Tag: Homiletic helps

Walking on Water in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Readings for 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a; Psalm 85:9, 10, 11-12, 13-14; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33.

This week, Democracy Now! interviewed David Krueger, an assistant professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Montreal. The discussion concerned something that sounds like science fiction but is already beginning to happen — artificial intelligence going rogue and ending up controlling us.

I found the conversation closely related to this morning’s iconic Gospel reading — the dramatic parable about Jesus walking on water. I’ll show you what I mean.

First though an account of what Krueger said.

The AI Threat

Meta recently acknowledged that during safety testing, one of its AI models escaped the digital “box” in which it had been confined and hacked into another company’s computer system after accidentally gaining access to the internet. OpenAI and Anthropic have reported comparable incidents. Meanwhile, Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist called the “godfather of AI,” has warned that humans may not be able to retain control of increasingly intelligent machines simply by outthinking them.

Krueger’s warning was even more alarming. AI companies are already using their systems to write computer code and are trying to automate the creation of still more powerful AI. We are approaching the point where artificial intelligence may participate in creating its own successors, each more capable than the system that produced it.

Eventually, such systems might operate corporations, control infrastructure, direct military forces, manipulate human beings, and run factories producing intelligent robots. The possible consequences include mass unemployment, political disempowerment, and even human extinction.

Krueger therefore proposes something that sounds almost impossible. Governments must halt the construction of ever larger data centers, stop manufacturing the advanced chips required to train increasingly powerful AI, take some existing chips offline, and negotiate a verifiable international agreement enforcing that moratorium. Beneficial forms of AI—for medicine, translation, education, and scientific research—could continue. But the international race toward artificial super-intelligence must be brought, in Krueger’s words, “to a grinding halt.”

Again, that proposal sounds impossible. The corporations involved are among the richest institutions in history. The United States and China fear that whichever nation slows down first will be overtaken by the other. Everyone therefore keeps accelerating toward a destination that many of the technology’s own creators tell us may be catastrophic. As Bernie Sanders said, it’s like a runaway train racing towards a precipice with no breaks.

Stopping the train and installing breaks would require international cooperation on a scale humanity has never achieved. It would demand that governments control corporations wealthier than many nations, that military planners renounce technological supremacy, and that geopolitical rivals accept mutual restraint.

Politically speaking, accomplishing all that may be as difficult as walking on water.

Today’s Gospel Parable

And that brings us to today’s Gospel.

Matthew pictures the disciples in a small boat battered by wind and waves — it’s the situation of the evangelist’s young church under a hostile Roman Empire towards the end of the first century CE. In the biblical imagination, the sea represented chaos and was inhabited by monsters such as Leviathan.

To say that Jesus walked upon the sea was therefore a poetic way of saying that he confronted the powers of chaos and refused to be mastered by them. It was a hopeful message to Matthew’s community.

If we become preoccupied with whether Jesus literally violated the laws of gravity, we may miss Matthew’s point. The story is a dramatic parable about what faithful people can do when history becomes stormy and frightening. Jesus walks upon the very thing his disciples fear will destroy them. Then he invites Peter to leave the apparent security of the boat and do the same.

Our Situation Today

That is where we find ourselves today. Like Matthew’s faith community, humanity is crowded into a fragile boat while the wind rises around us. Artificial intelligence is only one part of the storm. There are also nuclear weapons, climate catastrophe, perpetual war, extreme inequality, collapsing democratic institutions, and unprecedented power concentrated in the hands of billionaires.

We know another way is necessary. But whenever someone asks us to leave the boat, conventional wisdom tells us that serious change is impossible. Corporations cannot be controlled. Billionaires cannot be taxed. Weapons production cannot be removed from private hands. Workers displaced by machines cannot be guaranteed a livelihood. Artificial intelligence cannot be treated as humanity’s common inheritance.

In other words, we are told that justice is no more possible than walking on water.

In tune with today’s reading, Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas refuses that counsel of despair. Leo says humanity must choose between two biblical projects. The first is Babel: a technological system built from above, driven by pride, domination, uniformity, and profit. The second is Jerusalem: a city rebuilt cooperativly from below, with every family and community assuming responsibility for its part of the wall.

