13 March 2027 · Latin Rite
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“The police answered, “Never has anyone spoken like this!”” John 7:46
Jeremiah, the prophet of tears, discovers that people from his own town, Anathoth, are plotting to kill him. “It was the LORD who made it known to me, and I knew.” Until then he had not suspected anything: “But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter.” They said: “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will no longer be remembered!” Jeremiah does not take revenge with his own hands. He places his cause before the LORD of hosts, who judges righteously and tries the heart and the mind: “to you I have committed my cause.” His cry for retribution is honest, but the deeper movement is trust. The Church reads this passage on the threshold of Passiontide because Jeremiah is a living image of Christ, the true Lamb of God, who will be led to the slaughter and will not open his mouth, and who will commit his cause, and his spirit, into the Father's hands. The Psalm prays it with him: “O LORD my God, in you I take refuge.”
In the Gospel Jesus has spoken on the last day of the feast of Booths, and the crowd is divided. Some say: “This is really the prophet.” Others: “This is the Messiah.” Others object: the Messiah must come from Bethlehem, not Galilee. The irony is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but they do not know it. The Temple police, sent to arrest him, come back empty-handed. Asked why, they give one of the most beautiful testimonies in the Gospel: “Never has anyone spoken like this!” They have been disarmed by a word. The Pharisees scorn them and the crowd: “this crowd, which does not know the law… they are accursed.” Then one voice rises from among the rulers: Nicodemus, “who had gone to Jesus before,” by night. He does not yet confess Jesus openly; he only asks for fairness: “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing… does it?” They mock him too. But this small courage will grow: on Good Friday Nicodemus will come to the cross carrying a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes for the burial of Jesus. Lent asks us: will we let Jesus' word disarm us, and will we find courage, even a little, to speak for him?
Theme: “Never has anyone spoken like this!”
The gentle lamb, the word that disarms, and the small courage of Nicodemus.
“But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter.” Jeremiah 11:19
“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:29
Apply: Give one hurt you carry to God tonight, and pray for the one who caused it.
“The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.” Isaiah 50:4
“The police answered, “Never has anyone spoken like this!”” John 7:46
Apply: Read one chapter of John's Gospel slowly each day until Palm Sunday.
“God is my shield, who saves the upright in heart.” Psalm 7:10
“Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds.” John 19:39
Apply: Say one word for Christ or for fairness this week where you would normally stay silent.
Jeremiah, the gentle lamb, points to Christ the Lamb of God.
The word of Jesus disarms hearts, and small courage grows into faithful love.
Take-home resolution: Speak one honest word for Christ or for justice this week.
Dear friends, Jeremiah discovers that people from his own town want to kill him. He says: I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter (Jeremiah 11:19). He does not take revenge. He says to God: to you I have committed my cause. In Jeremiah the Church sees Jesus, the true Lamb, who goes to his death without hatred.
In the Gospel the Temple police are sent to arrest Jesus. They come back with empty hands. Why? Because, they say, never has anyone spoken like this! (John 7:46). They came to bind him, and his word bound their hearts.
Then Nicodemus, who once came to Jesus by night, speaks up. It is only a small question: our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing, does it? But it is a beginning. On Good Friday this same Nicodemus will come openly to bury Jesus with myrrh and aloes.
Next Sunday the Church enters the last two weeks of Lent. Let the word of Jesus disarm us. And let us find the courage, even a little at first, to speak for him and for those who are judged unfairly. Amen.
Children, some men were sent to catch Jesus. But when they heard him speak, they could not do it! They said: no one ever spoke like him. Jesus' words are full of love. Let us listen to them carefully at Mass tomorrow.
Lord God, you saw Jeremiah led like a lamb to the slaughter, and you sent your Son, the true Lamb, to take away the sin of the world. Let his word disarm our hearts, and give us the courage of Nicodemus to speak for him and for the truth. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Tomorrow the Church turns to the Fifth Sunday of Lent, and today the shadow lengthens. Jeremiah discovers that the people of his own town have been plotting against him, and he calls himself “a gentle lamb led to the slaughter”. In John the crowd is split about Jesus, the Temple police come back with empty hands, and one quiet voice among the authorities asks for fairness. Psalm 7 prays, “O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge”. Both Jeremiah and Jesus are in danger because of the word they carry.
Setting.
This is the first of the so-called Confessions of Jeremiah, personal prayers of the prophet scattered through chapters 11–20 (see also 15:10–21; 17:14–18; 18:18–23; 20:7–18). No other prophet lets us see so far into his own heart. Jeremiah preached in Judah from about 627 BC until after the fall of Jerusalem in 587/586 BC.
He came from a priestly family of Anathoth (1:1), a village a short distance north-east of Jerusalem. The verses just after today's reading explain the plot: the men of Anathoth are telling him to stop prophesying or he will die (11:21). The danger comes from his own neighbours, and soon also from his family (12:6).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter.” (11:19)
Isaiah 53:7 uses a similar picture for the Servant. Christians cannot hear these words without thinking of the Lamb of God (John 1:29).
“Let us destroy the tree with its fruit,” (11:19)
The Hebrew is obscure and may mean “the tree with its sap” (literally “its bread”). St Jerome's Latin rendering of it speaks of putting wood into his bread, and St Jerome and other Fathers read in this a hidden reference to the Cross and the Body of Christ (in substance). This is a spiritual reading of the text rather than the plain sense, but it shows how the early Church heard this prayer on the lips of Christ.
“let me see your retribution upon them, for to you I have committed my cause.” (11:20)
It is a hard prayer, and an honest one. See the question below. Notice that he does not take up any weapon himself. He places the matter in God's hands.
How the Church reads it.
The Fathers saw Jeremiah, persecuted by his own people and gentle as a lamb, as a figure of Christ in his Passion, and the text suits these last days of Lent. The Catechism says of the prophets that their prayer is at times an argument or a complaint, yet always an intercession that awaits God's saving action (CCC 2584). Christians read such pages with their eyes on the Cross, where the true Lamb prays for those who put him to death (Luke 23:34).
Setting.
We are still at the festival of Booths. On its last great day Jesus has cried out that rivers of living water will flow (7:37–38), and these are the reactions. The chief priests and Pharisees had sent the Temple police to arrest him (7:32). John's picture is not of a single block of enemies. The crowd is divided, the police are shaken, and Nicodemus, “one of them”, speaks up.
A note on the text. The last verse, “each of them went home”, really begins the story of the woman caught in adultery (7:53–8:11). That passage is missing from the earliest Greek manuscripts, but the Church receives it as inspired Scripture. Today's Gospel simply ends with this line.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?” (7:42)
They have in mind passages like 2 Samuel 7:12 and Micah 5:2. John does not correct them, and leaves the irony for his readers: those who know the story know where Jesus was born (Matthew 2:1; Luke 2:4).
“The police answered, “Never has anyone spoken like this!”” (7:46)
Those who were sent to bind him come back bound by his word. They bring no theology to the discussion, only what they have heard.
““Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?”” (7:51)
Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night (3:1–2), now speaks in the daylight, a little. He does not even defend Jesus; he defends the Law's own justice (Deuteronomy 1:16). He will appear once more, with spices for the burial (19:39). Faith can grow slowly in a person.
“Search and you will see that no prophet is to arise from Galilee.” (7:52)
This is said in anger, and it overlooks Jonah son of Amittai, who came from Gath-hepher in Galilee (2 Kings 14:25). One very early papyrus reads “the prophet”, which would fit the discussion well.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism notes this very dissension. Among the religious authorities of Jerusalem, it says, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were secret disciples of Jesus, and there was long-standing disagreement about him (CCC 595–596). It also says that Jesus' relations with the Pharisees were not simply hostile (CCC 575). So the scorn in v. 49 is not the voice of all of them, or of Judaism. This page can be read as a warning to anyone in authority, Church leaders included, who has stopped listening.
How can a holy prophet pray to see “retribution”?
The Bible records honest prayer, including anger. Jeremiah is a man wronged by his own people, and he asks God to do justice; he does not take revenge himself. That is itself a kind of restraint, and St Paul gives the same counsel (Romans 12:19). But this prayer is not the last word. Christ teaches us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44), and he prays for his persecutors. The Christian may bring anger to God as Jeremiah did, and then ask for the grace to pray as Jesus did.