4th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022
Jeremiah 1`:4-5, 17-19; 1Cor 12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30.
The compilers of the Lectionary (the book of readings) can be irritating at times in the way that they edit passages from the Scriptures, and, in particular, in the choice of verses which they omit. Today’s reading from the prophet Jeremiah skips twelve verses from the middle. In some cases this is understandable, as the verses in question deviate from the principal theme of the call of the young prophet, but it is galling to be deprived of verses 6-8, in which we hear of Jeremiah’s reluctance and anxieties.
These verses read: “I said ‘Ah Lord look. I do not know how to speak: I am a child.’ But the Lord replied ‘Do not say “I am a child”. Go now to those to whom I send you, and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to protect you—it is the Lord who speaks.’”
From them we learn that Jeremiah resisted his call to be a prophet, because he foresaw difficulties and opposition, the same opposition which Our Lord encountered in the synagogue at Nazareth. Jesus was rejected because He told the people some home truths, and that rejection extended to violence. Jeremiah too was to encounter violence at the hands of the civil and religious authorities, and his unease proved to be well founded.
What about us, who were anointed at our baptism to be priests, prophets, and kings, as members of the Body of Christ; who are called to be a prophetic people, witnessing to the Gospel and opposing injustice? If we are true to our calling, we shall encounter opposition or, what can be worse, indifference. Nobody is interested in what we have to say, and if they listen at all, they are unlikely to be convinced.
Some twenty years ago, the late Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, commented that we are singing the song of the Lord in a strange land. He was quoting the psalm in which the Jewish exiles in Babylon lamented their condition, asking, in the translation provided by Boney M, now more than forty years ago, “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”
In Babylon, the exiles refused to sing those songs, even though their captors requested them. Jeremiah, Jesus, and we do not have that choice. If we are to be true to our baptism, we must sing the Lord’s song. We have to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ by our words, but especially by the manner of our lives and we have to do it in our own country, which has become a strange land, estranged from Christ and from the values of His Kingdom.
Our greatest prophet at the present day is Pope Francis, who determinedly sings the song of the Lord and who, like Jeremiah, and like the Lord Jesus, encounters bitter opposition from his own people. It was Jesus’ co-religionists who, in His own town, rejected Him, and who wished to kill Him, not least for pointing out that pagans such as the widow at Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian had won God’s favour. Likewise, it is not pagans, but members of his own flock, who are vitriolic in their denunciation of Pope Francis for his determination to make the Church more Christ-like, and to bring the compassion of Christ to the world.
So true commitment to Christ, true proclamation and living out of the Gospel, will bring opposition. How are we to cope with that? St. Paul provides the answer in that beautiful passage from his First Letter to the Corinthians. Opposition must be countered and overcome by love. Denunciation, condemnation, demonisation of our opponents are all contrary to the message and person of Christ. All of our cherished schemes and projects, and all of our most persuasive arguments, will, in the end, fall short. Only that love which comes from God, which is developed and grown in us through our relationship with God, and which encompasses even those with whom we disagree fundamentally, will empower us as true prophets, in whatever land we seek to sing the Lord’s song.