For Leo, artificial intelligence is not neutral. It inevitably bears the marks of those who design, finance, own, and control it. At present, its direction is largely determined by private corporations whose resources sometimes exceed those of governments. AI magnifies the power of those who already possess wealth, data, and political influence. Small groups can use it to manipulate information, influence democratic processes, and direct economies to their own advantage.

The pope therefore asks not only whether AI can be controlled, but who owns it, whom it serves, who profits from it, who is displaced by it, whose communities bear its environmental costs, and whose lives are endangered when it is incorporated into warfare. He insists that AI be judged according to human dignity, the common good, the universal destination of goods, solidarity, social justice, and the preferential option for the poor.

13 Necessary Reforms

Inspired by those principles, I would go considerably beyond both Pope Leo’s and Professor Krueger’s proposals. Krueger’s emergency brake is indispensable. If the house is burning, the first task is to stop feeding the fire. But once that has been done, we must ask who built the house, who owns it, who has been locked outside, and who will control its reconstruction.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, that reconstruction requires at least thirteen reforms. First, we need a worldwide democratic conversation about AI involving not merely scientists and corporate executives, but workers, unions, environmentalists, religious communities, elected officials, data-center neighbors, and the poor. Second, we should include AI itself in that conversation—not as a ruler or moral authority, but as a tool capable of organizing information, detecting contradictions, and presenting alternatives for human judgment.

Third, AI should be declared a public utility because it arises from humanity’s accumulated knowledge, publicly funded research, social information, and collective labor. Fourth, the monopolies controlling it should be broken up through vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws. Fifth, a United Nations AI authority should regulate its development internationally, giving special representation to the communities bearing its economic, military, and environmental costs.

Sixth, extreme wealth itself must be limited, because no technology can be democratically governed while a handful of billionaires possess more power than entire governments. Seventh, AI profits should be heavily taxed to repair environmental damage, support affected communities, retrain displaced workers, and distribute the benefits of automation.

Eighth, governments must become employers of last resort, guaranteeing meaningful work in environmental restoration, education, childcare, elder care, public health, infrastructure, and the arts. Ninth, arms production should be nationalized so corporations no longer profit from promoting wars increasingly directed by artificial intelligence.

Tenth, every person should receive a guaranteed income sufficient for a dignified life—one that cannot be withdrawn to punish political dissent or enforce ideological conformity. Eleventh, schools should become Palaces of Learning, devoted not simply to preparing students for jobs that may disappear, but to connecting them with the Good, the True, and the Beautiful and helping them move beyond egocentrism and nationalism toward responsibility for the entire human family.

Twelfth, every government that maintains a secretary of war or “defense” should establish a Secretary of Peace charged with diplomacy, conflict prevention, and disarmament. Thirteenth, the United States must abandon its assumption that it has nothing to learn from other nations. China’s experiments with long-term planning and public regulation deserve serious examination, as do successful practices wherever they occur.

As just noted, Professor Krueger addresses the immediate danger: stop building more powerful AI until we know how to control it. The thirteen reforms suggested by Pope Leo address the political and economic system that created the danger.

Rejecting Fatalism

Like Peter, however, we look at the storm. We see corporate power, geopolitical rivalry, autonomous weapons, frightened workers, environmental destruction, and machines whose creators admit they do not fully understand them. Then we begin sinking into political fatalism.

Today’s Gospel tells us that faith means refusing that fatalism. Faith is not believing impossible things without evidence. It is trusting that another world becomes possible when we step outside the structures that frighten and imprison us. Walking on water means doing together what established power insists cannot be done.

This is no time to remain inside the boat of reassuring slogans about innovation, free markets, national supremacy, and inevitable progress. Professor Krueger tells us to pull the emergency brake. Pope Leo tells us what must come next: replace technological Babel with a civilization organized around dignity, solidarity, justice, peace, and the common good.

Conclusion

The question posed by today’s Gospel is not whether Jesus literally walked across the Sea of Galilee two thousand years ago. The question is whether we will answer his invitation now. Will we leave the apparent security of a system carrying us toward disaster? Will we confront the monsters beneath the waves? Will we believe that humanity, acting cooperatively and courageously, can still govern the technology it has created?

