This translation is from the New American Bible. The bolded hyperlinks will take you to additional translations. The other, italicized, hyperlinks will take you to explanations of the original Hebrew words. Text highlighted in yellow tells us something about God’s nature or our relationship to Him. Text in green tells us about something God wants us to do. Text in red tells describes what God wants us to avoid. Commentary is in blue.
The LORD said to me: Go buy yourself a linen loincloth; wear it on your loins, but do not put it in water. I bought the loincloth, as the LORD commanded, and put it on.
A second time the word of the LORD came to me thus: Take the loincloth which you bought and are wearing, and go now to the Parath; there hide it in a cleft of the rock. Obedient to the LORD’s command, I went to the Parath and buried the loincloth.
After a long interval, the LORD said to me: Go now to the Parath and fetch the loincloth which I told you to hide there. Again I went to the Parath, sought out and took the loincloth from the place where I had hid it. But it was rotted, good for nothing!
Then the message came to me from the LORD:
Thus says the LORD: So also I will allow the pride of Judah to rot, the great pride of Jerusalem. This wicked people who refuse to obey my words, who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts, and follow strange gods to serve and adore them, shall be like this loincloth which is good for nothing. For, as close as the loincloth clings to a man’s loins, so had I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the LORD; to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty. But they did not listen.
Jeremiah obeyed God’s specific command, as odd and insignificant as it must have seemed, and God used his actions as the basis for a powerful message. That is consistent with the dynamic underlying today’s gospel: God can work exponentially more good than we expect if we yield to and serve Him.
As in today’s gospel, it may take a while for the fruit of our obedience to become manifest. The message God built on Jeremiah’s actions occurred “[a]fter a long interval.”
to hear, listen to, obey; to hear with attention or interest;yield to; to obey, be obedient
In contrast, rot and ineffectiveness result from disregarding God’s direction.
R. (see 18a) You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you, you forgot the God who gave you birth.When the LORD saw this, he was filled with loathing and anger toward his sons and daughters.
R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
“I will hide my face from them,” he said, “and see what will then become of them.
What a fickle race they are, sons with no loyalty in them!”
R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
“Since they have provoked me with their ‘no-god’ and angered me with their vain idols,
I will provoke them with a ‘no-people’; with a foolish nation I will anger them.”
R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you, you forgot the God who gave you birth.When the LORD saw this, he was filled with loathing and anger toward his sons and daughters.
R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
“I will hide my face from them,” he said, “and see what will then become of them.
What a fickle race they are, sons with no loyalty in them!”
R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
“Since they have provoked me with their ‘no-god’ and angered me with their vain idols,
I will provoke them with a ‘no-people’; with a foolish nation I will anger them.”
R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Father willed to give us birth by the word of truth that we may be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Father willed to give us birth by the word of truth that we may be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’
He spoke to them another parable. The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.
All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables. He spoke to them only in parables, to fulfill what had been said through the prophet: I will open my mouth in parables, I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world.
God transcends our expectations; He can accomplish far, far, more than we can foresee.
God brings forth exponential amounts of good from the service we offer Him, both in terms of the quantity/variety of goodness (the parable of the mustard seed) and the influence/impact it has on individuals, families, communities, cultures, and the world as a whole (the parable of the yeast).
Examples of this dynamic are found in the incidents recorded in Luke 5:1-11 and John 6:1-13. Peter made his boat available to Jesus and the boy apparently offered up his lunch. Jesus produced tremendous good from those things, both in those immediate circumstances and over the centuries since then, good that neither Peter nor that boy could possibly have imagined.
We therefore should trust God by doing the specific things He asks of us. That can result in good far beyond our expectations.
That said, it can take a while for the full fruit of our obedience to come forth. It takes time for a mustard tree to grow from a seed and the greatest good that came from Peter’s and the boy’s obedience came long after their actions.
This wicked people who refuse to obey my words, who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts, and follow strange gods to serve and adore them, shall be like this loincloth which is good for nothing.
The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’
The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.
Obedient to the LORD’s command
refuse to obey my words
walk in the stubbornness of their hearts
forgotten God
unmindful of the Rock that begot you
unmindful of the Rock that begot you
you forgot the God who gave you birth.
forgotten God
forgotten God
forgotten God
forgotten God
forgotten God
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