Saturday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

The controversy stirred up by the minister of an American Christian Church reminds us that our world is far more interrelated than most people appreciate. People are watching what we say and do, and foolish behavior in one neighborhood can have fatal consequences in faraway places. 

Examples abound: 1) Mexico is collapsing because some of our children entertain themselves with illegal drugs. 2) When more people want to live as Americans live, our wasteful consumption contaminates the earth. And so forth...

Secondly, the pleading of an American commander not to burn the Koran reminds us that we now have a vested interest in showing respect to other religions. Our military personnel are within easy range of their weapons. We should know our enemies and what they believe. The more respect we have for them, the more successful will be our conversations with them. In the end that will lead to greater community and a more peaceful world. 

And now, back to our regular reflections on the readings of the day: 

A path along the creek
below the MSF dam

My beloved ones, avoid idolatry.

I’ve been reading a history of Israel by Michael Grant, and I am surprised to discover the religion of God, the one whom the Jews called YHWH, was never absolutely dominant in Israel, Judah or Jerusalem; or in the entire region later known as Judea. The Canaanite religion with its worship of Baal persisted in the countryside; and the capital city of Jerusalem with its magnificent temple usually housed more than a few pagan shrines.

The people and their kings generally practiced a kind of syncretism, combining various religious beliefs into their practice of Yahwism, even as the Yahwist prophets, whom we know from the Bible, railed against them. Only in Babylon, according to Mr. Grant, did the Jews isolate themselves from the Sumerian deities and purify their synagogue worship around the Lord of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In exile they separated the wheat of the scriptures from the chaff of other religions and created the Bible.

So when Saint Paul urged his Corinthian disciples to avoid idolatry, he spoke out of an ancient tradition of struggle. In the tenth chapter of this first letter, he reminds his gentile and Jewish friends of the stories from ancient times, how the idolaters were punished even in the desert for worshipping false gods. It seems that God’s people were always distracted.

Saint Paul urges them to accept the Eucharist with pure, undivided hearts. They cannot give their bodies to the Eucharist and to idolatry.

The struggle continues for us today. If we don’t exactly “worship” strange gods, we still decorate our homes and tattoo our bodies with strange images. Athletic heroes and entertainment idols festoon children’s bedrooms. Syncretism appears when Santa Claus overwhelms Christmas; and the Easter Bunny, the Pasch.

Meanwhile, we tolerate a pious mixture of militant patriotism and generic Christianity, although our nation is founded on the deist principles of the Enlightenment.

The Eucharist, as Saint Paul knew so well, binds us in a close union with people of many nations and every age. Entering the Church we become a stateless people who know no political boundaries. We are sojourners in a strange land. If we speak many languages we understand only one, that which our High Priest Jesus prays before God. Leaving the Church we should return to our exile as salt of the earth and a city on a hill, a light shining in darkness.

On this September 11, nine years into this new era, Christians must study the pacifist, communitarian principles of Jesus, and trust in God for both security and prosperity. Then we will have something to say to the political gridlock America suffers today.