Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord," Habbakuk laments. 'But you, O Lord, do nothing to stop it...why must I gaze at this misery!?'
How often we make the lament of Habakuk our own! Violence and misery, wars and murders, suicides and betrayals, people stripped of their dignity and even their humanity...Its never been so bad, and it's as if God doesn't care!
Well it has been this bad, and it probably will be until the day we depart this valley of tears, but the reason for the violence, dear Habakuk is not the will of God, but the deeds of men, for as Pogo used to say, I have met the enemy, and he is us!
Whether we're Cain, the King or the Pharaoh, it is our sin which is the author of violence and our hardened hearts which incubate our own misery.
Cain
The primordial act of violence in the scriptures is raised in the heart of Cain. The scriptures tell us that Cain raised wheat, while his younger brother Abel raised sheep, one a cattleman, the other a farmer. And when they went to offer sacrifice to God, Abel's offering was seen as more pleasing. At which Cain grew jealous and killed his brother in a jealous rage!
Jealousy was and is is the green-eyed monster, ever longing for the greener grasses in the other fellow's yard. Jealousy is never satisfied and almost always leads to a violent rejection of the will of God. Uh, excuse me God, I think you must have made a mistake. This is the life you chose for me? But where's the yacht, or the private plane, or the awards for my stunning beauty, or the perfect children, or the Nobel prize, or the bit about being smarter or more powerful than everybody else? Where indeed, is al that stuff I know will make me happy? Well if you won't give it, I guess Ill just have to take it!
And so we make believe we know best, or at least better than God what's best for us, and so we plot and plan our destinies. And despite the fact that our schemes must be very amusing to God, we plug right on, for ours is the kingdom and the power and the glory...by hook or by crook. Jealousy is a miserable little wretch.
The King
And then there's the King, and his murderous lust for Bathsheba, which leads the great David to the deceitful slaughter of her husband Uriah. There were really two murders committed by King David that day...one of the virtue of Bathsheba, whom David turned from a person to a thing, and then the brutal killing of one of his most loyal soldiers. All out of a desire to possess the one who did not belong to him and his childish willingness to treat human persons like toy soldiers for the fulfillment of his own fantasies.
It's the same violence we embrace each time we seek to defraud another of their human dignity, to dehumanize the one God made in his image and likeness, ignoring who he made them to be.
It's the sin that drove a young freshman to the George Washington bridge this past week....it's the sin of every kind of pornography...whether the Internet kind that turns vulnerable young people into things we use for our selfish amusement or the political kind that turns all public servants and personalities into objects of ridicule and derision.
Such sins refuse to accord respect to anyone. Everyone is subject to our use and abuse, twisted and destroyed for our entertainment. Policemen or parents, jurists or presidents, priests or physicians, each are but another titillating opportunity to turn real people into jokes, to deride embarrass, and destroy...oh, how the mighty have fallen! So we revel in their misery! What fun for the giggling crowd!...the worst kind of character assassination, worthy neither of the fifth grade school yard, of twitter, TV or the blog. For if I have not love, I am nothing. And if I have not respect, I cannot love.
The Pharoah
And then there;s the genocide of Pharaoh. It started with the death of Joseph and his brothers, the last of the sons of Jacob. Exodus tells us why the genocide begins: “the Israelites were fruitful and prolific. They became so numerous and strong that the land was filled with them.” (Exodus 1:7).
It’s the fear of the stranger, then, that moves Pharaoh to enslave the people whom he knew not! So he does two things: First, he makes all the Israelites slaves, appointing cruel taskmasters over them. And then he calls in the Jewish midwives and commands them to kill every newborn Hebrew child.
Such hatred is as timeless as fear itself: fear of the unknown, fear of the stranger that grows into a desire to make those people just disappear. And while the fear has been the same in every human heart, the identity of those people changes with each generation in every land. For the Hutus, those people are the Tutsis, for the Nazis, they are the Jews....for the Jews they are the Palestinians....and even here in Worcester, for the Yankees they were the Irish, for the Irish they were the French, for the French, they were the Italians, for the Italians they were the Puerto Ricans, for the Puerto Ricans, they were the columbians, and on and on and on, in never ending cycles of suspicion of the next one down on the ladder, breading hate, discrimination, and even violence.
The antidote to such fear, of course, is the confidence of the children of God, who welcome the alien as a brother, treat the stranger as they treat their Lord, and even seek to love their enemies as they love themselves.
So what's the remedy? Is it our good reason, our common sense, or our ability to figure it all out. Hardly! For left to our own devices, we only succeed in digging ourselves deeper and thickening the web of our sins and deceptions.
Our only hope is to be redeemed by Christ, with absolute faith in him, and an absolute surrender to his will, that the hardening of our hearts might be redeemed by the blood which flows from his side. For at the end of the day, 'We are nothing but unprofitable servants, who if they had faith but the size of a mustard seed, would never know violence or misery, ever again.
Monsignor James P. Moroney
Rector
