The Calling of the Disciples from Matthew’s Gospel
The Calling of the Apostles, Mosaics from San Marco, Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello and Murano
Apostle’s Call, Relief from Manastery of San Pedro da Roda
Calling of Peter and Andrew, Duccio di Buonisegna (1308-1311)
James Tissot, The Calling of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew (1886-1894)
1 Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the LORD. 2 Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the LORD. 3 Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. 4 I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the LORD.
5 The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 6 In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The LORD is our righteousness.”
7 Therefore, the days are surely coming, says the LORD, when it shall no longer be said, “As the LORD lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of Egypt,” 8 but “As the LORD lives who brought out and led the offspring of the house of Israel out of the land of the north and out of all the lands where he had driven them.” Then they shall live in their own land.
Anyone who reads Jeremiah has to make educated guesses about the context that Jeremiah is writing to, especially when the time period is not made explicit. I see this as an extension of what comes before at the end of chapter 22 which is addressing the beginning of the exile (the first exile where the leadership is taken into exile but the people are left primarily in the land) in the time of Jechoniah and so this passage comes very late in the story of Jeremiah. The chapter verse delineations in scripture come much later and probably reflect an effort to highlight the messianic hope of this passage rather than see it buried at the end of a long chapter of judgment against the king, yet this passage probably belongs as an extension of chapter 22. Rabbi Lau has a different perspective, that it comes much earlier in the time of Josiah and contrasts between Josiah and the local leaders of his time (Lau, 2013, p. 28ff.) but this is an area where I think both Walter Brueggemann and Patrick Miller, who I have been reading as I have gone through Jeremiah, are correct. (Brueggemann, 1998, p. 205) (Elizabeth Actemeir, et. al., 1994, p. VI:744)
The themes of these verses are full of echoes throughout the prophets and in the gospels as well. The verses about the shepherds and the ways they have not been faithful is echoed in Ezekiel 34:
2 Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel: prophesy, and say to them– to the shepherds: Thus says the Lord GOD: Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? 3 You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. 4 You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. 5 So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. 6 My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.
7 Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: 8 As I live, says the Lord GOD, because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild animals, since there was no shepherd; and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep; 9 therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD:
10 Thus says the Lord GOD, I am against the shepherds; and I will demand my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, so that they may not be food for them. 11 For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out Ezekiel 34: 2-11
And is echoed in John chapter 10 where Jesus talks about being the good shepherd in contrast to the previous shepherd, or in Mark 6: 34 where the people are discussed as sheep without a shepherd. Here in Jeremiah at the end of verse four the promise is for a new and faithful shepherd who will come. After a long passage of judgment now comes the hope of the coming days.
Again the passage about the righteous branch has echoes in other places as well, for example in Isaiah 11:
A shoot shall come out of the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. Isaiah 11:1
And the hope is that out of the defunct lineage of David which seems to be coming to an end that the God of Israel will maintain the commitment to the line of David and from that line will raise up a righteous branch who will live out of the vision of the Lord’s peace. And the renewal that the Lord will bring will make even the paradigmatic event of the Jewish people’s story, the Exodus, take second place to the new renewal that the Lord will do when the people are returned from exile. This is a story of hope for at least two sets of people: for the Jewish people it was a hope of renewal and return with a righteous and faithful king where God would gather from all the lands of the diaspora God’s people once again, and for Christians is also is an image of hope for from the story of Jesus we cannot help but hear that story in the hope of the righteous branch that arises out of the line of David. One passage can bring hope in two different ways, and hearing the hope of one another should also help us to see our dependence upon the Hebrew Scriptures to understand the life and ministry and hope of Jesus and his followers.
The Breaking of Jeremiah’s Yoke by Hananiah, Cathedral of Notre Dame, Amiens, France
9 Concerning the prophets:
My heart is crushed within me, all my bones shake;
I have become like a drunkard, like one overcome by wine,
because of the LORD and because of his holy words.
10 For the land is full of adulterers; because of the curse the land mourns,
and the pastures of the wilderness are dried up.
Their course has been evil, and their might is not right.
11 Both prophet and priest are ungodly;
even in my house I have found their wickedness, says the LORD.
