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Commentary on John 14:1-6

We begin today the long discourse, covering four chapters (14-17) of John, in which Jesus at the Last Supper says farewell and gives his final instructions to his disciples.  Although it is, on the face of it, spoken in anticipation of what is going to happen, the discourse clearly applies to the fears and anxieties of the post-resurrection community coping without the direct leadership of Jesus, and often harassed by both Jews and Gentiles alike.

The passage begins with Jesus telling his disciples to “not let your hearts be troubled”.  The immediate reason is the great threat that hangs over Jesus and his warnings to them of what is going to happen to him.  The disciples are disturbed by the predictions of betrayal, of Jesus’ leaving them and of the denial by Peter.

But Jesus’ words are also applicable to all those who, because of their following of Jesus, fall under threat of persecution or harassment. In face of these warnings, Jesus tells them to have faith in him and in his Father.  Faith here means a deep trust that Jesus will take care of them and give them the strength to face any difficulties:

In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places…if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

Jesus is about to leave his disciples, but he will be back soon and take them to the place which has been specially prepared for them.  He will return very soon after his resurrection, although in a very different way, and he will come at the end of time to take them to himself forever.  And not to worry, there is plenty of room for everyone. In the end, we will be where he is and that is the only goal of our lives that matters.

And then he says,

And you know the way to the place where I am going.

They, and we, certainly ought to know the way but we are glad that Thomas, characterised in the Gospel by his blunt speaking, asked his question which drew forth a famous answer. Says Thomas:

Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?

To which Jesus replied:

I am the way and the truth and the life.

Jesus does not only tell us where to go.  He is himself the Way (Greek, hodos).

And Jesus is not a way, but the Way.  This is not to be understood in a narrow sectarian sense.  The way of life that Jesus proposes is not just for a particular group of people—it is a way of life for every single person to follow.  The heart of that Way is an unconditional love which sees every other person as a brother or sister, and a love which gives itself unceasingly in service.

If we want to know where our lives, where any life, should be going, all we need to do is to identify ourselves totally with the attitudes, the values and the goals of life that Jesus lays down for us. And, as the Way, he is Truth and Life.  Jesus is Truth not just because the things he says are true.  His whole life, everything he says and does, all his relationships, have the ring of truth and integrity.

And, of course, he is Life.  When we unconditionally decide to walk his Way, we, here and now, begin to live in the fullest manner possible. Thank you, Thomas, for asking that question. All we need now is to make the answer the centre of our living.

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Commentary on Acts 13:44-52

We are still with Paul and Barnabas in Asia Minor, where they are proclaiming the message about Jesus as Lord in Pisidian Antioch.  They now have the whole city coming to hear them speak the word of God.  But they now have also incurred the jealousy of some Jews who hurled abuse at the the two men.  Perhaps they believed that the word of God was only for them and not for Gentiles—pearls were not to be thrown to swine.

Paul and Barnabas (Paul is now regularly mentioned first) took this as a sign to transfer their energies to preaching among the Gentiles, who responded enthusiastically.  While Paul’s fellow-Jews in Antioch had shown themselves unfit to hear the Gospel:

It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken first to you. Since you reject it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of eternal life, we are now turning to the gentiles.

He had to speak to them first—and he will do this in other places as well—because the Gospel came to and was intended for the Jews first.  And Paul, of course, was himself a Jew and had great compassion for his people.  This is expressed very well in his letter to the Romans (see Rom 9:1-5; 10:1-3).

We are told that the two Apostles spoke out these words “boldly”.  The courage and confidence of the Apostles has been already stressed by Luke on a number of occasions.  Luke repeatedly attributes these qualities to Paul, and Paul himself lays emphasis on them in a number of his letters. Fortitude is one of the four cardinal virtues which should be the characteristic of every Christian.

On the other hand, they turn to the Gentiles because the Lord had told them to be:

…a light for the gentiles,
so that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.

This is a rendering of the Septuagint (Greek) reading from Isaiah:

I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. (Is 49:6)

The words may be taken either as referring to Paul himself, Apostle and teacher of the Gentiles, or to the risen Christ. Christ is the light of the Gentiles—he himself had said “I AM the Light of the World”—but since only the Apostles’ witness can spread this light, Paul considers this prophecy as a command that he must carry out.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had told his disciples:

You are the light of the world. (Matt 5:14)

This phrase conveys the sense that they are being called to transmit the Light that is Christ.

The Gentiles responded enthusiastically. After receiving the Word from Paul and Barnabas:

…they were glad and praised the word of the Lord, and as many as had been destined for eternal life became believers.

‘Eternal life’ refers to the life of the world to come.  These are the ones whose names are “written in heaven” (Luke 10:20) and in “the book of life”.  Actually, “destined for eternal life” was a common rabbinic expression.  For Christians, the first and necessary condition for this predestination to glory is faith in Christ.

As a result of the Gentiles’ enthusiasm for the message, “the word of the Lord spread throughout the region.”  In other words, well beyond the bounds of the city.

However, some of the Jews continued their harassments.  They incited prominent women who were believers (though not necessarily Jews) and leading men to stir up attacks on the two missionaries.  And they eventually managed to drive the two Apostles from the city.

Following the teaching of the Gospel, they shook the dust of the city from their feet (see Matt 10:14; Luke 9:5).  In doing this, they showed the severance of responsibility and the repudiation of those who had rejected their message and had brought suffering to the servants of the Lord.

They now continued on to the town of Iconium, lying to the east of Antioch on the southern borders of the province of Galatia.  Its modern name is Konya.  In Paul’s time it was an important crossroads and an agricultural centre for the central plain of Galatia.

Far from being discouraged by their experience in Antioch, we are told that:

…the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

It teaches us a lesson we continually need to learn.  The preaching of the Gospel, in spite of its message of love and forgiveness and justice and its rejection of all forms of violence, can incur vicious and violent opposition.  We should neither be surprised nor discouraged at this.

On the contrary, like the Apostles, we should rejoice that, with Jesus, we suffer for proclaiming the message of life and love: 

Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
(Matt 5:10)

We think of the story of the three men thrown into the fiery furnace by an angry King Nebuchnadnezzar, singing the praises of God or, in much more recent times (and with more historical validity), of the civil rights marchers under Martin Luther King, Jr singing ‘We shall overcome’ as they were carried off to jail.

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Commentary on John 14:7-14

Once again we have to be thankful for a disciple’s question.  Jesus has just said that those who really know him also know his Father.  In fact, he says, they have already seen him.  But after all this talk about the Father, Philip, the naive one, is puzzled.

Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.

Perhaps, like some of the other Jews, he was expecting some dramatic sign, some striking manifestation of the Father.

Jesus replies patiently:

Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father…believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves.

Philip still lacked that faith that could see the Father clearly working in and through Jesus.

Of course, what Jesus says has to be understood properly. In a sense, when we see Jesus we do see the Father; but in another sense, we do not see the Father, at least not fully. When Jesus speaks, the Father speaks; when Jesus forgives, the Father forgives; when Jesus heals, the Father heals; when Jesus gives life, it is the Father who gives life.

Jesus is the Word of God; he is the utterance of God; he is God expressing himself and communicating himself to us.  In his person, Jesus is totally united with the Father.  But in Jesus’ humanity, which is where we meet him, the Father only comes through in the dimmest fashion.  As Paul wrote to the Christians of Corinth:

For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Cor 13:12)

The love that Jesus shows is the love of the Father, but reflected through his human nature, it is only the faintest image of the full reality of that love.  It is so important for us to understand this. That is why Jesus calls himself the Way—he is the Way, not the End.  The Father is the End and Goal of all living.

And so Jesus goes on to make a statement that at first seems strange:

Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.

