Word to the Wise
Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - Tuesday in the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
[Jeremiah 14:17-22 and Matthew 13:36-43]If I walk out into the field, look! Those slain by the sword; if I enter the city, look! Those consumed by hunger.....
Jeremiah's lament seems to be directed at two disasters that inflict the land: war and pestilence/drought. There is no point distinguishing between them in regard to responsibility. Whether the problem is meteorological or political in its cause, Jeremiah attributes both to Israel's infidelity and idolatry. If Jeremiah has a "program," it is the renewal of the nation's covenant with God and a return to the strict monotheism that has unified the people at their best. However, in this case, God lets Jeremiah know that the disasters are an inevitable punishment that must occur as a result of human policies! I find echoes of this in events like 9/11 and Katrina. One is a result of war and the other of nature! We tend to take the "high road" in all these events and refuse to acknowledge that our own conduct may contribute to the damage that enemies or nature may cause. That damage may be in terms of thousands of innocent lives lost because of bad foreign policy or millions of acres of wetlands that have been weakened by humans acting through corporations, etc.. We make ourselves vulnerable by our own destructive national behavior. Jeremiah has a few things to say to us about that! AMEN
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