12 Therefore their way shall be to them like slippery paths in the darkness,
into which they shall be driven and fall;
for I will bring disaster upon them in the year of their punishment, says the LORD.
13 In the prophets of Samaria I saw a disgusting thing:
they prophesied by Baal and led my people Israel astray.
14 But in the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a more shocking thing:
they commit adultery and walk in lies;
they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from wickedness;
all of them have become like Sodom to me, and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.
15 Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts concerning the prophets:
“I am going to make them eat wormwood, and give them poisoned water to drink;
for from the prophets of Jerusalem ungodliness has spread throughout the land.”
16 Thus says the LORD of hosts: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you; they are deluding you. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD. 17 They keep saying to those who despise the word of the LORD, “It shall be well with you”; and to all who stubbornly follow their own stubborn hearts, they say, “No calamity shall come upon you.”
18 For who has stood in the council of the LORD so as to see and to hear his word?
Who has given heed to his word so as to proclaim it?
19 Look, the storm of the LORD! Wrath has gone forth, a whirling tempest;
it will burst upon the head of the wicked.
20 The anger of the LORD will not turn back
until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind.
In the latter days you will understand it clearly.
21 I did not send the prophets, yet they ran;
I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.
22 But if they had stood in my council,
then they would have proclaimed my words to my people,
and they would have turned them from their evil way,
and from the evil of their doings.
23 Am I a God near by, says the LORD, and not a God far off? 24 Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the LORD. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the LORD. 25 I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, “I have dreamed, I have dreamed!” 26 How long? Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back– those who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart? 27 They plan to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, just as their ancestors forgot my name for Baal. 28 Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the LORD. 29 Is not my word like fire, says the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces? 30 See, therefore, I am against the prophets, says the LORD, who steal my words from one another. 31 See, I am against the prophets, says the LORD, who use their own tongues and say, “Says the LORD.” 32 See, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, says the LORD, and who tell them, and who lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or appoint them; so they do not profit this people at all, says the LORD.
33 When this people, or a prophet, or a priest asks you, “What is the burden of the LORD?” you shall say to them, “You are the burden, and I will cast you off, says the LORD.” 34 And as for the prophet, priest, or the people who say, “The burden of the LORD,” I will punish them and their households. 35 Thus shall you say to one another, among yourselves, “What has the LORD answered?” or “What has the LORD spoken?” 36 But “the burden of the LORD” you shall mention no more, for the burden is everyone’s own word, and so you pervert the words of the living God, the LORD of hosts, our God. 37 Thus you shall ask the prophet, “What has the LORD answered you?” or “What has the LORD spoken?” 38 But if you say, “the burden of the LORD,” thus says the LORD: Because you have said these words, “the burden of the LORD,” when I sent to you, saying, You shall not say, “the burden of the LORD,” 39 therefore, I will surely lift you up and cast you away from my presence, you and the city that I gave to you and your ancestors. 40 And I will bring upon you everlasting disgrace and perpetual shame, which shall not be forgotten.
First the critique goes towards the ruling elite, the shepherds, the king but now it turn on the religious authorities and in particular the other prophets. There are several points in the book of Jeremiah where we hear about other prophets who are proclaiming a different message than Jeremiah is called to proclaim and the people hear different religious authorities proclaiming a very different message, or more likely they hear Jeremiah as a voice that is so different from the message others are saying that he goes unheard. In giving the people a false message they have prevented the people from having a realistic hope of turning. The narratives from the political and religious elites are going in the opposite direction of the proclamation given to Jeremiah. They proclaim an unconditional peace which serves the people rather than the covenantal shalom which calls the people to live in justice.
Perhaps these other prophets feel compelled to live into their roles, prophets are supposed to have a message from the Lord, dreams to dreams and visions to tell and so in the absence of these visions they have kept up the appearance, or perhaps the prophets have been coopted into the royal and priestly power systems to be additional mouthpieces for these authorities. Whatever the case they have failed in their calling, according to Jeremiah they are producing only lies and false visions and they are leading the people astray. They have become worse than the prophets of northern Israel which led Israel to worship Baal, for they perhaps are constructing a misleading image of the Lord. God’s judgment is on the prophets who have misled the people. Their condemnation will be harsher, everlasting disgrace and perpetual shame, and unlike the promise of a righteous branch that will arise out of the stump of Jesse, there is no promise for the prophets-they are also to be cast out of the city.