How can we possibly do greater, far greater things than Jesus?  Yet, in a way, it is very true.

Because of his human nature, Jesus’ accomplishments were limited during his short time here on earth. He lived in one very small place, likely spoke only one language, although he might have picked up a smattering of Greek; he reached relatively few people and was intimate with only a small number.

There are many Christians today who, with the means of travel and communications available to them, can bring the message of Jesus to far greater numbers and often more efficiently.  The pope in a major address or at a Christmas Mass can reach a potential audience of billions through television, radio and via the Web. Jesus could do none of these things.

Jesus, now in his risen Body, the Church, can indeed “do greater works than these”, and this was made possible by his going back to the Father and passing on his work into our hands.  Given the instruments at our disposal, we have a great responsibility to do those “greater works”.

But to do that work we need, of course, to rely on the help and guidance of Jesus through his Spirit.  As he says in conclusion today:

If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

He has left us, but is still with us.

And to pray in his name is not just to use his name like a talisman or charm.  In invoking Jesus’ name, we also fully identify ourselves with his Way and his will.  It is not an invitation to make any kind of arbitrary request to suit our own personal whims.  Primarily, it is to ask his help in spreading his Gospel.  That is a prayer which he will surely answer.

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Commentary on Micah 6:1-4,6-8 Read Monday of Week 16 of Ordinary Time – First Reading »

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Commentary on Matthew 12:46-50

Just before we enter the third great discourse which are on the parables of the Kingdom, we have today’s short passage on who really belong to Jesus. As Jesus was speaking to the crowds his mother and other family members arrived:

While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him.

Matthew does not say what their words were, but we know from another context (Mark 3:21) that they were embarrassed by what he was doing, probably because of the way he was earning the displeasure of the authorities. In later times, many who opted to follow Christ have been a source of embarrassment and displeasure to their families, especially in situations where being Christian or Catholic was a violation of state law or religious affiliation.

When Jesus is told they are looking for him he stretches out his hands to his followers and says that they are his “mother and brothers”. And then he defines how one becomes one of his brothers and sisters:

…whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

It is significant that Jesus’ own blood relatives are spoken of as being “outside”; Jesus’ disciples, those who really listen to him, are those who are ‘inside’. This is not to say that Jesus is rejecting his family; to do so would be to contradict his own teaching of loving all unconditionally. But he uses the situation to make a very important point—that relationship to Jesus is based on one thing only, total commitment through Jesus to the Father.

To be a Christian, a disciple, is to enter into this new relationship with God and with others. All other bonds, including those of blood, take a second place or are to be understood in the light of this bonding to God first of all and above all.

It would be wrong to conclude that Jesus was rejecting his own mother here. Yet what he says applies to her as much as to anyone else. Mary is measured by her commitment to the Father and the Son, who is also her Son. That commitment was clearly made when she accepted to be the mother of Jesus:

Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word. (Luke 1:38)

It was a commitment that was still being kept as she stood in grief at the foot of her Son’s cross. Mary was certainly on the ‘inside’. Let us ask her today that we too may always be ‘insiders’.

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Commentary on Jeremiah 1:1,4-10

As we listen during these weeks to the teachings of the great prophets, we come today to one of the greatest – Jeremiah, from the latter half of the 7th century BC. He was born about 650 BC of a priestly family in Anathoth, a village near Jerusalem. Today we read how, in the year 628, at the age of 22, he was called by God to be a prophet. His life in the service of the Lord will face many hardships. Today we start with hearing about his call.

The first three verses of the first chapter put Jeremiah in his historical context, but we only read the first verse. In the verses omitted, we are told that his call came in the 13th year of the reign of King Josiah of Judah and continued through the reign of his son, Jehoiakim and on until the downfall of Jerusalem under puppet King Zedekiah, a son of Josiah, when the people were brought off into exile to Babylon. In our readings from the books of the Kings, we have met all these people already.

