Peace in our turmoil

The psalmist proclaims “we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” in the text chosen for the Roman Catholic Lectionary today. The passage from the Book of Revelation today is the vision of the destruction of Rome, the centre of the evil empire which is persecuting Christians. The Gospel from Luke is the foretelling of the destruction of Jerusalem, which occurred at the hands of the Romans before the Gospel was written. The destruction of the evil cities is a theme which goes at least as far back as Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis. (Genesis 19.24). Luke presents the destruction of Jerusalem as the consequence of the failure of the Holy City to embrace Jesus message of trust in God. The failure to trust in God has been attributed as the root of much of the trouble in our salvation history. The exile of the people of God to foreign lands seems to be contrary to the praise heaped on God by the psalmist. The unfolding of tragedy to peoples and individuals is multi causal. Failure to trust in God and direct our actions according to His Will can be the loss of moral compass which brings us to exile from loved people and places. The other phenomena cited by Luke are natural occurrences in our world. Fire, flood and the action of nature are not divine punishment. They do remind us that our personal exile from the world may come without notice. Trust in God is the faith that the praise of the psalmist holds true regardless of the circumstances in which natural disaster, disease or our own choices have brought us destruction. Rabbi Harold Kushner has written very insight fully about the position of God in the lives of people in turmoil and trouble. He asserts, echoing the psalmist, that God is the first to cry with us in our exile in mourning, remorse, loss and destruction.