Homilies on Jeremiah

Homilies on Jeremiah

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Homily 20

1a Everything that is written about God, even when it looks unfitting on the surface, must be understood in a way that is worthy of a good God. Who would not say it is unfitting to attribute to God that he has anger, that he uses wrath, that he repents, or even that he sleeps? Yet each of these, in the hands of someone who knows how to hear “dark sayings,” will be found worthy of God. His anger is not fruitless. As his word trains us, so his anger trains us too. Those who have not been trained by the word he trains by anger. So God must use what is called anger just as he uses what is called the Word. For his Word is not the kind of thing that everyone else’s word is. No one else’s word is “a living being.” No one else’s word is “God.” No one else’s word was “in the beginning” with the one whose word it was, even if it is only [from some beginning]. In the same way, God’s anger is called anger, but not as anyone else’s anger is. And just as the Word of God has something foreign about it compared with every other word whatever (he is God, he is a living Word, he has his own existence, he serves the Father), so too, since what is called God’s anger has once been given that name, it has something foreign and quite different from the anger of anyone we could define. His wrath likewise has something peculiar to it. It belongs to the purpose of one who rebukes in wrath, wishing the person rebuked to turn back through the rebuke.

1b The word also rebukes, just as the word trains. But the word does not rebuke in the way wrath rebukes. Those who have not been helped by the rebuke that comes from the word will need the rebuke that comes from wrath. We said that there is also a repentance of God that looks unfitting on the surface, since it is written: “I have repented that I anointed Saul as king.” You must investigate this repentance in a worthy way. Do not suppose that his repenting has any kinship with the repenting of those who repent. As his word had something set apart, and his anger, and his wrath had something surpassing, and none of them was akin to the things that share their names, so his repentance shares only a name with our repentance. Things are “homonyms” when only the name is common, while the account of the essence that goes with the name is different. So only the name is common between the wrath of God and the wrath of anyone else, and only the name is common between anyone’s anger and the anger of God. We must understand repentance in the same way. Anyone who can should ask what God’s repentance accomplishes, and what it accomplished. It brought down Saul, who was reigning lawlessly, and raised up for the people a king after God’s own heart. For because of that good repentance he said: “I have found a man after my heart, David, son of Jesse.” But all this is only my introduction, because the reading from Jeremiah begins like this: “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived.”

2a We are asking whether it works like this. Everyone else’s wrath is evil, but God’s wrath is meant to expose and correct. Everyone else’s anger is harsh, but what is called God’s anger is meant to train. The regret of any of us accuses the weakness of the one [who acted] before the regret. But in God’s case his regret does not accuse God. It speaks of the outward circumstances that prompt the regret. In the same way we must understand that God’s deception is of a different kind from our deception, the kind by which we deceive. So what is this deception from God? The prophet understood it. When he stopped being deceived, and knew the benefit of having been deceived, he said, “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived.” First I will use a Hebrew tradition that reached us through a man who had fled because of faith in Christ. He had come up from the law and had come to the place where we live. He told a story that may look like a myth or may be a sound account able to win over those who hear it, as a way into the words “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived.” He said something like this. God does not rule as a tyrant but as a king. As king he does not use force but persuades. He wants those under him to give themselves willingly to his plan, so that a person’s goodness comes from willing choice and not from compulsion. Paul knew this, and wrote to Philemon about Onesimus in the letter to Philemon: “that your good deed might not be by compulsion but of your own free will.”

2b So the God of the universe could have worked in us what is thought of as good, so that we gave alms by compulsion and practiced self-control by compulsion. But he did not wish to. For this reason he does not command us to do what we do out of grief or compulsion, so that what is done may be voluntary. He looks, so to speak, for a way for someone to do willingly what God wants. The tradition told me something like this. God wanted to send Jeremiah to prophesy to all the nations, and before all the nations, to the people. But the prophecies were rather grim, for they announced punishments, by which each person would be punished according to what he deserved. God also knew the prophet’s inclination, that he did not want to prophesy the worse things to the people of Israel. So he arranged to say: “Take this cup, and you shall give it to drink to all the nations to whom I send you.” God commanded Jeremiah to take a cup. To encourage him to take the cup of unmixed wine, he said, “And I will send you to all the nations, with this cup of unmixed wine.” Jeremiah heard that he was being sent to all the nations to serve them a cup of anger, a cup of punishments. He did not suspect that Israel too would have to drink from the cup of punishment. So he was deceived and took the cup in order to give all the nations a drink. Once he had taken the cup, he heard: “And you shall first give drink to [text missing].”

