SPEAKER_00: There are sentences in the Bible that sound pretty beautiful to embroider on a pillow.
SPEAKER_00: Today we don't have one of those.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah looks towards heaven and says, You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped.
SPEAKER_00: What an extraordinary thing to say.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps even more extraordinary is this.
SPEAKER_00: God allowed it to remain in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah is angry.
SPEAKER_00: He's exhausted.
SPEAKER_00: He feels betrayed, and God does not erase the prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes faith does not sound like praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes faith sounds like, Lord, I do not understand what you're doing in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why you're not there for me.
SPEAKER_00: I think there are people sitting in church right now who need permission to know that.
SPEAKER_00: Because we sometimes confuse faith with pretending.
SPEAKER_00: We think a faithful person should always understand.
SPEAKER_00: A faithful person should always be peaceful.
SPEAKER_00: A faithful person should never question God.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jeremiah destroys that illusion.
SPEAKER_00: To understand why he speaks so strongly, you have to know what happened immediately before today's first reading.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah had been preaching what God commanded him to preach.
SPEAKER_00: It was not making him very popular.
SPEAKER_00: Peshur, an official associated with the temple, had Jeremiah beaten and placed in the stocks.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine that.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah has done what God has asked him to do, and this is where obedience has gotten him.
SPEAKER_00: No applause, no success, no comfort, imprisoned.
SPEAKER_00: And when he's released, Jeremiah basically turns towards God and says, This is not what I signed up for.
SPEAKER_00: You duped me.
SPEAKER_00: There's something painfully human about that sentence.
SPEAKER_00: Because maybe Jeremiah's prayer is not as foreign to us as we think.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've tried to do the right thing and it cost you.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you prayed for someone and they died anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you remained faithful in a marriage and still got hurt.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've raised children in the faith and today one of them wants nothing to do with God.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you've tried to live honestly while watching somebody who cuts every corner seems to prosper and have a good life.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you finally surrendered something to God and thought now things will get better, and they didn't.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the moments when Jeremiah becomes our companion.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I trusted you.
SPEAKER_00: I followed you.
SPEAKER_00: I tried to do what you asked of me.
SPEAKER_00: So why am I here?
SPEAKER_00: But notice something important.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah is furious with God, but Jeremiah is still talking to God.
SPEAKER_00: That distinction matters.
SPEAKER_00: He's not walked away.
SPEAKER_00: He's brought this disappointment directly into the relationship.
SPEAKER_00: There's a difference between losing your temper with God and losing God.
SPEAKER_00: There's also a difference between questioning God and abandoning God.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the most honest prayer you will ever pray is not particularly pretty.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I'm angry.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I'm tired.
SPEAKER_00: I'm exhausted.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I don't understand.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, where are you?
SPEAKER_00: I don't feel your presence.
SPEAKER_00: But God can handle that.
SPEAKER_00: He already knows it anyway.
SPEAKER_00: But then Jeremiah does something even more dramatic.
SPEAKER_00: He quits.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I will not mention him.
SPEAKER_00: I will speak in his name no more.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm finished.
SPEAKER_00: No more prophecy, no more preaching, no more humiliation, no more carrying God's word to people who don't want to hear it.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah writes his resignation letter.
SPEAKER_00: Except there's one problem.
SPEAKER_00: He can't resign.
SPEAKER_00: Because then he says, Then it becomes like the fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones.
SPEAKER_00: I grow weary holding it in.
SPEAKER_00: I cannot endure it.
SPEAKER_00: That may be one of the most beautiful descriptions of faith anywhere in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: There was something inside Jeremiah that Jeremiah himself could not extinguish.
SPEAKER_00: He could not reject the mission.
SPEAKER_00: He could complain about God.
SPEAKER_00: He could decide he had had enough.
SPEAKER_00: But somewhere deep within him the fire was still burning.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder how many people here know exactly what Jeremiah is talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Because maybe you've tried to walk away from God.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there was a season when you stopped praying.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you became disappointed with the church.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe something happened that you simply could not reconcile.
SPEAKER_00: Or you told yourself, I'm done.
SPEAKER_00: But yet something kept bothering you.
SPEAKER_00: Something kept calling you.
SPEAKER_00: You walked into a church when nobody was around.
SPEAKER_00: You heard a hymn you remembered from childhood.
SPEAKER_00: You found yourself making the sign of the cross when somebody you loved was in danger.
SPEAKER_00: You were sitting in a hospital room and suddenly began praying words you had not prayed in years.
