This blog follows the daily bible readings of the Catholic Church

Reading 1, Jeremiah 26:1-9

1 At the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord, 2 ‘The Lord says this, “Stand in the court of the Temple. To all the people from the towns of Judah who come to worship in the Temple of the Lord you will say everything I have ordered you to say, not omitting one syllable. 3 Perhaps they will listen and each turn from his evil way: if so, I shall relent and not bring the disaster on them which I intend because of their misdeeds.”

4 Say to them, “The Lord says this: If you will not listen to me and follow my Law which I have given you, 5 and pay attention to the words of my servants the prophets whom I have never tired of sending to you, although you never have paid attention,

6 I shall treat this Temple as I treated Shiloh, and make this city a curse for all the nations of the world.” ‘

7 The priests and prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah say these words in the Temple of the Lord. 8 When Jeremiah had finished saying everything that the Lord had ordered him to say to all the people, the priests and prophets and all the people seized hold of him and said, ‘You will die for this! 9 Why have you made this prophecy in the Lord’s name, “This Temple will become like Shiloh, and this city become an uninhabited ruin”?’ And the people all crowded in on Jeremiah in the Temple of the Lord.

The prophet speaks the unvarnished truth: the life the people are leading will bring national disaster. The people and their leaders do not want the truth and turn on the prophet. This is particularly the fate today of those who point out that the wasteful, greedy and destructive life of rich nations is unsustainable. The power of propaganda is unleashed upon them, along with the ignorant assaults of poor citizens who are themselves victims of the economic system. Churches have been slow to identify these prophets as speakers of God’s warning, because they are not believers or do not make their religious faith an element in their critique. Raj Patel’s book, “The Value of Nothing” is an incisive summing up of the destructiveness of modern capitalism. He does not use alarmist rhetoric but he could easily use the language of Jeremiah, “I shall make this city (New York, London, Delhi, Beijing) a curse for all the nations of the world.”

Gospel, Matthew 13:54-58

If this is a picture of Jesus with siblings, it's the only one I've found

54 and, coming to his home town, he taught the people in their synagogue in such a way that they were astonished and said, ‘Where did the man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? 55 This is the carpenter’s son, surely? Is not his mother the woman called Mary, and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Jude?

56 His sisters, too, are they not all here with us? So where did the man get it all?’

57 And they would not accept him. But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is despised only in his own country and in his own house,’ 58 and he did not work many miracles there because of their lack of faith.

Jesus also was a prophet. He noted that those who know a prophet’s origins are less likely to honour him. No-one wants to believe that God’s truth is available to people like them: otherwise they’d have to ask why they choose to be blind. Much better to imagine that prophets have a miraculous birth which gives them an advantage! It’s interesting that that’s exactly what the church has done with Jesus. In the interests of maintaining not only his miraculous birth but the perpetual virginity of his mother, it has denied the plain sense of this passage, that Mary had several children as well as Jesus. Of course I understand the development of Mariolatry and its deep purpose of providing a respectable female aspect to male deity, but this theology risks denial of full humanity to Jesus, and a mystification of his message. “Where did the man get it all?” He got it where we can all get it: love of God and neighbour, clarity of mind, integrity of living.