2c He had expected one thing, and something else met him. About this he says, “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived.” Isaiah gave a similar account. He too did not know what he would be commanded to say to the people. He hears God saying, as it is written, “Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people?” He answered, it says, “Here I am; send me.” Then he hears: “Go and say to this people: You will hear with your ears and never understand, and you will look and look and never see. For the heart of this people has grown fat,” and so on. Since he did not know what he would prophesy, or that he would have to threaten the people with such things, he said, “Here I am; send me.” Because of this, it says, in what follows there is “a voice of [a lion; perhaps ‘of one speaking’]: Cry out.” And he did not answer as one eager to do what was commanded. He said, “What shall I cry?” For he was afraid that he might again hear what he heard in the earlier prophecy: “Go and say to this people: You will hear with your ears and never understand.” “What then shall I cry?” “All flesh is grass, and all its glory is like the flower of grass,” and so on. In these words he heard nothing against Israel. This is what that man told us, handing down the meaning of “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived.”

3a (Jer 19) For my part, I pray that what I receive from those who teach me I will not merely keep. I pray that I will not bury the talent in the ground, as the passage says, nor tie up in a cloth the mina of those who teach something useful. Instead I pray to multiply the lessons I receive from the one who hands them on and is able to hand on what is useful. I pray to make the mina, whether of the gospel, or of an apostle, or of a prophet, or of the law, yield many times over. So when I heard these words, I began to think to myself about “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived.” And as I think about it, I pray to find something true for this passage. Perhaps it is like this. A father wants to deceive his son, who is still a small child, for the child’s good, because the child cannot be helped in any other way unless he is deceived. A doctor works to deceive a sick man who cannot be healed unless he accepts words of deception. In the same way the God of all acts, since he has set before himself the benefit of the human race. Let the doctor say to the sick man, “You must be cut, you must be cauterized, you must suffer other, harsher things.” The patient would not hand himself over. So sometimes the doctor says something else. He hides the cutting iron, the blade that divides, under a sponge. Again, if I may put it this way, he hides the nature of what is bitter, the unpleasant medicine, under honey. He wants not to harm but to heal the one he is treating. The whole of divine Scripture is full of such medicines. Some are good things that are hidden, and some are bitter things that are hidden. Suppose you see a father threatening his son as if he hated him, speaking fearful words to him and not showing his affection, but hiding his love for his son. You will see that he wants to deceive the child. For it is not good for the son to know his father’s love, his friendly disposition. The boy would go slack and would not be trained. For this reason the father hides the sweetness of his affection and shows the bitterness of his threat. God does something like this, in proportion, as a father and as a doctor.

3b There are some bitter things that heal even the most righteous and the wisest man. [The text seems to have a gap here.] For everyone who has sinned must be punished for his sins. “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked.” “Whether fornicator or adulterer, or effeminate, or homosexual, or thief, or drunkard, or slanderer, or swindler, they will not inherit the kingdom of God.” If this is understood and taken exactly, by people who cannot see the doctor’s iron under the sponge, by people who cannot perceive the bitter medicine under the honey, someone will lose heart. For which of us is not aware in himself of having drunk without good judgment and been drunk? Which of us is clean from theft, and from failing to provide what is needed as one ought? Yet see what the word says: “Do not be deceived, for these will not inherit the kingdom of God.” The mystery in this passage has to be hidden, so that the many do not lose heart, so that they do not learn the facts and expect their departure from this life to be not a rest but a punishment. For who will be found to be a Paul, able to say, “It is far better to depart and be with Christ”? My own wood must be burned in me. For I know that if I depart, my own wood must be burned in me. And what wood do I have? I have slanders for wood, I have drunken bouts for wood, thefts for wood, and countless other pieces of wood I have built into my building. You see that all this escapes the notice of most believers, and it is well that it does. Each of us supposes that because he has not worshiped idols and has not committed fornication (if only we were clean at least in such matters!), he will be saved when he leaves this life. Do we not see that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive what is due for what he did through the body, whether good or bad”? Do we not see the one who said, “You only have I known out of all the tribes of the earth; therefore I will take vengeance on you for all your practices”? He did not say some of them and not others.

