Archbishop of Sydney

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
Jer. 20.10-13; Rom 5. 12-15; Mt. 10. 26-33

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
19 June 2005

The first reading is from the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, who was born about 650 B.C. near Jerusalem.  He came from a priestly family, who had been in trouble hundreds of years earlier with King Solomon, but he is best known as one of the major prophets of the Old Testament with Isaiah and Ezekiel.

It was a difficult time with attacks from the Scythian barbarians of the Caucasus, when the Assyrian Empire was in decline and Babylon was on the rise.  The Jews were caught in the middle, a much smaller people.  Religiously it was also a time of change, although Jeremiah took no part in public life under the reforms of the faithful Josiah.  It was when Judah under the leadership of Jehoiakim (607-897) lapsed back into idolatry, the worship of false gods, that Jeremiah began to predict the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, urging an alliance or acceptance of Babylonian rule, rather than lining up with Egypt, the competing super-power of the region at that time.

Jeremiah was imprisoned and thrown into a pit by his enemies who disparaged him for his fearless defence of the one true God and his denunciation of those who had begun to follow false gods.

Jerusalem was destroyed as Jeremiah had predicted and many of the Jews were deported to Babylon.  Jeremiah himself was taken by those who fled to Egypt, where tradition has it that his own people stoned him to death.

Therefore it is quite clear, that in these chaotic and terrible times, Jeremiah certainly knew the reality of struggles over religion and paid the ultimate price for his fidelity.

No one likes the prospect of bad news and many prefer to confront today’s problems in the light of earlier better times especially if the future looks bleak. In fact Jeremiah’s name has passed into the language as someone who is a serious pessimist.  Last night on the A.B.C. radio someone in Europe was described in a news report as a “Jeremiah”, a pessimist.

It is not possible to be a follower of Christ without some sort of a struggle and occasionally big struggles when we find it hard to do the right thing.  That is one reason why today’s gospel passage from St. Matthew begins with Our Lord saying “fear not”.  “Be not afraid” is (I am told) repeated 365 times in the Old and New Testaments, once for every day of the year (I have never checked the counting!)

This reassurance is important because we can be tempted to stop our search or our following of God; to be frightened off by what might occur if we stick to God too closely.  The rewards are one hundred fold even in this life, but if anyone advocates a spirituality which costs us nothing at all, then we can be sure that we are being sold counterfeit goods.  The cross is easy and the burden light, but they are real.

Followers of Christ are called to repent and believe, so there are two categories of struggle i.e. in faith and morality.

We are more used to the world of moral struggle as we know that we have to work hard to purify our own hearts, to curb our selfishness, to practise the delaying of gratification, not trying to have every good thing we fancy now, immediately.

We can be forced to struggle within our family, in our circle of friends and often in our work place to do the right thing, to maintain proper standards, while there is a constant struggle in public life for social justice, for the defence of life, marriage and family.  We need genuine knowledgeable Christians in the major political parties for this.

However there is also another important struggle in Australian life today which continues admittedly in a different way; Jeremiah’s struggle for the one true God.  The number of atheists is probably declining; no one is going to worship Baal and those who worship the devil are small in number and secretive.

However a goodly minority claim that it is not important to search out the one true God, that you cannot be certain in that area of life.  Others seem to think that any one form of vague religiosity is as good as any other, so that they flit from New Age spirituality to aboriginal religion, or to a worship of the mighty forces of nature, with some of them even believing that their way, this vague nonsense, is what we are about as followers of Christ.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

The one True God we worship is Yahweh, the God of power and compassion revealed to the Jewish people and to them alone.  The God we worship is described in today’s gospel as the God who will eventually reveal everything, who is placing obligations on us, who knows everything (when a sparrow falls from the sky) and knows even the number of hairs on our heads.

In other words God is good, intelligent, predictable and interested in each one of us.  God is personal, who knows and loves, responds to our prayers, is able to forgive us.

The mighty forces of nature, always remote, and sometimes so cruel and heartless as in times of earthquakes or bushfires or droughts, cannot hear us or reassure us.  No power or force can tell us not to be afraid; only a personal God can do that.

And we do have something of a struggle on our hands in this matter today.  The major challenge from unbelief comes in the form of undemanding superstition.  We too are sometimes obliged to declare ourselves for the one true God and Christ his only Son.  If we do this, we are reassured by Our Lord himself that He will speak for us, vouch for us with God our loving Father.  But if we refuse to speak up for the one true God and Christ his only Son, Jesus will disown us before the Father.

The options are clear.  The choice is ours. So we pray to the God of our fathers, that we may have courage and wisdom sufficient for this.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.