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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
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
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
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