3c So then, the doctor sometimes hides his surgical knife under a soft, gentle sponge. The father also hides his tender affection behind the look of a threat. Some deceptions remove fatty growths and swollen veins and anything else that harms the make-up of the body; another removes a child’s lack of discipline and softness. The prophet understood God to be doing something of this kind in a hidden way. He saw how he had been deceived by God for his good, and he says, “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived.” God brought him to so great a grace that he prayed and said to God, “Deceive me, if that is for my benefit.” For the deception that comes from God is one thing, and the deception that comes from the serpent is another. Notice what the woman says to God: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” The serpent’s deception drove Adam and his wife out of God’s paradise. But the deception that came to the prophet who said, “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived,” brought him to so great a grace of prophecy: it increased the power in him, it brought him to maturity, and it enabled him to serve the purpose of God’s word without fearing any human being. So let us also understand these things, and let us pray, for the present and for the future, to be deceived by God. Only let the serpent not deceive us. Something related is written elsewhere, for it is said in Isaiah: “For the Lord mixed for them a spirit of error.” You will stop there too and consider what the spirit of error does when it is mixed by God. And it is fitting that God did not give the spirit of error undiluted; rather, as the prophet put it, he mixed it.

4a I want to take a risk and give an example of people who were helped by being deceived. There are some who practise purity and chastity for this reason, and others who practise being married only once, because they expected that a person who has had marital relations would be lost, and that a person who has married twice would be lost. Let us compare the cases themselves. What is better for the woman who has married only once: to be deceived, to suppose that a twice-married woman is punished and handed over to eternal punishment, and so to stay married only once and pure, or to know the truth and marry a second time? I think anyone who sees the consequence can say this: it would be more blessed to stay pure and not marry twice without being deceived, and to see that the twice-married woman does share in some salvation, though not in as great a blessedness as the one who could have married twice and kept herself pure. But if she cannot do this, it is better to be deceived, thinking that the twice-married are lost, and to remain pure because of the deception, than to have known the truth and to have come to be in the lesser rank, that of the twice-married. You will find something like this also in some who practise complete chastity and purity. Many other things could be found that we do under a deception and that benefit us. And how many people who are thought wise have found the truth about punishment, and have gone through the matter of the deception, so to speak, and have ended up living worse lives? It would have profited them to think as they did before, about “their worm will not die,” and that “their fire will not be quenched,” and that “they will be a sight for all flesh,” and that “the chaff will be burned up with unquenchable fire.” But if they imagine something different from their first understanding, and so are “about to despise the riches of God’s kindness, forbearance and patience,” see whether it is not true that, just because they did not seem to have been deceived, they stored up for themselves “wrath on the day of wrath, of revelation and of God’s righteous judgment.” They would not have stored it up if they had been deceived.

4b All this is said because of the deception that comes from God, since the prophet said, “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived.” Let us now look separately at the words “I was deceived.” Why did he not say only, “You deceived me, Lord,” but add, “and I was deceived”? Sometimes one person may be working a deception while another is on guard and is not deceived. But when one person works at deceiving and the other does not guard himself against being deceived, and falls into the deception, then he might say, “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived.” Now if I were in the prophet’s place, I might say something like this. Whatever the serpent says to me, whether he tells me the truth or wants to deceive me, I am suspicious of his words. I am convinced that, whether he deceives me or speaks truly, he harms me. Even his truth does harm. Nothing useful comes from the serpent, since “a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.” But whatever God says to me, and I am persuaded that it is God who speaks, I am ready to give myself over to him. If he speaks the truth, I accept it. If he wants to deceive me, I am willingly deceived; let God alone deceive me. And because I give myself over, persuaded that it is God who speaks, even to being deceived, and because I do not pry, wanting to be deceived not by another but by God, I therefore say: “Not only did you work the deception, but I also underwent being deceived by you.” In this sense I say, “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived.” And what follows when God is the one deceiving and a human being the one deceived? “You prevailed and you were able.” Once he has prevailed, he is able. But if he does not prevail, then I need labors. “You prevailed and you were able.”

