SHOWDOWN BETWEEN THE GOOD AND THE BAD
Reading: Jeremiah 20: 11 But the LORD is with me like a dread warrior; therefore my persecutors will stumble, and they will not prevail. They will be greatly shamed, for they will not succeed. Their eternal dishonor will never be forgotten. 20:12 O LORD of hosts, you test the righteous, you see the heart and the mind; let me see your retribution upon them, for to you I have committed my cause. 20:13 Sing to the LORD; praise the LORD! For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.
There was a small town in rural Arizona. The town suffered big time from rivalry between the cattle breeders and the farmers. Maybe it is an ancient conflict too, between the nomads and the crop-growers. Many times the cattle grazed the cultivated fields of the farmers, who in response ate the cattle whenever they found them grazing crops in the forbidden.
Armed cowboys started to demand restitution from the farmers, who demanded the same from the cattle owners regarding their losses. The arguments were backed by Colts and Remingtons. Vendetta happened after vendetta. The local Sheriff entrenched himself in his office, surrounding himself with cheap Irish whiskey, and in frequent delirium he kept talking to the empty cells and the non-responding jail walls.
The only school closed when the only teacher escaped to a far away city. The church building was burned down long time ago. The friar died under the smoking roof he tried to save.
One mom said it to an other one at a farmers’ event that there still must be hope, as at least the Arizona Hopi says so beyond the mountain ridge. We must pray for better times.
The other mother said , maybe the bad times will not change themselves for the better, thus we should pray that somebody should come and deliver us from our chaotic conditions and from the rule of the fist and the guns.
They started to pray. More and more people prayed. It is like a sickness, when we are looking for remedy, the first step is the willingness to live, to second is the willingness to be healed, the third is the willingness to accept heavenly help in whatever form it comes. Willingness, iformed by prayers, is the best.
It
is an old and widely known story about the old farmer sitting on the
roof top during the flood, which threatened his house to collapse and
him to be drowned.
He prayed for a miracle, thus a boat arrived,
but he rejected the human help, saying that God will help me, I
prayed, and I am sure that my prayer was heard. Then a hovercraft came through, but he rejected them too, saying God will
help him. Then at last a rescue helicopter spotted him sitting
embracing his chimney, but he kept rejecting to be taken by the
chopper crew. Eventually the house collapsed, and he died. He went to
Heaven and filed an official complain, that the miraculous
help did not arrive. Where was
the providence to answer my prayer?
The
Angel of the Lord said: “First, all is well that ends well.
You are in Heaven. Secondly, I sent for you a rescue boat, a rescue
hovercraft, and a rescue helicopter. After all your rejections, I sent
the rescue angels to take you to Heaven.”
It is a millennia
old Midrashic story though contemporary storytellers dressed it up in modern costumes.
The essence of the story is right, when we want a change we have to start to pray. Prayers can not substitute actions, but no significant actions should be taken without prayers and meditation in order that the action should be a righteous one, a benevolent and a beneficial one.
The men
in town were mostly engaged in civil war of infinite vendettas, armed
groups , gangs and clans dictated the new rules, mostly the whimsical
will of the violent mighty in town. Thus
the women
started to pray for speedy delivery.
However
there is a huge difference when Heaven sends somebody to be a help of
the people
or somebody
is imposing himself by force on the population.
In
the human pyramid scheme, what
we
call the civilization of the ages of empires it
is an artificially created imperial
idea
that the deliverer should be an
imperial minded person.
Especially
when kings, Pharaohs, Emperors started to claim not only divine
origins but divine status for themselves as well, minimum that the
ruler is a Son of a God. Like
as it happened in
the year of 42
BC when
the
Roman law deified Julius Caesar, then his
nephew, his adopted Son, Octavius,
later
Emperor Augustus,
consequently
became a
"son of a
God."
Also the title of Savior was commonly used for the Roman emperor, as the ruler was responsible and hopefully able to maintain or restore peace in the empire. It was not only an obvious error in judgment, but it was also zealous idolatry and blasphemy. No wonder, the Roman Empire was a thoroughly wicked one. The Roman peace was enforced by the terror of the sword, the two-third of the society were slaves, the senate was corrupt and the emperors went insane ruling a militarized police state.
Sometimes people had hopes in from Heaven descending deliverers, but most of the time they prayed for a good ruler, for a benevolent King or a surprisingly merciful Emperor.
The women in the small town in Arizona prayed for a flesh and bone somebody to come and help in a frontier style. They prayed for an Old Shatterhand-ish person like Clint Eastwood style, a lone wolf hero.
In the civilized world aka from Japan to the USA, from Sweden to South Africa, from Chile to Korea, from Australia to Canada, people think that regarding prosperity, peace, or the American dream, what we really need, is a good president, or a benevolent king, good institutions, helpful organizations.
However all wrong. In the
Pharaoh’s Egypt, not a single, not even a charismatic and warm-hearted Pharaoh ever
had gotten rid of the slavery and the poverty of the people. The same
happened all over the world and throughout the whole history. The
mighty rulers and the oligarchy, even those who personally happened
to have some empathy for the poor, having a little heart for the
needy and the suffering, they never changed the rules we called the oppressive legal system of the civilized world.
Very characteristically this legal system is based on the laws of the ancient Roman Empire. What can we say?Jesus and the Roman Empire are incompatible, Moses and the Pharaoh’s Egypt are incompatible, Abraham and Emperor Nimrod’s Babel are incompatible.
It is a myth that an empathetic fist or a merciful military general, or a mighty warrior can change the systematic inequality and injustice. The system must be changed. Within the changed system there must be lawful guarantees entrenched and incorporated safeguarding the public against tyranny, dictatorship, exploitation, oppression, monopolies and oligarchy.
Even the US constitution does not
contain the required safety belt for real freedom and equality for
all. Because the theoretical equality before the court is not worth a
rusty penny without economical equality.
Thus the delivery of
the people must be systematic and by adherence to the divine law. As
Jesus said in
the Gospel of John, chapter 12 that :
“
If anyone hears My sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge
him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. He
who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges
him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.”
The
Law of the world is judged by the Law of the Gospel.
Nonetheless prayers were heard thus one day a lone rider came to town with two Colts and a Winchester riffle. He was a headhunter, as the cattle breeders traveled to the far away city and reported the cattle thieves to the court. The court created a warrant to catch the criminals, as at that time people stealing horses or even cattle faced occasionally capital punishment. Sometimes the warrant contained the dreaded words, that this or that notorious man is wanted dead or alive.
The headhunter went to the bar first,
where else in Arizona of the era of the smoking Colts.
The
gang leaders argued there over a couple of liter of gin. The
professional headhunter, a real fighter, a veteran from the civil war, overpowered the armed groups, forced them to compromise creating a balance of power in the town hall.
In exchange people elected the veteran the new Sheriff, and he settled and stayed in town to oversee the ceasefire in order to cultivate an enduring peace.
For decades the life was bearable and balanced in town. However the industrialization, the banking expansion, the infiltration of the bureaucratic hit-men of the oligarchy made the governments to hit the farmers and the cattle breeders with high taxes. Most of them lost their farms and flocks, and were forced to settle in the the big cities becoming slave workers in the big factories owned by the money worrshiping oligarchy.
The
Pharaoh’ s Egypt just arrived at the small town.
The fist of
empathy and the lone gun of mercy were not able to change to course
of the human history.
In
the nineteen sixties the women of the dispossessed families prayed
and said maybe this is final time to go to ask the Hopi beyond the mountain ridge
what to do.
Our civilized but morally barbarian leaders for two thousand years they did not listen to Moses, they did not listen to Jesus. Although it is certain that they will not listen to the Hopi, but at least the Hopi are still here to answer us what to do.
The irony, if it might be any irony here, is that, that the answer of the Hopi and Gospel is almost identical, as both came from the Creator Grandfather Spirit, and it is the same what John the Baptist told the people at the Jordan river: “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”
These principles had been observed by many indigenous
people on Earth for long millennia, including also in Israel, were the Law
of Moses in
the book of Deuteronomy,
chapter 15 demands
that
“However there shall be no poor with you; (for the Lord will surely
bless you in the land which the Lord your God gives you for an
inheritance to possess it;). AND exactly that happened in the
Jerusalem congregation led by the Apostles, as it is written: “there
were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who
owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and
put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone who
had need.”
Peace
and blessing was a reality among them not because an emperor enforced it, but it
happened for the sake of the Love of God, observed by the people who
observed the divine Law.
May the Lord’s name be blessed, may
His Kingdom come soon by the Holy Spirit, AMEN.
