Tuesday of the Twelfth Week in Course 2020
If a far-seeing leader in the Middle East back in the centuries before Christ had wanted to found a city or territory for his people, he would have chosen a place with natural defenses, like the island of Tyre in the Lebanon area. Tyre survived as a walled city for hundreds of years until Alexander the great, in the fourth century before Christ, actually demolished a city on the Lebanese mainland and used the stones to construct a causeway so that his soldiers and siege engines could easily access and overwhelm the citizens of Tyre, taking thirty thousand into slavery.
But no human ruler would have chosen the land called Palestine for his people. It’s like a superhighway between Asia and Africa, threatened by Egyptian powers in the south, Arabians from the desert east, and a successions of kingdoms from the north and northeast. It’s practically indefensible in human terms, and was conquered many times from all directions.
God, however, has ways beyond human plans. His people, formed from the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were planted in that place we call the Holy Land with an intention far beyond human politics. They were supposed to be defended by the power of the Most High God, and they were supposed to turn away from human alliances and rely only on the God of Israel. In the times of the post-Davidic kings, however, they paid only lip service to God’s law and God’s protection, and were overrun time and time again by their neighbors.
Our reading today from the second book of Kings reveals one of the few eras in which a king of Israel actually took the Lord God at His word, and benefited from the Lord’s loving kindness by an awesome miracle. Let’s briefly remember the empire of Assyria. This was a military giant ruled by a succession of monster-kings. The archaeological evidence shows that when they conquered a city, they butchered the inhabitants. When they defeated the northern kingdom of Israel, they deported the Israelites all over their empire and moved the people later called the Samaritans into the region. Sennacherib was particularly brutal, and the good king Hezekiah was fated with Jerusalem to lie in the path of his southern juggernaut. I encourage you to read the whole chapter nineteen of second Kings, to see the full story. Yes, the angel of God, which could have been a horrible, fast-working communicable disease like Ebola or cholera, wiped out nearly two hundred thousand Assyrian troops, forcing the army to withdraw from Judah. And the line after today’s reading tells us that Sennacherib did not live long after his retirement. Two of his sons killed him while he was praying to his false god. Yes, God promised the enemy’s defeat through the word of Isaiah, and He followed through because the king and his people turned to God for the answer to the disaster.
But most of the history of the Hebrew people seems to be an application of the sage advice shared with us disciples in today’s Gospel. Jesus tells us that we must use our own desires for ourselves as our rule of life for the way we treat others. In fact, that is the fulfillment of the Mosaic law. But it’s not easy; it’s a narrow path that leads to eternal safety and joy. For hundreds of years, God’s chosen people chose the broad path, succumbing to the pagan culture that surrounded them, worshiping false gods with bloody and lascivious religious rites. It led ultimately to God turning their lives and land over to destruction and exile.
You see, when God reveals Himself as a jealous God, He’s not implying that He needs our worship, our devotion, our following the Golden Rule. God does not need anything; He is simply the perfection of the good, the true and the beautiful. God acts like a jealous husband because He loves us to His own detriment. We are the ones who need devotion to God–single-hearted dedication. When the people of the covenant were led into exile, the pagans around them joked at the Lord’s expense. “Ha! Where is your god, Israel? You didn’t follow His law so our gods beat your god.” The lesson was learned in an onerous time of exile. But by the time of Our Lord Jesus, the real lesson had been all but abandoned–yes, the Jews worshiped only the true God, but they forgot that their mission was to call all men to true worship and following the law of love. So God subjected Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, the God-man, to ridicule and torture and death, so that after rising from the dead, He could form a people dedicated to the Golden Rule and right worship. He formed the Church, His Bride, and gave us the privilege of being baptized into that community of faith, hope and charity. Now we, the New Israel, are called to attract all humans into relationship with Christ, and active fellowship in His Church. Blessed be God forever.