In the midst of the unmoving darkness with its bone chilling cold
Emerges the beginning of a new day
As the approaching sun paints the sky with its pallet of light
As the skies cry out in the labor pains of the genesis of morning
As the sun slowly emerges from the depths of the ground
Breaking the reign of darkness, crying out for life to re-emerge from its slumber
Smiling with its rays of fire to warm the creatures of the day
Re-inviting those with eyes to see into the drama of another cycle of new possibilities
Of awakening from the land of dreams to shape a new reality
In the breaking dawn of a new beginnings
Neil White, 2014
The second Sunday of Epiphany always takes us into John’s story, and in year A it is John the Baptist pointing out Jesus as the Lamb of God, two of John’s disciples (one being Andrew) following Jesus and then Andrew bringing Simon who is renamed Peter.
There are some good John the Baptist images in my Advent posts, but here is another couple:
Jacopo del Sellaio, St John the Baptist about 1485
Carvaggio, St. John the Baptist
Then the calling of the disciples (many other images of this will be out next week for the Matthew reading)
Carvaggio, the Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew
Ghirlandio Domenico, the Calling of the First Apostles (1481)
And since this is one of the place Andrew is highlighted:
Icon of St. Andrew by Yoan from Gabravo, 19th Centuty
Andrey Mironov, Saint Andrew (2013) copyright holder grants licence under Creative Commons Attribution
Gustav Dore, Jeremiah Preaching (1865)
1 Thus says the LORD: Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and speak there this word, 2 and say: Hear the word of the LORD, O King of Judah sitting on the throne of David– you, and your servants, and your people who enter these gates. 3 Thus says the LORD: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place. 4 For if you will indeed obey this word, then through the gates of this house shall enter kings who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they, and their servants, and their people. 5 But if you will not heed these words, I swear by myself, says the LORD, that this house shall become a desolation. 6 For thus says the LORD concerning the house of the king of Judah:
You are like Gilead to me, like the summit of Lebanon;
but I swear that I will make you a desert, an uninhabited city.
7 I will prepare destroyers against you, all with their weapons;
they shall cut down your choicest cedars and cast them into the fire.
8 And many nations will pass by this city, and all of them will say one to another, “Why has the LORD dealt in this way with that great city?” 9 And they will answer, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD their God, and worshiped other gods and served them.”
10 Do not weep for him who is dead, nor bemoan him;
weep rather for him who goes away, for he shall return no more to see his native land.
Two conflicting views of reality are coming into conflict between the prophetic and the royal ideologies of the day. Jeremiah’s worldview comes out of the Mosaic and particular the Deuteronomic covenant where the covenant is conditional, if the people live into the vision that God has set before them they will be bless and if they do not they shall be cursed. For example the structure of Deuteronomy 28 illustrates this well:
If you will only obey the LORD your God, by diligently observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth; 2all the blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey your God:….
But if you will not obey the LORD your God by diligently observing all his commandments and decrees, which I am commanding you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you:
Deuteronomy 28: 1,2,15
And the prophetic voice interprets these obligations primarily not in terms of cultic actions but in terms of living in justice/righteousness (justice and righteousness are the same word families in both Hebrew and Greek). In contrast the royal ideology views God’s commitment as unconditional, so long as there is a Davidic king and a temple God will not forsake God’s people. The prophet Jeremiah tries again and again to call the people and the rulers back to the vision of justice and righteousness. They are charged again to not shed innocent blood, to care for the weakest of the society, the widows and orphans, and their success is conditional upon their living out of this justice. In contrast to the desire to accumulate more and more wealth among the elite as a way of securing their position, Jeremiah points to the practice of justice and righteousness as a condition for their security which ultimately comes from God. Numerous passages throughout the prophets echo this sentiment, perhaps one of the most well known being from Amos:
But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Amos 5: 24
Vultures around a Dead Donkey
11 For thus says the LORD concerning Shallum son of King Josiah of Judah, who succeeded his father Josiah, and who went away from this place: He shall return here no more, 12 but in the place where they have carried him captive he shall die, and he shall never see this land again.
