12TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (YEAR A)

1st Reading              Jeremiah 20: 10-13

Psalm                         69: 7-9, 13 & 16, 32-34 (R. 13c)

R:// "In your great mercy, answer me, O Lord"

2nd Reading            Romans 5: 12-15

Gospel                       Matthew 10: 26-33

DO NOT BE AFRAID

Friends, Pax et Bonum!

Today is the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A). Globally and on a secular front, today is Fathers' Day. We take this opportunity to wish and pray for all Fathers. In this light, I suggest we digest today's readings with fathers in mind. The first reading is from Jeremiah 20: 10-13, the Second reading is from Romans 5: 12-15 and the Gospel is from Matthew 10: 26-33. Notice that the Second Reading and the Gospel are continuations from where they ended last Sunday. Let us quickly note a few points for understanding and reflection. 

The first reading is from Jeremiah 20:10-13. This is a text of just three verses. The First Reading comes from one of the most psychologically raw passages in all of Hebrew prophecy. It belongs to a section scholars call the Confessions of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 11–20) which is made up of six poems in which the prophet stops delivering messages to Israel and instead turns to address God directly about what it is costing him to be a prophet. I think, so far, no other voice in the Old Testament is this candid. The passage we read today is the most intense of all of them.

To understand why, we need to know what happened immediately before it. In Jeremiah 20:1–3, a Temple official named Pashhur, the chief of security in the House of God, had Jeremiah arrested and put in the stocks. He was placed publicly at the Upper Benjamin Gate, one of the main entrances to the Temple complex, so that the morning crowds coming to worship could see him locked in a wooden frame, contorted, displayed as a fool and a fraud. This is the bruised, humiliated man who opens his mouth in verse 10. 

But what is the stock? The Hebrew word for the stocks is mahpeketh, from the root hāpak, which means to turn or to twist. It was a wooden device designed to hold the prisoner's body in a deliberately uncomfortable and humiliating position, exposed to public view. Placed at a temple gate, Jeremiah would have been on full display before the worshipping community he had been sent to address. His enemies did not need to argue against his theology. They simply put him where everyone could see him and draw their own conclusions. Sometimes the cruelest persecution comes without a debate. 

Notice what is happening in this short passage. Jeremiah opens by hearing the whispers of his enemies. They are using his own words against him. The phrase Terror on Every Side, in Hebrew is māgôr missābîb (מָגֹור מִסָּבִיב). It is Jeremiah's own signature phrase. He had coined it and declared it over Israel seven times in the book. Now his enemies throw it back at him, thus "Here is your 'terror on every side.'" The prophet who proclaimed the storm is caught in it. That irony is deliberate and devastating.

Let us move to verse 12 and notice something beautiful. In verse 12, Jeremiah appeals to God as the one who tests kelāyôt (kidneys) and lēb ( heart). To modern ears, kidneys seem an odd seat of moral life, but in ancient Hebrew thought, the kelāyôt were the most concealed, innermost parts of a person. It is the place of hidden emotion, conscience, and desire. Together with the heart, they represented the totality of a person's inner world. Jeremiah's appeal is that human courts may misjudge me based on appearances and politics, but you, LORD, see past all of that. You test what no human tribunal can access. The prophet's vindication is not in public opinion or institutional verdict but in the gaze of the one who sees without being deceived.

How did Jeremiah navigate this moment? That appears at the end of the passage. The passage ends with a song. Jeremiah said, "Sing to the LORD, praise the LORD, for he has rescued the life of the poor from the power of the wicked!" (v.13). Nothing has changed. The stocks are still there. The enemies have not relented. Pashhur has not apologised. However, Jeremiah sings. He sings not after the storm has passed, but in its eye. The verbs he uses are perfect tense in Hebrew, thus, "he has rescued" and this describes a future deliverance with the confidence of a done deal. That is the grammar of biblical faith. That faith is expressed in the fact of a praise that outruns its circumstances because it is anchored not in changed conditions but in unchanging divine character. Jeremiah does not sing because the problem is over. He sings because he has found a God who fights at his side and sees what no one else can see.

What does the Gospel offer us then? The Gospel passage comes from Matthew 10, which forms the second of five great discourses in Matthew's Gospel, called the Mission Discourse. Jesus has just sent out the Twelve, giving them authority and instructions. But then, beginning at verse 17, he turns to prepare them for suffering and persecution. They will be handed over to courts, flogged in synagogues, dragged before governors (10:17–18). It is precisely into that climate of announced persecution that Jesus speaks today's three-times-repeated word, thus "Do Not Be Afraid".

