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Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Fr. J. D. Ousley
26 March 2006IIChron.36/Jn 6“History Lessons”
In the Name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
The Second Book of Chronicles is rarely encountered in the Sunday lessons assigned to be read in the Episcopal Church.
The Book is, as its title says, a set of "chronicles" of the history of the people of Israel. Much of that history is about monarchs and wars — and about the fortunate and not-so-fortunate political events that occurred in the life of the Hebrew people.
Admittedly, the two Books of Chronicles are somewhat repetitive and their ancient military history seems pretty irrelevant to modern life; I imagine that's why they are rarely read in church. But the lesson we heard today has some interesting accidental connections with places that are in the news right now.
The lesson describes a devastating loss suffered by the Hebrew army. As a result of Israel's defeat, the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed, and the people of Israel were forced into exile.
When we look at the lesson closely, we notice that after the army of Israel was beaten by the King of the Chaldeans. The king forced the Hebrews to leave their "promised land." They were brought under guard to the city of Babylon — and Babylon was located in the country we now know as Iraq!
There is a second coincidental link with places that are on our minds these days. The Hebrews remained in Babylon until they were rescued from their slavery by King Cyrus of Persia. King Cyrus allowed them to return to Israel and rebuild their Temple. Of course, the modern name of Persia is Iran!
Now, for me at least, these political references don't give us any direct insight into our contemporary situation in the Middle East. The whole area is known as the "cradle of civilization;" the peoples inhabiting Iraq and Iran have long histories as do the people of Israel. No wonder, there's much in the history books about all three nations.
So we should be careful of trying to read too much into such ancient texts. And we should be wary of using the Bible to try to make predictions about what will happen in our own near-term political future.
Most important: the Bible doesn't give us grounds to believe that God is "on our side" in a particular conflict.
In fact, the lesson from Second Chronicles makes exactly the opposite point! The writer says that in this case God was on the side of Israel's enemies! The Hebrew priests and people were, the author writes, "exceedingly unfaithful. The people of Israel had, "polluted the house of the Lord that he had consecrated in Jerusalem."
Not only was the Lord not on the side of the Hebrews: he used their enemies to cause a harsh judgment to be leveled against them.
And this passage illustrates another important principle about God and politics: the divine role in human history might only be discerned long after the events have taken place.
Of course, at the time, as the people of Israel were forced into captivity in Babylon, they saw nothing but disaster in what they were suffering. They would have shared the song of the Psalmist who wrote, "By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept" — they wept as they remembered Jerusalem.
Only after many centuries, by the time the Books of Chronicles came to be written — only then did the Hebrews reach the conclusion that God had been involved in their catastrophic exile.
They had been justly punished. They had strayed from the divine law, and God had used the shock of political defeat to bring them to their senses. Or, at least, that was the lesson they learned from their history.
Now, like the ancient Hebrews, it seems to me that we can sometimes detect God's will in events of the distant past. When we proceed carefully, we can make a spiritual reading of history.
We can learn the lesson, for example, that the persecutors of God's people don't endure for ever. Today, there is no longer a Roman Emperor — even though, at the time of Jesus, the Emperor was the most powerful person in the world. It was the armies under the Emperor's control who caused the Jerusalem Temple to be destroyed a second time some forty years after Christ's death.
And it was the Roman Emperor who later ordered the worst persecutions of the early church. Yet this powerful, political figure has now vanished into the dust of history — while both Judaism and Christianity, against all the odds, have survived.
Or, to take a much more recent example from a history to which we in America have a direct connection: around the time this church was constructed in 1864, there was huge popular opposition in New York City to President Lincoln and his government's actions in the Civil War.
Today, a century-a-and-half later, Lincoln is regarded as a national hero because his policies preserved the Union and eliminated the evil of slavery.
It would be too much to say that the cruel and bloody war between the states was "God's will." But the Civil War did lead to a more just society, and Christians feel that God would approve of this outcome. In fact, the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church last week issued a pastoral letter affirming the church's opposition to slavery and slavery's lingering effects in our society.
Yet, notice again that this judgment only arises in hindsight. To apply historical wisdom to our own period, we would have to imagine an historian in the very distant future. An historian looking back at today's world as the author of the Books of Chronicles once looked back on the history of the Middle East.
Such an historian might be able to judge that some nation which lost a war in the 22nd Century "deserved" to be punished. That historian might be able to judge, with the benefit of hindsight, that the leader of a some other nation had acted like the Emperor Cyrus of Persia to liberate God's people and God's will had been done through that action.
We can imagine that the historian could make such judgments in some cases though even from the perspective of a great distance in time. We can never be sure how God sees the events of history.
We might agree that God would have "approved" of Lincoln's actions. But Lincoln himself was never confident that God was on his side. And our current history gives ample evidence how hard it is to be sure that God would approve or disapprove of a given military action.
And notice, too, that it's hard to believe that God micro-manages our history.
A ludicrous example of this belief was the Protestant leader who ventured the opinion that God gave the Prime Minister of Israel a paralyzing stroke because the Prime Minister had forced Israeli settlers to leave Gaza!
Unfortunately, this propensity to judge is found on all sides of the political spectrum. Anglicans in England recently called for divestment of church holdings in some companies that do business with Israel, believing that God is calling Israel to be more accommodating to Palestinians! (Our own Bishop of New York was quick to challenge this policy. Yet he wisely did not claim to know what God was thinking!)
I raise all these issues to show that proposals to know the mind of God aren't new. People still make them. And I would also suggest that people of faith might be more careful about how they invoke God's will and God's judgment and God's point of view.
This is not to say that we can't make pronouncements about politics. In fact, we should be wary of the fatalistic belief that we can't know what God really wants us to do and therefore we as individuals and as a nation should stand idly by while events take their course.
Rather, even if we are sparing in our judgments, we need to take responsibility for own actions.
But that's because God is not a micro-manager; we are the managers of history. And as managers, we have to be very careful about predicting that certain actions are God's will.
For we don't have the benefit of hindsight. We can only act on uncertain knowledge — like the Psalmist whose plea we heard sung today. We can only, "pray for the peace of Jerusalem." We can only trust in the ultimate providence of God.
And now unto that same God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be ascribed as is most justly due all might, majesty, power, dominion and praise, now and forever, Amen.