades began here.
The town continued to thrive after the crusades, thanks to a bustling salt industry (Aigues-Mortes means "dead waters").
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the tower was turned into a prison for Protestants, when they were being persecuted by the Catholic Church. One woman, Marie Durand, was held for 38 years, and carved the word register ("resist" in Occitane) into the wall.
Back to the underwear. Horrible things have been done over the years in the name of religion. These are but two examples. It is so easy for us to be corrupted, to be separated from God. How easily we justify our own desires as God's will. Instead of clinging to God, we hide ourselves (or let ourselves be hidden) in rocky places. Killing people in God's name is not clinging to God, not following Jesus.
Seeing places like this is interesting. The architecture and the stories are compelling. They are monuments to the past -- but to glory or shame? Maybe a little of both?
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