Friday, March 31, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Jeremiah and Jesus
I hear the whisperings of many … terror on every side … all those who were my friends. But the Lord is with me like a mighty champion, and my prosecutors will fail. They will stumble in lasting, unforgettable confusion.
When in terror, sleep fails to do its work. Thoughts stumble and encircle each other. Pictures, mostly horrific, plague me before what dreams may come. Then the dreams, feverish, pointed, driving me to panic, wake me again.
All those who were my friends.
They are coming for me, and not to celebrate my latest rant inside the temple. They will throw me in a well like Joseph, and leave me there to die. Perhaps they are afraid, their leaders threatening them with prison unless they betray me. I won’t know for sure, because they turn away in the street and refuse to say a word to me.
In my distress I call upon the Lord, he hears my voice. I love you, O Lord, my strength, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.
Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ. For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours now and forever. The peace of the Lord be with you always.
The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from my Father.” The Jews said, “We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy. You are making yourself God.”
Neither Jeremiah nor Jesus are making much headway against those who encircle them with accusation. Is anybody listening, either to their conscience or to God? The three famous Japanese monkeys stand on the edge of the crowd, with their hands on their eyes, their ears and their mouth. Wordless, they do not show respect for the people in front of them. They cackle, they schmooze, and keep their hands in place.
Dorothy Day was not in the crowd.
I think of my days of struggle coming into the church, how I did not know whether or not I had faith or believed or just wanted to believe. I knew that if I waited to understand and get rid of all my doubts, I would never be ready. When I was baptized, at least I knew that prayer, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief,” and that comforted me. I believed in Jesus Christ – that he is REAL, that he is the son of God, that he came here, that he entered history, and he is still here with us, all the time, through his church, through the sacraments of the church. Faith came before understanding.
Jeremiah was rescued from the well, but imprisoned, until the Babylonian invasion and victory. Nebuchadnezzar released him and allowed him to live where he wanted. Â But he continued to prophecy doom and destruction, and those around him eventually stoned him to death.
Jesus escaped from the crowd of Jews. He continued to speak what he heard from his Father, and not long after that he was arrested, condemned and crucified.
Next week we will participate in that horror any way that we can.
(Jeremiah 20, Psalm 18, John 6, John 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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