5a Next he says: “I came to the passage...” I heard these things: that Jeremiah lived in the times of the most sinful people (in his days, at any rate, the captivity took place). They were so sinful that they mocked and laughed and jeered whenever the prophet spoke the prophetic opening, “Thus says the Lord.” Those who heard laughed and mocked what was said. So the one who had been deceived, and had been helped by being deceived, took care not to say “Thus says the Lord.” For this reason he himself, wanting to deceive for the sake of their benefit, said: “I am speaking to you my own words, since you do not listen to the words of the Lord.” Then they lent their ears as if to the words of Jeremiah, and they were hearing the words of God. The man who handed the passage down to me told me these things, as he examined the openings and beginnings of the prophecies. So the beginning of Jeremiah’s prophecy is, in our version, as the Seventy handed it down (I do not know what they had in view): “The word of God that came to Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah, of the priests.” But in the Hebrew and the remaining editions it is: “Words of Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah.” All of them agree in saying, “Words of Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah.” Why then “words of Jeremiah”? Because his opening, in speaking to those unwilling to listen, was: “Hear my words.” We too sometimes do such things when it seems useful to us. At times we bring words to people from the nations, wanting to bring them to the faith. If we see that they are prejudiced against Christianity, that they loathe the name and hate to hear “This is a Christian word,” we do not pretend that we are speaking a Christian word, though it is a useful one.

5b But when we have built up that speech as well as we can, and we think we are winning the hearer, who has not listened to what was said in a casual way, then we admit that this praiseworthy speech was a speech of Christians. We do something close to what the prophet did when he no longer said, “Thus says the Lord,” but, “Hear the words of me, Jeremiah.” All this is because of the words, “I became a laughingstock.” And do we get angry if we are ever laughed at while we are speaking, when a man like Jeremiah says, “I became a laughingstock; all day long I was continually mocked”? Why do I say Jeremiah? My own Jesus was mocked too. For it says, “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they mocked him.” But the Lord mocks all who mock the words of God. “I became a laughingstock.” See what kinds of lives the prophets lived. At one moment they were laughed at, at another they were in danger, struck down and stoned by the people, killed, hated, driven out. They suffered and endured all of this so that, in keeping with God’s will, seeking the glory that comes from the One alone, they might proclaim the word and reach the end that comes from God. “All day long I was continually mocked.” He spent the day being mocked.

6a “For at my bitter word I will laugh.” Laughter is a kind of promise, and the patriarch Isaac is named after that promise, for his name is translated “Laughter.” That laughter is a promise is clear from the words, “Blessed are those who weep now”; the promise is “for they will laugh.” Just as there is a promise, “They will be called sons of God,” and “They will see God,” and “They will inherit the earth,” and “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” so laughter is a promise. The opposite of that promise is the weeping of the one who is called blessed. But you will ask whether, in this good laughter, the weeping that is blessed fits with it in one sense or another, while a different weeping is set against it, the weeping kept in store for those who are pitied for the opposite reasons. For it says, “Woe to those who laugh now, for they will mourn and weep.” So the weeping that is blessed is one thing, and the weeping stored up for those who have lived badly is another. Whether that second weeping also has some useful end, I do not know. Why do I say this? Hear Paul. He taught, and he worked at it, saying that he grieved his hearers. And he admits that he was most glad just when someone was grieved by him. For he says, “And who is it that makes me glad, if not the one who is grieved by me?” And if anyone is able to move the soul of a hearer who has sinned greatly, he prays to speak words of this kind. Spoken with power, with order, with divinity and with holy thoughts, they will shake the soul of the hearer and move him to mourning, to weeping and to tears. So the speaker rejoices [when he sees the audience delighted and full of what is said].

6b For when a speaker leads people toward the promises, as “through the narrow and hard way” of sorrow “to life,” he leads them through weeping to the laughter that is called blessed. But when he does not achieve this, I am afraid that he may be saying something like this: “Woe to those who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.” Why have I said this to you? I wanted to hint at what he means by “at my bitter word I will laugh.” I wanted to show a laughter that comes out of weeping, and the other weeping which those who laugh here will weep, perhaps because God is working to produce weeping in them. For “there will be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.” And God works this because he sees that the one who weeps over his own sins, who laments over his own lawless acts, has already come to a true awareness of his own evils. If only each one of us would say, over each sin, “Every night I will wash my bed; with my tears I will drench my couch.” If only each of us, weeping over his own sins, would say, “My tears have become my bread day and night.” If my word is rather bitter here, and bitter because I am distressed for their sake, then the hearers are put off. Those who are rebuked are burdened by the speaker. But I know that the end of my bitter word is to laugh, and to laugh with the laughter of the blessed. The prophet perhaps knew this when he said, “At my bitter word I will laugh.” Already there is “a bitter word,” but I do not yet laugh. “At my bitter word I will laugh.”

