22ND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (YEAR A)

1st Reading               Jeremiah 20: 7-9

Psalm                         63: 2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9 (R. cf. 2ab)

R:// "For you my soul is thirsting, O Lord, my God"

2nd Reading            Romans 12: 1-2 

Gospel                       Matthew 16: 21-27

DO NOT QUIT IT

Friends, Peace and Goodness! We end the month of August today with the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A). 

Our first reading is from Jeremiah 20: 7-9. It is an accusatory speech the prophet Jeremiah directs to God. Let us attempt to unpack it carefully with a few observations. 

The first thing we should pick from the text is its opening. It opens with "O Lord, You deceived me, and I was deceived" (v. 7a). That sounds very interesting, especially for God to "deceive". Some translations use "Seduce" while others use "Dupe". Now, the Hebrew word behind it is PĀTĀH. To understand its usage properly, we should look for where else it occurred in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). We see that in Exodus 22: 15 where it is used of a man who seduces a young woman who is not yet betrothed. In Judges 14: 15 and in 16:5, it is the very word used for what the Philistines ask Samson's wife and later Delilah to do to him, to coax him, to draw out of him what he does not intend to give. Clearly, the word belongs to the vocabulary of seduction, of being drawn somewhere against one's own resistance by a stronger will. 

When Jeremiah says that God has PĀTĀH (deceived, duped, seduced) him, he is telling us what his call felt like from the inside. Remember the narrative of his calling in Jeremiah 1:6, where the young Jeremiah protests and said, "I do not know how to speak, I am too young". God overruled that protest or objection and even promised him telling him that, "I am with you to deliver you" (Jer. 1:8b). However, years later, when Jeremiah faced the mockery of his own people of Anathoth, when he was beaten and pit in the stocks by Pashhur the Priest (Jer. 20: 1-2), Jeremiah looks back on that scene of his calling and names it a seduction he did not fully consent to and cannot now walk away from. He trusted in the promise of God, yet what he sees and experiences does not seem to be the protection and deliverance he expected. 

Let us take a second detail. Jeremiah said, "You were too strong fro me, and you prevailed" (v. 7b). The language is also very important to underline. The verb used there is CHAZAQ, which means to seize, to grip, or to overpower by force. In fact, it is the same root that describes Amnon's violence against his sister Tamar in 2 Samuel 13: 14, where we are told plainly that "...he was too strong for her: he forced her...".  This is a strong word, and the author of the book of Jeremiah is not afraid to use it. He tells us that whatever happened to Jeremiah in his call, he experienced it as an overpowering and not an invitation he was free to decline. 

Jeremiah is telling God, using a language borrowed from the darkest corners of human experience, that the prophetic vocation came upon him with a force he did not choose and could not resist. Surprisingly, this accusation is allowed to stand. Maybe, the author wants us to get a point about how much room God is willing to give the one he has called, even when that one turns and accuses him. 

Let us see how Jeremiah resolves this inner trouble. At the end of today's passage, Jeremiah says, "If I say, 'I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,' there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot" (v. 9). It looks at Jeremiah desires to stop speaking for God and in His name. However, there is another desire that is preventing or shutting him up from doing that. The word translated as "Shut up" is ĀTSUR, which  is to restrain, to hold back, or to close in. 

The very root of the word ĀTSUR appears in Genesis 16:2, where Sarai says to Abram that " The LORD has kept me from bearing children", as if to literally say the LORD has ATSAR my womb. The word appears again in 1 Kings 8: 35, where Solomon prays for the day "when heaven is shut up (ATSAR) and there is no rain". Jeremiah is reaching out for the way an unborn child behaves or the way rain clouds behave when they can no longer he held. Briefly, Jeremiah gets to understand that the Word of God in him is not a message he manages. Rather, it is a thing conceived in him that must, in the end, be delivered, whatever it costs him to deliver it. Maybe, the point for us is that when we bear the word of God we do not carry it as one carries an opinion. The word of God rather carries us. 

The Gospel is a continuation from last Sunday. Peter was dominant last week. Today, he is still dominant. However, on a different note. Jesus tells him to get behind him. This was Jesus's response when Peter objected to Jesus' death. 

Remember that when Jesus called Peter by the Sea of Galilee he told him, "Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19). The phrase is DEUTE OPISŌ MOU. In today's Gospel, Jesus tells him, "get behind me", which is HYPAGE OPISŌ MOU. The issue is that there is a sort of reminder when Jesus rebuked him. The first time was discipleship. What is happening the second time is a disciple wanting to take charge of his master's mission. Jesus corrects his position within his being a disciple. We must belong to where we were called to be.

Let us add a final point. Jesus said, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me". I suggest we should understand this in the light of crucifixion. Crucifixion, in first century Palestine under Roman occupation, was the empire's standard public execution for slaves, rebels, and provincials who defied Roman authority, and the condemned man carried the crossbeam himself through the streets to the place of execution, in full view of the crowd, as a deliberate act of state terror. Matthew's audience had watched the Roman government crucify their own countrymen by the thousand around the walls of Jerusalem within living memory. They saw it for themselves. 

Notice also the little expression, "his own" (AUTOU). Jeuss does not say "let him take up the cross", as though there were a single and shared symbol to be carried. He says, let him take up his own cross". Each disciple's cross belongs to him alone. It cannot be borrowed, and it cannot be handed to someone else. To hear this sentence rightly, we have to let it mean exactly that, a call to walk, with open eyes, toward the same kind of death Jesus himself was walking toward, and to regard that walk, and not the avoidance of it, as the very shape of following him.

On the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A), I suggest we bring the two readings together and understand that the word of God, once it is truly received, does not remain a possession we manage. It becomes, as Jeremiah says, a fire we did not light and cannot put out, and as Jesus says, a cross we did not choose and are nonetheless asked to call our own.

Pax et Bonum