Politicians Will Not Save Us

Friday of the fifteenth week in course 2024 (7/19)

It’s not possible for me to read the Scriptures today and ignore what happened just a week ago in Pennsylvania. I do believe that God, perhaps through angelic suggestion, arranged things so that the bullet missed the candidate’s head by a few millimeters, clipping his ear. Anyway, I’ve heard the word “miracle” used more than once, and we can all thank God for it, no matter what our political affiliation may be.

King Hezekiah, in the prophet Isaiah’s historical account, also “dodged a bullet” thousands of years ago, too. He was at the point of death from a serious illness. Even Isaiah had predicted his death and told him to get his affairs in order. Hezekiah turned once again to the Lord, reminding God that he was one of the handful of faithful kings of Judah, doing good in God’s sight. And he punctuated his prayer with tearful sobs. The second prophecy of Isaiah makes it appear that God changed His mind, and told the king he would be given another fifteen years of life. Moreover, he would drive away the king of Assyria who was on the verge of laying siege to Jerusalem. Isaiah made some kind of dressing for the disease wound, and Hezekiah did recover. So prayer works, right? And they all lived happily ever after, right? Hezekiah or Isaiah, we don’t know which, composed a beautiful psalm that we use even today every couple of weeks in the Divine Office, one that most of us have used during life: “restore me to health and make me live!”

But the psalmist also tells us to put not our trust in princes, because in the sons (or daughters) of men there is no salvation. All but the One Son of Man, Jesus Christ, in whom there is salvation. In the case of Hezekiah, his recovery from illness led the up-and-coming political big guy in the Middle East, Merodach-baladan, son of the Babylonian king, to send emissaries to Hezekiah. Then, certainly out of national pride, “Hezekiah welcomed them; and he showed them his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his whole armory, all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them.” That was an act of sheer, unadulterated hubris, a moment of pride that even the ancient pagans considered a cosmos-rendering sin. After they departed, Isaiah asked about the visit, and Hezekiah admitted what he had done. “Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord of hosts: Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And some of your own sons, who are born to you, shall be taken away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” But that didn’t bother the king too much, since it would not happen to himself. So much for Hezekiah being a good king. Perhaps he was kind of good in contrast to the majority of his ancestors, and all but one of his descendants.

Oh, and in that fifteen years of added life, he became the father of his successor, Manasseh, unarguably the worst, most faithless king in the whole history of Judah. Moreover, he ruled Judah for fifty-five years, over two generations of wall-to-wall evildoing from which the kingdom never truly recovered.

When the true Son of Man, who was Jesus, Son of God, came, He never did anything evil. Nor did He prompt His people to do evil. But His adversaries, Pharisees, Sadducees and all the other political factions, were constantly trying to trip Him up over His actions being in violation of Torah. Matthew records that His disciples were hungry on the Sabbath, and as they were walking through some barley fields, they plucked the heads of grain, whole grain, and munched on them to satisfy their hunger. Jesus obviously approved so the Pharisees following Him jumped all over the disciples and their Leader. He very charitably replied that these were doing no more damage to Torah than David, the model of Messianic action, did when he took sacred bread from the priests’ storage to feed his hungry troops. (And he prevaricated in order to make it happen.) And as far as Torah goes, it sets the priests’ duties of Temple service on the Sabbath as being more important than keeping the Sabbath rest. And he adds the zinger: “something greater than the Temple is here.” He meant Himself, and implied that as Messiah, He could amend the Law when necessary.

So how does this apply to us today? There have to be dozens of ways. I’ll just focus on one, the one still vibrating in our heads a week after the event. We are blessed to live in a nation that elects leaders, and gives adult citizens a voice and vote. But there is no God-ordained leader today any more than there was in David’s time. We must pray for an end to political violence of all kinds, and for safety for all candidates. And we must subject our voting decision to our prayerful discernment of who at every level will seek God’s will and the good of all the people.