7a “I will call upon faithlessness and misery.” The righteous man calls upon God; the unrighteous man also calls upon wisdom. For it says, “It will be that when you call upon me, I will not listen to you.” That is said of the unrighteous. And it is clear that the righteous also call upon wisdom at times: “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” Here, though, the prophet says, “I will call upon faithlessness and misery,” as if he called upon faithlessness the way one calls upon God, and upon misery the way one calls upon the Lord. Is it a good thing you are calling upon, Jeremiah, when you announce, “I will call upon faithlessness and misery”? But we must consider the agreements we make and the breaking of them, because there are times when one makes an agreement badly. And after making a bad agreement, I wish we would call upon faithlessness. So too, if I consider “the wide and roomy road that leads to destruction,” and see that I am not miserable while I travel on it, then I move away “from the wide and roomy road” and come “to the narrow and constricted one.” There I become miserable, and I say, “I will call upon misery.” I am about to break the agreements I made with the world and worldly things, so that I may take up heavenly agreements. “I will call upon faithlessness.” So I leave “the wide and roomy road” and come “to the narrow and constricted one,” so that I may become miserable as Paul was, and I say, “I will call upon misery.” For not every person will say, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Only the one who has understood the body of death, the one who wants to be rescued from this body of death, will say, “Wretched man that I am.”

7b But the lover of the body, the common sort of man, who does not believe in the age to come, does not say, “Wretched man that I am.” He counts himself happy to be a man, and happy to be in the body of death. So if I can understand how Paul came to say, “Wretched man that I am,” though I have not yet called upon misery, I will call upon it by breaking the agreements I made with wickedness, and I will say as Jeremiah did, “I will call upon faithlessness and misery.” For he did not say, “I will call upon faithlessness toward God.” I want to give an example from Scripture of a righteous person breaking agreements, to show how that person by deed called upon faithlessness. Judith made an agreement with Holofernes: for so many days she would go out and pray to God, and after those days she would give herself to the bed of Holofernes. Holofernes accepted this agreement. He let Judith go outside the camp to pray. What ought Judith to have done? Keep the agreement or break it? All agree: break it. For to break the agreements made with Holofernes was a blessed thing before God. Judith was about to break her agreements with Holofernes; she was about to say, “I will call upon faithlessness.” And she did call upon faithlessness. I wish that I too might become such a person, that I might say, “I will call upon faithlessness,” and call upon faithlessness toward the serpent, toward the devil. The serpent once made an agreement with Eve, and the serpent was a friend to the woman, and she to him. But God, being good, arranged for this agreement to be dissolved and this evil friendship to be broken up. And as a good God he says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.”

7c So let us listen with good sense to how God creates enmity toward one party, in order to create friendship toward Christ. It is impossible to be a friend of opposites at the same time. Just as “no one can serve two masters,” so no one can be a friend both of God and of mammon, a friend both of Christ and of the serpent. Friendship with Christ must create enmity toward the serpent, and friendship with the serpent must breed enmity toward Christ. “I will call upon faithlessness and misery.” To help you understand better the words “I will call upon misery,” I will describe something that happens to those who practice self-discipline. Often a man has the chance to marry and avoid trouble, while the flesh rises up against the spirit. Yet he chooses not to use his freedom to marry. He chooses instead to suffer hardship and toil, to “batter the body with fasting” and bring it into slavery by abstaining from certain foods, and in every way to “put to death the deeds of the body” by the spirit. Has such a person not called upon misery, when he could have given himself over to luxury and pleasure and not called upon misery at all? So if anyone is able to imitate the prophet, let him call upon faithlessness, as we have explained, and let him also call upon misery in his disciplines. It also happens that the account about Jeremiah is true, that he lived in purity. For the Lord said to him, “You shall not take a wife, and you shall not have children.” And he lived in purity. For he called upon faithlessness and misery.

