Tenth Sunday after Trinity

Jeremiah received his call to prophetic ministry amidst hard times in Judah. He witnessed Judah under the reign of three kings (1:1), and Judah yielding to the imperial aggression of Egypt and later Babylon. Deeply pained by the downfall of Judah, Jeremiah calls Judah to turn towards God. Jeremiah ascribes the down fall of Judah to the failure of two institutions: the monarchy and the priesthood, the palace and the temple. In Jeremiah’s view, the downfall is not due to a strategic military failure, but due to the moral failures of the city and its ‘watchmen.’ God appointed these watchmen over its subjects. They were to listen to God, instead they chose not to (6:17). The rulers assumed that they could please God and get away with their unjust rule by indulging in rituals (6:20). They sought to trade morality for ritualism. They sought to replace the difficult demands for ethical responsibility, compassion and justice with the comfortable and visible performance of external ceremonies and sacrifices. Jeremiah is asked to ‘stand at the gate’ of the temple and pronounce the prophetic oracle. The expression ‘Stand at the gate’ is seen again in ch 17: 19 where the prophet was asked to stand at the gate of the people. ‘Standing at the gate’ is suggestive of the liminal spaces that a prophet is called to occupy. The gate has dual participation – it participates in the outer precincts and the inner space. Jeremiah was a prophet whose life was one of experiencing liminality. He comes from a priestly background who later was called to engage in prophetic task that brings priestly

vocation to accountability. His relation to temple too was such. On the one hand it recognizes the temple as the ‘Lord’s house’, and on the other brings judgement against its institutional representations. Jeremiah was aware that the temple rituals are symbolic of the divine calling to the community, but they are not end in themself. When rituals become an end, and faith becomes transactional, it is dead ritualism. Therefore, the prophet calls the community who walk through the gate into the temple, not to rely upon the ritual attendance for their acceptance by God,but to bring to the temple lives that were turned towards God’s demand of righteousness, and walk out to live a life of grace. God’s demand for righteousness is not an abstract idea, but a demand for concrete life of faith: to deal with each other justly; not to oppress the alien, the fatherless, or widow; not to shed the innocent blood, not to follow false gods (Vs. 6-7). The restoration of Judah lies in their turn towards God who is just and compassionate.

This oracle of Jeremiah has profound significance for our times when the occupation of Palestine by Isreal is misinterpreted as the ‘restoration of Isreal.’ The test of the restoration of any people to a state of acceptance before God is how they treated the ‘other.’ Compassion, loving kindness and justice are the marks of divine presence in a community. It is significant for the life of the church as well. The danger of falling into dead ritualism always lurks at the doorstep of our lives- both individual and communal. The contemporary Christian faith as it is expressed in popular religiosity is mostly ritualistic and transactional. The prophetic oracle is perhaps an indictment against our dead ritualism and a call to repentance – to turn to God and live a life of compassion and justice.

Book of Hebrews reflects one of the Christological perceptions of the New Testament Christianity. Having been written to the Jewish communities, the book seeks to place Jesus Christ within the three offices that were understood to be instituted by God within the Jewish tradition. They were the offices of the King, the priest and the prophet. In order to establish that Christianity is not a counter faith to Judaism but a natural consequence of Judaism, and that Judaism is an anticipation of Christ, the author sought to articulate a Christology that relates itself to these three offices. Though Jesus was understood to be a participant in these offices, the author insists that Jesus radically transforms the nature of these offices through his participation. Here in our given text, the author seeks to place Jesus Christ within the line of prophets, yet makes a distinction that Christ is the Son of God. The book of Hebrews begins with an affirmation that God who spoke in various ways in the past (through the prophets) now speaks to us through the Son in these last days (Hebrews 1: 1-2). For the author, Jesus is the ‘speech of God.’ The call is to listen to Christ and not to harden the heart. The author invokes the memory of their ancestors who rebelled against Moses while they were in wilderness and were unable to enter the rest. According to the book of Hebrews, Christian discipleship involves ‘fixing our thoughts on Jesus’ (3:1, 12: 2), since Christ is the author and perfector of our faith.

John the Baptist was arrested by Herod. Having heard what Jesus was doing in Galilee, John sends his disciples to know if Jesus was the one that is to come, the one to whom John the Baptist bore witness to. Jesus bears witness to John as a prophet, and someone who is more than a prophet. The contrast between two spaces is worth noting: The palace and the desert. While the palace is the abode of the king who wears fine clothes, the desert is the abode of the ascetics who rebelled against the status-quo (vs. 7-10). Jesus identifies himself with an ascetic prophet by acknowledging him as his forerunner. This passage offers an insight into an important aspect of Jesus’s self-understanding. He distances himself from any kind of monarchic perceptions, and identifies himself within the legacy of prophetic calling (vs. 17-18). Jesus also suggests that his prophetic practice was one of solidarity with John who was in prison, though their life-styles differed. While John withdrew himself to wilderness, Jesus engaged with the vulnerable communities in total identification with them, even to a point of being called names. The call is to repent. The failure of Korazin and Bethsaida was their failure to turn towards God in repentance. Miracles were performed, yet there was no sign of repentant lives. Jesus’s indictment is relevant for our times. Our contemporary Christianity in India is infested with those who claim to be prophets and dress themselves in the kingly clothes. Beware of those false prophets. Prophetic line with Jesus identified himself with were those who resisted the empire and the imperial life-style of pomp. To be prophetic is to be on the side of the vulnerable and bear witness to God’s reign of Jstice, love and righteousness.