Homily:
29th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle C
One of the things that I find very curious about our
culture is 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 often find myself 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 to which society wants to reduce it. And I’m not talking just about the big
things, I’m talking about the little things: the gossip, the jealousy, the
judgmentalism with which we find ourselves battling 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 Saint Mary’s
Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – October 20th, 2019
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