SPEAKER_00: Something inside of you would not die.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah would say, That's the fire.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that's one of the mistakes we make in the spiritual life is thinking that we are always the ones holding on to God.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jeremiah discovers something much more beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes God is holding on to us.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah thought he couldn't get away from God.
SPEAKER_00: Years later, Saint Augustine would discover something remarkably similar.
SPEAKER_00: Augustine ran, he searched, he experimented, he resisted, and eventually he realized that underneath all of his searching was a restlessness that nothing created could satisfy.
SPEAKER_00: We usually hear this beautiful quote by Augustine, You were made for us.
SPEAKER_00: You made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until the rest in you.
SPEAKER_00: But Augustine lived it before he wrote it.
SPEAKER_00: Restlessness was God's fingerprint on our soul, on his soul.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah calls it fire.
SPEAKER_00: Augustine calls it restlessness.
SPEAKER_00: Today's Psalm calls it thirst.
SPEAKER_00: My soul is thirsting for you, O God, my Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Fire, restlessness, thirst.
SPEAKER_00: Three different images describing the same mystery.
SPEAKER_00: There's something inside the human person that is this world cannot satisfy because it was made for God.
SPEAKER_00: Now if we turn to the gospel, Jesus tells the disciples what is going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: He will go to Jerusalem, he will suffer, he will be killed.
SPEAKER_00: But then Peter says, God forbid, Lord, no such thing shall ever happen to you.
SPEAKER_00: I understand, Peter.
SPEAKER_00: Peter loves Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want him to suffer.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter still believes that if something comes from God, it should somehow avoid the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus has to teach Peter what Jeremiah had already discovered.
SPEAKER_00: Following God does not mean you will never suffer.
SPEAKER_00: It means your suffering does not get the final word.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.
SPEAKER_00: Those words can sound terribly harsh unless we remember who's saying them.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is not standing safely on the sidelines telling suffering people to toughen up.
SPEAKER_00: No, he goes first.
SPEAKER_00: He enters Gethsemane, he will experience anguish, he will ask whether the cup can pass from him, he will carry the cross, and he will discover in the deepest darkness that surrender to the Father is not the destruction of life.
SPEAKER_00: It is the road to resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: That's why Saint Paul gives us that key today.
SPEAKER_00: Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: A living sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: That almost sounds like a contradiction.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we think of sacrifices as dying.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, not this one.
SPEAKER_00: Give yourself to God and discover who you really are.
SPEAKER_00: Lose the life you have desperately tried to control and discover the life grace has been trying to give you.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's words somebody needs to hear this Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: You thought faith meant that if you followed God closely enough, everything would eventually make sense.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jeremiah says no.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it won't.
SPEAKER_00: You thought holiness meant never becoming angry with God.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah says no.
SPEAKER_00: Tell him the truth.
SPEAKER_00: You thought because you went through a season when you wanted nothing to do with God, your faith must have died.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jeremiah says, check your bones.
SPEAKER_00: Is there fire in there?
SPEAKER_00: Because maybe the fact that you're still wrestling with God means God has not finished wrestling with you.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the ache you've been trying to silence is actually an invitation.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe the restlessness you have been trying to cure is pointing somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: Or even your anger with God can become prayer if you finally stop talking about Him and start talking to Him.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to give you a very simple to do this week.
SPEAKER_00: Before you go to sleep, tell God one true thing.
SPEAKER_00: Not something impressive, not something you think a Catholic is supposed to say.
SPEAKER_00: Something true.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I'm grateful.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I'm scared.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I'm angry.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I miss her or him.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I do not know what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I don't even know whether I can trust you anymore.
SPEAKER_00: But tell him the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Tell him how you're feeling.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah did.
SPEAKER_00: But then listen.
SPEAKER_00: Because underneath the anger, underneath the disappointment, underneath all the questions, you may discover something you thought had disappeared, a little fire.
SPEAKER_00: And if it's still burning, even barely, don't ostriate it, underestimate it.
SPEAKER_00: You may have tried to walk away from God.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the great surprise of your life will be discovering that God never walked away from you.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah couldn't put out the fire.
SPEAKER_00: Augustine couldn't silence the restlessness, and the psalmist couldn't quench the thirst, and Jesus could not be talked out of the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Because the final word of Christianity is not that we hold on to God perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: It is that even in our anger, our questions, our disappointments, our suffering, and our weakness, God refuses to let us go.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that's what the fire in the bones has been trying to tell us all along.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.