8a “Because the word of the Lord has become to me a reproach.” Blessed is Jeremiah, who had no other reproach than the word of the Lord. But we, wretched as we are, have reproaches that come not from the word of the Lord but from our own sins. We are reproached for the things in which we stumble and have stumbled, and we are abused for our wickedness. The Savior does not want us to be reproached in that way. He says, “Blessed are you when they reproach you and persecute you and say every evil word against you for my sake.” “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy.” So he says, “The word of the Lord has become to me a reproach and a mockery all day long.” Then notice how honest the prophets are. They do not hide their own sins, as we do. They speak of sins committed not only in their own time but in all generations. I myself hesitate to confess my sins before the few who are here, because those who hear me will condemn me. But Jeremiah felt no shame over something he had suffered that was sinful. He wrote down his own sin. What follows in the passage was a sin: “And I said, I will not name the name of the Lord, and I will no longer speak in his name.” You were taught to do everything in the name of the Lord, to act in the name of God. Yet you say, “I will not name the name of the Lord”? What name will you name instead? “You shall not remember the name of other gods in your hearts.” And yet you say, “I will not name the name of the Lord, and I will no longer speak in his name”? So he speaks as one who has suffered something human, which we too have often been in danger of suffering. This is especially so when someone knows in his own conscience that he once endured hardship, suffering and hatred for the sake of teaching and the word. He often says, “I am withdrawing. Why should I have all this trouble? If I am in trouble because of this, because of teaching and putting out the word, why not rather withdraw into solitude and quiet?”

8b The prophet suffered something like this when he said, “And I said: I will not name the name of the Lord, and I will no longer speak in his name.” But the Lord is good, for he prevents sins like this in men of such stature. He did not let the prophet stand by what he had just said. Even here he made Jeremiah call down “unbelief” on himself, and set aside what he had said. For he said, “I will not name the name of the Lord, and I will no longer speak in his name.” Then he says, “It became in my heart like a burning fire, flaming in my bones, and I am helpless on every side and cannot bear it.” The word of the Lord had become a fire burning his heart. “It became in my heart like a flaming fire, burning in my bones.” Jeremiah threw off the sin he had committed when he said, “I will not name the name of the Lord, and I will no longer speak in his name.” And he threw it off in the very moment he spoke. I wish that I, at the very moment I sin and speak a sinful word, would feel that a fire had come into my heart, burning and flaming, so that I could not bear it. The word is about to venture something, though I do not know whether it is good for such an audience as this. It has said that there is a kind of fire, not a fire perceived by the senses, which punishes the one punished with such pain that he cannot bear it. For he said, “It became in my heart like a flaming fire,” and “burning” not only in my heart but also “in my bones, and I am helpless on every side and cannot bear it.” I fear that what is laid up for us may be like this: a fire arising as it arose in the heart of Jeremiah. But we have not experienced it. If we had experienced it, and if the two fires were set before us, this fire and the outer fire we see in those who are burned by the rulers of the nations, we would choose that outer fire rather than this one.

8c For that fire burns the surface, but this one burns the heart. Beginning from the heart, it reaches through all the bones, and passing through the bones it spreads over the whole person who is burning, and it comes in such a way that the one burning cannot bear it. Who, under this fire, is able to say, “And I cannot bear it”? I know that even robbers have managed to endure that other fire, the pain that comes from it. The pain from this fire is of a different kind, the one Jeremiah described when he said, “And it became in my heart like a burning fire, flaming in my bones, and I am helpless on every side and cannot bear it.” The Savior, who said, “I came to cast fire upon the earth,” is the one who kindles that fire. And because the Savior kindles that fire, for those who begin to listen to him he begins with the fire, and first casts fire into their heart. This is what Simon and Cleopas confess when they say, concerning his words, “Was not our heart burning on the road, as he opened the Scriptures to us?” Here the heart of Simon and of Cleopas is burned with fire. Hear them as they say, “Was not our heart burning?” 9. Who is worthy now to receive that fire in the heart, so that he does not receive it there, in the other place? I want to describe who it is that has this fire in the heart. Picture for me two people who have committed the same kind of sin, the foul, unclean sin of fornication. Of these two who have fornicated, one is not grieved or pained or stung. He experiences what was said in Proverbs about the immoral woman: “Whatever she does, she washes herself and says she has done nothing out of place.” But look at the other. After his fall he cannot keep quiet. He is punished in his conscience and tormented in his heart. He cannot eat or drink; he fasts not by decision but from the pain of repentance. Picture such a man for me: gloomy and worn down all day long as he goes about, groaning aloud from the sighing of his heart, seeing his sin before him, constantly accusing him to his face.

