| January 28, 2001 Jeremiah 1:4,5,17-19 + 1 Corinthians 12:31,13:13 + Luke 4:21-30 |
| “As Christ was anointed priest, prophet, and king, so may you always live as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.” These words from the Rite of Baptism. They were said over each one of us as we were anointed with Holy Chrism: anointed into a priestly people, prophetic people, and kingly people. The first reading today from Jeremiah’s first chapter draws our attention to one of the three qualities or roles we are called to and anointed for in Baptism. While the text seems extremely personal and unique to Jeremiah’s experience, even a quick look at all the prophets, Jesus included makes it clear that there is nothing unique about Jeremiah’s experience except his particular spot in history. Prophetic people seem to share the same lot in life. Sadly, the violent end to which most of them come and the miserable suffering that marked some of their lives is all we can see and remember. As a result, it’s not hard to understand why so few are willing to take up their mantel. I suppose it is the same thing with priestly role. If all you can see or want to see is how hard it is, how lonely it can be, it’s notdifficult to understand empty seminaries. Too bad it’s hard to see how wonder-filled and how fulfilling it really is. Believe, me I would never have lasted 33 years if the good stuff didn’t out-weigh the bad. But it’s prophets we are about this week, not priests nor royals. The fact is, there is a great deal more to the role of a prophet than suffering misunderstanding, rejection, and hostility. |
| There is in us all, planted as seed at Baptism a little bit of the prophet, and what the Word of God proposes to us today is that we might nurture that seedling along a little more in our prayerful assembly today. It has something to do with how we see things. |
| Everyone knows that the world has both beautiful and ugly angles; that people are a mixture of good and bad; that the world is an imperfect place; that progress is measured by inches and by decades. So, some people expect justice to be delayed, honesty to be expensive, the rich to prosper, and the poor to be always with us. But not the prophet. The prophetic in us is scandalized by injustice and impatient in its face. The prophetic are affronted by evil. |
| If you listen to Jeremiah, the country he thought was ruining the whole world measured about 25 by 20 miles square! The people he criticized for universal evil numbered about 15,000. That many people and that much evil is about the size of one or our larger neighborhoods. Such immoderate excitement on the part of the prophet! But, that’s the way it is with the prophetic. They don’t see things the way the rest of the world sees. |
| To the world, a single act of cheating in business is slight; and it doesn’t hurt any one. To the prophet, it’s an economic disaster. To the world exploiting a poor person is harmful to them and someone should put a stop to it, but to the prophet it is a deathblow to the welfare system. What is to the world, just an isolated episode is to the prophet an instance of systemic evil.Does the prophet see to much or does the world see too little? There in lies the difference. |
| The prophet shuns the average and abhors compromise. For the prophet, no one is just enough, honest enough, faithful enough, good enough, or holy enough. The prophet does not travel the middle of the road. Others may suffer from loneliness, but the prophet is overwhelmed by the divine presence. Others would separate their world or some things in this world from God; but to the prophet, that is a fairy tale and an act of insolence. |
| On the day of our Baptism, someone anointed us to be prophet. What a happened to us? Too much compromise? Too much mediocrity? Too much middle of the road? The only result of that is all too obvious: injustice, poverty, loneliness, and half lived lives that never begin to reflect the grandeur of God nor resonate with the voice of God. |
| Jesus heard the words of Jeremiah and he believed them. We have heard them too. Let me repeat them: “I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” If we believed that to be the “The Word of the Lord”, we would probably be a little more prophetic, and what began on the day of our Baptism would have begun to make a difference in the face of injustice, poverty, and loneliness. |