Readings: Jeremiah 14:7–22; Psalm 84; 2 Timothy 4:6–18; Luke 18:9–14

Amidst a litany of despairing questions and complaints from Israel — “Why should you be like a stranger, like a warrior who cannot save? Why have you rejected us and struck us down?” — Israel’s God breaks in, saying of this people, his people: “Truly they have loved to wander” (Jeremiah 14:10). “[This is] probably an allusion to the many idolatrous sanctuaries … or to the frequent attempts to enter into foreign alliances” (J. A. Thompson, The Book of Jeremiah [New International Commentary on the Old Testament], 382).

In our time, the trope of the (usually) man throwing off the shackles of convention and expectation, refusing to be defined by externally imposed goals and principles, finding his own path, blazing his own trail, wandering relative to the fixed and constraining itineraries of an unimaginative society, may still resonate romantically. Employees check out of the rat race. Vacationers avoid the beaten track. Students create their own majors. But … there’s a difference between wandering because you’re a living self rather than a cog in a machine, and wandering because you’re lost.

“When we rise from our sins or repent, we are returning to the baptism from which we fell, and finding our way back to the promise then made to us, which we deserted when we sinned. For the truth of the promise once made remains steadfast, always ready to receive us back with open arms when we return” (Luther, Babylonian Captivity of the Church). “On earth the church journeys in a foreign land, but she seeks Christ seated at the right hand of God, where her true life is hidden” (Vatican II, Lumen gentium 6).