The book opens by telling us that it contains the “words of Jeremiah”, that is, the whole story of his discourses and activities. (There are actually 10 people called Jeremiah in the Hebrew Testament, of whom two were actually contemporaries of our prophet.)

His father, Hilkiah (a common Biblical name, meaning ‘the Lord is my portion’) may have been related to a priestly house going back to the time of King Solomon. Like Ezekiel and Zechariah, Jeremiah himself was both a prophet and priest. We know of two other men in the Bible named Hilkiah, both of them Jeremiah’s contemporaries.

His birthplace, Anathoth, was a village not far from Jerusalem and was named after Anat(h), a Canaanite deity who was goddess of war. Its priestly connections go back to the time of Joshua, the successor of Moses, and Solomon. Abiathar the priest had been sent into exile there by Solomon. Its pagan origins would presumably have been almost forgotten by Jeremiah’s time.

Anata, a town 5 km northeast of Jerusalem, still preserves the ancient name, although it is about 2 km away from the biblical site. Anathoth is described as being in the territory of Benjamin (patriarch and the youngest of Jacob’s 12 sons) and was one of four Levitical towns (recall that priests came from the tribe of Levi). After the Babylonian exile, Benjamites settled there again.

Jeremiah then tells how the word of God came to him. Yahweh says to him:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you…

From all eternity God knew of Jeremiah and, in the very act of creating him, had a call on his unconditional service. In the beginning of the letter to the Ephesians we read a similar description of our own calling:

…just as [God] chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.
(Eph 1:4)

Paul, writing to the Galatians, also speaks of God:

…who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace was pleased… (Gal 1:15)

When God tells Jeremiah, “I knew you”, he means more than an awareness of his identity. To “know” in the Scripture implies a close and intimate relationship which goes beyond the purely mental or intellectual, still less just recognition. In other biblical contexts, the word can also mean to “choose”.

When God says to the prophet, “I consecrated you”, he means more than making Jeremiah holy, but rather equipping him for the work of prophet, to be a spokesman for God with his people. Jeremiah is being called to be a prophet to the nations, but his native Judah, the kingdom of which Jerusalem was the capital, is certainly included among these.

Jeremiah responds to this call with some alarm; like Isaiah, he feels totally inadequate for the task. Moses, too, had many misgivings about being chosen to lead God’s people, and said:

O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. (Exod 4:10)

Similarly, Jeremiah says:

Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.

And Paul, when he complains of an affliction that he feels makes him less effective as an evangeliser, is reassured that it is precisely his weaknesses which make him a fitting channel for God’s message (see 2 Cor 12:7-10).

Jeremiah’s objection is immediately rejected by Yahweh. He has no cause to fear:

Do not say, ‘I am only a boy…’

Youth and inexperience do not disqualify when God calls. He equips and sustains those he commissions. Timothy is also encouraged when he is told:

Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.
(1 Tim 4:12)

Jeremiah is told, “Do not be afraid” – perhaps one of the most repeated phrases in both the Old and New Testaments, and often heard from the lips of Jesus. Jeremiah will be given what he needs to carry out his mission. He is simply to go to those to whom he will be sent and to say what he is told to say. He has no need to fear because God is with him to protect him.

“I am with you” – God’s promise of his continuing presence should calm the fears of the most reluctant of prophets. “To deliver you” – Yahweh does not promise that Jeremiah will not be persecuted or imprisoned (he will), but that no serious physical harm will come to him.

Then comes the act or rite of commissioning. What is described may have come to Jeremiah in a vision, or the experience is simply being expressed in figurative language. The Lord touched Jeremiah’s mouth and gave him his mission:

Now I have put my words in your mouth.

This describes perfectly the role of the prophet – to be a spokesperson for God. As he had been promised earlier, Jeremiah will be told what he has to say. The prophet does not speak in his own name; he speaks as the messenger of God.

