Ministers must know how to lose arguments on non-essential matters. Care must be taken not to harangue others into silence. Preachers have a way with words. Their whole career is related to the skillful communication of ideas. It is a disgraceful fact that some ministers love to talk and have a habit of dominating discussion on every subject. Even when ignorant on an issue, a preacher can usually out-talk knowledgeable men. Thus in a controversy it is possible to silence men by sheer force of verbiage without convincing them. How exemplary would it be if all ministers exercised self-control over their tongues in the church! It is to be feared that some men are able to handle texts of Scripture who cannot discipline themselves.
Walter Chantry

jh9401

This entry is part 5 of 9 in the series JOHANNINE HOURS - from the Taize Community

JOHANNINE HOURS - from the Taize Community

jh9401

Document: Johannine.94.01

JOHANNINE HOURS – January 1994 – from the Taize Community, France.

Jeremiah 20,7-13

This text gives us a glimpse of the inner struggle undergone by one of the greatest prophets of Israel. Jeremiah, a man of peace, had to proclaim the word of the Lord which only led to resistance and violence against him, even from his own kinsfolk. Beside himself, he projected his suffering toward God. The prophet felt himself trapped in the middle between, on the one hand, the Word of God that filled him to such an extent that he could not hold it back, and on the other his countrymen, who refused to be open to God and to change their lives in consequence.

Is there a way out of such a situation? Yes, and Jeremiah discovers it by sharing his sufferings with the Lord, sometimes vehemently, rather than keeping them to himself. Jeremiah makes an act of surrender that gives him the certainty that God’s cause will triumph, that God’s justice will at last shine forth in the world (that is the most authentic meaning of the expression translated by “vengeance” in v.12).

The life of Jeremiah helps us understand that being called by God is not a privilege. It means instead having to live out in one’s own being the contradictions of a world that ignores the source of its own existence, attempting by this concern for both God and world to close, in oneself, the gap between the two. The prophet thus gives us a foretaste of the inner struggle waged at Gethsemane, and on the cross, by the One sent by the Father to reconcile all things in himself (cf. Col 1,20; 2 Cor 5,18).

Am I in the habit of bringing to God, in prayer, my difficulties and even my fears and doubts? Can the example of Jeremiah help me in this?

Does my faith bring me into conflict with some aspects or values of contemporary society? Which ones? In such a situation, how can I maintain a reconciled heart?

You can also read: Jeremiah 15,15-21; Matthew 26,36-46

[ email addresses: brother.roy@almac.co.uk or taize@dkauni2.bitnet ]

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