The last and most violent of the passages usually called Jeremiah's confessions — six short first-person outbursts scattered through Jeremiah 11–20 in which the prophet says things to Yahweh that no other prophetic book records. This one comes immediately after Jeremiah has been beaten and locked in the stocks at the temple gate by Pashhur the priest.
What happens
"You seduced me, Yahweh, and I let myself be seduced; you overpowered me, and you prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, 'Violence and outrage!' The word of Yahweh has brought me derision and reproach all day long. I say to myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more — but then it is as if fire is burning in my heart, shut up in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, and I cannot."
What to notice
The first verb is the scandal of the passage, and translations have been managing it for centuries. Pittitani is the piel of patah, and its plainest legal use is Exodus 22:16: "if a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed." It also carries the sense of enticing or duping — it is what the lying spirit does to Ahab in 1 Kings 22:20–22. Jeremiah is charging Yahweh with a seduction he consented to and now regrets, and the grammar doubles to make the consent explicit: pittitani va-epat, you enticed me and I was enticed. Then the second pair: hazaqtani va-tukhal, "you were stronger than me and you prevailed." The verb is yakhol — the same verb as yesterday's reading. In Jeremiah 1:19 Yahweh promisedthey will fight against you but they will not prevail over you. Nineteen chapters later Jeremiah reports the outcome: they did not prevail, and you did. And the ending is not repentance. "I will not mention him" is a resolution he makes, and it fails — not because he reconsiders but because there is a burning fire shut up in his bones. He is still not volunteering at the end of this passage. He is simply unable to hold it in.
Superscribed "a psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah" — the Judean desert, a real and specific landscape of chalk hills and no water. Whatever its origin, the psalm's images are consistently physical: thirst, faintness, fat and marrow, hands, mouth, the shadow of wings.
The selected verses
Psalm 63:2."Theos, you are my Theos — for you I long. For you my soul thirsts, my flesh faints, in a dry and weary land without water." Psalm 63:3–4."So I have gazed on you in the sanctuary, to see your power and your glory. For your hesed is better than life; my lips will praise you." Psalm 63:5–6."So will I bless you all my life; in your name I will lift up my hands. As with the riches of a banquet shall my soul be satisfied, and with joyful lips my mouth shall praise you." Psalm 63:8–9."You are my help, and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy. My soul clings fast to you; your right hand upholds me."
What to notice
Psalm 63:2 uses two verbs for the same longing with two different subjects: tzam'ah lekha nafshi — my nefesh thirsts for you — and kamah lekha besari — my basar, my flesh, faints for you. The body is a party to this, not a bystander, which is exactly why this psalm sits beside Romans 12:1 today. And Psalm 63:9, daveqah nafshi acharekha, uses davaq — the verb of Genesis 2:24, a man clings to his wife; of Ruth 1:14, Ruth clung to Naomi. It is a word about grip, not sentiment. The psalmist's soul is not admiring Theos from a distance. It is holding on.
The hinge of Romans. Eleven chapters of argument ended last Sunday in the doxology (Romans 11:33–36); now comes oun, "therefore," and the letter turns to what to do. These two verses are the header for everything that follows.
What happens
"I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of Theos, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to Theos, your reasonable worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of Theos, what is good and pleasing and perfect."
What to notice
Three phrases carry the passage, and each is fighting its usual English. Thysian zōsan, "a living sacrifice" — in the sacrificial system Paul's readers knew, Jewish or pagan, this is a contradiction in terms, since the defining feature of a sacrifice is that it stops being alive. Paul takes the one word that meant a completed, irreversible act and attaches the one adjective that undoes it.Logikēn latreian, usually "spiritual worship," which loses everything: logikos is from logos — word-ish, rational, articulate. Against a background of animals on an altar the adjective is exact: a sacrifice that can think, a victim that for the first time understands what is happening and has agreed. And the two imperatives turn on schēma against morphē: mē syschēmatizesthe, do not be shaped to the outward pattern of this age; metamorphousthe, be transformed in inner form. Schēma is the shape a thing presents; morphē is the shape a thing is — and both verbs are passive. One more, because Matthew is about to make it pay: metamorphousthe is the verb of Matthew 17:2, one chapter after today's Gospel, for what happens on the mountain. Paul applies the transfiguration verb to the renovation of an ordinary mind.
