Twenty-first of Year C
August 2010
As I have often mentioned before the Bible tells us some things about God but tells us far more about human beings - about ourselves.
The Bible is the story of God striving to reveal Himself, and what He is like, to human beings.
Despite the stories about the faith of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the twelve sons of Jacob - the Patriarchs; Despite the stories of Moses, Joshua etc. and their claimed belief in the ‘One True God’ they were in fact idolaters with a pretty fluid belief in many and varied ‘gods’ just like all the tribes and nations who surrounded them.
It was not until the captivity in Babylon about 500-600 BC that belief in One Supreme God began to emerge. This is also the period during which many of the early books of the Old Testament were written down for the first time, drawing on oral tradition and ancient folklore as well as written fragments.
Human beings - homo sapiens - as we know them today were already in existence for not just thousands of years before this but for hundreds of thousands of years. For all these years, God - the Supreme Being, Creator of all things visible and invisible - was striving to reveal Himself to human beings.
Striving to reveal Himself, I say, and not with great success, seeing as the idea of the ‘One True God;’ the ‘One Supreme Being,’ only began to emerge two thousand five hundred years ago and this only among a small insignificant tribe in the Middle East called the Israelites.
The Bible is the story of this gradual awakening of the Israelites to the idea of and to a gradual belief in the ‘One True God.’
This gradual growth of belief in the ‘One True God’ was punctuated by many and frequent reversions to polytheism.
When writing the Bible, after the events described had happened, the events were always interpreted in the light of their growing belief in the One True God. That is famines, epidemics, defeats in battle, droughts etc. were chastisement for reversion to polytheism. Abundance, peace, success in battle, good health etc. were the reward for belief in the ‘One True God.’ The chastiser and the rewarder was of course the ‘One True God.’ This was how any good leader acted in the event of disloyalty or loyalty at that time. The ‘carrot and the stick’ with which we are familiar to this day.
Therefore most of the Bible is a very subjective account of events and reflects the beliefs of the authors rather than the objective reality of God. In short it tells us more about human beings and how they regarded God rather than what God is really like.
But from time to time the Bible produces pure gems of insight into the reality of God.
Today’s first reading is such a gem.
Today’s second reading has some of the carrot and stick outlook and should be looked at as an exhortation to take the ups and downs of life as necessary for our total development as good human beings and opportunities to live as Christians in good times and bad.
The Gospel reading is simply Luke taking a swipe at the Jewish authorities, both religious and civil, for rejecting Jesus and having him executed.