Proper 7:

Jeremiah 20.7-13
Romans 6.1b-11
Matthew 10.24-39

JESUS warns his disciples, as they are about to set out on their mission to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”, that people will speak ill of them. Indeed, they will be derided even more then he has been. If we are followers of Jesus, we, too, must expect to “bear the abuse he endured” (Hebrews 13.13).

In reality, that may not be our experience. We live in an easy-going age, and, most of us, in societies where the worst verbal assaults we are likely to suffer are the mild ribbing of our mates, or accusations of inanity by a Richard Dawkins. But, in the light of our readings this Sunday, we would be foolish to pooh-pooh the possibility that times may change, and that we may yet be mercilessly mocked for the sake of whose we are.

What does it feel like — what does it feel like, as the interviewers always ask — to be hated and vilified for the message one brings? There is someone in the Bible who tells us, and we hear him on Sunday.

Jeremiah was active throughout the most turbulent period of biblical history. He witnessed the invasion of the kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians, the siege and the sacking of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, and the deportation of the community’s leading citizens into exile.

Jeremiah saw the hand of God in this unfolding history. He proclaimed that the Babylonian armies were instruments of God’s judgement on his faithless people, and he bluntly declared that the best thing to do was to surrender to them. It was no way to make friends.

Jeremiah’s public witness, despite the obloquy it brought on him, was fearless and unwavering. But that outward confidence masked a very different inward experience, as — day after day, decade after decade — there was only disdain for what he was divinely driven to say.

Jesus was in Gethsemane for a few hours. Jeremiah was there for upwards of 40 years. We would know nothing of that long night, were it not for a series of extraordinary soliloquies in the book of the Bible that bears his name. Here the prophet bares his anguished soul, and berates the Almighty for what he has made him go through.

These so-called “confessions” of Jeremiah — our first reading is an extract from one of them — reveal the personal cost of “prophetic discipleship”. Such was the path the Twelve were called to tread, and it is the way we may yet have to walk.
 The prophet begins with a bitter outburst. “Lord, you have deceived me” — or “duped” me, or “tricked” me, or “enticed” me. Jeremiah, shaking his fist in the face of God, would not have split hairs over niceties of translation. He complains that when he speaks, he is ridiculed, but that when stays silent, the word of the Lord becomes — in his memorable image — “a fire in his bones” that he cannot contain.

To be sure, God is with him, but — “dread warrior” that he is — the Almighty is not the most comforting of companions. Just how bitter is the cup, which Jeremiah must drain to the dregs, becomes apparent if we read on a few verses (if we dare) from where the lectionary tells us to stop.

The prophet bewails the day he was born. Then he utters a yet-more-terrible imprecation. Jeremiah curses the messenger who brought the news of his birth to his father. And why? “Because he did not kill me in the womb; so my mother would have been my grave and her womb for ever great” (Jeremiah 20.15-17).

A skilful curator will hang pictures next to each other in an exhibition so that they may throw light on each other. Sometimes, as this week, our lectionary succeeds in doing much the same. The disciples, sent out to teach and heal, will suffer contempt and scorn. The juxtaposed confession of Jeremiah suggests something of what such “prophetic discipleship” — to stay with that idea — can do to you.

No wonder our tender Lord is solicitous for his friends. “Do not be afraid,” he says. He knows better than they do that they have every reason to fear. Jeremiah’s cup will be theirs, as it was his, and as it may be ours. We may be more valuable than sparrows, but we are vulnerable to sorrows that sparrows will never know.

It is now more than 80 years since John Skinner published his magisterial work on Jeremiah entitled Prophecy and Religion. Skinner, writing of “the inner life of Jeremiah”, comments: “Out of the Hebrew prophet, there is created in Jeremiah a new spiritual type — the Old Testament saint.”

He concludes: “Jesus Christ would have said that, though among those born of women there has not arisen a greater than Jeremiah, yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

Greater than Jeremiah: is that possible?

Text of readings

Jeremiah 20.7-13

7O LORD, you have enticed me,
and I was enticed;
you have overpowered me,
and you have prevailed.
I have become a laughing-stock all day long;
everyone mocks me.
8For whenever I speak, I must cry out,
I must shout, ‘Violence and destruction!’
For the word of the LORD has become for me
a reproach and derision all day long.
9If I say, ‘I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name’,
then within me there is something like a burning fire
shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot.
10For I hear many whispering:
‘Terror is all around!
Denounce him! Let us denounce him!’
All my close friends
are watching for me to stumble.
‘Perhaps he can be enticed,
and we can prevail against him,
and take our revenge on him.’
11But the LORD is with me like a dread warrior;
therefore my persecutors will stumble,
and they will not prevail.
They will be greatly shamed,
for they will not succeed.
Their eternal dishonour
will never be forgotten.
12O LORD of hosts, you test the righteous,
you see the heart and the mind;
let me see your retribution upon them,
for to you I have committed my cause.

13Sing to the LORD;
praise the LORD!
For he has delivered the life of the needy
from the hands of evildoers.

Romans 6.1b-11

1Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 2By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? 3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

5For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7For whoever has died is freed from sin. 8But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Matthew 10.24-39

Jesus summoned the twelve and sent them out with the following instruction: 24‘A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; 25it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!

26So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. 27What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. 28Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. 30And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

32Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; 33but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

34Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

35For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
36and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
37Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.’