People who use sacred texts have often found ways of selecting passages appropriate to their needs. Disciples of Confucius used a complex system of hexagrams, chosen by lot, to find images and comments suitable to their time, place and situation. In classical and medieval times, the writings of Virgil and Homer were used in a similar way. Sometimes the Bible was accessed by lot or dice or random procedures. The Church responded to the need to select appropriate wisdom from the Bible, by the daily lectionary, a selection of readings for every day in the year, which was originally used in monasteries, but has for some time been used in daily mass in the Catholic Church, and for private devotion in others. Obviously the choice of passages reflects a theology and the Christian calendar, but it also has an arbitrary element. It asks the reader, “Can this wisdom be applied to your soul, your community, your place, today?” This blog follows the daily readings and hopes to uncover some wisdom.

 Reading 1, Jeremiah 18:18-20

18 ‘Come on,’ they said, ‘let us concoct a plot against Jeremiah, for the Law will not perish for lack of priests, nor advice for lack of wise men, nor the word for lack of prophets. Come on, let us slander him and pay no attention to anything he says.’

19 Pay attention to me, Lord God, hear what my adversaries are saying.

20 Should evil be returned for good? Now they are digging a pit for me. Remember how I pleaded before you and spoke good of them, to turn your retribution away from them. 21 So hand their sons over to famine, abandon them to the edge of the sword. Let their wives become childless and widowed, let their young men be cut down by the sword in battle, and their husbands die of plague.

Matthew 20: 17-28

17 Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, and on the road he took the Twelve aside by themselves and said to them,

18 ‘Look, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man is about to be handed over to the chief priests and scribes. They will condemn him to death

19 and will hand him over to the gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised up again.’

20 Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came with her sons to make a request of him, and bowed low;

21 and he said to her, ‘What is it you want?’ She said to him, ‘Promise that these two sons of mine may sit one at your right hand and the other at your left in your kingdom.’

22 Jesus answered, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?’ They replied, ‘We can.’

23 He said to them, ‘Very well; you shall drink my cup, but as for seats at my right hand and my left, these are not mine to grant; they belong to those to whom they have been allotted by my Father.’

24 When the other ten heard this they were indignant with the two brothers.

25 But Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that among the gentiles the rulers lord it over them, and great men make their authority felt.

their great men make their authority felt...

26 Among you this is not to happen. No; anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant,

27 and anyone who wants to be first among you must be your slave,

28 just as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

 I’ve italicised v 21 of the Jeremiah passage, because the lectionary selection stops at verse 20, without allowing the reader to see the full range of Jeremiah’s anger against his people. The book of Jeremiah is a vast pile of edited fragments; some perhaps from the speeches of a prophet called Jeremiah, in the last years of the Israelite monarchy, others composed much later, designed to provide a final critique of a vanished Israel, along with hope for a new future. Throughout the book Jeremiah is depicted as announcing God’s negative judgement on his people. This makes him unacceptable to his fellow citizens, and angry with God for calling him to carry this message. Indeed the true note of Jeremiah is a bitter anger, at the kings, at the people, at God and even at himself.

 He has three convictions: Israel has forsaken its true God; God will therefore punish the nation with disaster; beyond disaster there is hope for a new relationship between God and his people. But what are we to think of a man who describes the violent punishment of God with such relish? It is impossible to disentangle the actual language of the “real Jeremiah” from the language of the book’s editors who were living after defeat and exile; and promoted their own type of faith, by emphasising the disaster of the past. This voice, however, with its articulation of a God who loves so jealously that he must kill his unfaithful wife, is one of the most powerful in the Old Testament.

 Although there are conflicts in the Matthew story, it breathes a different, saner air, from that of Jeremiah. Matthew is here editing a story from Mark, who gives a negative picture of the disciples, which Matthew softens but does not obliterate. In Mark, for example, the brothers themselves ask for pre-eminence, whereas Matthew attributes the request to a mother’s ambition for her boys.

 Jesus has announced his own destiny of failure, suffering and death, but he remains wonderfully patient with disciples who still think in worldly terms and want favours from the Messiah. He reminds them what he will undergo, and asks them if they can share it. In their innocence, they say they can. Jesus accepts this, although he knows they will fail him, because he trusts they will ultimately be faithful even to the point of death, but he clearly states the nature of greatness in his topsy-turvy kingdom: in the world, greatness is upwardly mobile and lords it over inferiors; in God’s kingdom greatness is downwardly mobile and serves everyone. Even the Son of Man (that is, Jesus and his people) have not come to demand service but to serve “many” (that is, all humanity) by offering their lives as ransom money, to release them from captivity by evil. I am writing on a day, when a very rich person has been defending his status as “non-domiciled” in the U.K., which means he is only taxed on what he earns in this country. He feels “entitled” to protect his wealth, and many people agree with him. The lurking tax-collector is a bogeyman for the upwardly mobile.

Among you, this is not to happen

 Whenever we feel “entitled”, we should hear Jesus words, “Among you, this is not to happen.” If we use the name of Jesus, we must live by his teaching.