Learning to fall as spiritual discipline

The fate of Jeremiah paralleled the fall and rise of the city in which the prophet resided. In fact, this Sunday’s readings present a theme that considers the fate of a person, place or household that falls into turmoil. Can a person recover and overcome? Will the holy city of Jerusalem survive a violent seizure? There remains a glimpse of hope, according to this Sunday’s psalm, for those who wait in the Lord. But the readings also provide a meditation on lament before the realization of renewal or resurrection. 

For example, in this Sunday’s first reading Jeremiah had every reason to despair. King Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, along with the princes of the land, were convinced that the spokesperson of the Lord was nothing but a burden to the people of Jerusalem. “Jeremiah ought to be put to death; he is demoralizing the soldiers who are left in this city, and all the people, by speaking such things to them; he is not interested in the welfare of our people, but in their ruin” (38:4). This ended with Jeremiah being thrown into a pit, a cistern without water and only mud. Here the prophet is slowly dying, abandoned and sinking into the mud. The image represents the seizure about to happen for Jerusalem as their doomed fate is only a matter of time with the approach of the Chaldeans.

This Sunday’s psalm is meant to reveal Jeremiah’s state of mind with a hymn that touches on both thanksgiving and lament: “I have waited, waited for the LORD, and he stooped toward me” (Ps 40:2). In several of the penitential psalms the tone of lament is tethered to the idea of waiting. To wait for the Lord becomes the practice, the meditation and the experience that must not be skipped nor ignored. In this Sunday’s second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, the author hints at this by mentioning the hardships one must pass through before a sense of peace is secured. “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood” (Heb 12:4). The practice of waiting is a kind of discipline meant for all but not always embraced by people of faith. 

This leads us to today’s strange Gospel passage, which on the surface seems to promote conflict and division. Jesus presented a rhetorical question to his disciples: “Do you think I have come to establish peace on earth?” (Lk 12:51). To which Jesus gives his own answer: “No, I tell you, but rather division.” Households will be divided against themselves according to those who receive the message of the Gospel and those who reject it. There are two ways to sit with this meditation. The first implies a suspicion of religion and cultish thinking that seems to separate families and divide communities based upon different moral visions of society. This is not unlike what is happening to many places today that were once guided by a dominant moral-religious set of principles. Another approach to Jesus’ strong language is to understand his invocation “I have come to set the earth on fire” to imply that the pursuit of truth often comes at an exceptional cost (Lk 12:49-50). 

If the message of the Gospel is true, the limited turmoil it may cause within a household might be a necessary step before the desired peace arrives. As the saying goes, peace is not always the absence of conflict but a constant struggle for what is just. 

The theme running through this Sunday’s readings suggests that a kind of failure will come to people of faith, but resurrection will follow. Jeremiah was thrown into a pit and then rescued much the way his city fell, only to be raised at a later time. Jesus predicted conflict before peace for some households because of the Gospel message. All of it collectively implies the act of sitting in the mud first before rising to renewed life. It becomes a passage that no disciple may escape, but it is also a discipline in waiting that may be embraced through faith.