13 Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice;
who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages;
14 who says, “I will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms,”
and who cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar, and painting it with vermilion.
15 Are you a king because you compete in cedar?
Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness?
Then it was well with him.
16 He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well.
Is not this to know me? says the LORD.
17 But your eyes and heart are only on your dishonest gain,
for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence.
18 Therefore thus says the LORD concerning King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah: They shall not lament for him, saying, “Alas, my brother!” or “Alas, sister!” They shall not lament for him, saying, “Alas, lord!” or “Alas, his majesty!” 19 With the burial of a donkey he shall be buried– dragged off and thrown out beyond the gates of Jerusalem.
20 Go up to Lebanon, and cry out, and lift up your voice in Bashan;
cry out from Abarim, for all your lovers are crushed.
21 I spoke to you in your prosperity, but you said,
“I will not listen.” This has been your way from your youth,
for you have not obeyed my voice.
22 The wind shall shepherd all your shepherds,
and your lovers shall go into captivity;
then you will be ashamed and dismayed because of all your wickedness.
23 O inhabitant of Lebanon, nested among the cedars,
how you will groan when pangs come upon you, pain as of a woman in labor!
24 As I live, says the LORD, even if King Coniah son of Jehoiakim of Judah were the signet ring on my right hand, even from there I would tear you off 25 and give you into the hands of those who seek your life, into the hands of those of whom you are afraid, even into the hands of King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon and into the hands of the Chaldeans. 26 I will hurl you and the mother who bore you into another country, where you were not born, and there you shall die. 27 But they shall not return to the land to which they long to return.
28 Is this man Coniah a despised broken pot, a vessel no one wants?
Why are he and his offspring hurled out and cast away in a land that they do not know?
29 O land, land, land, hear the word of the LORD!
30 Thus says the LORD: Record this man as childless,
a man who shall not succeed in his days;
for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David,
and ruling again in Judah.
Much of the ire of the prophets is directed at the kings, and we need to remember that this is a time much different from our own. In an age where the vast majority of the population was illiterate and relied on the kings and the elites of the society to establish the systems of justice that the society operated within. As Brueggeman accurately states, “The conduct of the king is decisive for the weal or woe of the entire social system.” (Brueggemann, 1998, p. 194) and so here at the end of the Davidic monarchy, at the point where the elites are being taken into exile, including King Jehoiakim and his son Jeconiah (here referred to as Coniah) who is contrasted to his well respected father/grandfather Josiah. He is of no account, he will not have the honors he desires, instead of an honorable death Jeremiah declares he will have the death of a donkey—simply thrown beyond the gates. God is done with Jeconiah, ready to cast him off. In contrast to Josiah who rebuilt the temple, his son and grandson are accused with surrounding themselves with luxury far greater. This is not a new critique, it goes at least as far back as Solomon when the amount of resources placed into the temple is compared with the amount of time and resources that go into the construction of Solomon’s houses. Yet in contrast to Jeremiah’s words at the end of this chapter about his being recorded childless, when the people return to Jerusalem under the Persian empire it will be Zerubabbel, the grandson of Jeconiah will be leading the people home. The grandson of the one who if he was a signet ring on the LORD’s finger he would be cast off will experience the reversal of being the signet ring that is put back on after the exile is over.
