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President Obama Tuesday in his address to Congress gave an Ash Wednesday kind of exhortation. He said that America has reached the day of reckoning. Like Moses in today's first reading, the President was giving the country a choice between economic prosperity or continued decline. He was outlining how our country could remain strong enough to thrive under difficult circumstances. I'm not saying that President Obama is as prophetic or trustworthy as Moses, mind you. I am just pointing out the similarities in the two speeches.
President Obama was right to point out that a country filled with irresponsibility and greed will not prosper. His appeal to patriotism contained within it some vestiges of natural law, of doing good and avoiding evil. He did end his speech with God bless America, but of course, there were no other references to God. Moses, as we hear, is giving a similar life and death speech to the Israelites. Unlike President Obama, Moses' appeal to patriotism is tied directly to the Divine Law. President Obama appealed to fidelity to an American way of life. Moses appeals to the abundant life promised by God, a life lived in close friendship with the one true God who has revealed Himself. This abundant life grows stronger when the Israelites are faithful to the Divine Law given to Moses, and their chance of inheriting the promised land grows faint when the Israelites are unfaithful.
In telling his disciples that they are to lose their lives by following Him, Jesus is obviously claiming to lead His disciples to a promised land greater than that promised to Moses. Jesus is no longer promising first of all an abundant life within a physical land flowing with milk and honey. He seems to promise just the opposite in asking his disciples to take up their cross and to lose their lives. Jesus is leading his disciples to a physical kingdom not marked by mountains or fruit trees or rivers, but by the temple of His body. That kingdom grows into its fullness as new members are incorporated into His body. This is the pilgrimage for the Christian, to be incorporated into the body of Christ. Fittingly, the Divine Law given to Moses that guarantees a close friendship with God in the promised land gives way to a Divine Law that guarantees instead a perfect union with Jesus within the kingdom of His body. What is that Divine Law? In today's Gospel, it is summed up in two words. Follow me. In other words, find a way to be exactly where I am, even if you have to take up your cross.
Jesus claims that the kingdom of God is not ultimately found in a more prosperous America, nor in an Israel that is no longer marked by violence, although both of these would be nice. No, the kingdom of God is ultimately present through persons redeemed by the blood of Christ and incorporated into His eternal body the Church through the sacrament of the Eucharist. This is the everlasting kingdom that will have no end. It is a kingdom with unusual physical boundaries. God has made His home with us not in America or Israel or China or wherever, He has made His home with us by taking on a human body. It is these human bodies that are invited to share in the very Trinitarian life of God. That my friends, is the definition of ultimate prosperity. It is why Jesus is right to ask to to lose our lives and to follow Him, in order to find everlasting life! +m
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