Following Jesus is serious business

Homily for June 25, 2017 (12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)
Jeremiah 20:10-13; Psalm 69; Romans 5:12-15; Matthew 10:26-33

This past week the Church celebrated the memory of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More (June 22), both of whom were beheaded in 1535 on the order of England’s King Henry VIII for their loyalty to the Church and their defense of the indissolubility of marriage.  Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, kept a skull at his desk to remind him of his mortality and his ultimate accountability to God.  More, who had served in Parliament and had then as Lord Chancellor of England, testified shortly before his death that he remained “the king’s good servant, but God’s first.”   They could not be truly loyal to their king and nation unless they were loyal to their vocations and their God.  That loyalty and dedication, however, came at a price; and God’s word today calls us to reflect on the cost of our own vocations and our mission as followers of Christ.

Jeremiah, who lived more than two millennia before More and Fisher and six centuries before Jesus, was a reluctant prophet for Judah at a time of national peril.  While the empire of the Assyrians was dying and becoming less of a threat, Judah was squeezed between the ascendant Babylonian Empire and the ambitions of Egypt.  Further, with few exceptions, the political and religious leadership of Judah had become corrupt and the people were being led further and further away from trusting in God.   Jeremiah’s unenviable role was to denounce their sinfulness and infidelity and announce that the days of God’s judgment and their exile were upon them.

Jeremiah wasn’t exactly a popular guy.  As we witness in today’s first reading, he suffered a lot for his faithfulness to God.  Like the author of our Responsorial Psalm, he became an outcast and was the object of insults from many quarters. He was denounced even by those close to him.  He was thrown in a cistern and left for dead.  Things got so bad at times that he lamented even being born.  Yet over the course of a ministry that lasted some 40 years, Jeremiah remained faithful to what God had called him to do.    

In preparing to send the Twelve out on their own mission of teaching, preaching and healing (Matthew 10:5-15), Jesus warned them that they would face opposition and persecution (10:16-25).  In today’s gospel reading he counsels them: “do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill soul; rather be afraid of the one who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna (i.e., hell).”  Church tradition tells us that, with the exceptions of Judas Iscariot and John, all of them were later martyred.

Following Jesus is serious business.  Indeed, in many parts of the world today it is a matter of life and death.  In our own country, we are blessed with a degree of religious freedom that others can only envy and that we can easily take for granted.  But whether we face the bombs or swords of fanatics or merely the criticism or indifference of others in an increasingly secular society, we can trust in the grace and care of the One we serve when we strive to live the gospel.  Even the hairs on our heads are counted. +