BAD RELIGION

Homily for January 16^th, 2014: 1 Sam. 4:40-45.

          “Why has the Lord permitted us to be defeated today?” the elders of Israel ask after a defeat at the hands of a neighboring tribe, the Philistines. Without waiting for an answer to this question, the elders resolve on a counter-attack. This time, however, they resolve to take with them the ark of the covenant. This was a kind of portable tabernacle containing the tablets given by God to Moses and inscribed with the Ten Commandments. The ark had been carried before the people on their flight from Egypt. It was Israel’s most sacred and precious possession.  

          The ark was then resting in the temple at Shiloh where, as we heard yesterday, the Lord first called the boy Samuel, while he was sleeping. Because the temple priest Eli was old and almost blind, his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas (also priests, since Jewish priesthood was inherited) were the de facto guardians of this treasure. A previous chapter, not included in the readings for Mass, discloses that these two brothers regularly assaulted the worshipers at Shiloh, robbing them, and attacking them sexually as well.

          The people who decided to take the ark with them into battle reasoned that the God, whose protection the ark symbolized and guaranteed, would assure their victory over their enemies. This hope remained unfulfilled. Struck with fear by the shouts of joy that rang out at the arrival of the ark, the Philistines fight harder than ever and inflict what the text calls “a disastrous defeat” on God’s people. The wicked priests Hophni and Phinehas are killed; their aged father Eli drops dead when the news reaches him. And the Philistines carry off the ark in triumph.

          What had gone wrong? The people who thought victory was certain if the ark was with them were practicing bad religion. God, they assumed, was at their disposal. God is never at our disposal. We are at his disposal. God always hears and answers our prayers. But he does not always answer them at the time, or in the way, that we wish. 

          Whenever we ask the Lord for something, we need to pray, as Jesus himself did when he asked his Father, in the garden of Gethsemane before his arrest, for deliverance from the cup of suffering: “Not my will but yours be done” (Luke 2:42).