I Stand

A Reflection on the First Reading for August 18th, 2019:
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10

The officials said to the king, “This man ought to be put to death, because he is discouraging the soldiers who are left in this city, and all the people, by speaking such words to them. For this man is not seeking the welfare of this people, but their harm.” 

King Zedekiah said, “Here he is; he is in your hands; for the king is powerless against you.” 

So they took Jeremiah and threw him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king’s son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes. Now there was no water in the cistern, but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud. 

So Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, an officer in the king’s house, left the king’s house and spoke to the king, “My lord king, these men have acted wickedly in all they did to the Prophet Jeremiah by throwing him into the cistern to die there of hunger, for there is no bread left in the city.” Then the king commanded Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, “Take three men with you from here, and pull the Prophet Jeremiah up from the cistern before he dies.”

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Jeremiah, a prophet of the Lord, reviled and cast in a cistern to die. A dark scene. I recognize this scene replayed over history again and again. People standing up for the truth being reviled and evilly murdered. It’s hard not to conjure the life of men and women like the suffragettes and Martin Luther King, Jr.


We live in a day and age where people are still being cast into a cistern for speaking the truth. It’s being done in the name of the good of the country and society itself. Those in positions of power are either complicit or wash their hands of the evil being done. It’s hard not to think of the advent of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada. What was evil one day is called good the next – a decree of the law. Those who refuse to be complicit are mocked and reviled. I have read the threats and hatred launched against those who speak out in the name of life. A few loud voices have decided that evil is good and those who won’t get involved are evil.

Whether we are a Jeremiah or an E'bed-mel'ech, the call is clear:
​speak truth to power, even though the stakes are high.

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I work for and with a prophetic group of healthcare professionals who daily resist the perception that some lives aren’t worth living. Their day to day reality is speaking about inalienable human dignity. I have the privilege of standing with them to say that forcing doctors, nurses and pharmacists to participate and be complicit in euthanasia and assisted suicide is evil. I am compelled to stand alongside them, even though I am not personally affected by this moral crisis. I stand beside them because not doing so makes me morally complicit in the expulsion of people of faith and moral conviction from those fields both now and in the future.


The life of Jeremiah is a great example to us as society again repeats this cycle. When evil is called good, good men and women will suffer for standing against evil. When Jeremiah is the cistern, we don’t read that he despaired or gave in. He waited. I’m sure it wasn’t joyful, sinking into the mud and muck of the cistern. I’m sure there was a temptation to hopelessness. But someone spoke out on his behalf. E'bed-mel'ech spoke out on Jeremiah’s behalf, even though that could have meant the same fate – a grisly death by starvation and sickness in the cistern. 

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Whether we are a Jeremiah or an E'bed-mel'ech, the call is clear: speak truth to power, even though the stakes are high. God gives us opportunities to speak out when evil is called good. Those opportunities may come packaged in persecution and pain, but if we don’t speak out, who will be the prophet needed in this time?


Stephanie Potter

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