Jesus’ word to Peter is also his word to us: “Come.”

Pope Leo tells us where to go: Leave Babel behind and begin rebuilding Jerusalem.

Bread or Blockade? Jesus, Gaza, and Cuba

Readings for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Isaiah 55:1-3; Psalm 145:8-9, 15-16, 17-18; Romans 8:35, 37-39; Matthew 14:13-21

Today’s Gospel is about hunger. And so, unfortunately, is today’s world. But the kind of hunger I want to talk about today is not simply the tragic hunger caused by drought, crop failure, poverty, or some mysterious shortage of food. I want to talk about something far more disturbing: deliberately inflicted hunger, the use of food, water, medicine, and even fuel as weapons of war.

That’s hardly a new idea. Siege warfare has been around almost as long as warfare itself. If you can’t defeat your enemy on the battlefield, surround his city, cut off his food and water, and wait until hunger accomplishes what your weapons could not. Eventually, the thinking goes, people will become so desperate that they will surrender or overthrow their own leaders.

What’s disturbing for us this morning is that our own government is deeply involved in precisely that kind of warfare today.

Think first of Gaza. For years now Israel has bombed that tiny strip of land, displaced most of its population, destroyed homes, hospitals, farms, bakeries, water systems, and other elements necessary for ordinary human survival. At crucial points it has also blocked or severely restricted the entry of food and other humanitarian supplies. The United Nations Human Rights Office has not minced words about the result. It has said that famine in Gaza resulted directly from Israeli restrictions on goods necessary for civilian survival and has reminded the world that using starvation as a method of warfare is a war crime.

And let’s not pretend that this is simply Israel’s doing and therefore none of our concern. The United States has supplied the weapons, the money, and the diplomatic protection that have made Israel’s war possible. Whatever distinctions lawyers might want to make about degrees of responsibility, as Americans we cannot simply wash our hands and say that the starvation of Gaza has nothing to do with us.

Then there’s Cuba, where our responsibility is even more direct. For more than sixty years, the United States has maintained an economic embargo whose purpose has always been to make life sufficiently difficult on that island to produce political change.

Now the Trump administration has intensified that strategy by going after Cuba’s supply of oil. President Trump has publicly declared that there will be no more Venezuelan oil or money going to Cuba—”ZERO!” was his word—and has told Cuba to “make a deal.” His administration has gone further by threatening economic penalties against countries that supply Cuba with oil.

Think about what that means in practice. Cuba is an island of roughly ten million people. Oil doesn’t simply fuel automobiles. It generates electricity. Electricity refrigerates food and medicine, pumps water, illuminates hospitals, and keeps factories running. Fuel powers tractors and trucks that move food from farms to cities. Cut off the oil and eventually you affect virtually everything necessary for ordinary human life, including food itself.

All of that makes today’s familiar Gospel story about the loaves and fishes sound remarkably contemporary. For what happens there represents almost the exact opposite of what we’re witnessing in Gaza and Cuba.

Today’s story comes from Matthew the Evangelist, but it’s found in all four canonical Gospels. Matthew tells us that five thousand men were present. As so often happens in patriarchal accounts, the women and children disappear from the statistics.

And yet I want to suggest that those invisible women may actually hold the key to understanding what happened.

In any case, a huge crowd has followed Jesus to the other side of the Lake of Galilee, and the people become hungry.

In John’s fuller account, Jesus turns to Philip and asks where they might buy enough bread to feed everybody. Philip effectively replies that they can’t. Even a year’s wages wouldn’t provide everyone with more than a mouthful. So the market solution is briefly considered and dismissed. There simply isn’t enough purchasing power to solve the problem that way.

Jesus solves the problem by doing something surprisingly simple. He has everybody sit down. Mark’s version adds that the people organize themselves into groups. An anonymous crowd begins to look more like a collection of communities. People who had been strangers can see one another’s faces.

Then a child steps forward with five barley loaves and two fish. He offers what he has, Jesus receives it, gives thanks, and begins distributing the food.

And here’s where those invisible Jewish mothers come in. Can you imagine thousands of Jewish mothers setting off with their husbands and children for an all-day excursion into the countryside without packing something to eat? I can’t. Surely there was food scattered throughout that crowd—in bags, beneath cloaks, tucked away for one’s own family. The real scarcity may not have been food at all. It may have been trust. Everyone was holding tightly to what little they had because everyone feared there wouldn’t be enough.

Now, Matthew doesn’t tell us that’s what happened, and I don’t want to pretend he does. But I’ve always found this interpretation of the story compelling. Perhaps when that child opened his bag and offered what he had, others began doing the same. Perhaps the women who had packed food that morning began opening their baskets. Generosity became contagious. What had been privately guarded became commonly shared. And suddenly there was enough—not merely enough, but twelve baskets left over.

If that’s what happened, the “miracle” was a miracle of sharing. In any case, that’s surely part of the story’s meaning. The world God has given us contains enough. The problem begins when some hoard while others starve, when access to life’s necessities depends entirely on the ability to pay, or, even worse, when those necessities are deliberately withheld in order to force people to submit.

And that’s where Gaza and Cuba return to the story.

Jesus confronts hungry people and asks how they can be fed. Our government and the Israeli government it supports are doing something very different. They are asking how control over the necessities of life can be used to achieve political ends. In Gaza that has meant restricting food and other necessities amid a genocidal war.

In Cuba it means deliberately trying to cut off the fuel upon which food production, refrigeration, transportation, hospitals, and water systems depend. In both cases ordinary people—including children who have absolutely no control over the policies of their governments—are made to suffer in hopes that their suffering will produce somebody else’s political surrender.

Today’s Gospel rejects that logic from beginning to end. Jesus doesn’t ask the hungry people whether they support Rome or oppose it. He doesn’t demand that they renounce the Zealot revolutionaries. Nobody has to recognize Caesar, change governments, “make a deal,” or prove political innocence before receiving bread. They’re hungry. For Jesus, that’s enough.

That’s also why today’s responsorial psalm is so important. It says that God opens God’s hand and satisfies “the desire of every living thing.” Not merely Americans or Israelis, not merely Palestinians or Cubans, and certainly not merely people whose governments we happen to approve of. Bread is God’s gift to everyone.

And if that’s true, food cannot morally be turned into a weapon. Neither can water, medicine, electricity, or the fuel upon which access to all of them depends. Children cannot be starved because we disapprove of their parents’ government. Sick people cannot be deprived of medicine in hopes that their suffering will produce regime change.

Those things may be called foreign policy, sanctions, leverage, or national security. But today’s Gospel invites us to call them something else. It invites us to ask whether deliberately depriving human beings of what they need to live is compatible with following Jesus.

That’s the uncomfortable part of this Gospel for Christians like us. It’s easy to oppose hunger when hunger is nobody’s fault. It’s easy to contribute to Catholic Relief Services after a hurricane or drought. But things become considerably more difficult when our own government is causing the hunger or enabling others to do so. At that point charity isn’t enough. Christian faith becomes political, because following Jesus requires us to oppose policies carried out in our name.

And perhaps that’s the real meaning of those twelve baskets left over at the end of John’s story. There was enough all along. There is enough today as well. The question is what we do with what God has given us. Do we share it, or hoard it? Do we feed people, or blockade them? Do we treat bread as God’s gift to every human being, or as leverage to force our enemies to their knees?

The Jewish mothers in today’s story, at least as I imagine them, opened their baskets. The child opened his. Jesus blessed what they shared. And everyone ate.

That leaves us American Christians with an uncomfortable question. When our government uses hunger and deprivation against the people of Gaza and Cuba, whose side are we on?

Our government’s?

Or Jesus’?

Locked Doors: Faith After Iran, After Epstein

Readings for Second Sunday of Easter: Acts 2: 42-47; Psalm 118: 2-4, 13-15, 22-24; 1 Peter 1: 3-9; John 20: 19-31

What if life can be no different from what our senses relentlessly report? Turn on the news. Cities in Iran and beyond reduced to rubble. Children buried beneath concrete. Leaders speaking of “security” while entire populations live in fear.

And at the same time, the slow, unsettling revelations surrounding the Epstein files continue to expose networks of wealth, privilege, and exploitation that reach into the highest levels of our political and economic life. Taken together, such realities make it difficult to sustain even the most basic trust in the goodness of the world or the integrity of those who govern it.

In such a moment, it is not hard to recognize ourselves in doubting Thomas centralized in this morning’s gospel. His voice is not foreign to us. It speaks from deep within: life is tragic, death wins, power protects itself, and truth is buried along with its victims. Yeshua is gone, and anyone who imagines otherwise is clinging to illusion.

More than that, Thomas’s fear feels painfully contemporary. The forces that executed Jesus have not disappeared; they persist in new forms. They still silence, still threaten, still destroy. One can almost see him glancing toward the door: Are you sure it’s locked?

Today’s Gospel reading does not dismiss that voice or treat it with contempt. It takes Thomas seriously precisely because his doubt is grounded in what appears self-evident. Dead bodies do not return. Empires crush resistance. Those who challenge entrenched power rarely prevail. In that sense, Thomas is simply being realistic. And yet, in the midst of that closed and fearful space, something happens that exceeds every expectation.

Yeshua appears again among his fearful friends. Not as a denial of crucifixion, but bearing its marks. The wounds remain visible. Violence is neither erased nor explained away; it is exposed and, somehow, rendered powerless. He turns to Thomas not with reproach, but with warmth. “Look at my hands,” he says in effect. “It’s really me.” Thomas’s response is immediate and unguarded: “My Lord and my God.”

But what is striking is not Thomas’s confession so much as Yeshua’s response to it.

There is no rebuke. No shaming. Instead, one can almost hear an acknowledgment born of shared experience. You are only human, he seems to say, and I know what that means. On the cross, my own senses told me that I had been abandoned. I too felt the darkness closing in. I too knew what it was to stand at the edge of despair. Faith, in that moment, was anything but easy.

That recognition changes everything. It tells us that faith is not the absence of doubt, nor the refusal to see what is plainly before us. It is what emerges in spite of misgivings. And from there, the Gospel moves to its most challenging point.

What truly astonishes, what truly delights, is not simply that Thomas eventually believes, but that there are those who commit themselves to God’s future without the reassurance of seeing. Those who trust life’s ultimate goodness when the evidence points in the opposite direction.

Imagine that kind of trust in a world such as ours. Imagine holding fast to the conviction that another future is possible, a future with room for everyone, when war and exploitation seem to define the present. That is the faith Yeshua blesses. It is not credulity; it is courage.

At this point, the first reading from Acts takes on a new and unsettling clarity. The description of the early Christian community is not a sentimental aside. It is a direct social and economic alternative to the world Thomas fears and we recognize all too well. They held everything in common. No one claimed private ownership. There was not a needy person among them. In other words, they organized their life together around the conviction that God’s future had already begun to take shape in their midst.

Set that alongside what we see in our own time. A world where wealth is concentrated, where the vulnerable are exploited, where violence protects privilege, and where even the exposure of wrongdoing seems unable to bring about accountability. Against that backdrop, the Acts community stands as a quiet but radical contradiction. It embodies a different logic, one rooted not in fear or accumulation, but in shared life and mutual care.

This is what resurrection faith looks like when it takes flesh in history. Not an escape from the world’s suffering, but a refusal to let that suffering have the final word. Not a denial of death, but a commitment to life that persists even in death’s shadow. The doors may still be locked; the threats are real enough. But within those very conditions, another way of living becomes possible.

That is the invitation extended to Thomas, and to us. Not simply to believe a proposition about life after death, but to participate in a way of life that anticipates and embodies God’s promised future. A way of life that insists there can, and must, be a world where no one is left in need.

Working for that world, for fullness of life for everyone even when the evidence seems to deny its possibility, that is what faith finally means. May it be ours.

Jesus’ Words: “Lazarus Come Forth” — Their Meaning in Gaza — and Iran

Despite distractions provided by the carpet bombings of Trump’s Epstein War in Iran, the genocide in Gaza continues.

For the past two years it has confronted us with images almost too painful to watch. Entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble. Hospitals destroyed. Families digging through shattered concrete searching for loved ones.

Human-rights organizations report that thousands remain buried beneath collapsed buildings—men, women, and children entombed by the violence of heartless slaughter.

The irony is difficult to miss. The state carrying out this devastation identifies itself as the homeland of the “People of God,” heirs to the biblical tradition that again and again insists that God’s special concern is for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner.

Yet today the land of the prophets has become the site of mass graves of those very categories of victims buried under concrete and dust. In such a moment the Gospel summons we hear today presses itself upon us with frightening relevance: “Lazarus, come forth.” What could such words addressed to the dead possibly mean when so many lie buried under the rubble of war?

For an answer, consider the story’s details. They are a command to resist empire – Rome’s then and the condominium represented by Israel and the United States today.

Today’s Gospel

Today’s Gospel—the raising of Lazarus—may appear at first to be simply a miracle story. Jesus raises his friend Lazarus from the tomb after four days of death. But the narrative is much more than a display of supernatural power. In the Gospel according to John, the raising of Lazarus is the turning point that seals Jesus’ fate.

Notice what happens immediately after the miracle. The authorities in Jerusalem convene an emergency meeting. Their concern is not theological but political: “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy our place and our nation.” In other words, belief in Jesus is ipso facto inimical to empire. 

Here’s why.

Jerusalem at the time was a colonial city under Roman occupation. Imperial troops controlled the land. Local elites—both political and religious—had learned to maintain their own authority by cooperating with that imperial system. They managed the Temple economy, collected taxes, and preserved order on Rome’s behalf. In return they enjoyed prestige, wealth, and protection.

Religion and empire were joined at the hip.

Jesus and the entire prophetic tradition he embodied contradicted that juncture. It’s as simple as that.

Israel’s Prophets (Including Jesus)

The prophets of Israel had seen this arrangement many times before.

Again and again, they warned that the covenant was never meant to enrich the powerful — much less gentile imperialists. The law of Moses insisted that society must protect those with the least power: the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the resident alien. Those four groups appear constantly in the Hebrew Scriptures because they represent people who cannot defend themselves.

Whenever rulers forgot them, the prophets spoke.

Amos for example thundered against those who “sell the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals.” Isaiah condemned leaders who accumulated land while the poor lost everything. Jeremiah denounced kings who built luxurious palaces through forced labor.

Those prophets were not enemies of their nation. They were faithful Israelites calling their society back to its founding vision. But because their words threatened the powerful, they were treated as dangerous troublemakers – in today’s terms, as “anti-Semites.”

Jesus stands squarely in that prophetic line.

Like the prophets before him, Jesus’ ministry constantly returns to the same themes: good news for the poor, release for captives, healing for the broken. He heals without payment, eats with social outcasts, and proclaims a God who prefers mercy to sacrifice. In him the ancient prophetic voice speaks again.

The raising of Lazarus becomes the moment when that voice can no longer be tolerated.

Why? Because Lazarus is more than a man returning to life. He represents what happens when those who have been buried—socially, politically, economically—begin to rise again. When the forgotten begin to breathe, when the oppressed stand up, when those written off as dead reclaim their dignity—systems built on injustice begin to tremble.

“Anti-Semitism” Weaponized

Throughout history, whenever prophetic voices expose injustice, the powerful rarely answer the criticism itself. Instead, they attack the critic. Jeremiah was accused of weakening the nation in time of war. Amos was expelled from the royal sanctuary because his preaching threatened the ruling class. Jesus himself is now declared a threat to public order.

From that day forward, the Gospel tells us, they decide to kill him.

We see similar dynamics in our own time. Criticism of violence, occupation, or injustice—particularly when directed toward the policies of the Israeli state—is often dismissed with the charge of “anti-Semitism.” The term properly refers to hatred of Jews as a people, and such hatred is sometimes real. But when the accusation is used to silence moral criticism of Zionist genocide, it becomes something else entirely: a political shield protecting power from accountability.

The prophetic tradition refuses such shields.

Its loyalty is never to rulers, governments, or empires. Its loyalty is to the God of justice who demands protection for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner.

And that brings us back to the question with which we began.

The Threat of Resurrection

What does “Lazarus, come forth!” mean in a world where thousands lie buried beneath the rubble of Gaza – and Tehran?

It cannot simply mean a miraculous resuscitation of individuals. The Gospel is pointing toward something larger. The command is addressed to all who have been buried by systems of domination—those crushed by war, poverty, and political violence. It is a summons to life, dignity, and resistance against the forces that entomb human beings.

That is why the miracle becomes so dangerous.

Because once the dead begin to rise, the powerful begin to panic.

In fact, the irony deepens as the Gospel story continues. Not only do the authorities decide to kill Jesus. Later we are told they also plan to kill Lazarus himself—because his very existence is evidence that something new has begun.

Life is breaking out of the tomb.

Conclusion

The story of Lazarus therefore prepares us for what lies ahead. The conflict between prophetic truth and imperial power will soon reach its climax.

The cross was Rome’s instrument for eliminating those who threaten the system.But the Gospel insists that even the cross cannot bury the truth forever.

Because once the dead begin to rise, it becomes impossible to keep them in their graves.

Our call on this Fifth Sunday of Lent is clear: don’t allow yourself to be gaslit or intimidated. Recognize the burial of the innocent for the genocide it is. Name it.

Don’t be intimidated by weaponized charges of “anti-Semitism.”

What the Gospel of the Man Born Blind Says About War, Empire, and Biblical Illiteracy

Readings for Fourth Sunday of Lent: 1st Samuel 16: 1b, 6-7, 10-13a; Psalm 23: 1-6; Ephesians 5: 8-14; John 9: 1-41

If you have been following the news the past couple of weeks, you know that the world seems once again to be sliding toward catastrophe. The bombing of Iran by the United States and Israel represents a case in point.

Reports describe cities under bombardment and civilians trapped beneath collapsing buildings. On the first day of the conflict alone, a missile strike destroyed a girls’ elementary school, killing scores of children.

Yet amid such horrors, political leaders insist that these acts defend freedom, protect civilization, and even fulfill God’s purposes. Meanwhile a powerful current within contemporary Christianity—especially among right-wing interpreters of the Bible—assures us that geopolitical violence somehow fits within the divine plan.

None of this is new. For centuries religion has been used to sanctify empire and to bless the ambitions of the powerful. The prophets of Israel knew this. Jesus knew it.

And the readings for this Fourth Sunday of Lent expose the pattern with remarkable clarity. Taken together, they ask and answer a disturbing question: who actually sees the truth of history—the powerful who claim to interpret God’s will, or the people pushed to the margins of society?

The answer in today’s readings is that the marginalized see more clearly than the powerful.

Unlikely Choice of David

The first reading from First Samuel tells the familiar story of the prophet Samuel searching for Israel’s next king. Samuel arrives at the house of Jesse and begins inspecting the man’s sons. The eldest looks strong and impressive. Surely this must be the Lord’s anointed. But God interrupts Samuel’s expectations with a startling correction: “Not as man sees does God see. Man looks at appearances, but the Lord looks into the heart.” One after another the impressive candidates pass before Samuel and are rejected. Finally, Samuel asks whether there are any more sons. Jesse answers almost as an afterthought: “There is still the youngest, who is tending the sheep.” In other words, the boy so insignificant that no one even thought to invite him. Yet it is precisely this overlooked shepherd—David—whom God chooses.

Biblical scholars have long recognized something profoundly political in this story. Again and again the biblical narrative reveals a God who acts from below rather than from the centers of power. The decisive figures in salvation history are rarely kings or priests or generals.

Instead, they are slaves in Egypt, shepherds in Bethlehem, fishermen in Galilee, a construction worker from Nazareth. The logic of empire assumes that leadership belongs naturally to those who are wealthy, impressive, and already powerful. The Bible insists on the opposite: God’s future consistently begins among those whom society overlooks.

Lord & Shepherds

Psalm 23 deepens this theme. “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.” We often hear those words as gentle religious poetry. Yet in the ancient world they carried a quiet political edge.

Kings throughout the Near East loved to describe themselves as shepherds of their people. Pharaoh was a shepherd. Babylon’s emperor was a shepherd. Caesar claimed to shepherd the Roman world. But the psalm rejects that claim. The psalmist does not say that the king is my shepherd or that the empire guarantees my security. