Word to the Wise
Saturday, July 26, 2014 - Saturday in the 16th Week in Ordinary Time
[Jer 7:1-11 and Matt 13:24-30]The following message came to Jeremiah from the Lord: Stand at the gate of the house of the Lord, and there proclaim this message: Hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord! Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Reform your ways and your deeds, so that I may remain with you in this place. Put not your 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 deeds.....will I remain with you in this place, in the land I gave your fathers long ago and forever.
JULY 26, SS. JOACHIM AND ANNE, parents of Mary
Imagine arriving for Sunday Mass and being confronted outside the front door with a person shouting about reforming your life and attacking your confidence in the Church! No doubt the security guard or local police would be summoned to remove the shouting figure for "disturbing the peace!" Look carefully at the list that Jeremiah provides for reform: "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...." Do any of those things strike a bell? Given the current debates over immigration, "no longer oppress the resident alien..." certainly struck a bell with me. Widows and orphans were considered the most vulnerable figures in the land. Hmmmm.....what are we doing for them or to them?
The connection between worship and justice is clear not only in this dramatic scene but is a major theme for the Old Testament prophets and appears just as dramatically in the Gospel of Matthew in chapter 25:31-45 at the judgment scene. Jeremiah attacks the smug confidence of the people who think that they have got "God in a box" when it comes to the temple. God responds that the temple is only a building. God will not be there if there is no justice or mercy in the Land or if other "gods" are included in the temple!
Prophets make us uneasy! They "disturb the peace!" If this peace comes from wrapping ourselves in a religious cocoon of Sunday ritual while we support actions that are harmful to "the neighbor, the resident alien, the widow and the orphan," and don't see that our worship should reflect what we have done before we arrive at the front door, then we do need to have Jeremiah "disturb our peace!" AMEN