This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: Stand at the gate of the Lord’s house and there proclaim this message: Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the foreigner, the orphan or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 7:1-11)

At the time of the prophet Jeremiah, six centuries before our era, the tiny nation of Judah, assailed on all sides, looked for its security from two promises of the Lord. The first concerned the Holy City, Jerusalem. Founded by the great King David, whose descendants were still on the throne thanks to an “everlasting covenant” (2 Samuel 23:5; see ch. 7), it had the reputation of being unshakeable: “God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day” (Psalm 46:5).

This confidence in the City was reinforced by the fact that the Temple of Solomon, “the Lord’s House,” was located there. Since no one could imagine that God would leave his dwelling in the midst of his people, everyone felt safe and protected, whatever might happen.

But… these promises were part of a larger whole, a relationship with the Lord known as a covenant. By this covenant, God committed himself to take care of the children of Israel and they, for their part, promised to listen to and put into practice his words (see Exodus 19:1-9), the commandments, recapitulated in the “Ten Words” (Exodus 20). Detached from the framework of the covenant, God’s promises no longer had any consistency; they became empty words, or even falsehoods.

That is why Jeremiah was sent to stand beside the gate of the Temple one day. Fixing his eyes on those who were going in, he tried to unmask their illusion that the existence of a building, even if it was God’s house, could bring about salvation by itself. His message: if you do not behave as true members of God’s people by remaining faithful to the one God and by practicing solidarity and justice towards your neighbors, professions of religion are meaningless. Worse still, they are blasphemies, because they make it more difficult for others to discover the living God (see Ezekiel 36).

It is not surprising that, following this intervention of his, Jeremiah was arrested and threatened to be put to death in the name of religion (see Jeremiah 26). He did not defend himself, but simply stated that he was indeed acting in God’s name. Centuries later, another man of Israel was condemned to death for words he supposedly spoke against the religion of the Temple, transformed into a “robbers’ den” (Jeremiah 7:11; Matthew 21:13). The Bible thus shows us that the deadly separation between expressions of piety and the authentic search for the living God can lead to the worst of all confusions: a certain religiosity becomes the enemy of true faith.

 On what is my trust in God based? What commitment on my part is implicit in the conviction that God remains close to me?

 How can we understand better ourselves, and help others to understand, the relationship between the faith we profess and the consequences of that faith in daily life?