Mass readings for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Jeremiah 38.4-6, 8-10 Psalm 40.1-3, 17 Hebrews 12.1-4 Luke 12.49-53
Prophetic speech is difficult speech. It’s difficult to deliver, it’s hard to hear because we know that as much as these words were addressed to people thousands of years ago, God’s word being eternal, they continue to speak to us today. They speak to us in our personal distress, and our society’s current crises, especially as we know them to come of us repeating the bad behavior of our spiritual ancestors. That’s why they describe so accurately the turning from God and its results in our lives. Instead of valuing them, of gladly speaking them in love as a warning, and of heeding them we resist the idea that God is talking to us at all.
We learn of the consequences of speaking God’s truth in today’s first reading: the prophet Jeremiah is cast into a dried-up cistern, to either starve to death, or more horrifyingly, to drown in the mud at its bottom. All this for speaking the truth in the face of the manipulating lies offered by the official, royally-appointed prophets of the king’s court. More to the point of humanity’s reticence to hear the truth about its condition, and its need for God, are the words of Jesus who speaks of bringing fire into the world, and division. There are those who will rejoice to, at last, hear the truth spoken, but there are still more who don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to hear it because it convicts them in their sins, tells them they must change, they must choose God and his ways. And that is often seen as an undeserved reproach: “what have we done to deserve this? To be spoken to in this way? Did we not build Jerusalem and its Temple? Are the sacrifices not being offered? God, you are being unfair, unjust! Many speak in a similar way today, although perhaps with less reference to God and more about themselves as virtuous and innocent victims of circumstances they in no way contributed to making.
Those who reject the true prophet do so in the conviction that they are righteous according to their judgment. Indeed, because they are convinced of their righteousness, anyone who speaks against them can’t be from God – So, into the cistern with him; up on the cross he goes.
This is the sin of Cain that we know from the story of Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve. Cain, when God rejected his sacrifice, didn’t ask how he might be properly faithful and offer a true sacrifice (that is, give God what God really wanted from him), instead grew angry at God; and in his resentment and rage killed the righteous Abel.
Not looking for sympathy, I must say that homilies in this prophetic vein are a challenge for me (getting lowered into that dark and dry cistern at times looks the better option). In part, it’s because I don’t want to be met with a refusal to listen to the difficult words that must be spoken; but also, that in no longer listening, the words of comfort and divine assurance aren’t heard either. What balance can the preacher strike so that we can all hear both the warning of the prophet, but also the ready offer of God’s mercy?
We only have to look at the words of the prophets, of Jeremiah, in particular, to note how for all the words that would seem to condemn to hell-fire all of us for our sins, there are also the warm words of God’s enduring mercy for any who turn to him, even at the 11th hour, the last minute.
Jeremiah declares:
“Return, faithless Israel, says the Lord.
I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful,
says the Lord. I will not be angry forever.
Only acknowledge your guilt, that you have rebelled against the Lord your God… and have not obeyed my voice, says the Lord.” (Jeremiah 12-13)
This the message that underlies the famous parable of the Prodigal Son.
We may recall the story of Jeremiah to put in context what we heard in the first reading. The project of the Kingdom of Israel is ending. That kingdom divided after the death of Solomon into two, “Israel” in the north, and Judah with its capital at Jerusalem, in the south. The northern kingdom fell, and now it is the turn of the southern one. The king of Babylon is coming with his army. The kings of Judah have been duplicitous in their dealings, switching sides back and forth in the great power rivalry of the day, between Egypt and Babylon. Their latest double-cross is now bringing harsh consequences down on Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar has had enough.
Jeremiah, like all prophets, is a reluctant one, but who nevertheless takes up the unpopular task of preaching to Zedekiah the king of Judah, and the people, a call to repentance at first, and then sounding the alarm of impending destruction – he warns that the schemes of the king aren’t going to work. Zedekiah has called on the Pharoah of Egypt to come to the rescue. The Egyptian army makes an appearance, the Babylonians prudently withdraw, the Egyptians go home, but then the Babylonians start back toward Jerusalem. And this time, Pharoah says he’s not coming.
The false prophets of the royal courts – those designated by the king as the official spokesmen of God, they tell the king and the people that God will deliver them, that the king will figure out what to do. The army is ready, the city prepared, let the Babylonians bring it on!
Jeremiah, God’s true prophet tells them, “No, that’s not going to work.” The jig is up – the best thing for the people to do is to leave Jerusalem; and to begin to plan for what comes next, and to do so with God at the centre of that plan.
And he tells the king to go and meet Nebuchadnezzar and hope for the best. Maybe, the city can be spared, even if the king’s life isn’t.
But Zedekiah won’t go. The king won’t give his life for his people. Rather, he and his court respond to Jeremiah with vicious intent, to shut the prophet up, and some even to just kill him. Why? Because they are clinging to power. If the people desert them, they lose their power. But what kind of king is a man who will not lay down his life for his people? Who, even in inevitable defeat, will sacrifice the blood of others to forestall what eventually must come; who clings to power just a little longer, hoping for a miracle to deliver him personally from the consequences of his actions?
The king who dies for us is a rarity, the ruler, the leader who will make the sacrifice be it that of his life, or maybe just his pride, these people are rare, truly exceptional.
We know the king who died for us, though. Christ who though he came with fire, also came to rescue; Christ who came to save by the sacrifice of himself.
What is so reassuring is that while things may fall apart, for those who’ve staked their lives on God and not the world, and the powerful within it, they will escape the worst of the consequences. At the very least, their souls are vouchsafed against the pitiable lot of those who cling to the passing world when they could have accepted Christ and been saved.
Hard times, bad news, its not anything any of us want to hear. I’ve sat in the room when the diagnosis was read out by the doctors; I’ve been there when the test results have come back. Would it have been better to not know? But the further question is, in knowing what we didn’t want to hear, what can we do now?
And boy, I want to hear that there is something, anything, because then I’ll do it.
The good news here is that there is something we can do, that’s in our power to do: we can turn to God, in prayer, in repentance, in thanksgiving, in sadness, in joy, and begin again with him – to truly be God’s people. Yes, we might have to leave behind quite a bit behind, abandon the Jerusalem we’ve built up, the great city and civilization that we thought was the height of human achievement. But this wasn’t what God wanted. All God has ever wanted was us. And for us, he moves heaven and earth, walks through fire with us, endures the cross, to raise us up to eternal life.
Amen.