Jeremiah and Jesus

Homily for Saturday of the Fourth Week in Lent

The lives of the prophets – like Jeremiah whom we hear in the first reading and the life of the great prophet, Jesus – are marked by what is undoubtedly one of the greatest pains a human being can endure. To be misunderstood, considered a deceiver, to be the object of the plotting and schemes of your fellow human beings, to be mistrusted and treated as a danger to the world, this is a kind of ostracism that crushes anyone.

Jeremiah was misunderstood simply because the courtiers of the king did not like the message he was preaching. In addition to that, Jeremiah was a very young man when he preached the need for them to repent. The courtiers thought of themselves as being far more worldly aware than the youth who stood before them preaching the word of God. Who was this upstart, how had he come to be God’s prophet?

Jesus was also misunderstood, but not because he was a young man but because they thought he was from the wrong place. In fact, Jesus had been born in Bethlehem, the city of David. However, he had grown up in Nazareth and Capernaum which were both located in Galilee. Bethlehem was a suburb of Jerusalem, the most important city in all of Israel and the site of the great temple of the God of Israel. The people of Galilee were of a mixed race. They lived among the Gentiles. He simply could not be the one who was sent by God as the Christ.

As we draw closer and closer to Holy Week, we will concentrate more on the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. However, though we are in the final stage of our Lenten journey, we should not lose sight of the fact that Lent is meant to be a time for us to turn back to God. It is a time to set aside enmities and misunderstandings; it is a time to forgive and be forgiven. Many still misunderstand the Gospel that Jesus preached. May it never be said of us that we have misunderstood the message that Jesus came to preach. Let us, like Nicodemus, take the time to consider what Jesus has to say and what Jesus has done. We are called to conform ourselves to his likeness, to be obedient as Jesus was obedient, to be people of prayer as Jesus was a man of prayer, to identify with sinners so that Jesus can effectively heal us as he did the tax collectors and prostitutes of his own time.