Word to the Wise
Saturday, July 23, 2022 - Saturday in the 16th Week in Ordinary Time
[Jer 7:1-11 and Matt 13:24-30,]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 your deed; if each of you deals justly with his neighbor; of 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, in the land I gave your fathers long ago and forever. [Jeremiah]
I once heard it said that some people sow wild oats during the week and go to church on Sunday to pray for crop failure!! Jeremiah would be standing at the church door to accuse them just as he stood in front of the temple to accuse the people of Israel. They seemed to think that as long as they did what the rites required in the temple, what they did outside the temple was their own affair. Jeremiah pulls down the curtain of hypocrisy and exposes the difference between public worship and private/public behavior outside the temple. The list of oppression and idolatry could easily include common patterns of conduct in our own time. Temples of righteousness are often built to shield morally dubious behavior. This includes denying past patterns of discrimination and oppression in order to o make present conduct look less evil! The "Gospel of Prosperity" is as dangerous now as it was in Jeremiah's day!
In the gospel scripture today, Jesus warns that the "weeds" in the crop may think that because they grow up alongside the wheat, that they (the weeds) will escape the inevitable fate of weeds. The conversion that Jesus and Jeremiah call us to is a challenge to moral complacency and injustice. It may be difficult to determine at times whether anyone is weed or wheat, but the Lord is the harvester and will know the difference. AMEN