Actions Speak Louder

Today's reading from Jeremiah is foreboding, especially as Holy Week approaches. Jeremiah's fear—it almost seems like paranoia—is palpable. 

I hear the whisperings of many:
“Terror on every side!
Denounce! let us denounce him!”

I can imagine Jesus, as his accusers grew more and more threatening, identifying with this passage and finding solace and strength in Jeremiah's thirst for vengeance against his own tormentors.

But that isn't the kind of justice that Jesus preached about. His ministry was about love, forgiveness, and mercy. He asked us to serve one another, and to lift up the poor and defenseless. He wanted to show God's goodness through action—his own and ours. In fact, as his accusers threaten him with arrest and even violence for what they call his blasphemy, he tries to clarify his bold words by pointing instead to what he has done:

If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me;
but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me,
believe the works, so that you may realize and understand
that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

He seems to be saying that it's less important for them acknowledge his divinity than that they see the good works he has done, the ways that he has sought to bring the will of God to fruition right in their very time and create the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

It's a message that resonates for all of us. Doing God's work, living out the true meaning of the scriptures, means putting God's word into action: among them, this, from Micah (which would be known to Jesus' audience):

What does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Jesus himself summarized God's message this way, when asked about the greatest of the commandment:

"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

The words have no power—essentially, God's not in them—if we aren't putting them into practice and demonstrating their power for all to see.

I pray for the ability to bring God's word into the world by actions that show justice, mercy, humility and, above all, love.