The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today suggest meditation on the possible dissonance between how our bias may shape our view of our mission and the prophetic role to which we are called.
Prophets in Life
The reading from the Prophet Jeremiah declares God has delivered the life of the needy.
* [20:7] You seduced me: Jeremiah accuses the Lord of having deceived him; cf. 15:18. * [20:14–18] Deception, sorrow and terror have brought the prophet to the point of despair; nevertheless he maintains confidence in God (vv. 11–13); cf. Jb 3:3–12.1
Psalm 18 is a Royal Thanksgiving for victory.
* [Psalm 18] A royal thanksgiving for a military victory, duplicated in 2 Sm 22. Thanksgiving Psalms are in essence reports of divine rescue. The Psalm has two parallel reports of rescue, the first told from a heavenly perspective (Ps 18:5–20), and the second from an earthly perspective (Ps 18:36–46). The first report adapts old mythic language of a cosmic battle between sea and rainstorm in order to depict God’s rescue of the Israelite king from his enemies. Each report has a short hymnic introduction (Ps 18:2–4, 32–36) and conclusion (Ps 18:21–31, 47–50).2
In the Gospel of John, Jesus proclaims “the Father is in me and I am in the Father”.
* [10:30] This is justification for Jn 10:29; it asserts unity of power and reveals that the words and deeds of Jesus are the words and deeds of God. * [10:34] This is a reference to the judges of Israel who, since they exercised the divine prerogative to judge (Dt 1:17), were called “gods”; cf. Ex 21:6, besides Ps 82:6 from which the quotation comes.3
Tom Lenz comments that the biases of our lived experience are pretty awesome – until someone comes along and shows us that they are not. “The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus” because he was not like them. He was doing and saying things that were not aligned with their “usual storyline” and because of that he was a threat to their comfortable and predictable way of life.
Sometimes, if I hear the words that confirm my own biases, I am willing to make exceptions for actions that I would not normally approve of. In other times I fail to see the good actions that I normally approve of because they are accompanied by words that do not agree with my biases. This is what I saw in the Jews from John’s Gospel and this is what is easy to see in our society today – particularly in politics. As long as the words confirm what I already believe to be true, the appalling actions can be forgiven. In the case of the Jews, the good actions of Jesus did not matter because his message was inconsistent with the party-line of the Jews. Their biases did not allow them to see the truth.4
Don Schwager quotes “The sacrifice of Christ,” by Saint Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D.
"Even though the man Christ Jesus, in the form of God together with the Father with whom He is one God, accepts our sacrifice, nonetheless He has chosen in the form of a servant to be the sacrifice rather than to accept it. Therefore, He is the priest Himself Who presents the offering, and He Himself is what is offered." (excerpt from City of God, 10,20)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Jeremiah 20:10-13 notes that in today’s first reading, Jeremiah describes how his former friends cast him off because they didn’t like what God was saying through him. Jesus himself was also treated this way. In today’s Gospel, he was nearly stoned to death for speaking what the Jewish leaders considered blasphemy (John 10:33).
Life isn’t easy for prophets. When they bring God’s message—especially if it is one people don’t want to hear—they often encounter opposition. But God still calls each of us to be prophets in the world. Because Jesus lives in us, we can be living expressions of hope, encouragement, truth, and sometimes conviction to others.6
Friar Jude Winkler explains that “Jeremiah’s “ are poems to call upon the Lord to intervene and keep His part of the bargain. The “Son of God” in Hebrew times was understood as a heroic person. Jesus and John intend it to be the begotten Son of God. Friar Jude reminds us of the authority and power of Jesus, given by the Father.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, comments that we might know the names of only a few prophets, memorialized in the scriptures and by history, but by the gift of the Spirit, we can all think and act prophetically. We can pay attention to what isn’t right in the world around us and speak and act out of faith and love to change it. Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, a prophetic voice in our day, encourages us to do just that.
It is that steadfast, unyielding, courageous commitment to the eternal Will of God for Creation—whatever the cost to themselves—that is the prophetic tradition. It sustains the eternal Word of God while the world spins around it, making God’s Word—Love—the center, the axle, the standard of everything the faithful do in the midst of the storm of change that engulfs us as we go. [2]7
Our Baptismal gifts as priest, prophet, and king show that our Life is from the Father in relationship with Jesus and the Spirit.
References
No comments:
Post a Comment