9th Sunday after Pentecost 25.7.10 Divine punishment
Our Lord laments over Jerusalem which has missed so many opportunities to get things right with God but has missed them all. He foresees the destruction which will come upon them in 70AD.
Things have not improved much, one fears, in our own time. Repentance never seems to be a popular activity.
If destruction follows too much sin, then repentance does not always follow destruction.
In our time, if a disaster happens there are various responses, but repentance is often not one of them.
a) People will say that it was not God involved, but only scientific principles at work.
b) Or it will be said that God does not punish people in that sort of way (even though the Bible is full of stories where He does use nature or foreign armies to punish rebellious people. And there are countless other passages threatening such action).
c) Or some will say that if God does do such things then He is not the sort of God I want to believe in, and they will then leave Him.
It is true that God is love, but Love does not always follow human thinking. God loves us in a way that is designed for our overall good, and this requires sometimes that He take from us a lesser good to replace it with a greater one.
The greatest good we can have in this life is to know what it means to love God, to be united with Him; to be able to renounce sin so that we can walk fully in His ways.
This is the best thing for us, though it will not usually be our first choice. We will be tempted to seek happiness in much more immediate things, which may often be displeasing to God and harmful to ourselves.
He will intervene if He thinks it is for our good, and His interventions may seem quite rough to us. But He sees it necessary to remind us from time to time of the fragility of our earthly life and of how impossible it is that the things of this life alone can satisfy us.
So the odd earthquake or hurricane might be coming to a town near you...!
What must be our response? When we hear about how slow the Jews were to repent we are meant to repent more quickly. If others have been slow we will be quick.
We can do a great deal to decrease the need for divine punishment if we simply do what God is asking: Repent, Change the way we are living, Obey Him at all times.
He does not enjoy punishing us; it is a last resort for Him. This is why Jesus was weeping. But He has to do something to get our attention.
We pray for our own ongoing conversion to His will; and we pray for others to repent before the disaster not after.
It is said the people laughed at Noah for building the ark when there was no sign of rain. They laugh at us for going to church, for taking all this God-talk seriously. It is not so funny when a disaster comes.
We pray that the Lord will not punish us as our sins deserve. We pray that everyone will come to repentance in this time of mercy; the delay is to give us time. God could have ended the world a long time ago.
It is always a good time to repent, to start again. It is never too late if we are still alive, but any later than this might be too late.
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