The prophetic mission is then described in both negative and positive terms. He is both to “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow”. But he is also “to build and to plant”. The first two pairs of verbs are negative, stressing the fact that Jeremiah is to be primarily a prophet condemning what is wrong, while the last pair is positive, indicating that he is also to be a prophet of restoration – even if only secondarily. This is the traditional role of the prophet. He is called on to denounce all that is against truth, love and justice. He also exhorts people to convert, to reform and to turn their lives around.

Jeremiah is often seen as a prophet of doom (we call gloomy people ‘Jeremiahs’), but he also had positive messages to bring. We will see that Jeremiah’s hard-hitting words were not welcomed especially by the rich and those in power. He will be attacked and persecuted.

This too is the role of the Church within whose ranks there must always be prophets. These prophets will speak not only to the world, but to their own Church.

We might reflect on who are the prophets in our contemporary Church today? Do we have enough prophets? Does our Church encourage and see the need for the prophetic role? One fact is sure; they are not always welcomed by their fellow-Christians, not least by those in authority. There can also be false prophets and we must carefully discern which is which.

Every baptised person is priest, prophet and king as we share in the mission of Jesus Christ himself, who was, of course, a prophet in the sense we have been discussing. Each one of us has been called from all eternity to do what Jeremiah was asked to do:

…to pluck up and to pull down…to build and to plant.

As we sometimes say, the Church and its members have both to denounce and announce, or, in more colloquial terms, ‘to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable’. As with Jeremiah, this will not make us very popular with certain groups, but popularity has never been a requirement for salvation.

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Commentary on Matthew 13:1-9

Today we come to the third of the five discourses of Jesus found in Matthew’s Gospel. It consists entirely of the Parables of the Kingdom of Heaven, as Matthew calls it. It might be helpful to go back to Monday of the 10th Week (Ordinary Time) and look again at what is said there about the meaning of the ‘Kingdom of heaven’. Briefly to repeat, we are talking about, not a place and still less a place in the future life, but a network of people and communities who are committed to all that God is and stands for, as revealed to us through the life and teaching of Jesus. The people are those who work to see that God’s will be done on earth, which is the establishment of the Kingdom.

These parables, then, are images that Jesus gives to help us understand how we are to enter into and become part of that Kingdom—of that kingship of God to which we adhere with all our heart and soul.

Our passage begins:

That same day Jesus went out of the house…

What day? And what house? It seems that Matthew is linking the parables of the Kingdom with the scene at the end of chapter 12 (vv 46-50) about those who are on the ‘inside’ and those on the ‘outside’. The house—whose ownership is never referred to, and we know that Jesus had no house of his own—seems to refer to any place where people are gathered together with Jesus.

For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them. (Matt 18:20)

And wherever people are closely related with Jesus, not just physically, but intentionally, that is what it means to be on the ‘inside’, and it is also to be part of the Kingdom.

We are told that the crowds wanting to listen to Jesus were so great that he had to use a boat moored near the shore to speak to them. In the Gospel, the boat often represents the Church or the Christian community from which Jesus continues to speak his message to the world. We are also told that he spoke to them in parables. Once again, Matthew uses his favourite number by having seven of them. Just to remind ourselves: there are 2×7 generations in Jesus’ genealogy; 7 Beatitudes; forgiveness not 7 but 77 times; 7 ‘alas’ in the condemnation of the Pharisees; and his Gospel is divided into seven main sections—infancy, five discourses, passion.

For three days, that is, for the rest of this week, we are going to be considering the first and the longest of the parables, the parable of the sower. First, today, we have the parable itself, then tomorrow some explanation of the role of parables in Jesus’ teaching and, finally on Saturday, an interpretation of the parable.

The parable itself is very straightforward. It speaks about a farmer sowing seed in his field, a typical Palestinian field of the time. It is obviously a very mixed patch of ground. There are paths going across it where people have long established a right of way. There are bits of rock sticking up above the ground with small hollows where water can gather after rain. At that time, ploughing was done after the seed was sown, so there are weeds and brambles growing wild all over the place. And then there are parts of the field which have good, fertile soil.

