What is Jesus on about in today's Gospel? These are the kinds of passages that prove scary to people, especially when they are treated in a vacuum rather than in context. As it pertains to Gospel readings from the Lectionary, context means both situating the passage in the biblical book and section of that book in which it is found, as well with the other readings from the Lectionary for that day, with which it is harmonized.
Our reading from the Hebrew Bible (i.e., the Old Testament) for this Sunday is taken from the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah. It is a difficult reading because Jeremiah, in being true to his prophetic calling, which consisted of calling the kingdom of Judah back to fidelity with its covenant with God, experiences the wrath of the king. The reason the king's advisors call for Jeremiah's death is because by speaking prophetically he is demoralizing people and, in their view, not interested the nation's welfare. The implication is that he is seeking to bring about Judah's demise. In short, Jeremiah is deemed an enemy of the state. In reality, the welfare of the people and of the nation are foremost on Jeremiah's mind as well as first in his heart.
Nonetheless, Jeremiah is seized and cast into a cistern in which there was "only muck." Seemingly in despair for being punished simply for being faithful to his divine calling, the prophet "sank into the muck." I use "muck" instead of "mud" as the result of making reference to Robert Alter's translation of the Hebrew Bible. His insistence on using "muck" arises from his observation that a cistern, which is a pit for collecting rainwater, in midsummer, which is when this episode takes place, would contain "only a residue of muck" (The Hebrew Bible: A Translation- Prophets, 986). Living in the desert, Alter's explanation makes me think of gnats, flies, and wasps, which hover over such muck in the heat of a summer's day.
It bears noting that it was a Cushite, not an Judahite (i.e., a Jew), who implored the king to let him save Jeremiah from starvation. So, Jeremiah's life was spared by the good graces of a benevolent foreigner. As Alter observes, the Cushite, Ebed-Melech, was very likely a black African. He further notes the irony that it should be a foreigner who takes "the initiative to save the prophet" (The Hebrew Bible, 986).
Our reading from the Letter to the Hebrews shows that the connection between Jeremiah and Jesus could not stronger. "For the sake of the joy that lay before him," the inspired author writes, Jesus "endured the cross" (Heb 12:2). Jesus did not merely endure the cross, by despising the shame this hideous form of death was intended to impose who were so executed, Jesus he defied death. Just as Christ endured "opposition from sinners," we, too, should remain steadfast and "not... lose heart" when our love not only when our love is not returned but when we are rejected and despised for it (Heb 12:3). In fact, our steadfastness should be such that we struggle against sin, our own sin, "to the point of shedding blood" (Heb 12:4).
This past week, the Church observed the Memorial of St. Maximilan Kolbe, who, like Jeremiah, died of imposed starvation. Fr. Kolbe voluntarily the place of a Jewish man in German concentration camp. Praying Morning Prayer that day I was struck by one of Intercessions, taken from the Common of One Martyr:
Your martyrs followed in your footsteps by carrying the cross,It may seem that, unlike Jeremiah, Maximilan Kolbe was not rescued by a foreigner. In a reversal, this righteous Gentile was rescued by the resurrection of the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth.
-help us to endure courageously the misfortunes of life
Indeed, Jesus came to bring fire upon the earth. In its essence, what is this fire? Is it literal? Is God going to burn everything just as, in the flood, he drowned nearly everything? No! Jesus came to set the earth on fire with the love of God. He is God's love incarnate and resurrected. Jeremiah shows, as does Jesus, for that matter, that the love of God is frequently not well-received. It is not the one aflame with the fire of God's love who divides herself from others as the result of some imagined holy separation. Rather, it the division arises from the rejection of God's love by those on whom it is lavished. Far from embracing being cast into the cistern as a relief, Jeremiah languishes still on fire with the love of God.
Just as Jesus "endured" his passion without arguing or disputing, our passage from the Hebrew Bible conveys no words spoken by Jeremiah. The prophet certainly does not speak in his own defense. Just as Jeremiah was seen as a nemesis to his people, so Jesus was deemed to be a danger by the Sanhedrin of his own day. Let's recall these words put in the mouth of Caiaphas by the inspired author of St. John's Gospel: "it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish" (John 11:50).
As the Lord indicates in our Gospel today, love usually results in suffering. Love, of course, is not all suffering. But to love is to suffer, at least to some extent and some of the time. Jesus speaks about the "anguish" he must experience until the redemption, the reconciliation, the communion he came establish is fully realized. Walking the way of love is to intentionally embrace that path of maximum resistance. As a member of his body, the Church, it is through you that the earth is to be set afire by God's love and it is through you that Christ experiences the anguish to which he refers in our Gospel reading.
It was only a month ago that our second reading for Mass, taken from St. Paul's Letter to the Colossians, began with these words: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking* in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church" (Col 1:24). Indeed, these days faithful members of the Christ's Church suffer for the things inflicted on the young and innocent lambs who by wolves masquerading as shepherds and businessmen pretending to be bishops. To give up on the Church, however, is not only to give up on Christ, it is to give up on the love with which God seeks to set your heart aflame.
As the last verse of the twelfth chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews, the chapter from which our second reading is taken, asserts: "For our God is a consuming fire" (Heb 12:29). "Be who God meant you to be," wrote St. Catherine of Siena, "and you will set the world on fire."
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