The Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
JEREMIAH 29:1, 4-7: This is an astounding letter. Jeremiah wrote it to the exiles from Jerusalem living in Babylon. It was probably written in the decade between 597 and 587 B. C. This is after the Babylonians had captured and exiled King Jehoiachin and his court and before they besieged and destroyed Jerusalem in 587. In this letter Jeremiah tells the exiled Judahites that it is God's will for them to make their homes in Babylon now and for as long in the future as the prophet can foresee.
The letter begins abruptly; it has no salutation. "Build and plant," he says. These words come from his call to be a prophet. He was to "pluck up and pull down," and he was to "build and plant." No resident of Jerusalem at the time of Jeremiah's call could possibly have foreseen that their "building and planting" would take place in Babylon and not in Jerusalem - that was unthinkable! But here Jeremiah announces it as God's will: "Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses
and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce."
Not only are they to plant their fields, they are also to settle their families in this hostile city. "Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease." Jeremiah sees many generations of Judahites making their homes in Babylon.
He gives what may have been an even more unwelcome instruction: Pray for the Babylonians, pray for your enemies, do good to those who would despitefully use you: "Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." If my introduction to this command seems to have come from the lips of Jesus, so be it. Jeremiah is instructing the exiled people to Judah to do for the Babylonians in the precise terms that Jesus was to use in instructing the people of Galilee and Judea to deal with the unwelcome Romans: "Pray for your enemies. Do good to those who would despitefully use you."
Jeremiah's instructions bore fruit. Some of the people of Judah
did return to their homeland after Cyrus of Persia had captured
the Babylonian empire and gave them permission to do so. But
many more stayed in Babylon and settled in its environs. These
people built synagogues and continued to pray to the Lord. They
established criteria for what it meant to be a Jew: a Jew was one
who was circumcised, who kept the dietary laws, who worshiped on
the Sabbath day, who adhered to the Law of Moses. This community
continued in Babylon into the time of Jesus Christ and beyond.
During the time after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A. D.,
and especially after the revolt of Bar-Kochba, "Son of a Star,"
in 128 A. D., when Jews were no longer permitted in Jerusalem,
Jews in Babylon kept the Jewish faith alive as they carried on
the faith and traditions of their fathers. They developed a
Babylonian Mishnah and Talmud, and these became official
interpretations of the Law. Their leaders were the leaders in
thought and practice of the world-wide Jewish movement. Judaism
continued in the Babylonian area until the 20th century when it
was rooted out by fundamentalist Muslims. Jeremiah had
instructed those first exiles to make their home in Babylon and
pray for the well-being of the city. The Jewish people in
Babylon far outlived their captors, for Cyrus drove out the
Babylonian kings in about 540 B. C., but Judaism continued to
thrive in that unlikely place.
PSALM 66: 1-12: This is a psalm of gratitude to God for a renewed deliverance that God has granted to the people.
The first verses sing out the gratitude: "Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth; sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise." The word for "God" is a generic name, and not a specifically Hebrew one. The psalm, after all, suggests that "all the world" and not just Israel and Judah, is praising God, and this name for God captures the ecumenicity of the psalmist's words.
Twice the psalmist calls out to the people to see the "terrible deeds of God." "Terrible" here means "awe-inspiring." God's power is so awe-inspiring that his enemies cringe before him. His own people remember how he turned the sea into dry land and they passed through the river on foot. The peoples of the earth are given a choice: rebelliously they can exalt themselves, or worthily they can worship him, sing praises to his name.
Verse 8 continues the invitation to all the peoples of the world, not the Israelites alone, to praise God. Verses 9 through 12a describe the manner in which God has tested them. There is nothing specific in these verses. They are a series of metaphors that could be used on many occasions: tested as silver in a fire, caught in a net by a hunter, burdens laid on our backs, people squashing them into the dirt as the enemy rides over them, passing through fire and water. Interestingly, the psalmist does not think for one moment that the trouble is an accident that falls outside God's power or concern. The psalmist is not interested in questions about how the trouble came. The decisive verb (12b) is "rescue." This is an allusion to the exodus from Egypt, when God brought the people out of the house of bondage. The current deliverance is a replication of that earlier deliverance. Gratitude to God is the best response to this.
Verses 13 through 20 (not included in the current lection) seem to be the song of thanksgiving of one person. This person keeps a vow and comes to the altar with a sacrifice of thanksgiving. The psalmist comes to the temple with a burnt offering. Unlike the compulsory sacrifices for sin, a burnt offering is a voluntary acknowledgment of one's personal sense of gratitude. Often at feasts, accompanied by the sound of trumpets, such an offering gave a dramatic public exhibition of a man's inner impetus to thanksgiving. "I will come with burnt offerings," says the psalmist. "I will cry aloud to him. I will tell what he has done for me." Saving the people extends to saving the person. God who delivered Israel from Egypt also delivered this psalmist from the troubles that befell him.
The psalm concludes, as it began, with a blessing of God.
LUKE 17:11-19: One came back, and he was a Samaritan. This is the astonishing thing of this narrative in Luke's Gospel. Ten lepers had been cleansed, but only one returned to Jesus to give thanks to God for the healing that had taken place.
Luke sets this scene during Jesus' journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, although Luke badly mixes up the route of this travel by saying in verse eleven that "Jesus was going through the region between Galilee and Samaria." This confused detail, however, does bring us close to the land of the Samaritans and serves to introduce us to the chief character in the story.
