Where Do We Place Our Trust For Safety And Protection?

 

TUE EP Reflection 110320 (Ps 61, 62; Luke 13: 1-9)

Today’s Psalms 61 and 62 are just a delight to listen to and meditate on. They begin like a personal cry to God. Who knows how many personal cries each of us have? It would take a good discipline of writing them down, so we can bring them to God in prayer with our hands raised as we plead with God using these two Psalms. Think of bringing a few prayer requests that are close to your heart, as we pray to God: “Hear my cry, O God, and listen to my prayer. I call upon you from the ends of the earth with heaviness in my heart; set me upon the rock that is higher than I.” We are asking God to bring us to a stable place like a Rock. A higher place so we can get a better perspective because many times, when we are surrounded with hardships and difficulties, we tend to be overrun by our feelings and emotions that our perspective is skewed. Only when God brings us to a higher place, can we have a better understanding because most times, we don’t even understand ourselves, which makes it harder to understand God and others.

“I will dwell in your house for ever; I will take refuge under the cover of your wings.” Only with God, resides our absolute safety and protection. Many a times we place our safety and protection elsewhere. We tend to believe that Governments, presidents that we like will be our safety and protection. This is not true. It is true that God can use any of those to bring peace and security, but our idea of thinking that our well being depends on them is the same as believing they are ultimately your salvation. That’s why we get disappointed by people and human institutions always, because we place too much hope in them while they are incapable to protect us. This is why the Psalmist says: “For God alone my soul in silence waits; from him comes my salvation.” Won’t we try to repeat this every day in our daily prayers? Remind God that despite our constant attraction to things that can’t protect us, we are willing to readjust ourselves every moment so that our focus would be directed to our God. So, the question is: “Where do we place our trust for safety and protection?”

Do we put ALL our trust in our home surveillance cameras and capacity of weaponry to protect ourselves? Reality is that looming bad guys are always creepy and frightening and also, unfortunate circumstances do happen all the time. So, where do we place our trust for safety and protection? Our Gospel reading today has a peculiar story which was reported to Jesus that some Galileans had been killed by Pilate in the name of Caesar. Some Bible scholars think that they belonged to a faction that disowned Cæsar's authority and refused to pay tribute to him and were barbarously murdered. Since the Galileans were Herod's subjects, it is probable that this outrageous killing by Pilate caused enmity between Herod and Pilate. The Jewish outrage was also about the way they were murdered: the victims were killing their sacrifices in the temple at the time of the attack [they were caught off guard]. So, their blood was mixed with that of the sacrificed animals. The altar, which was a sanctuary and a place of shelter, now became a trap, a place of danger and slaughter. This reminded me of countless people who run to churches for safety but unfortunately met their death where they expected safety.

Jesus upon hearing the story, his reaction was surprising. They might have expected some kind of outrage since it was fellow Galileans that were murdered, even if everyone knew that they were secretly bad people themselves. But Jesus instead, veered their attention to another story of people being taken away by sudden death. Apparently, it wasn’t long since the tower of Siloam fell on people. It was a sad story, a freaky accident that befell on people who were expecting healing from the pool of Siloam. Jesus cautioned people not to think that the victims died because they were sinners. We humans have tendencies to think that the rich and powerful are saints while the sufferers are sinners, but Jesus wanted to set the record straight.

Towers were built for safety, but often prove men's destruction. How prepared are we in making peace with God, should a sudden end be on our path? Jesus found a call to repentance least the same situation happens to us unexpectedly. “Where do we place our trust for safety and protection?” Psalm 62 says: He alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold, so that I shall not be greatly shaken.