Jeremiah 20: 7-13 (links validated 6/3/26a)

What are you afraid of? A few years ago, I came across an article about cancer specialists and end-of-life conversations. The article explained that many doctors hesitate to tell terminally ill patients the full truth about their condition. One of the biggest reasons wasn’t lack of knowledge. It wasn’t lack of compassion. It was fear. The doctors feared breaking devastating news. They feared causing pain. They feared taking away hope. Yet the article pointed out something surprising. Patients who were honestly informed about their condition often did better emotionally and spiritually than those who were not. Knowing the truth helped them prepare. It helped them make important decisions. It helped them have conversations with loved ones that they had been putting off. The truth didn’t eliminate fear. But it helped people face it. Reading that article reminded me of one of Jerry Seinfeld’s classic observations. He said: “According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. This means to the average person, if you’re at a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” It’s funny because it’s absurd. But it’s also funny because it’s true. Fear has a remarkable ability to shape our lives...

One of my favorite movies is Kingdom of Heaven from 2005 (the director’s cut, naturally). It’s a loosely adapted telling of the loss of Jerusalem in 1187 by the Franks just before the Third Crusade. The film isn’t a history textbook by any means, but it is an entertaining look into a fascinating period of history. One of the many pieces of dialogue that I enjoy is the conversation between Tiberias, the marshal of Jerusalem, and Guy de Lusignan, brother-in-law of the king of Jerusalem. Simply put: Guy wants war with the Muslim Fatimids while Tiberias wants peace. At one point, Tiberias exclaims to Guy, “That I would rather live with men than kill them is certainly why you are alive.” Guy flippantly responds, “That sort of [nonmurderous] Christianity has its uses, I suppose.” The contest of different versions of Christianity, such as we see between Pope Leo and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, isn’t particularly new. Indeed, in this week’s lectionary readings, we read preserved arguments about what God wills and wants...

While we were on vacation, Jim and I came across John Brown’s farm in North Elba, New York. You will remember John Brown the abolitionist who led the raid on the armory at Harpers’ Ferry just before the Civil War. I mentioned our visit to his farm to some friends who told me about a book based on his life called Good Lord Bird. It has just been released as a TV series. I wanted to show you a clip from it, but everything I could find was too violent for our context. So I just have this screen shot. Until two weeks ago, what I knew about John Brown was what I learned in middle school social studies, that he was an abolitionist who was executed for insurrection at Harper’s Ferry. It turns out that his story is much more complicated than that. But based on that memory from school, I guess I pictured him fairly mild-mannered, maybe like I imagined the scholarly Henry David Thoreau who went to jail for refusing to pay his taxes. If you had asked, I might have described John Brown like that, but just a bit tougher. Then I watched the first episode of Good Lord Bird where Brown is portrayed as wild and slightly mad. And because Jeremiah lives in my brain right now, I began to wonder what John Brown and Jeremiah might have in common. John Brown’s biographers described him as both “extraordinary” and “a victim of mental delusions.” Some called him a terrorist, but others said that his struggle against slavery was very personal and religious. Biographer Stephen Oates said that he was “maligned as a demented dreamer, but that he was in fact one of the most perceptive human beings of his generation.”...

Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing make you afraid, All things are passing, God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Nothing is lacking to the one who has God– God alone is enough. These words, from a meditation titled “St. Teresa’s bookmark,” are a fine summary of today’s readings from Scripture. They all speak to us, strangely enough, about the gift of patience. We are taught that patience is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but it often feels like a heavy burden. People in today’s society mistake patience for submission in the same way they mistake kindness for weakness — and they walk all over you. But as usual, we must look beyond the surface. God has a greater message in store. Some truly great people in the history of Christianity have been “walked on” in this way, you see. Just as one example, St. Teresa, known as Teresa of Avila, is world famous as a theologian, reformer of the Carmelite Order, and spiritual advisor to the great medieval Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross. But Teresa’s ministry was not well received in the community that she loved. Her sisters had grown lax in faith and practice, she called for reform, and their response was to throw her out of convents that she herself had established. On one occasion, she was turned out at night in the middle of a rainstorm. Dressed from head to toe in her coarse wool habit, she got back into her donkey cart and was riding along when the wheel of the cart hit a ditch and the cart turned over, dumping Teresa into the mud. She sat there, in mud-soaked wool, looked up to heaven, and said, “Lord, if this is the way you treat your friends, it’s no wonder that you don’t have many.”...

Donald Woods was the editor of the Daily Dispatch, a South African newspaper. He had been raised in a middle class family, had attended the right schools, and had defended apartheid, the system of racial segregation and discrimination that reigned for so long in South Africa. Then something changed his life. It was such a small thing, but it made such a big difference. He read these words by Abraham Lincoln: "What is morally wrong can never be politically right." He then had the opportunity to interview Prime Minister Vorster, who claimed to be a Christian. Woods asked Vorster how he could reconcile apartheid with his Christian faith. He says, "I then saw the first real flash of anger." He knew he was asking for trouble, but knew also that he must continue. Woods exposed in his newspaper the evils of jailing or banning opponents of apartheid. He found himself being shadowed by security police. His phones were bugged. He then threatened to reveal the truth about the black leader, Steve Biko, who was beaten to death in his jail cell. This time he had gone too far. He was banned to his home. Realizing that his life was in danger, he and his family made a daring escape to England on New Year's Day, 1978. He wrote a book entitled Asking for Trouble, an account of his struggle against apartheid and the high price he paid...

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