In Baptism every Christian is made Priest, Prophet and King; Old Testament Prophets like Jeremiah (the "weeping prophet") teach us about our prophetic mission. We are a counter-cultural people, and sometimes being a prophet means saying "no" to society, to friends, or to family.
One of the great shocks of this decade has been the escalating war in Ukraine, beginning in 2014 as Russia annexed Crimea, then on and on until the full invasion began last year – a shock because we thought the days of European countries wantonly invading one another were over; things like that aren’t supposed to happen anymore! Now imagine for a moment you’re living in a country at risk of invasion; there’s a powerful and expansionist enemy right on your border, and you know it’s only a matter of time before their soldiers arrive. Perhaps, like Ukraine in 2014 the first elements are already leaking across the border and the other country’s leaders are already making speeches and justifying their obvious plans to invade you.
Now imagine that as all this is going on you hear the voice of God, calling you out to prophesy to your people – what might you hope he has to say? Might you hope that God would say “don’t worry, these people will not conquer you” “don’t be afraid, I am with you”? You would, probably, hope God gave some words of comfort and encouragement for you and your people. Imagine then your disappointment when the prophetic voice burning inside you commands you to say something else entirely. Imagine your trepidation as you have to say to your own people;
You will be invaded, and it’s your own fault. You have abandoned God, so now God is abandoning you. There is no hope in this war, we are going to lose, and what’s more we deserve it.
This is the position in which the author of our first reading finds himself; Babylon, the superpower of the ancient near east, is hovering on Judah’s border, preparing to invade. God speaks to Jeremiah, he calls him to prophesy, to tell his people that God has decided to punish them; they have abandoned him and worshipped other gods, and built temples to them, and violated the law – so God has decided to hand Judah over to the Babylonians.
Jeremiah is often called the weeping prophet – he weeps and laments over the punishment Judah has brought on itself, and he often turns to God cursing that he was ever called to prophesy. There are some beautiful lines from Jeremiah, in today’s reading he is crying out, complaining to God. The passage we read today is the middle of a longer passage, Jeremiah shouting,
You seduced me Lord, and I allowed myself to be seduced, you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me.
And in today’s reading, he hints at his persecutions; he’s accused of depressing people, of lowering morale in Jerusalem, they seek to arrest him and eventually they will – they’ll throw him in a well and try to starve him to death. The prophet of doom was never destined to be popular, and Jeremiah often resents it; he resents God for calling him to this prophetic duty, and he resents the wickedness of his own people for bringing it on themselves.
What does this have to do with us? We are living in a free country, at almost no risk of invasion. Even if we were, surely God doesn’t send prophets anymore to tell people they are about to be punished: we have Jesus, we have the word of God, we have a new covenant.
Well, each one of us, because of our Baptism, has been anointed with a triple ministry; we are all priest, prophet, and king. The prophets of the Old Testament are a window into our own calling as prophets of the new covenant – they tell us something about ourselves. What does Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, prophesying doom and destruction, have to teach us?
Jeremiah lived in a corrupt age – an age of idolatry, of sexual immorality, and of law breaking. He lived in an age where the majority in Judah had abandoned God, where even the priests and the prophets had become wicked and compromised with the paganism around them. God’s holy people had lost their holiness. Jeremiah had the gift of the Word of God given to him to call out their corruption and call them to repentance.
The prophet of the New Testament is called to offer the same kind of witness; the word of God, Jesus Christ, came to us to instruct us, to teach us right from wrong, to purify us with his presence in our hearts, to sanctify us and save us from our sins, and then to send us out as witnesses to his salvation. Jesus says it in today’s Gospel to his disciples
What I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the housetops.
He is sending us out – to proclaim the Good News. But wherever there is light there is also darkness; we have been saved from sin and are called to proclaim salvation. This means we have to be honest about what sin is; accepting what is good means rejecting what is evil. The two cannot co-exist - there can be no compromise with sin.
Today, the great challenge is this; everyone wants affirmation – they want to be told that what they are doing is right, and good, and that they should be praised for it. The difficulty of being a Christian today is that we will sometimes have to say no. No to participating in something immoral, no to supporting someone who is straying from the right path. Sometimes that will cost us friends or even family.
As Catholics most of us have been taught about the works of mercy, but we often focus on the corporal works of mercy (feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, clothing the naked etc.) and ignore the seven spiritual works of mercy we are called to practice, especially these two;
To instruct the ignorant.
To admonish the sinners.
Today, we are surrounded by the same problems Jeremiah faced; immorality, idolatry, and abandonment of God. And Jesus speaks to us just as God spoke to Jeremiah;
If anyone declares himself for me in the presence of men, I will declare myself for him in the presence of my Father in heaven. But the one who disowns me in the presence of men, I will disown in the presence of my Father in heaven.
We are called to be witnesses, and sometimes it is hard. Jesus tells us not to be afraid, to speak the truth, that God cares for us more than for any other creature and will not let us come to true harm. But he does ask a lot of us. How can we live up to it? The answer is simple; first look at our own lives, and ask, am I doing what I am supposed to do and being what I am supposed to be? The first ignorant person to instruct and the first sinner to admonish, is ourselves. We begin with ourselves. We ask God to convert us, we seek his forgiveness in regular confession of our sins and ask for his help not to sin again.
Then, we prepare ourselves. We don’t go out on street corners holding protest signs calling people to convert. But we also have to be strong, we have to be prepared to say no. We have to be prepared to refuse to participate in the sin of others and we have to be prepared to call them to conversion gently and charitably.
Sin is a death, it is a disease, it is an enemy is at the gates, wanting to invade our lives and condemn us, and we (God’s prophetic people) are called to beat back that enemy with the loving and authentic proclamation of the truth. It may cost us everything, we might (like Jeremiah) suffer persecution. But in the end Jesus reminds us how important we are, worth more than the sparrows, every hair on our head has been counted; there is no need to be afraid.
Homily for 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
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