This image largely describes too the field in which Jesus, the preacher and teacher, is working. It provides very mixed soil, and much of the seed does not go very far in producing fruit. All this has been described in what we have already seen of Jesus’ mission among the people, the religious leaders, his own family—and his disciples. It is these latter who are the fertile soil, these are the ones who will enter, who are already entering the Kingdom.

A parable in the Gospel usually makes just one point. In this case the message is that God’s plan will succeed, even though there seem to be setbacks. It was as important a message for the early Christians to hear as it is for us today. It is a word of encouragement when Christians see how little success they seem to have at times in their evangelising work. The message is not to worry—God’s Word will prevail, and there will always be fertile soil in which to grow and multiply. Indeed, in the past, some communities did fail, but overall the Christian communities grew and the message spread to every corner of the world.

And then there is the final exhortation:

If you have ears, hear!

‘Listening’ and ‘hearing’ are sometimes used interchangeably. In this context, to ‘hear’ is not just to be physically capable of picking up sound. To ‘hear’ presumes attention and awareness; it implies understanding and acceptance and, ultimately, implementation of what is heard.

Am I ready to enter the Kingdom? What kind of soil do I present for the Lord’s Word? Am I really listening to him in the fullest sense?

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Commentary on Jeremiah 2:1-3, 7-8, 12-13 Read Thursday of Week 16 of Ordinary Time – First Reading »

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Commentary on Matthew 13:10-17

Today’s passage continues from the Parables of the Kingdom and forms an interlude between the parable of the sower and its interpretation. Jesus is asked by his disciples why he speaks to the people in parables. The implication is that he does not speak in parables to his own disciples.

It would be possible to interpret Jesus’ reply as meaning that he speaks clearly to his disciples but to the people in riddles because they are outsiders. This would seem to contradict the purpose of speaking in parables which is to use helpful and familiar images in order to lead towards a better understanding of a deeper message (the parable of the sower is a good example).

The Jerusalem Bible sees it somewhat differently:

“Those who saw so dimly could be further blinded by the light of full revelation. Jesus, therefore, does not reveal with complete clarity the true nature of the messianic kingdom which is unostentatious. Instead he filters the light through symbols, the resulting half-light is nevertheless a grace from God, an invitation to ask for something better and accept something greater.”

It seems that we are dealing here again with the difference between ‘insiders’ and the ‘outsiders’. The ‘insiders’ are those who give Jesus a ready hearing. Naturally, they are more open to hear about the ‘mysteries’ of the kingdom and to assimilate what they hear. The ‘outsiders’ on the other hand, are precisely that because they have closed minds, they are not ready to listen.

In the particular context of Matthew’s Gospel, those who refuse to listen are those who have rigidly bound themselves within the confines of the Mosaic Law and who refuse to listen to the message of Jesus which is a “fulfilment” as well as being a radical restatement of the Law and the proclamation of a totally new covenant in the person of Jesus as Messiah. Or, as the Jerusalem Bible puts it:

“The ill-disposed will even lose what they have, namely, that Jewish Law which, without the perfection Christ brings to it, is destined to become obsolete.”

This gives meaning to the words which Jesus uses. Speaking of the ‘insiders’ he says:

To the one who has, more will be given until he grows rich; the one who has not, will lose what little he has.

Those who have opened themselves to the Word of God will find themselves evermore enriched, while those who have not even begun to accept the Word will end up in even a worse situation than they are now. Similarly, those to whom the parables are addressed:

…look but do not see, listen but do not hear or understand.

This happens, not because the parables are difficult, but because the hearers are not prepared to listen. In fact, they are, one might almost say, watered down and easily digestible versions of the full message.

