Word to the Wise
Friday, October 9, 2009 - Friday in the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
[Joel 1:13-15; 2:1-12 and Luke 11:15-26]If it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.
Jewish expectations about the Messiah and the Kingdom of God in Jesus' time were highly diverse. However, some of the main features of these expectations included the belief that the Babylonian exile was not over. The pagans still ruled the land. God had not yet established divine rule over Mount Zion and the temple built by Herod was a fraud perpetrated by the ruling priestly class and Romans. The political reality was Caesar in Rome! When Jesus responds to the slander about his power to drive out demons by referring to the "finger of God" and the "Kingdom of God," he is making a dangerous claim. He was neither Caesar nor temple priest! In point of fact, which the crowds and powers could not realize, he was indeed bringing the exile to an end in his very person by establishing a completely different "kingdom" which required no temple and answered only to God. In our own times, the concept of the nation-state, dated by some historians to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, has created a similar challenge to faith. The political powers believe that they rule the world and that true faith is what we refer to as "patriotism" which substitutes secular symbols for the Kingdom of God. By "privatizing" faith and walling it up from public life, we have done pretty much what the Romans did. Prominent symbols of faith are banished from "public" property. (Of course the Supreme Court has left the ones on that building stay put - true irony!) The gospel scripture for today is not just about exorcism. There were lots of folks in Jesus' time who claimed to do that. It is really about who is truly in charge of the world. We humans still have a lot to learn. AMEN
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