Prophets of our Times

March 16, 2025

On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates. That is the last line from today’s first reading.  This and many other similar readings found in the Old Testament are good examples of how we tend to confuse Scriptural passages with political or historical realities.  These are the kinds of passages that those Jews and Christians who take the Bible literally, consider as ‘proof’ that God had promised the land that is currently known as Israel to the Jews.  

And yet it is sobering to note that scholars seem to agree that the ancestors of those we call the Jews, seem to have escaped/migrated from Egypt  around 1300 BC, but the book of EXODUS was written around 400 BC, based on an oral tradition that started around 600 BC. So one could very well ask whether the stories and the promises to Abraham about the land being given to the Jews were later narratives meant to justify the Jews’ violent and genocidal overthrow of those whom they conquered when they took over Palestine or what was then known as the land of Canaan. I use the term genocidal because there was/is a  law of ‘herem’ that is found in the Book of Deuternomy, which demanded that the Jews annihilate all the inhabitants of the land they conquered in Canaan (now Israel) - including every single woman, child and livestock. This is the kind of teaching that gives religious justification to all the horrors that human  beings inflict on others.

These kinds of post-facto religious mythology/stories are common in many religions. So conservative Hindus use the religious narratives of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (two religious epics) to justify their claim that violence can and should be used to punish those who go against Hindu religious beliefs, just as Krishna supported the Pandavas to kill the Kauravas and all their familes, and Ram used his divine prerogatives to kill Ravana and many in the latter’s kingdom. Conservative Muslims do the same to justify violence against the ‘enemies’ of Islam’.  Christians too, claiming that it was their religious duty to  conquer the whole world for Christ as he was meant to be King of all, also unleashed atrocities on many populations down the centuries.   

Often, when I reflect on these realities, I seem to be led to the conclusion, that since over 90% of religious followers are blindly following their respective religions, perhaps it is better that religion is banished, - for, on a comparative scale, we can surely ask whether it does more harm than good.

However, I see this same propensity towards ‘creating’ evil in almost any ideology or belief  that is blindly followed - whether they are beliefs found in communism, capitalism, liberalism, nationalism, conservatism, feminism, and in many other isms.  It would seem that wherever and whenever  there is a blind following of what is preached or taught, there seems to be much harm done, even as there is good. The only difference, perhaps, is that those who believe in some sort of religion (blindly or otherwise) constitute over 90% of the human population and so the potential for good and harm is greatly multiplied.

At the same time, it seems to me that human beings cannot live without ideologies, whether religious or otherwise. Even atheists follow certain ideologies and sometimes aggressively so. And many ideologies, generally, do add an insight to the human experience. In the case of religion, the ideology is based on a an essential intuition or insight that there is something beyond our empirical experiences, something that connects us all at some deep level. And it is this intuition that makes all religions as much about relating to each other, sometimes even more so, than about the existence of that ‘other’ reality. So, since having ideologies seems to be essential to human beings, perhaps all we can ask for is that such ideologies (religious or otherwise) should be constantly rethought and reexamined, modified and improved, based on the learnings of humanity - from whichever ideology - that have emerged down the centuries

Such a periodic renewal happens in religious groups when later prophets and saints remind us of the original inspiration, and point out to us where we have gone astray. Of course, soon enough, we institutionalise even these prophets and saints. A good example is found in the story of Francis of Assisi who chose to serve the poor and rejected the consumer society represented by his father and his way of life.  When Francis’ father, Pietro, questioned his son’s generosity (after all it was the money his father had accumulated that Francis was giving away) and servitude to the poor, Francis chose to strip off his clothes and renounce his paternal inheritance. And from then on he exhibited in his own life his radical understanding of Jesus’ teaching: Blessed are the poor.  The Franciscan orders that were found to carry on his legacy, were always meant to witness this kind of a poverty that stood in deep solidarity with the poor - but as they got institutionalised  one certainly cannot see Francis' kind of poverty being witnessed in most (all??) of the various Franciscan orders that owe their inspiration to him.   Francis’ radical vision has been domesticated!!!! But then around ten centuries later, a new somebody arises to remind us of our duty to the poor, and so we have a Mother Teresa, for example, who focused on serving the rejects of society, those found abandoned on the streets of our cities.  But will such a  vision too be gradually diluted over the years?  A look at history may push us to ask the question: Are all religious groups struggling like Sisyphus who was cursed to keep rolling a boulder to the top of a hill only to see it roll down again?  

What then is our role in bringing about the kingdom?  We, who believe that the message of Jesus is truly necessary and life-giving for our world today, cannot afford to be satisfied with fulfilling the rituals and rules of the institutionalised Church. And so, in the face of a new and evolving world,  we too are called to be prophets and saints, called to continue to review, re-imagine and build further on the life-giving insights of the founders, prophets and saints who came before us. To adapt what Obama said about change, we can perhaps say about prophets and saints: ‘Prophets and Saints will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we are waiting for.  We are the prophets and saints that we seek.” 

First Reading: Genesis 15: 5-12, 17-18

He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.” But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.” Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half.  Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. (Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”)

When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates—

Second Reading: Philippians 3: 17 – 4: 1 or 3: 20 – 4: 1

Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.  But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends!

 

Gospel: Luke 9: 28b-36

Jesus took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what he was saying.)

While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud.  A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.”  When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves and did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen