Word to the Wise
Saturday, July 24, 2010 - Saturday in the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time
[Jeremiah 7:1-11 and Matthew 13:24-30]Reform your ways and your deeds, so that I may remain with you in this place. Put not our trust in the deceitful words: "This is the temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord!" Only if you thoroughly reform your ways and your deeds; if each of you deals justly with his neighbor; if you no longer oppress the resident alien, the orphan, and the widow; if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place, or follow strange gods to your own harm, will I remain with you in this place......[Jeremiah]
How would any of us feel if, upon coming out of church on Sunday morning, we were faced with an impassioned prophetic figure with a bullhorn voice saying to us what Jeremiah says above? Given current attitudes about "resident aliens" and other vulnerable people in our midst, how would we react? Jeremiah says that we should not take comfort from the sheer fact of the "temple of the Lord" (the institutional manifestation of our faith) if our conduct outside (or even inside) that temple is unjust or idolatrous! At one point, Jeremiah's opponents throw him in a cistern! Would we call the police and have the "public nuisance" removed? (Ironically, our "civil religion" of 1st Amendment Rights might protect the prophet more than our faith would!) An old saying about preaching has it that the role of the preacher is "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." This is truly what Jeremiah does and any preacher worthy of the name should do! I cannot claim to be a master of either but Jeremiah is a reminder to me of the challenges faced by the preacher and the listener in our day. The "temple of the Lord" is not a building. It is the "human person fully alive," as St. Irenaeus would put it. If we feel "afflicted" by Jeremiah, perhaps we have become too "comfortable." AMEN
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