Sunday, October 20, 2013

The return of the imagination...

          It was one of those weeks when I didn't feel like I had adequate time to prepare for this homily.  I had an idea of what I wanted to preach about but wasn't sure that it was the right direction to go.  Then this video by Fr. Robert Barron popped up and confirmed for me that I needed to preach on this topic.  Enjoy!


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Homily: 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle C
          One of the things that I find very curious about our culture is what I am calling the paradoxical fascination that we have with violence.  Daily we are bombarded with images of real violence and the suffering that it causes in the news, on social media, and, for some of us, even in our own neighborhoods.  Yet, we continue to fill our senses with “make believe” violence in movies, television, and video games as if we were somehow fascinated with it.  Thus, the paradox is that real violence ought to cause us anguish and so it wouldn’t make sense that even fake violence would be entertaining.  But just one look at the summer movie blockbusters, the latest hit TV shows, and the most popular video games is all it takes to realize that our culture does, indeed, find fake violence strangely entertaining.
          Of course, this is not limited to our modern culture.  One can look back throughout the history of civilization and see that in every age there was some form of “make believe” violence that was used as entertainment; and that some cultures even came to thrive on real violence instead.  Even our Bible is rife with images of violence, particularly in the Old Testament.  Just look at our first reading today.  It details how Joshua led the Israelite army against the Amalekites and how he “mowed down Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.”  He destroyed not just Amalek’s army, but his entire people, too.  And we read this here in Mass today as if this kind of violence is something that we are supposed to feel good about because the Israelites, God’s people, killed every person from another nation who threatened them.  Doesn’t that seem odd?  I don’t know, maybe since we’ve been so overwhelmed with images of violence, both real and fake, perhaps we’ve “switched off” our sensitivity to it, but for me an image of such violence, seemingly approved by God, doesn’t sit very well.  Perhaps some of you are like me.
          One of the things that I find myself often doing is reading the Bible too literally, as if it is scientific history.  You know, most of the stories that are included in the bible were first handed down orally, that is, solely by word of mouth.  Now you and I both know that the concrete facts of a history will often change and mutate as it is told over and over again and so the likelihood that the historical stories that are preserved for us in the Bible depict for us the exact sequence of historical events is pretty low.  Does that make them any less true?  Of course not.  But it does force us to take a deeper look at how we read and interpret these stories.
          An allegory is a story, poem, or picture which can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.  In other words, it’s a literary tool that is used to express something in a way that helps communicate it in a way that just stating the facts wouldn’t be able to express.  When we read today’s first reading literally, we might conclude that God’s chosen people are superior to others and therefore that whenever others threaten the well-being of God’s chosen people, that every man, woman, and child among them should be killed.  When we read it allegorically, however, we can find a much more profound meaning that is consistent with our understanding of God as loving, merciful, and just.
          You see, allegorically speaking, this is not just a battle between two nations where the nation that is favored by God destroys the other.  No, it is a battle between Good, represented by the Israelites who were set apart for a special relationship with God, and Evil, represented by the Amalekites who were considered a force that could turn the Israelites away from their relationship with God.  Therefore, the battle is not a physical one, but a spiritual one, nonetheless represented in physical terms so that we can understand it.
          With this hermeneutic, that is, with this “lens” for interpreting the story, we see that this is not a story about God’s people conquering other nations so as to reign over them (it can’t be, because we already know that Jesus himself said that his kingdom was not of this world), but rather that it is story about rooting out evil from our midst so as not to be overcome by it.  “In those days, Amalek [that is, an evil influence] came and waged war against Israel [that is, someone part of God’s people].  Moses [who here represents the conscience of the Israelite people], therefore, said to Joshua [who represents the mind and heart of the Israelites] … go out and engage Amalek in battle.  I will be standing on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand [that is, I’ll be in constant prayer while you engage this battle so that the power of God will be with us].”
          Has anyone here ever battled against sin?  Doesn’t that battle (if we engage it) always take this form?  Sin (that is, an evil influence) comes to tempt us.  Our conscience says “whoa, this is bad; you better fight this!”  And our mind and heart says… what?  “Forget you conscience, this looks fun!”  Well, I guess that happens sometimes.  But usually it says “Ok, you’re right, we need to fight this.”  And so you engage in the battle against sin.
          If you win the particular battle do you say, “Ok, that was enough, I beat that temptation”?  Probably more often than not we do.  Then, what happens next?  Well the temptation comes back again, only stronger the second time right?  And so we quickly learn that we can’t just win battles against individual temptations, but we have to root out the source of the evil influence so as to prevent all temptations from coming.  This, my brothers and sisters, is the allegorical meaning of “Joshua mowed down Amalek and his people [the temptation and the root of the temptations] with the edge of the sword.”  Is it starting to become clear yet?
          Now that we’re getting good at this, look at the part that Moses plays in the victory over sin.  There’s a direct connection, right?  “As long as Moses kept his hands raised up, Israel had the better of the fight, but when he let his hands rest, Amalek had the better of the fight.”  Moses was the intercessor to God on behalf of the Israelites, and so what else can this mean except that as long as Moses had his hands raised in prayer, calling down God’s power on Joshua and his men, they had the better of the fight; but when he became tired and his hands drooped, Amalek and his troops started to gain advantage.  Prayer, then, is critical in our fight against evil.  If we are fervent and consistent in our prayer, we will overcome evil in our lives and root out its influence on us.  If we become slack, evil will begin to overtake us and possibly destroy us.
          Ah, but Moses had help, right?  No, it wasn’t Moses alone, but Moses with the help of the community: his brother Aaron and their companion Hur.  With their help he was able to keep his hands raised in prayer long enough for Joshua and his men to win the battle.  So, too, do we need the help of our brothers and sisters to overcome and completely eliminate any evil influence in our lives and so we should ask for it frequently.
          You know, one of the things that is happening in our society is that we are giving up our imaginations in favor of stimulation.  With imagination we strive to interpret stories and events in our lives in order to find what meaning it has for us.  Our culture, however, is training us absorb stimulation, instead.  When all we’re doing is receiving stimulation, there’s nothing more for us to do.  It’s either there or it isn’t; and if it isn’t, we’re trained to seek more.  When we engage our imagination, however, we begin to see events in our lives in allegorical terms.  In other words, we begin to see the events of our lives through an interpretive lens that adds meaning and depth to what we experience.
          And so, what does this mean?  Well it means that we begin to see our struggle with sin in terms of a greater spiritual battle: the dramatic “Good vs. Evil” that is constantly being waged throughout the universe instead of the “self-help” exercise that society wants to reduce it to.  And I’m not just talking about the big things, I’m talking about the little things: the gossip, the jealousy, the judgmentalism that we find ourselves battling with daily.  It is not enough to win a battle on any given day; rather we must engage the war to root out its sources in our lives.
          To do so, we must pray and pray constantly.  Just as Joshua could not defeat Amalek without Moses’ prayer, neither can we hope to root sin out of our lives without the help of God’s grace in prayer.  When we feel too weak to pray, we must not give up, but rather we must ask the help of our friends, our community of faith, for together we can win the war.  My brothers and sisters, we must not be afraid to take up this battle for God will not fail to help us; because the victory… yes the victory is already ours in Jesus Christ.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – October 19th & 20th, 2013

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