Dear beloved sisters and brothers in Christ,

 

Jeremiah was a fire-and-brimstone prophet during the demise of his once-proud nation. When Babylon invaded Judea and Jerusalem three times from 597 to 582 BCE, he did not rally the people. Rather, he denounced their shallow religiosity. He said that the Lord was using their foes to destroy the Jerusalem temple (Jeremiah 7:1-15). He predicted a shameful end to King Jehoiakim who was violent, dishonest, and cared nothing for justice or the poor (Jeremiah 22:13-17). When Jehoiakim’s successor, King Zedekiah, reneged on freeing the Hebrew slaves and made new political schemes, Jeremiah promised the sword, pestilence, and famine (Jeremiah 34:8-22). Jeremiah spoke truth to power.

 

The first reading for this Sunday picks up the story. King Zedekiah refused to follow Jeremiah’s counsel. Instead, he believed his princes. He let them throw God’s messenger of truth into a muddy cistern to rot (Jeremiah 38:4-6). Jeremiah spoke the truth to power. He suffered dearly for the truth. (Sadly, Jeremiah was right. King Nebuchadnezzar would sack Jerusalem and destroy the temple. The Babylon king would kill Zedekiah’s sons, blind him, and lead him off in chains.)

 

During the worst of the pandemic, scientists and politicians urged our country to get vaccinated. Families told the news camera, “Please get vaccinated. My husband didn’t. Now he is dead.” Over a million Americans have died from Covid, twice as many as died in World War II. And yet a quarter of American adults are still not fully vaccinated against Covid.

 

Despite claims of voter fraud, no evidence of widespread voting malfeasance has been found in the reviews and audits of the 2020 election conducted by the federal government, state officials, dozens of courts, election security experts, news organizations, and political parties. Yet according to a Politifact review of multiple surveys, tens of millions of voters believe that the current president was not legitimately elected.

 

Rusty Bowers was the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, a white Republican in his late sixties. During the presidential elections, when asked by the White House to remove the electors for Biden, Bowers said, “You are asking me to do something against my oath, and I will not break my oath.” He testified to the January 6thSelect Committee that since then “various groups come by and they have had video-panel trucks with videos of me, proclaiming me to be a pedophile and a pervert and a corrupt politician and blaring loudspeakers.” Self-appointed militia bearing guns have accosted his neighbors. He spoke truth to power and suffered for it.

 

Leading up to the June 24, 2022 Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade, more than forty pro-life pregnancy centers and churches were vandalized or attacked, according to the Wall Street Journal. They suffered for their stand for life.

 

Jesus did not give a quiet witness as an honest worker. He was not a teacher secluded with his agreeable pupils. Like Jeremiah, he spoke truth to the powers-that-be. Jesus spoke the truth, and the truth is this. “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). He is the truth that sets us free (John 8:32). “In Jesus Christ, the whole of God's truth has been made manifest” (Catechism, 2466). “Full of grace and truth,” he is the Truth.

 

Fully accepting the consequences, Jesus called out the world’s corruption and its need to repent. Like Jeremiah and the prophets of old, he suffered rejection, torture, and death. But on the third day, he rose again.

 

“My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord; I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).

 

How have you like Jeremiah suffered for the truth?

 

In Christ,

Father David