Help us, O God, our savior!

Where were the great theologians when the Jews really needed them, back in the time of the Babylonian Exile?  The scene of devastation described in today's first reading certainly calls for more than prophetic voices telling the people how they got into such terrible circumstances, or promising a time of restoration in the distant future.  Where were the master theologians like Cyril of Alexandria, our feast day hero, who rescued Christology from the Nestorians in the fifth century?  Why couldn't the insights of philosophical theology prevail for those ancient deportees who were forced to leave their Promised Land in such desperate disarray?  Surely they needed more than, "You got yourselves into this mess because you were so bad, but after a period of protracted punishment, God will find a way to bring you back home!"

The crises facing Catholics in North America today are daunting.  Some of us feel exiled from home.  Some are wondering when, and if, we can ever return to our Promised Land where community means everything, and where we are unafraid to raise our children.  Some of us are contemplating remaining in Babylon indefinitely.  As our Jewish forebears, we also have our prophetic voices exposing our sinfulness, calling us to accountability and conversion, and promising us a changed, if not a changed-for-the-better future.  Most of us are just homesick.  We don't want a new king, a new home, and a new identity.  We just want to be delivered from this time of exile.  Babylon is not our home.

How I would love to have a house built on rock right now!  This spiritual "home" feels like it is collapsing into the sand sometimes, with prophets screaming diatribes against "the sinners" at the top of their lungs.  While we all dissolve into despair, clinging to hope for a better day, the foundation on which we stand seems to be shifting.  What is our rock today?  Where should we be standing?

Those whose mission in the Church today is excoriating the sinners remind me of those who claim heaven in today's Gospel reading because they drive out the demons in the Name of God.  They are busy prophesying in God's Name, and doing mighty deeds in God's Name, indeed, but they are not loving others.  In the end, as Jesus declares in Matthew's Gospel, they will remain unknown by Him, considered evildoers themselves.

Jesus knew the importance of being others-centered in the context of crisis.  Those who keep as their mission the mission of Jesus are those who will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, by feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoners, and giving a home to those who have none.  God desires mercy, not sacrifice, so we have been told.  Jesus was sent to save sinners, not condemn them.  What is, and ever will be, rock solid about our faith is that God is with us, and we are with God when we love each other as Jesus loved us, without condemning, without retaliating, without constraints.

Love, after all, is the ground of our being, if we are God's children.  Today I will look for ways to love concretely and lavishly.  I will look for God down and in, instead of up and out there somewhere.  I will feed, give drink, offer comfort, or welcome someone into my home in the Name of Jesus, the Savior.

Help us, O God, our savior!  You alone are our Rock!  Give us the Spirit of Jesus!  Amen.