Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Having spent four years working with high school students, I learned some interesting phrases and words, some that I can even say in church, but which will all sound rediculous, I’m sure, coming from my mouth: you don’t even know (sometimes abbreviated UOENO); but that’s none of my business (usually on a meme with Kermit the Frog sipping from a cup with Lipton tea); fo sho (which means for sure); bae (slang for a significant other; allegedly the abbreviation for before anyone else, as in, she comes before anyone else); and you don’t know me (which is usually used as a response when a person a being accused of something). If Scripture was translated into slang of the new millennium (which I don’t advise), perhaps Jesus’ response to his neighbors asking, “‘Isn’t this the son of Joseph?’” would be “You don’t know me!” Or maybe, after talking about how Elijah went to a foreigner, a Gentile, to provide bread during the famine, or how Elisha cured Naaman, who was not Jewish, of leprosy, Jesus would have said, “But that’s none of my business.” Maybe He wouldn’t have.
But the point is the same. Last week we heard about how Jesus went back to His home town and read from the scroll of Isaiah about the Messiah, and said that the Scripture was fulfilled in the hearing of his neighbors. This week, we hear their reaction, their disbelief. And Jesus gets upset at their lack of faith, because they think they know who this guy is. He’s just the neighbor boy from down the road, who was poor and seemed to be special in no way whatsoever. So He needs to prove that He is special by doing some miracles, by putting on a show for His neighbors, so that they can believe. But of course, we know human nature all too well, and Jesus knew it even better: even if he would have done a miracle, they would have found some excuse to not believe, because their minds were already made up that He was no one special. And all of this, because He spoke God’s Word.
It can be tough to speak God’s Word, especially around the people we know. That’s what it means to be a prophet, and we were all called to be prophets, to speak for God, when we were baptized. But people know us. They know our faults. They know where we came from. All too often they will not listen. That is why God tells Jeremiah in the first reading, that he will have to gird his loins, a phrase which literally means, “make sure your underwear’s tight so you’re ready for combat or strenuous activity,” but which we could also say means “be prepared.” God warns Jeremiah that the people to whom God is sending Jeremiah (the Chosen People) will try to crush him, and that Jeremiah will need to be “a fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass.” He will have to be strong because his own people will reject what he says as he speaks on God’s behalf.
We have to be strong if we’re going to speak for God. To speak out against the dirty joke or internet site that our friends are telling or viewing; to encourage a family member back into the Catholic faith who has been away for a while; to defend the Catholic faith when someone is mocking one of our beliefs; these are all difficult things to do, and we need to be strong like Jeremiah and especially like Jesus. Neither of them backed off when others challenged them speaking for God. In fact, they reiterated their message.
But, as St. Paul reminds us in the beautiful hymn of love in our second reading, we have to speak God’s Word with love. “If I speak in human and angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and comprehend all mysteries and knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” If one temptation is to shrink back from speaking God’s word, the other temptation is to speak God’s Word in a sanctimonious and overbearing way. Neither of these are the right approaches. The virtuous middle is to speak God’s Word, but to do so out of love for the other.
How do you know if you’re speaking with love? Are you impatient in your speech? Are you rude? Are you seeking your own interests, quick-tempered, or brooding over an injury? If so, St. Paul tells us that we’re not speaking with love. Love, rather, “does not rejoice over wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
It is challenging to be a prophet, to speak God’s message. If it were easy, everyone would do it. But the Lord calls us to be strong and speak His message, His Word, to those we know and those we meet. He calls us to spread His word, even when it calls for conversion and change of life, with love. We don’t have to be perfect to speak for God. Jeremiah wasn’t. But if we are followers of Jesus, then we, too, are called “‘to bring glad tidings to the poor…to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.’” That is fo sho what we are called to do.
