You have been dedicated by God, did you know that?\u00c2\u00a0 You see, Jeremiah’s words today apply to you as much as they do to Jeremiah.\u00c2\u00a0 I quote:\u00c2\u00a0 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born, I dedicated you.”\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, indeed, each and every one of you was known by God before you were born.\u00c2\u00a0 And God dedicated you to something.\u00c2\u00a0 These words definitely apply to you and I.\u00c2\u00a0 God doesn’t make junk, and he fashioned each and every one of you for something.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now Jeremiah was dedicated as a prophet.\u00c2\u00a0 Because, as our first reading tells the story, he heard God calling him to be a prophet and he heard God promising him to be with him.\u00c2\u00a0 Jeremiah was a reluctant prophet, but God promised to keep Jeremiah from being crushed. \u00c2\u00a0He did not promise to guard him against suffering.\u00c2\u00a0 Indeed, Jeremiah’s suffered in his own time because his words bore God’s truth- an uncomfortable truth for Jeremiah’s people, and that brought Jeremiah an uncomfortable life.\u00c2\u00a0 And yet, we know that Jeremiah was not crushed.\u00c2\u00a0 And ultimately, Jeremiah triumphed over his adversaries because his words live on today, and serve as a lesson for all of us.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet his detractors suffered the demise he predicted.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
What is God calling you to?\u00c2\u00a0 Do you hear the word of God speaking to you about your calling?\u00c2\u00a0 Now before you answer that, consider Jesus experience in the Gospel.\u00c2\u00a0 He reads the scroll of Isaiah’s scripture in his home Synagogue, and tells the people that the reading was fulfilled in their hearing.\u00c2\u00a0 The reaction is mixed.\u00c2\u00a0 In an initial reaction, people acclaim him.\u00c2\u00a0 But then there are others who say wait a minute- who does this guy think he is?\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t he just one of us?\u00c2\u00a0 Jesus then speaks of prophets not being accepted in their own town and quotes two Old Testament stories where God’s favor has been bestowed on foreigners rather than the Jews.\u00c2\u00a0 In both cases, the prophets messages were known to their own people and it rolled off of their backs without having any effect.\u00c2\u00a0 But the message of the prophets was new and fresh to the foreigners.\u00c2\u00a0 And so, these foreigners responded with genuine faith, and that faith was rewarded.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
These stories angered the people in Jesus synagogue because they realized that they were being told that they were like the Jews of old in these two stories.\u00c2\u00a0 You see, although the people in Jesus’ Synagogue were familiar with Isaiah’s scripture, that familiarity caused a sort of blindness in them.\u00c2\u00a0 They weren’t really hearing the word of God because it was too available to them, too familiar.\u00c2\u00a0 It had been proclaimed in a given context for centuries.\u00c2\u00a0 People were comfortable with that context.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a context that didn’t involve them.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a context that described happenings centuries ago to a group of other people- not them.\u00c2\u00a0 How dare some mere carpenter come along and shake them out of their comfort zone, and imply that the scriptures were being fulfilled in their time!\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Is it possible that we committed Catholics can suffer from the same kind of blindness with the scriptures?\u00c2\u00a0 We hear scripture proclaimed each week.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, we hear the same scriptures every three years because our readings are taken from a three year cycle.\u00c2\u00a0 Do our minds lock into the “same old- same old” context, that these things happened long ago and don’t affect us?\u00c2\u00a0 Or are our minds open to God talking to us about our lives today?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, if you agree that God knew each of you before you were born, and that he has dedicated you to something, then realize that he, too, is going to speak to you through the word of God.\u00c2\u00a0 He is talking to you through his scriptures every time you hear them.\u00c2\u00a0 Somewhere in these scriptures there are messages- just for you.\u00c2\u00a0 It is up to us to hear these scriptures in a fresh way, and to be open to when God is talking to us.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Personally, I feel It would be really hard for me, or for any of you for that matter, to deny that today’s second reading isn’t speaking to each of us.\u00c2\u00a0 Wow, what a message.\u00c2\u00a0 Because no matter how good we are with the talents God has given us, it is all too easy to be self motivated, and not motivated out of love.\u00c2\u00a0 Patience with folks who don’t see things my way;\u00c2\u00a0 kindness to people who have hurt me; rejoicing over someone’s good fortune who I think hasn’t earned it; these are all things that are hard for me, and I bet they are hard for most of you as well.\u00c2\u00a0 And, we have all heard this scripture so many times before.\u00c2\u00a0 And so, we don’t really take it to heart.\u00c2\u00a0 It makes me uncomfortable, but by tomorrow, perhaps I will forget that twinge of conscience.\u00c2\u00a0 But if someone tells me that I just don’t get it,\u00c2\u00a0 Why I’m likely to get upset at them\u00c2\u00a0 How dare they?\u00c2\u00a0 Well, that’s what Jesus was talking about.\u00c2\u00a0 We, too, may be like the crowd in Jesus Synagogue.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
So consider this.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like the prophet Jeremiah, we can measure our success in our Faith not by how comfortable our faith is making us feel, but by how uncomfortable it is making us feel.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
4th Sunday in Ordinary Time Jer 1; 4-5, 17-19; 1 Cor 12: 31- 13: 3; Luke 4: 21-30 Dc. Larry Brockman You have been dedicated by God, did you know that?\u00c2\u00a0 You see, Jeremiah’s words today apply to you as much as they do to Jeremiah.\u00c2\u00a0 I quote:\u00c2\u00a0 “Before I formed you in the womb […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}