“Fasting of a Different Sort” by Colleen O’Sullivan
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| Michelangelo Buonarroti, c. 1508-1512, The Prophet Jeremiah, Sistine Chapel, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons |
Heed me, O LORD, and listen to what my adversaries say. Must good be repaid with evil that they should dig a pit to take my life? Remember that I stood before you to speak on their behalf, to turn away your wrath from them. (Jeremiah 18:20)
As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the Twelve disciples aside by themselves, and said to them on the way, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day." Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee approached Jesus with her sons and did him homage, wishing to ask him for something. He said to her, "What do you wish?" She answered him, "Command that these two sons of mine sit, one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom." (Matthew 20:17-21)
Piety
Lord, may we live the way you died – for others.
Study
Once, when one of my nieces was about four years old, she was admiring the amethyst ring her mother was wearing. “Mommy, can I have that ring?” “Well, after I die, it will be yours.” “Mommy, can you hurry up and die so I can have it?”
A four-year-old can be excused for saying something so crass and unfeeling; she has no real concept of death. But adults do know what it means to die. And Jesus has just told his closest friends for the third time that he is going to die soon and not peacefully. He will suffer. It won’t be pretty. So, James’ and John’s mother’s question to Jesus seems particularly jarring. How unfeeling can a person be? Her sons’ best friend is going to be seized, tortured and put to death and all she (and if the truth be told, probably her sons, too) can think about is whether or not they can have the choicest places in heaven on either side of Jesus. (Maybe helicopter parenting wasn’t a 20th-century invention.) No one, not the sons, the mother or the other disciples, get it. Faithful service to others doesn’t always get rewarded with trophies, blue ribbons or the adulation of friends and family. For Jesus, the reward will be a horrible death on a cross.
Jeremiah fits right in with the disciples. He reluctantly agreed to be a prophet, but he’s been faithful to what God asked him to do. He’s spoken the truth about God’s people, the state of their relationship with their God and the consequences of their choices. The people, of course, don’t want to hear any of this, so they plot to dig a pit, throw Jeremiah in and leave him to die. And Jeremiah wants to know what God is going to do about this. Shouldn’t the good I’ve done be rewarded with protection from my enemies? Come on, God, don’t you owe me that?
Action
Whether it’s protection from our foes or choice seats in heaven that we desire, most of us seem to believe in a twisted version of the prosperity gospel, which is itself a perversion of the real Gospel. If we demonstrate enough faith and service, we think we should be rewarded here and now. We should be written up in the Arlington Herald, be liked and admired by others, and be regarded as pillars of the church, etc.
But the Gospel never promises us any such thing. Look at Blessed Archbishop Romero. Or the six Jesuits martyred in El Salvador in 1989. Or the monks in Algeria, now recognized as martyrs, whose story was told in the movie “Of Gods and Men.” Or the many Christians whose lives have been taken by ISIS.
Many times, the only real reward in this life for doing the right thing is the satisfaction of knowing we’re doing the right thing, knowing that we’re following in Jesus’ footsteps, even when the path leads to a cross.
Maybe what we could give up for Lent is the desire for recognition and rewards. Perhaps we could pray that doing the right thing in God’s eyes would in and of itself be reward enough for us. It’s fasting of a different sort.
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