On his way, Jesus is met by a group of ten men suffering from leprosy. According to the law, any person with a leprous disease was required to live "outside the camp" (Numbers 5:2-3) and cry out "Unclean, unclean" whenever anyone approached (Leviticus 13:45-46). If a leper was fortunate enough to recover, a priest had to certify that the person was clean before he or she could return to the community (Leviticus 14:23). This group is fulfilling all these requirements.
They do one more thing. When they see Jesus, they cry out, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." The word "master" means that they think Jesus has power over diseases such as their leprosy. "Have mercy on us" may be a cry for healing, or it may simply be a request for alms. Whichever it is, Jesus responds to it by saying, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." Priests alone could certify if a healing had taken place, and Jesus asks them to fulfill this part of the law. Only when the priests certified that healing had taken place could the men go back into normal human society.
One of them saw that he had been healed. Instead of going to the priests, he returned to Jesus. He praised God with a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. The narrator adds the stark words: "He was a Samaritan."
Were the others all Jews? We are not told. We are to assume that they were heading as speedily as they could to the priests in order to get from them the certification that would be their ticket back to their homes. We are told that the only one who returned was from the racially despised group of Samaritans. We are to recall the story of Elisha healing Naaman the Syrian, and how this foreigner returned to thank the man who healed him (see Second Kings 5:1-14). We are reminded that the healing of lepers functions in the Gospel as a sign of the power of God's kingdom, and that in his programmatic address at Nazareth in Luke 4 Jesus himself recalls the healing of Naaman. We know that Jesus himself was astonished that only the Samaritan returned. "Were not ten made clean?" he asked. "Where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?"
But "this foreigner" was granted Jesus' final accolade. "Your faith has made you whole." This man's faith in the power of Jesus as God's agent in healing had not only provided him with physical health, it had given him wholeness. With body and soul he could now praise God. This is faith. It is trust in God's trustworthiness. It is confidence in God's faithfulness. It is gratitude for God's graciousness. When these are present, Jesus' words are well-offered, "Your faith has made you whole."
SECOND TIMOTHY 2:8-15: The heart of this passage is found in the confession of faith it gives in 11-13. This, apparently, is another of the statements of faith taught in a catechetical nature to the new Christians. It begins with the familiar introduction: "This saying is sure."
If we have died with him, we shall also live with him;
if we endure, we shall also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful -- for he cannot deny himself.
The opening of the confession states that if we have died with Christ, we shall also live with him. In another place, Paul indicates that "dying with Christ" means being dead to all the values and manners of the world around us - we no longer respond to them. "Living with him" means that we are alive to the things Christ values - faithfulness, hopefulness, justice and love - and responding to them in the issues of life. It takes commitment to Christ to do this, to die with him. The commitment is met with the promise that as we are faithful to Christ, he will be faithful to us.
"Endure," "endurance," "persevere," "perseverance" are great Christian words. It was, and is, so easy to fall away from the faith. Simon Peter found that. Standing in the courtyard of the high priest, warming himself at the fire, he heard himself deny three times that he even knew Christ - and this was the Peter who was going to draw his sword and defend Jesus to the very end. But Peter's battle was over before he even knew that it had begun, and he had denied his lord. "Endurance, perseverance," this is what is necessary: at all times to hold on to the faith, even when it is much easier to say nothing or do nothing and hence deny it. But if we endure, we shall reign with God and Christ in heaven and on earth.
There is a contradiction in the next line: if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful - for he cannot deny himself. Christ had said that "Everyone who acknowledged me before men, I will also acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven" (Matt 10:32-33). The church was faithful to this statement as it created this creed. But the reality was much different than the statement. Peter had denied Christ before men and women, but Christ did not deny him; when he came forth from the grave, Peter was the first man that he met. So the statement went on with the glorious affirmation: even if we are faithless, Christ is faithful, It is his nature, and he cannot deny what he is.
Verse 14 appears to be the response given to this creed in the church. There was widespread discussion of its meaning, and some were holding to the part that said, "if we deny him, he will deny us." "Don't dispute about these words," says our author. "That does no good, and the disputes ruin those who engage in them and those who hear them. Instead, hold on to the truth of it: Christ is faithful, and we can depend upon his grace and faithfulness to us."
Before Paul states this "sure and certain statement." he had made another affirmation of Jesus Christ. He is "risen from the dead, descended from David, as preached in my gospel." These two affirmations were important to Jewish people who heard the gospel for the first time. They were assured that Jesus was descended from David, that powerful ruling family who, ideally, worshiped Yahweh only and who treated all people with justice and not oppression. Christ was also risen from the dead, to live and reign with God into all eternity. This was the gospel that Paul preached.
But Paul not only preached it. He did more. He suffered for it, and for it he wore fetters like a criminal. Paul endured anything and everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain salvation in Christ Jesus and the eternal glory that goes with that. Hold on, said Paul, as I have held on.
And remember Jesus Christ, as I have remembered him. "Remember" is a strong word in Greek. It is "anamnesis," to bring something out of the past and make it effective in the moment." The goal of anamnesis is not to reconstruct the past. It is to bring the power from the past into our lives today. It is the word used in the Lord's Supper: "Do this in remembrance of me." To perform the supper in remembrance of the Lord is to bring the distant lord into our own present lives. So Paul prefaces this section of the Second Letter to Timothy by saying, "Remember Jesus Christ, bring him from the past into your life as you live it today." It is an injunction that every Christian needs to hear.