Jeremiah accuses God of overpowering him, announces that he is finished speaking, and then admits he cannot stop, because the word has become a fire shut up in his bones. Six centuries later, Peter tells the Messiah that the cross will never touch him and gets called Satan for it. Aquinas sets the two scenes close together, reaching for Jerome and Chrysostom to explain how a man named the rock becomes a stumbling stone inside of six verses. What follows works through all four readings, with Origen, Theodoret, Theophylact, and the Catechism on the fire, the free will, and the price.
The Readings
First Reading: Jeremiah 20:7-9
O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived; thou art stronger than I, and thou hast prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day; every one mocks me.
For whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout, "Violence and destruction!" For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long.
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.
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9
The lectionary citation follows the NAB numbering, in which the superscription counts as verse 1. The same text is Psalm 63:1-8 in the RSVCE, printed here in full.
O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is.
So I have looked upon thee in the sanctuary, beholding thy power and glory. Because thy steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise thee.
So I will bless thee as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on thy name. My soul is feasted as with marrow and fat, and my mouth praises thee with joyful lips, when I think of thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the watches of the night;
for thou hast been my help, and in the shadow of thy wings I sing for joy. My soul clings to thee; thy right hand upholds me.
Second Reading: Romans 12:1-2
I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Gospel: Matthew 16:21-27
From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, "God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you." But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men."
Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life? For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done."
Scriptural Analysis
Jeremiah 20:7-9: The Fire He Could Not Hold In
The reading opens with an accusation against God that every translator has had to wrestle with, and the tradition did not look away from it. Origen asked the question directly: could God deceive anyone? His answer is that God works on us the way a parent works on a child who is not yet ready to be taught by deeds, drawing us in before we understand what is happening, "in order to form us."[1] Theodoret of Cyrus read the same verses through Paul standing silent in Athens, his spirit burning at the idolatry in front of him (Acts 17:16), and took the burning to be the whole point of the passage.[2] Both are working the problem a preacher meets Sunday morning: a canonical prophet charging God with overpowering him, and no retraction anywhere in the book.
Placement matters here, because the lectionary hands over three verses out of twelve. This is the fifth and last of Jeremiah's so-called confessions, and it runs to the end of the chapter (20:7-18). It sits immediately after Pashhur the priest has beaten Jeremiah and locked him in the stocks at the upper Benjamin Gate (20:1-6), which is to say the complaint is not free-floating interior weather but the reaction of a man who has just been publicly humiliated for preaching. The Navarre commentary dates it plausibly to around 605 or 604 BC, during the persecution under Jehoiakim, and reads the whole unit in three movements: the lament over his vocation (vv. 7-9), an act of trust in the middle of the harassment (vv. 10-13), and a run of imprecations at the end (vv. 14-18) that has real features in common with Job 3:1-10.[3] A preacher should know what he is cutting away. Sunday's selection stops before Jeremiah says he will sing to the Lord, and long before he curses the day he was born.
The image at the center is the one to preach. Jeremiah says the word of the Lord "has become for me a reproach and derision," and then that it is "a burning fire shut up in my bones." Read that against Jeremiah 23:29, where God asks, "Is not my word like fire?" The fire that will scorch Jerusalem is already scorching the man who carries it. He is not describing a mood. He is describing what the word of God does to the one who has to say it out loud, which is the same thing it will do to everyone who hears it. The Navarre note draws the pastoral conclusion plainly: his zeal wins in the end, and this only proves that people who have actually experienced the love of God cannot keep quiet about it, whether they are speaking to those who once knew him and forgot, or to those who never heard.[4]
Leave a Reply