20th Sunday in Greentime
Jeremiah (On a Bad Day)
Our first reading today speaks of Jeremiah, one of the greatest prophets in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition. His ministry, starting at the age of 12, lasted 40 years.
It was his sad vocation to be the chosen prophet to announce that YHWH was about to practice a little “tough love” on the Chosen People to get them to live properly lives of ethical monotheism. The people were hedging their bets on their allegiance to YHWH and were dabbling in the worship of EGO, viz., “easing God out”, as the mainstay of their existence. Consequently, they were also forging alliances with all sorts of foreign peoples (including the Egyptians!!) and were into local Canaanite religion and were neglecting the moral aspects of their dealings with one another, most especially the widow, the orphan and the alien. Jeremiah saw 2600 years ago clearly what Pope John Paul would call the Eclipse of God in his Evangelium Vitae (the Gospel of Life) on March 25, 1995AD, perhaps his greatest work. When the Transcendent is pushed aside in one’s life, sooner or later, sin (in Hebrew, “missing the mark of what it is to be human”) will occur in a people’s relationship with one another, particularly the helpless and silent. (There are those who would add the environment to the victims of the Eclipse of God these days.
As one can imagine, not everyone was pleased with what the boy prophet had to say. Jeremiah felt the abuse of the nobility of Jerusalem, the clergy of the Jerusalem Temple, the court prophets who tried to work the crowds by cajoling them into thinking that YHWH would never let anything happen to them and finally, the people of Jerusalem themselves who did not like it when Jeremiah said that the Temple was used as a center of practical atheism, viz., saying yes, yes to YHWH by showing up on the Sabbath for a bit and then, going ahead and doing what one wanted the other 6 1/2 days of the week. (Do we ever change?
Jeremiah was dumped in a muddy sewer by his enemies because his message was too persistent and too obnoxious. (More than one theologian said that Jeremiah was a candidate for antidepressants.)
However, like all of us, Jeremiah discovered that God works in mysterious ways. An Ethiopian slave in Jereusalem, named Ebed-Melech ( Hebrew for Servant of the King) comes to his rescue and lifts him out the sewer. Persecuted by his own people, Jeremiah is rescued by God through a Gentile slave!
The typology of going down and being lifted up is a familiar one in our Judaeo-Christian Tradition. At least, three major biblical Hebrew figures experienced going down and being lifted up. First, the Patriarch Joseph was thrown by his jealous brothers into a cistern after he flaunted his coat of many colors. He was then, lifted up and sold into slavery in Egypt where God used him to aid his murderous brothers during the years of famine in Egypt.
Second, Jonah went down into the belly of the great fish, where he dwelt for three days until God permitted him to be lifted up in the spewing forth on the shore. Then, Jonah fulfilled God’s plan to call people to repentance.
Our prophet today, Jeremiah is our third example of going down and being lifted up. However, the archetype is taking shape for Christians, the archetype of descent and transformation experienced by Christ Jesus in His Incarnation and His Redemption of us all.
Even Jesus Himself saw what was coming in His impending confrontation with the System when He arrived in Jerusalem. He spoke of the Sign of Jonah, just as Jonah was three days in the belly of the whale, so also must the Son of Man lay in the earth. Like us in all things but sin, Jesus experienced the basic pattern of reality, that of descent and transformation. Out of that which descends and dies, new life comes.
It is very difficult for us in Western Civilization to see the Paschal Mystery up close until it confronts us head on in our own lives. We condition our children to shoot for the stars. With the multiple advantages and opportunities and breaks, both young boys and girls in our part of the world can go for it. (Surely, indeed, they must do so, provided of course, that they build their towers morally (following the Gospel of Jesus by avoiding violence, dishonesty and greed, so rife in the System.))
Again, our young people are programmed to shoot ever higher. (Excelsior “higher” is the very nickname of the Empire State.) However, then something happens. We face the Paschal Mystery of descent and transformation. Joseph, Jonah and Jeremiah all experienced it as did the Chosen People when they went into the Red Sea and emerged safe and again, when they went down to Babylon in slavery to return up to Jerusalem. Jesus, the Archetype, Paradigm, Exemplar of Humanity and all creation experienced it on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Through our coming into the Christ Quantum in Baptism into Christ, we experience the Paschal Mystery with courage and confidence. In, with and through Christ Jesus, we know that descent and transformation are the pattern of the universe. Jesus teaches us not to fear because YHWH is with us in the journey.
Jeremiah lived for a long time and he witnessed the exile, the re-location of the Chosen People’s Elite in Babylon and then, predicted that they should not become too comfortable there because they were coming back up to Jerusalem. Jeremiah saw clearly that YHWH was present in situation, both good and bad, and that YHWH can transform everything into good. Blessed Juliana of Norwich said, in the fourteenth century, “God allowed the worst thing in the world to happen, the death of God’s Own Son, to show us that God can transform anything that happens.” God is that clever. Blessed John Duns Scotus said that Christ died to convince us through the most vivid audio-visual that God loved us to the point of suffering and dying for us. St Catherine of Siena said that she felt Christ say to her in response to her meditative reflection on why Christ had to die such a savage death, His response was simply, “Catherine, if there were any other way, believe Me, I would have taken it.” Not easy, the Paschal Mystery of descent and transformation was worth it for us.
Jeremiah, the Prophet, experienced going down and being lifted up by the care of the Ethiopian slave. Jesus, the Prophet-Martyr, experienced going down and being lifted up by YHWH on Good Friday and Easter. We experience going down and being lifted up again and again as well, not by Ebed Melech, the “servant of the king”, but by Christ Jesus, “the Servant of the Consummate King.” In a convoluted world, the pattern is hard to see.
We can’t teach it to people, young and old, when they think that all they need to know is in their heads by Confirmation. They are still going up and the world is theirs. However, it is God’s World, not ours! Sooner or later, we all learn that. The sooner, the better! 081907AD jfq
