3RD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY (A ? prop. 7) S. Margaret?s Budapest
The OT reading expresses the pain of Jeremiah as he is pierced to the heart. It is his hour of desolation and in this impressive and revealing passage he pours out his soul. The forces of evil threaten to overwhelm him; as God?s messenger he is scorned. The problem was that it was a time of relative peace and prosperity, and people did not want to hear bad news about what was to come if they didn?t mend their ways. To many his prophecies seemed destructive. Isn?t the same thing happening today in relation to climate change? The day before he wrote this passage he had just spent a day in the stocks because of his preaching. Jeremiah experienced humiliation and dishonour ? life seemed barely worth living. Hence this outburst which comes close to blasphemy. The Hebrew brings out the sense better than English, and the sense is that Jeremiah was feeling that the Lord had virtually seduced him. It seems to him that he has been manipulated and overpowered by God. But he is trapped, because when he wants to put down the task, his conscience will not let him do it. He realizes that in his own strength he is helpless. But is not this just the point which can be the beginning of great things? In our weakness God?s glory can be revealed. It was at the point of Jesus? absolute acceptance of his own utter helplessness and his reliance on God that God?s glory was revealed. The apparent defeat of Good Friday opened out on to the dawn of resurrection and new life.
So help me God, I can do nothing else but obey,
says Jeremiah in effect. This is the turning point; his faith is restored, his strength is restored. God brings peace in spite of the terrible things that are happening. There is joy and faith and love of God in his final cry as he recommits his life and work to the Lord:
Sing to the Lord; praise the Lord! For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.
Jeremiah has discovered what Jesus talks about in the Gospel ? that obedience to God inevitably brings some degree of persecution, and that persecution can even come from the community of God?s people. There is pain in this, but the pain is not the whole story. Supremely there is rich and joyous new life.
The reading today from the letter of S. Paul to the Romans shows us that there are moral consequences to our baptism: what we believe must be reflected in our daily life. In our baptism we are identified with Christ so intimately that we can be said to have died with him, and been raised with him into new life ? the new life we see revealed in the risen Lord. But resurrection was only possible because of his sacrificial death. The two go hand in hand. So, as we have already noted, the victory presupposes the suffering. S. Paul puts this in a moral context. For the baptized there has to be an end to the evil parts of pre-baptismal behaviour, and the emergence of new patterns of life. For early Christians this was often quite difficult because there was much in the normal customs of life, which was bound up with the surrounding pagan religion, which was just accepted and found congenial. Pagan religion sanctioned and promoted grossly immoral behaviour, and not just sexual behaviour, which was abhorrent from the Christian standpoint. Christians thus stood out as being different from the norm, as having different standards. Is this a large part of why we lack credibility today ? that we do not stand out as having different values from the world in which we live and work? St. Paul asks in effect:
How can those who have died to sin in baptism still live in it?
If participation in the new life is to be real we must
walk in newness of life.
This figure of walking which suggests a progression, a journey is really helpful I think. In the early Church baptism was frequently, perhaps usually, by total immersion. The candidates went down into the water and came out the other side of the pool, and were then clothed in a white robe. I remember seeing the baptistry in the ruins of the Basilica of St. John in Ephesus. Set in a wide pavement area, steps led down at one end and out again at the other. The experience of entering the water and then progressing out the other side must have given reality to the idea of death and burial to the old life and emergence as a new person in Christ. We easily forget the moral implications of our baptism, and today?s reading should impel us to take a hard look at how different our behaviour patterns are from those of unbelievers.
So, the Lord has not promised his disciples that they need only make an appearance on Sunday here, and all will be well. On the contrary they will experience insecurity and persecution. If the Gospel is really the force which opposes every form of evil, the Church cannot turn away from the cross which leads to glory or from the narrow gateway which leads to the Easter mystery. We have to proclaim, and live, Christ?s divine nature of love in our daily life and work. Although we share in the suffering of the Messiah here, we also share in the resurrection life beginning here and now. We are reassured by the words of the Lord,
So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.
The only thing to be feared is sin and its consequences.
It is a terrible passage of course. We try not to face it in various ways. It speaks of the breaking up of families, of trials, of martyrdom. But what does he mean:
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword?
Peace or conflict. Although the Lord, and now the disciples, are the bringers of the Gospel and the peace of God, this we are told will be rejected by many, and these will be the persecutors of both the Church who brings it, and those who respond in faith and obedience to the message of God?s love. So, although Jesus does bring peace, in another sense division and conflict and persecution is a certain result of his offer of peace to the world. When we share the peace of God this morning, when we offer and receive it, we must be aware that it is a costly gift. It will be costly to us if we are really walking in the way. It has cost many thousands their lives over 2,000 years.
I am not suggesting that we face actual martyrdom in Budapest today, but it is because of martyrs for the faith that we are here today. Our faith is not an easy one ? it is not the gentle middle-class Sunday pursuit which it is often pictured as, and is this not the picture we often present by our lives if not our words? There are many martyrs still in the world today at this beginning to the third millenium ? we need to pray for them from the depths of our being. We give thanks to God our Father, who watches over the least of his children. Through our baptism, and by receiving the life of God?s Son in the Eucharist, we receive the strength to stand firm in whatever trials are sent to us ? we receive the new life in Christ which no one can take from us.