Paradox in Plots and Protection

The texts in the Roman Catholic Lectionary today may cause us to consider “What’s in it for me?” The Prophet Jeremiah finds that his sincere efforts to speak to and for the good of his people and encourage them to re-establish their Covenant relationship with God are met with plots against his life. The prophet pleads for the dissonance he detects in his situation to be heard by God. Our sense of persecution even while we are doing “good work” gives us empathy with the psalmist calling for deliverance from enemies and persecutors. The Gospel of Matthew recounts Jesus declaration to his disciples that His mission in and to Jerusalem will include arrest, persecution and crucifixion by the Gentiles. A more distasteful scenario for their friend and rabbi could not possibly be imagined. This revelation of a plan which seemed paradoxical is place next to the apparent scramble for place in the “Kingdom” presented by Jesus. The impact of the evangelist “looking back” at the journey to Jerusalem from the perspective of decades after Jesus resurrection may account somewhat from the placing of the teaching on servant leadership following so closely after Jesus prediction of His fate in Jerusalem. The need to continue to put one foot in front of the other, at times, in the face of apparent contradiction, cognitive dissonance and persecution is the call to faith and trust in the Providence which will ‘turn all things to good” as we slave to lead in the vineyard.