12th Sunday of the Year A

Although every Old Testament prophet suffered because of the message he proclaimed, there was no-one quite like Jeremiah whom we heard about today. Born near Jerusalem in 646 BC, about a hundred years after the death of Isaiah – yes these were real people with real lives – he began preaching in 626 when he was just twenty. At the time he was a supporter of King Josiah who had successfully brought about a religious reform, the seventh century BC equivalent of the Second Vatican Council. But when Josiah was killed in battle in 609 he was succeeded by King Jehoiakim who was more interested in politics than religion. Unfortunately, he was not very good at it, formed some unfortunate alliances – a bit, some would say, like Tony Blair in Iraq – and these led directly to the destruction of Jerusalem in 587, followed by the exile in Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon on whom, 2,500 years later, Saddam Hussein would model himself, left a man called Gedaliah as governor in Jerusalem and when he was murdered, Jeremiah, who had been his friend and supporter too, fled to Egypt where he died sometime later. His whole, life, however, had been filled with problems. His outspoken criticism of the leaders of his day got him into all kinds of bother and he was in constant danger from his political enemies. ‘I hear so many disparaging me’ we hear him say this morning...All those who used to be my friends watched for my downfall.’ And although he goes on to say that God is at his side like a might warrior, in reality he often complained bitterly that it was all God’s fault

But although Jeremiah suffered more than most during his life, his suffering was not, as we said earlier, unique. Indeed, being misunderstood and rejected by those whose way of thinking is at odds with the values of the kingdom, has always played a part, to one degree or another, in the life of any person who has taken the call of God seriously. And we see it in this morning’s Gospel passage where St Matthew, in words clearly written for second and third generation Christians already experiencing the persecutions which arose very quickly in the first century and were a common experience for our ancestors in faith until the conversion of Constantine early in the fourth century, has Jesus tell them not to be afraid of those who kill the body and cannot kill the soul. But despite this, the message, as we heard Jesus say, was to be proclaimed from the housetops and anyone who disowned him before others would be disowned by him before the Father, a sentence clearly designed to encourage faithfulness and perseverance in difficult times. The shape and form those difficult times have taken has changed many times over the centuries, but the challenge is always the same. It’s to live by the values of the kingdom, suffer the consequences, as Jeremiah and others before us have done, and play our part in the proclamation of a message which has never really sat well with the way the world thinks. The big question, of course, is what, in concrete terms, that means for us today. Well, it can mean many things, but there is one area which I think is well worth exploring today given how relevant it is to what’s currently going on around us.

The last few months have seen almost unprecedented economic turmoil, not just here, but all over the world. First of all, we had the crisis at Northern Rock, itself no more than the symptom of a much deeper crisis. We’ve heard all about the problems associated with the so-called sub-prime mortgage market in the United States and the effect it has had on the availability of credit in the money markets. It even threatened to bring down the whole banking system, and I have read – how accurate it is I don’t know - that the amount of money pumped in by the Federal Reserve Bank in the United States was twenty times more that it would take to solve the problem of world hunger. And then we’ve had the rise in the price of oil to previously unimaginable heights. This, we were told, was caused by an increase in demand from developing countries like China and India and resulted in politicians who had previously been telling that we needed to use less oil suddenly asking the oil producers to turn out more of it. And as if that weren’t enough, we’ve had the rise in food prices, one report I read claiming that this was largely the result of speculators moving out of the failing housing market into food. By manipulating prices, of course, they can make huge profits for themselves.

But the real point I want to make today lies beyond all this. And it’s the illusion we all have, and which politicians, afraid to tell us the truth, encourage us to have, that all this can be fixed and that we will soon be able to go back to the way we were. But it’s not true. The days of cheap credit, cheap oil and cheap food are over. Or at least they should be. And the reason for this is that they were always ultimately unsustainable, depending as they did on our continuing to live off the back of the world’s poor. We have not been paying a proper price for what we eat for years and the result has been poverty elsewhere. We have exploited other people’s resources, paying a mere pittance for them, convinced that we have some kind of God-given right to ever improving standards of living regardless of the effect on others. And it’s sad to hear people who should know better – and in their heart of hearts do know better – telling us that, if we just vote for them, we can have all this back againt. It’s all a massive lie and has to be challenged.

And who are going to challenge it if not those of us who claim to want to live by the values of the kingdom? But first, we need to understand and accept ourselves that the whole way we live has to change and that that change is beginning to happen all around us. Then we need, when the opportunity arises, to tell others about this. We need to encourage people in Britain to stop judging every crisis by how it effects us, by what is in it for us. Moved by the Spirit of God we need to broaden our horizons, learn to think of others first and support measures which help the poorest people even if it means having less ourselves.

Folk will not like it. They may even get angry at us. But what’s new? Just ask Jeremiah.

BIDDING PRAYERS


The danger facing Christians in every age is that we become comfortable in society, accept without question its values and its norms, and so cease to be signs of the radically new way of living Jesus calls the kingdom. And so we pray for the grace to become more discerning in the way we relate to the world so that, when appropriate and when necessary we can challenge what is not of God in it in a way that is positive and helps people grow in the truth.............................Lord hear us

It has been the role of the prophet in every age to challenge current thinking and speak unwelcome truths to the people with whom they share a particular moment in history. And so we pray for the prophets of our own day. They constantly tell us that we cannot go on living the way we do; that something has to change if the world is to become a more just place; and we ask God for the courage and openness we need to heed their message while there is still time.................................Lord hear us

One of the most difficult things for us to hear in the West is that our present lifestyle is ultimately unsustainable. We have become so used to it and, for a long time, now and have been taught to believe that, with each year that passes, we can expect our standard of living to grow and grow; But all of this has been based on exploitation of the poor, cheap energy and cheap food. It has all been an illusion and we pray for the grace we need to understand this now.........................Lord hear us

The problem with our understanding the unsustainable nature of the way we live is consumerism. Our whole economic system works of the premise that we have to keep buying things. And so, manipulated by the advertising industry, we confuse need with want. We buy what we have been conned into thinking we need. The reality, often, is that we don’t need it, we want it. And so we pray for the wisdom to see through this trick and so grow in personal freedom............................Lord hear us

Another problem facing us in the developed countries is that no politician who hopes to come to power can afford to tell us the truth about ourselves. We simply don’t want to hear it. And so politicians make promises they know they cannot keep. They tell us what we want to hear rather than what they know to be true. And so we ask God to raise up among us leaders who are also prophets and so have the courage to challenge us and take us where we would rather not go...................Lord hear us

If we are to play our part in the great work of proclaiming the values of the kingdom in the midst of the modern world, then we, too, need to be prophets. But at baptism, when we were anointed with the oil of chrism, we shared in the prophetic ministry of Jesus himself. And so we ask God to stir this baptismal gift into a flame so that we can proclaim the message from the house-tops and do so without fear of those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul..............................Lord hear us