Directly after last Sunday's Gospel. Seven days ago in the lectionary and one verse later in Matthew, Peter was given the keys. The joint is Matthew 16:21's apo tote — "from that time on" — one of Matthew's structural markers; the same phrase opened the public ministry at Matthew 4:17. The gospel turns a corner here, and it turns it at Peter's expense.
What happens
"From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised." Peter takes him aside and rebukes him: "Theos forbid, master! No such thing shall ever happen to you." Jesus turns: "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you are thinking not the things of Theos but the things of men." Then, to all of them: "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?"
What to notice
Skandalon. Last Sunday Peter was petra, rock, the foundation of the assembly; today he is a skandalon — the trigger-stick of a trap and, in commonest usage, a stone in the road that trips people. The same material, doing the opposite job, and Matthew almost certainly intends the collision. Hypage opisō mou, "get behind me," is worth hearing literally before hearing it as a curse: opisō mou is where a disciple belongs — in Matthew 4:19 the call itself is deute opisō mou, come after me. The man who tried to walk in front has been told to get back in line. And aparnēsasthō heauton, "let him deny himself," uses the verb Matthew will use three more times — at Matthew 26:34, 26:35, and 26:75, every one of them about Peter denying Jesus. He is told today to deny himself; what he will do is deny his master, and go out and weep bitterly. Matthew put the instruction and its failure in the same man's story, on purpose.
How They Fit Together
Four readings, and in each one somebody is overruled
Peter, who has just told his master what will not happen
"You are thinking the things of men."
Last Sunday and this Sunday are one scene split in half, and the lectionary knows it. Peter's confession and Peter's rebuke are eight verses apart in Matthew, and the Church spread them across two weeks so that the second lands with the first still in the room. Last week: flesh and blood did not reveal this to you. This week: you are thinking the things of men. Same man, same subject, one chapter — the difference is that between them he heard the word killed and decided it could not be right.
Which is where Jeremiah becomes the key to the day. Jeremiah 20:7 is the sound a person makes when he cannot make the assignment fit and cannot put it down either. You seduced me and I let you. It is an accusation, and it is filed by a man who is still on the job. The lectionary offers it as the first reading on a Sunday about taking up a cross, and the effect is to preempt every sentimental account of what that means. Discipleship in this set of readings is not enthusiasm. It is being unable to leave.
Then Romans supplies the only instruction of the four, and its verbs are the thing to watch. Present your bodies — active, and the one thing asked. Be transformed — passive. Do not be conformed — also passive, a warning about what the age does to you if you stand still. The reader's whole job is the handover; the reshaping is somebody else's work. Which is exactly the movement of Jeremiah 20: he tries to manage his own conduct (I will not mention him) and fails, and what actually moves him is a fire he did not light.
Psalm 63, meanwhile, is the day's body. Thirst, faintness, the shadow of wings, a soul that clings. It is the only one of the four in which the relationship is described as wanted. Set it beside Jeremiah's you seduced me and the pair is honest in a way neither would be alone: the same grip, described once by a man who is glad of it and once by a man who is not, both of them holding on.
Second of two Sundays on one chapter
Matthew 16 is being read across two weeks. August 23: Caesarea Philippi, "you are Peter, and on this rock I will build" (Matthew 16:13–20). Today: the first passion prediction and "get behind me, Satan" (Matthew 16:21–27). Eight verses separate them in Matthew and seven days separate them here, which is roughly the interval at which most people's convictions get tested. Note also what the second readings have done: Romans 11:33–36 last week ended the argument in a doxology; Romans 12:1–2 today opens the ethics with a therefore. Both sets of readings crossed the same joint on the same Sunday — from what is true to what it costs.
A Question to Sit With
Jeremiah's resolution — I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more — is one I recognize better than I would like. It is what I say after something has cost me more than I expected: quietly, to myself, I will stop caring about this. What Jeremiah discovers is that the decision does not take. The fire is not a reward for faithfulness; it is simply there, shut up in the bones, and holding it in makes him tired. Where is my fire right now — the thing I have decided to stop caring about and cannot — and what would change if I stopped treating that inability as a weakness?