Memorial of Saint Scholastica, Virgin

Lectionary: 334

In those days when there again was a great crowd without anything to eat, Jesus summoned the disciples and said,
“My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat.

Today's first reading from the First Book of Kings tells how Jeroboam, a servant of King Solomon, successfully plotted to split the kingdom of David and Solomon into two countries, Israel and Judah. Jeroboam was not a son of David but was clever and ambitious. As the prophet Ahijah had predicted, the Lord used his ambition to punish David's kingdom for the inept wickedness of David's son Solomon and grandson Rehoboam. 

The new nation of Israel, bigger and wealthier than Judah, accepted Jeroboam as their new king despite his lack of Davidic legitimacy, and also accepted his insistence that they not worship in Jerusalem. They could worship the LORD in the older shrine of Bethel, and use a pair of golden calves to represent the LORD. 

Ignorant of their religion, few Israelites remembered their ancestors' captivity in Egypt, their escape and sojourn in the wilderness, and the covenant God had made with them. Unhappy with David's son and grandson, they readily accepted an impostor king, and rejected both their former kingdom and proper worship of God. The LORD was not amused at their short-sighted gullibility. The northern kingdom would survive apart from Judah for a couple of hundred years before being overrun by Assyria.

The story reminds us of our ovine ("sheep-like") human nature, and our need for competent, divinely inspired leadership. In a confusing, evolving cultural, social, political, economic, and ecological landscape, we need help! Lots of help! Divine help. Without it we are helpless; with it we are still helpless but we have God to protect and guide us. 

What were the Israelites to do but follow the strongman who had military support, charisma, and the raw courage to defy the ineffectual rulers, priest, and prophets in Jerusalem? 

The times were changing, it seemed, and the old traditional religion did not appear able to accept and adjust to new realities. The old God of Abraham and Moses needed an update, a do over. If he looked like a pair of golden calves, that made sense to them. No one remembered when Aaron took the gold and silver their ancestors had brought from Egypt to create a golden calf for their worship. Because their parents and grandparents had not told them the story, they could not tell their children how Moses had shattered the tablets of the law in a fit of anger. 

It doesn't take long for a people or a nation to forget its history with its admirable beginnings and its heroic sacrifices. The glories of the past can be skewed into comic book accounts about wars and battles, without reference to the subtler influence of philosophy and the complex decisions of politicians. They forget the sins of their ancestors, and suppose the way things are is the way God intended them. Even flagrant injustice and the violence of grinding poverty can be justified as God's doing. 

Almost a thousand years after Rehoboam's rebellion, the Lord Jesus found a lost, bewildered people who followed him with the same gullibility they'd followed their wicked kings. The world had changed many times over but their helpless gullibility had not. They knew only that they were desperate and this miracle worker could help them. Even as he fed and cared for them he taught them the ways of God, 

In the end Jesus would restore the covenant with his own sacrificial death. From his cross on Calvary, he would give us his body and blood as the new covenant with his Father. The old covenant had not disappeared; God had not forgotten his people. But the time for the fullness of God's promises to appear. 

We need only to compare the small gatherings in our churches on Sunday and the millions who flock to football stadiums every weekend to discover that humans still follow the strong men like sheep. Few even notice how their culture has coarsened. They follow the money and the success. If it's football today, it might be gladiators fighting to the death twenty years from now.  

But the Holy Spirit of the Lord does not abandon the Church; neither the sacrifice of Jesus nor the Covenant of His Body and Blood have failed. There may be only a remnant left to follow the Way but we remain; we worship; and we wait upon his mercy for we are still quite helpless.