Tuesday of the Twenty-second week in Ordinary Time

We are not of the night or of darkness.
Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do,
but let us stay alert and sober.

Ever since the attack on Pearl Harbor the United States has been on high alert, ready for enemy attack. At one time we maintained a fleet of nuclear-armed airplanes flying night and day along the northern Canada border, ready to fly into Russia at a moment’s notice. Blind-sided by 9/11 we have been even more alert to terrorist threats over the past ten years.

The unprovoked attacks and our response have taken their toll on our nerves and our resources. We maintain the largest, best equipped, best trained military on earth. The entire earth is in awe of our destructive capacity; no other nation even attempts to rival our military superiority. If the Lord had been speaking of military readiness in today’s gospel, we’re there!

But facts on the ground tell another story. Millions of our people cannot endure such tension and choose the darkness of alcoholism, drug abuse, violence and an array of obsessive compulsive behaviors. Their response to every crisis, challenge, and opportunity is to smoke, drink, shoot up, fly into rage or flee into the some other inane behavior. As a result we have locked over a million citizens into our prisons and jails. This is not what Jesus had in mind when he urged us to stay sober and alert.

The Bible is very familiar with our plight. The kingdoms of Judah and Israel maintained their own militaries – laughably inadequate forces against the mighty powers of Egypt and Mesopotamia. They also prayed to innumerable other gods in the shrines that dotted the countryside and polluted Jerusalem. Officially they worshipped the one God in his fabulous temple but, in fact, they were no more Jewish than the United States is Christian. Had they been, there would have been no prophets to continually lambaste them.

But the promises of God’s word and the hope of God’s chosen survives. The Jews were faithful enough to keep a record of his word. We have today’s wonderful Psalm 27 to teach us again to trust in the Lord and walk in his way:

One thing I ask of the LORD;
this I seek:
To dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
That I may gaze on the loveliness of the LORD
and contemplate his temple.
I believe that I shall see the bounty of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD with courage;
be stouthearted, and wait for the LORD.