Homily for Tuesday
12th Week of Ordinary Time
June
21, 2022
2 Kings 19: 9-11, 14-21, 31-36
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph Residence, New
Rochelle
“You
alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth” (2 Kings 19: 15).
2 Kings 18-19, just a little of which appears in our lectionary, provides us with accounts of the Assyrian assault on the kingdom of Judah, part of a broad campaign to subdue the rebellious western provinces of their brutal empire. These chapters contrast the arrogance of the Assyrians with the Jews’ humble reliance on the Lord. According to the boasting of Sennacherib, numbers, military might, and siege works make him lord of the earth; he mocks the powerless gods of the nations, including the God of Israel.
King
Hezekiah of Judah—one of the few kings recognized in our Scriptures as devout
and upright—prays to the Lord for deliverance, and the Lord sends Isaiah to
announce his answer: Jerusalem laughs at
the power of Assyria (19:21), and Sennacherib will be forced to retreat (19:28). Today’s last verse recounts how a plague of
some sort devastated the Assyrian camp and compelled them to go home
(19:35-36). The Lord proved himself more
powerful than a mighty army and the gods of Nineveh. Lord Byron tells this tale in a magnificent
6-stanza poem, “The
Destruction of Sennacherib.”
Every
government and many scientists, businessmen, scholars, journalists, and others
who shape public opinion and public policy fall into the temptations of
Assyria: to think that wisdom and power
come from armies, money, study, laboratories, and “expertise.” You may remember David Halberstam’s book about
how The
Best and the Brightest technocrats and academics led us into the
Vietnam War and couldn’t get us out of it.
The
Jewish experience and Jesus’ teachings tell us something else. Russia is the latest empire to face this
issue and seems no readier than Assyria to learn from it. Western society has our own lessons to learn,
our own ways in which we pretend to wisdom, usurp the ways of the Creator: seeking salvation in weapons, reproductive
technology, perversions of sexuality, decisions about life and death.
Your role as teachers was once to try to impart authentic wisdom to the young—the wisdom of Hezekiah and Isaiah—by which to guide their lives and influence their families and their careers. Now your role is to pray like Hezekiah for your past pupils, which you do, and for our national and international leaders and all who shape mores and policies. It’s a lot! Join Hezekiah’s plea: “Lord our God, save us from the power of [human beings], that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, O Lord, are God” (19:19).
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