On that day, says the LORD of hosts, I will take you, O Zerubbabel my servant, son of Shealtiel, says the LORD, and make you like a signet ring; for I have chosen you, says the LORD of hosts. Haggai 2: 24
And the harsh words of Jeremiah about the type of death Jehoiakim (or Jehoiachin) would receive seem also not to come to pass as the ending of 2 Kings points to:
27 In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, King Evil-merodach of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, released King Jehoiachin of Judah from prison; 28 he spoke kindly to him, and gave him a seat above the other seats of the kings who were with him in Babylon. 29 So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes. Every day of his life he dined regularly in the king’s presence. 30 For his allowance, a regular allowance was given him by the king, a portion every day, as long as he lived. 2 Kings 25: 27-30
This is another festival where there are no shortages of images out there. Particularly in ancient art baptism is frequently portrayed as well as the baptism of Jesus. Also the reading from the New Testament is from the baptism of Corneilius, the Roman Centurion in Acts, so a couple images from the Acts story first:
Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Vision of Cornelius the Centurion, 1664
Francesco Trevisani, Peter Baptizing the Centurion Cornelius (1709)
Guido Reni, The Baptism of Christ (1623)
Francesco Albani, Baptism of Christ (1600s)
A favorite for stained glass windows:
Louis Comfort Tiffany, The Baptism of Christ, Stained Glass Window at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church, Baltimore
And icons
Baptism of Jesus, Orthodox Icon
And Baptism in general appears in artwork across the ages from the very ancient
Baptism Fresco on the catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter, Via Labicana, Rome, Italy
Masaccio, Baptism of the Neophytes, (1424-28)
To modern architecture and art in churches:
Baptismal font at Valparaiso University
Descending Dove in Grace Lutheran Church, Tacoma Washington
The demons and angels and magical forces that reigned in the world no longer hold sway
In a world of people governed by rules and laws and discipline, order and civility
In the grave seriousness of the moment where the past is closed off
And fairy tales and ghost stories belong to the world of children
Walled off from the worlds of imagination in our buffered realities
Carefully constructed to ward off the shock of the unknown
Ballasted with the bulwarks of certainty to hold off the devilry of doubt
Where the only monsters left are ourselves
Yet our souls were never created to inhabit a mechanistic world
Nor our spirits excommunicated from our body
For all our science, suffering still calls out for an answer
For some new type of heroism that might call us from the banality of a disenchanted world
Yearning not merely for some romanticized past but a present that is not ultimate
To move us again to the transcendence of our excarnate realities and disembodied feelings
To the incarnate immanence that can somehow re-enchant the cosmos
Allowing the winds of creation to penetrate the armor of our buffered reality
And breathing free the breath of God in the midst of the polluted heavens
Neil White, 2014
Nativity by Lady Macbeth @deviantart.com
As we hear the story again, that ancient story we know so well
Of the days when heaven and earth touched and angels sang their praises
When shepherds heard and a virgin gave birth in the midst of the stable
There in the magic of the night where simple shepherds knew what kings did not
And somehow God came down to dwell among us in the weakness of a newborn
When the deafness of humanity somehow missed the Word of God
Except for those few gathered together to witness the chorus of new creation
And as we echo the strains in our own key two millennia displaced from that day
May the mystery and majesty of the heavenly chorus blend in harmony
With the songs of the faithful gathered from all corners of the world
To fill the silent night with songs, to join with all creation in singing a new song
And in the cacophony of noise perhaps we too might hear the stirring of angels
Proclaiming the message of peace on earth and goodwill towards humanity
Singing of the love of God that comes down to be among us on this silent night
To share God’s song and to join in ours this day
Neil White, 2013
Blessings to all my friends who will be a part of the song tonight
From Luke’s Christmas Story
Nativity by Lady Macbeth @deviantart.com
Nativity by Zephyr98@deviantart.com
Hugo Van der Goes, The Adoration of the Shepherds 1480
James Tissot, The Adoration of the Shepherds between 1886 and 1894
Christmas Day from the Prologue of John’s Gospel there are some really cool images at the Light of the World Exhibition of the Episcopal Church and Visual Arts
Finally for the Sunday after Christmas, which this year is the story of the slaughter of the innocents by Herod in Matthew’s gospel
Codex Egberti, Folio 15, scene: Bethlehemitscher Kindermord
Peter Paul Rubens, La massacre des Innocents 1611-1612
Francois-Joseph Navez, the Massacre of the Innocents 1824
Flight of the Phoenix by shutupandwhiper@deviantart.com
Rising from the ashes of a past that consumed the dreams of the day
Embracing the rising sun of the new life and possibilities
The flaming pyre that were supposed to consume me
Became the necessary predecessor to resurrection
As the strength long lost returns as the desperation of the past dies
The pinions once clipped to prevent flight have regenerated stronger than ever
As the fiery feathers cover my contours radiate life and light
And my brightly covered wings yearn to taste the breath of the heavens
The phoenix rises from the ash pile of the past
To boldly fly into a new future, to climb the updrafts
And return his magic to the kingdom of the air
Neil White, 2013
Sign of the Rose 