Readings of the day: Jeremiah 7:23-28; Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9; Luke 11:14-23
Have any of us ever been so frustrated
with somebody else’s poor choices or bad habits that we have been close to
giving up on this person?
We hear through Jeremiah in our first
reading of a God who is perhaps on the cusp of giving up on God’s people; the
people of Israel. Instead of following God’s commandments, “From the day that
[their] fathers left the land of Egypt… they… stiffened their necks and [did]
worse than their fathers.” God also says to Jeremiah that the people of Israel
are so mired in evil that “they will not listen to you either.” God has all but
given up on Israel. They will be left to the consequences of their evil; left
under the power of other nations.
The same could be said of Jesus toward
the crowds in our Gospel reading today who had seen him cast out a demon. Jesus
appears to have all but given up on those who say, “By the power of Beelzebul,
the prince of demons, he drives out demons.” Jesus leaves them to the
consequences of their divisive, evil attitude: “Whoever is not with me is
against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”
I think the key words are “all but”: God
all but gives up on the people of Israel
in Jeremiah; Jesus all but gives up
on the stubborn crowds who accuse him of channeling Satan’s power. God may all but give up on some especially
wicked people in our own time, but we are promised that, as frustrated as God
may become with human evil, God will never give up on us. And we are urged to
act as God acts; not to give up on one another, as frustrating as another’s
poor choices or habits, or even the state of our world, so full of violence and
a lack of mercy, may become to us.
How can we be so confident that God
never gives up on us? We can be confident in this if we listen attentively to
our readings today. God has the prophet Jeremiah rebuke the people of Israel as
“the nation that does not listen to the voice of the LORD, its God.” Even so,
God has sent these people Jeremiah. And God will send still more prophets to
them after Jeremiah. God never gives up on the people of Israel, no matter how
wicked and hard-hearted they have become.
Finally, God has sent us Jesus. No
matter how wicked we become (this is certainly no excuse to test God; we
understand this); no matter how many times we have sinned, God sent us his only
Son to live as one of us in all but sin, to die for us; to rise and to ascend
to heaven for us; to save us. God will never give up on us.
God invites us, then,
not to give up on one another. God invites us not to give up on ourselves and
on God; not to think any of our sins are so great as to be beyond God’s mercy.
Instead, God calls us to respond with hearts open to mercy; to forgiveness
toward one another, toward ourselves, and toward our world.
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