8d And look at such a person: he is punished not for one day or one night, but for a long time. Which of the two do you prefer? Which do you say has hopes with God? The one who committed fornication and gave it no thought, but became callous, as one who has handed himself over to licentiousness? Or the one who mourns and weeps after a single sin? This second man [has grounds for hope]. The more he is burned by the fire of grief, the more mercy he receives, and he has enough time for his breaking, as much time as is given for punishment to that man who fornicated and was grieved. And since this time of punishment here is profitable to him, the apostle took pains to punish the one who had fornicated. When he had punished him with grief and saw that the grief was enough, he said, “Lest such a man be swallowed up by excessive grief, confirm your love toward him.” Let each of us examine his own conscience and see what he has sinned, because he needs to be punished. Let him pray to God that this fire which was in Jeremiah would come upon him, and then the fire that was on Simon and Cleopas. But the one who has both sinned and has not cared will be kept for that other fire. “And it became in my heart like a burning fire, flaming in my bones, and I am relaxed on every side and cannot bear it, for I heard the slander of many gathering around.” The blameless, blessed Jeremiah (I say this setting aside that small sin, and any other slight thing he did) was slandered by many. But the slander of the many was praise for him with God. For those who slandered him said, “Band together, and let us band together against him, all you men who are his friends. Watch for his plan, and he will be deceived.” They wanted to deceive him with a different deception, a deadly one, the opposite of the deception about which he said, “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived.” And these who band together against him say, “And we will prevail against him, and we will take our vengeance from him.” Those who were rebuked for their own sins think they have been wronged, and because they think they have been wronged they say, “We will take our vengeance from him.”

8e Those who sawed Isaiah in two did something like this. They acted as men wronged (since the prophecies turned them back, punished them, rebuked them, and reproached them), so they sawed him in two and condemned him with a vote of death. But Jeremiah says about these who banded together against him, “And the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior.” If we become the kind of people we ought to be, and accept that fire when it comes upon us for our sins, as it did upon Jeremiah and those like him, then after this the Lord is with us “like a mighty warrior.” “Therefore they persecuted, and they could not understand.” [The Jews who persecuted him: “They were greatly ashamed, and did not understand their dishonor”; though dishonored for so long a time, they do not name their own sins.] The Lord was with the one being persecuted, and so the persecuted one could not be put into their hands. Might it be, then, since many things in Jeremiah are referred to the Savior, that this too can be of that kind? For “Band together, and let us band together against him” was said also about the Savior. And the “Lord” was with him “like a mighty warrior. Therefore they persecuted, and they could not understand,” the Jews who persecuted him. “They were greatly ashamed, and did not understand their dishonor.” Though dishonored for so long a time, they do not name their own sins, “which will not be forgotten forever.” Instead they suppose that in this age their lawless deeds will be forgotten. But we see that their lawless deeds will not be forgotten forever. And as we see this, we remember the words, “Do not be high-minded, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, how much more will he not spare” the unnatural ones? So the “Lord of hosts” is with us, “who tests the righteous, who understands the kidneys and hearts.” The Lord approves what is just and rejects what is unjust. He is, so to speak, a banker of the just and the unjust. And this same Lord “understands kidneys and hearts.” I ask what the difference is between “understanding kidneys and hearts” and “examining hearts and kidneys.” He does not examine the hearts and kidneys of everyone, but of those who have sinned. I take “examine” in the sense it has in everyday life, when it is said of people being put to the torture.

8f In the law courts some people conduct the examination, some are examined, and some are in the severest suffering. But the Lord alone has a new kind of examination, for he is the one who examines hearts, and to the Lord alone belongs the searching of hearts and kidneys. Robbers here are examined in their sides by the order of the governor. There, however, a person is not examined by an order of God but by the Lord himself, who tests kidneys and hearts. Unless perhaps I should say here that the one receiving the order is the Son, the one giving the order is the Father, and the Word is the one who examines hearts and kidneys. And I think that, of all tortures and all sufferings, the heaviest are those that come from the Word when he examines both hearts and kidneys. So let us do everything we can so that we are not handed over to that examination. I think those who are handed over to the “tormentors” mentioned in the Gospel suffer less than that. For they are handed over to many, perhaps to a greater number of tormentors at the beginning, since they are not yet worthy to be handed over to the one Word who examines hearts and kidneys. That rich man was not yet worthy to be handed over to the one who examines hearts and kidneys, and so he was tormented by several. Whether he suffers this later or not, let the one who is able examine it. But what awaits us is this: tormentors, and the one who examines hearts and kidneys over our sins. If we are not quickly set free from those sins, we will be in them. So let us rise and ask for help from God, that we may be blessed in Christ Jesus, to whom be glory forever. Amen.