Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

In the long history of humankind, thousands of cities have appeared and disappeared. Their cultures, customs, rulers, religions, symbols and gods vanished with them, lost forever. Periodically archaeologists dig them up and speculate about how the citizens used to live. How did they experience life? What values did they teach their children? How did they survive so long? What finally overcame them?

Sometimes we know they were conquered by another city; sometimes we have no clue. In some cases the climate changed, as when the towns in Greenland disappeared after five hundred years of habitation. The people of Cahokia Illinois apparently ran out of firewood. Disease, famine, earthquakes, fires, floods, glaciers and, of course, war have erased ways of life their people thought sacred and immutable. North America, with its severe climate, has seen more upheaval than most continents.

So what happened to Jerusalem in the sixth century before Christ? The Babylonians captured and destroyed the city. They deported everyone who might be useful; murdered, raped and maimed many; took all the livestock and food supplies, and left only the poorest in the ravaged land. As Jesus would say many years later, "The meek inherit the earth." 

The prophets had long predicted Jerusalem's fall if the city were not faithful to God. Jeremiah acknowledges:

We recognize, O Lord, our wickedness,
the guilt of our fathers;
that we have sinned against you.

But naysayers are always predicting doom. It doesn’t take divine inspiration to do that. Nor does it take much inspiration to say, “I told you so!” And Jeremiah doesn’t say it with much conviction. 

Someone is bound to ask, “Were we that bad? Did the city, despite the piety and devotion of so many poor, helpless people who were also destroyed in the carnage of war, really deserve this severe punishment?”

The question is not unfamiliar to the Bible, Jews or Christians. Even as we teach our children that God will reward goodness and punish wickedness, we hear the objections of the righteous Job and the irascible Qoheleth.

Or, in the words of Sportin Life, from the Gershwin Brothers’ Porgy and Bess:

     It ain't necessarily so
     It ain't necessarily so
     The t'ings dat yo' li'ble
     To read in de Bible,
     It ain't necessarily so.

Jesus seems to have it both ways in the Gospel according to Saint Luke:

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.
Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’ (13:1-5)

So we should pursue goodness, justice and mercy! The Lord has promised reward for the just and retribution for the wicked. But we cannot expect a cause-effect relationship here.  Hard times fall on the good and the bad alike. Between the two there is always the mystery of God’s justice, mercy and forbearance. We just don’t know when or how God will move.

This is maddening to the scientific mind that wants explanations and answers now. But it is comfort to sinners like you and me, who pray with gratitude for the time we have to turn away from sin and live by the gospel.