And Jesus quotes words of Isaiah (9:13) which are not meant to be understood as God deliberately blocking his Word from reaching people as this would not make any sense. The prophet is better understand as speaking in a strongly sarcastic tone:

You will indeed listen but never understand,
and you will indeed look but never perceive.
For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and their ears are hard of hearing,
and they have shut their eyes,
so that they might not look with their eyes,
and hear with their ears
and understand with their heart and turn—
and I would heal them.

That is where the issue lies. If we are prepared to see and to listen, it will mean a radical change in our lives, in our attitudes, in our values and priorities, in our relationships. Many are not ready to have their lives turned upside down. They prefer to remain blind and deaf.

On the contrary, Jesus says to the ‘insiders’:

But blessed are your eyes, for they see [i.e. understand and accept], and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it and to hear what you hear but did not hear it [i.e. listen, accept and carry out].

And to the extent that we have become ‘insiders’ with Christ, we too are deeply blessed. But we do need to be sensitive to our own tendencies not to see or not to listen because of our unreadiness to go all the way in our following Jesus, or in our reluctance to let go and make the changes in our lives he is asking of us.

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Commentary on Jeremiah 3:14-17

Today we are given an optimistic vision of Zion in the messianic age. Jeremiah, in spite of his reputation, is not all gloom and doom. It was, of course, an important role of the prophet to point out the people’s shortcomings and to warn them of the consequences of their lifestyle. But it was also his role to bring a message of hope and to raise the morale of people who were oppressed or depressed.

Today’s reading is a message of hope for a people whose city has been destroyed and who have been carried away into exile in Babylon. Now the prophet is calling them to come back – not only to their city but also to following the will of their God. He calls them “faithless children”, and reminds them that God alone is their husband and master.

The Hebrew word here for “husband/master” is ba’al, which, of course, is also the name given to the false gods that the Jews of the time had, under the influence of their conquerors, been worshipping. Jeremiah is calling on his people to have only one ba’al or master, namely Yahweh.

Now comes the promise. The people will return to Zion or Jerusalem, but in very small numbers, “one from a city and two from a family”. They are the remnant of Judah who will carry on the covenant promises of the Messiah to come.

They will have shepherds, that is, rulers, who, like David of old, will be “after my own heart”. They will be wise and prudent shepherds, unlike the corrupt and idolatrous rulers who led them to their downfall and exile.

“In those days”, that is, in the age of the Messiah, the remnant that has returned to Jerusalem will grow in numbers, yet:

…they shall no longer say, “The ark of the covenant of the Lord.”

It is clear that the Ark had been carried away or destroyed with the pillaging of the Temple by the Babylonians, but this will not matter.

The Ark of the Covenant, formerly symbolising God’s royal presence, will be irrelevant when the Messiah comes:

It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed, nor shall another one be made.

For the city of Jerusalem itself will become the “throne of the Lord” to which all the nations will assemble. Formerly, the Lord had been “enthroned upon the cherubim” in the Ark (Ps 99:1).

Moreover:

…all nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the Lord in Jerusalem, and they shall no longer stubbornly follow their own evil will.

In the past, they refused to listen to the Lord and instead worshipped idols made by human hands.

Unlikely as it must have seemed at the time, Jerusalem did indeed become a place where the nations assembled. It became the place where the Messiah, the Christ, sealed the New Covenant in his own blood. It was the place where the people converged from all over the Mediterranean and, on the day of Pentecost, heard the Good News proclaimed in a language they could perfectly understand.

And, from Jerusalem, the message fanned out to the four points of the compass and eventually to every corner of the world. This is the theme of the Acts of the Apostles.

Jeremiah’s hearers never lived to see that day, but he was accurate in everything he foretold. We, on the other hand, are the beneficiaries. How are we responding to this tremendous gift of God’s love? To what extent have we heard and assimilated the Message? And what difference does our way of life make to those around us?

The Messianic Age continues, but it depends on us to make it visible. The realisation of the Messianic Age is the coming of the Reign of God into our world. There is a lot of work still to be done!