Three times in eight verses he told them not to be afraid (vv. 26, 28, 31). Each time Jesus tells them not to be afraid, he gives a different reason. The disciple has no ultimate reason to fear, because the one who knows him most completely is also the one who holds all power. What are the three reasons for which the disciples are not to be afraid?

The first reason not to fear is revelation (vv. 26–27). Jesus said that nothing hidden will remain hidden. What Jesus has told them in the dark, they must speak in the light. The truth has a direction and it presses toward disclosure. The disciples' proclamation is not their private invention. It is divine truth that wants to be known. History is on the side of the Word.

The second reason not to fear is proportion (v. 28). Again, Jesus asserts that even death does not reach the soul. Human violence is real, but it has a ceiling. The one who can destroy both body and soul in γέεννα Geenna, Gehenna is a reference to the Valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, infamous as the site of child sacrifice in the pre-exilic period and later the city's smouldering rubbish dump. Jesus is making a proportional argument that the worst thing humans can do to you is still not as ultimate as the one who holds you in the first place.

The third reason is knowledge. This is precisely where the sparrows come in. Jesus said, "Can you not buy two SPARROWS for a PENNY?" (Matt. 10: 29). Let us explore a cultural background to understand this. Particularly, let us look at the market and economic system in brief. The Greek word translated as PENNY IS ASSARION. The assarion was a small Roman bronze coin worth approximately 1/16 of a denarius. A Denarii was a daily wage. Therefore, the assarion was roughly what a day-labourer might earn in fifteen minutes. Sparrows (strouthia) were the cheapest available protein in the first-century Palestinian marketplace, sold to the poor who could not afford lamb or fish. Luke's version of this saying (12:6) sheds more light on the economy by stating "five sparrows for two assaria", which is the fifth one thrown in as a bonus, so insignificant it barely merits individual counting. These are birds the market treats as interchangeable, disposable, or uncountable. However, Jesus says not one of them falls to the ground without your Father's knowledge. Every sparrow has an individual relationship with the divine gaze. 

Jesus moves on to say that "if anyone DECLARES himself for me in the presence of men, I will DECLARE myself for him in the presence of my Father in heaven" (Matt. 10: 32).This is an interesting statement. How? The word that the author used for DECLARE is the Greek HOMOLOGEŌ. The verb homologeō is a compound of homos (same)  and logos (word). To confess is literally to say the same thing as to bring your public speech into alignment with an interior truth. Jesus promises that those who align their public voice with him before human audiences will find him aligning his voice with them before the Father. Pay attention to the weight of that promise in the first-century Roman world. Confessing Jesus before a governor was a potentially lethal public act. However, Jesus promises that this moment of human court will be answered by a corresponding moment in the divine court. Our confession down here echoes in a higher assembly. 

Jesus ealier said that "even all the hairs of your head are counted" (v.30). No census bureau tracks hairs. No Roman tax collector recorded them. No scribe noted them. The number is irrelevant to every human system of value and that is exactly the point. God's care operates at a resolution far finer than anything human administration can reach. What the world cannot be bothered to count, God has already numbered. The counting of your hairs is the most radical statement in the passage. It informs us that that we are known, specifically and completely, by the one who holds all things..

What then do we have for Fathers' Day today? In today's Gospel, Jesus uses the word Father five times in just eight verses. He does not say, "Do not be afraid, you have authority." He says, "Do not be afraid, you have a Father." The antidote to fear, in Jesus' logic, is the discovery that you belong to someone whose attentiveness has no gaps. Human fatherhood, at its best, participates in this. A good father's steady and attentive gaze creates in a child the kind of interior security that makes venturing into unknown rooms possible. The child who knows he or she is watched by loving eyes can walk into the unfamiliar without collapsing. The disciples are being sent into precisely those unfamiliar and hostile rooms, and Jesus says go, because before you arrive, your Father already knows you are coming and has already counted the hairs on your head that will walk through the door.

For those for whom the word "Father" is not a warm word, for those whose earthly father's gaze was absent, distorted, or a source of shame, the first reading has a word for you. Jeremiah has lost every human patron. His friends are informants. His priestly colleague has locked him in public humiliation. He is stripped of every human covering. It is in that exact stripped space that he finds something that does not require social capital to stand firm. He found that "The LORD is with me, like a mighty champion." The God of Jeremiah is the Father of the fatherless, the champion who steps into the gap that no human father managed to fill.

Pax et Bonum