Word to the Wise
Thursday, July 24, 2014 - Thursday in the 16th Week in Ordinary Time
[Jer 2:1-3, 7-8, 12-13 and Matt 13:10-17]"The word of the Lord came to me: Go, cry out this message for Jerusalem to hear! I remember the devotion of your youth, how you loved me as a bride, following me in the desert, in a land unsown.......When I brought you into the garden land to eat its goodly fruits, you entered and defiled my land you made my heritage loathsome.......The prophets prophesied by Baal, and went after useless idols....."
It is difficult in a society as pluralistic and diverse as ours in the USA (and elsewhere in the Western world) to understand the collective sense of loss that Jeremiah is mourning in the name of the Lord. Jeremiah hearkens back to the journey with Moses in the desert when one people worshiped one God. He sees those days as the time of Israel's "youth" and their relationship to God as one of a bride to her spouse. Once this people moved into the "promised land" they began to adopt some of the religious practices of the previous inhabitants - the "Baals' - and lost their collective religious unity. The "freedom of worship" which is enshrined in our constitution guarantees that religious unity will not exist here, even though the Pledge of Allegiance contains the words, "under God!"
That "desert experience" inspired many of the early New England settlers in this country, but it also inspired the great civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. and his companions. It is a sense of unity and collective purpose that can motivate a group to endure great suffering for a cause and a desire to survive. But it is difficult to keep up that spirit when the outside threats disappear. It is then that the "inside threats" of idolatry and loss of a collective purpose begin to take hold. Jeremiah is warning Israel that without that religious faithfulness to God, they will collapse when the enemy comes. History shows just how "prophetic" he was! Is there a lesson for us in what he proclaimed so long ago? AMEN