Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish

FR MICHAEL BIBLICAL IMAGERY

(Fr Michael Boakye Yeboah: Vice Rector of St Gregory Seminary, Kumasi-Ghana)

IS GOD DEAD?

The prophet Habakkuk’s prophetic message for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time can puzzle one’s mind to consider if those who hold the view that “God is dead” had a point or not. The question “Is God dead?” is a more venerable one than some who have asked it during the past decade have been aware. Many centuries ago, the Psalmist declared, “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.” The pioneer philosopher of science Lucretius – no fool – acknowledged that there might indeed be gods out there somewhere, serene and indifferent, but he had no patience with those persons who “supposed that the gods designed all things for the sake of men.” In contrast to the theist’s grand claim that in the beginning God, by an act of will, created the heavens and the earth, the sturdy Roman aristocrat proposed an evolutionary view almost deliberately ugly in its naturalism: “Thus the ponderous mass of earth was formed with close-cohering body and all the slime of the world so to speak slid down by its weight to the lowest point and settled at the bottom like dregs.”

            Constantine, St Augustine, and the Middle Ages (to telescope a great deal of Western history) are commonly supposed to have put a stop to all such impieties, but as the Middle Ages waned the old heterodoxies surfaced again. John Herman Randall, in his widely used textbook, The Making of the Modern Mind, suggested that the first “modern” symptoms of God’s fatal illness may have been diagnosed in the fifteenth century by the sometime Dominican friar Giordano Bruno, who revived the Lucretian concept of infinite space and thereby broke open the tidy cosmopolis in which God and man had previously dwelt together. By the time of the Copernican and Cartesian revolutions, Randall intimated, the God whom medieval man had worshipped was indeed mortally stricken. The conditions of life and the culture of the time made people to build an “ill” concept of God’s death. In such a culture, strong faith is required and the first reading and the Gospel provide the thesis and antithesis of our biblical analysis for the 27^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C).

            Some other frustrated minds have had recourse to this philosophy and theology basically because of how the all-powerful God has allowed violence and all kinds of evil to dominate our world. The prophet Habakkuk words may be interpreted like that when he said: “I cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not intervene.” The prophet in the first reading can no longer endure the situation the world finds itself in. Violence, abuse, and oppression are everywhere! He cannot comprehend how God can simply stand by and watch. Men cannot improve the world’s situation by themselves. If anything is to change, God will have to become involved, and at least help men to change things. Initially God’s reply has an Old Testament tone: Be patient, Messianic salvation will soon arrive. “It presses on to fulfillment and will not disappoint.” Essentially this will also be the New Testament answer, for example, in Revelation, when man can no longer offer resistance to the devilish powers of the netherworld and cries out to God: “Come!”, the Lord answers “I come quickly” (Rev. 22:17, 20). Yet a difference is to be found: in the New Covenant the Christian not only waits (“wait for it, for it will surely come” [Hab 2:3]), but also fights alongside the Lamb, rides with him into the battle (Rev 19:14). In that fight, to appear to be defeated with the Lamb is already a form of victory.

            God has not given us a cowardly spirit for us to philosophize or theologize that “God is dead.” The second reading hints at the same. The chosen one should remember the spirit that was given him in the laying on of hands. He ought to let the fire inside him, which perhaps is only smoldering, be “kindled anew”, for it is “a spirit of strength, love, and wisdom.” All three words may be viewed together: strength is located precisely in love (and this is love that is prudent and deliberate rather than ecstatic) which is needed to fight against powers inimical to God. This strength, which is love, is the weapon of the Christian. Paul brings this home yet again: One ought to persist in the strength granted by the Holy Spirit, “abide” in the “love” that has been given, and do so according to the example of the saints, who retained strength to suffer for the Gospel even in prison. This can indeed be the “good fight” (2 Tim 4:7), the most fruitful struggle, since it is fought alongside the Lamb.

            The Gospel clarifies things even more. To believe is not simply to sit back and wait until the Lord comes and serves us with his grace. Faith receives its incomprehensible efficacy (tossing a tree into the ocean) in the course of serving the Lord, who, after all, has become the servant of us all and cannot stand to see anyone lazily let himself be served by him (sola fides). Instead, he takes it as self-evident that his followers serve alongside him, which really means they serve him, for “where I am, there will my servant also be” (John 12:26). Moreover, this serving does not take place in haughty pride over how useful to the Lord my co-service may be (as if he could not do anything without me). Just the opposite – in modesty the servant knows the words of Jesus: “Without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Since he has already done everything for us, the correct estimation of ourselves is the one commanded by the Lord himself and expressed in the confession, “We are useful servants; we have only done our duty.”

            In our contemporary day if one is not blessed with an increased in faith, there can be a great temptation of the mind that God is dead. Like the apostles in today’s Gospel, we ask Jesus to increase our faith, so that against all odds we can still believe in the redemptive powers of God. God is not dead, for He is the same yesterday as He is today and as He will be forever – we need patience to wait for his intervention. We should not be pessimistic and use the prevalence of evil to determine the existence of God but rather we should be optimistic by seeing God’s mighty deeds in his marvelous works in our world. This saying means that even that which looks completely impossible becomes possible, if it is approached with faith. We have only to think of the number of scientific marvels, of the number of surgical operations, of the feats of endurance which today have been regarded as utterly impossible. With a faith as a grain of mustard seed, nothing will make you entertain the thought that “Is God dead”!