Ordinary 28

The Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

_{Isaiah 25:6-10a; Psalm 23; Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14}

8 October 2023 – The New York Times headline: An Attack from Gaza and an Israeli Declaration of War, Now What?

We have seen the images and heard the stories. Revulsion and fear, anger and revenge to numbness again mark our spirits. We have been here before. Heard similar stories and seen related images. The evil named. The dehumanizing of the enemy by each side. The blame proffered.

Will this war escalate to engulf the region, the world? Now what?

As a people of faith, we need to ask, “Where is God in the midst of this horror and destruction?”

There is no war that is holy. There is no war that is just. There is only war. Human beings killing human beings. War is the absolute failure of the human race. “War is always a defeat!” _{[+Francis of Rome]}

“Where is God?” Have we considered that God is absent, abandoned by his sons and daughters?

If God is anywhere, is not God kneeing in a field holding in his arms the murdered body of Able, taking down from the tree the body of Absalom and crying with every parent, “If only I had died in your place,” accusing the heavens over the slaughtered children of Bethlehem, rocking and clutching his dead Son to his chest after being taken down from the cross, holding in embrace all who are dead?

Does not God weep with Eve and Adam, David, Mary and every parent throughout the ages and refuse to be consoled?

If God is anywhere, is God not in the midst of this pain and sorrow?

And what of Cain and his descendants?

Cain is vulnerable. Laid open for revenge. God put a mark on Cain to protect him. Cain belongs to God.

We are marked in the blood of the Lamb. We belong to God. “Bad and good alike”.

In the Midrashic tradition of the Jewish people, a tradition that uses story and imagination to reconcile apparent biblical contradictions, it is related…

One day the angels of God were rejoicing, dancing and singing with great excitement. God asked them, “Why are you so filled with song and dance?” They shouted with triumph, “Your children, Israel, have just walked dry shod through the Reed Sea to freedom!”

God again asked the angels, “Why are you so filled with dance and song?My children the Egyptians are dead”.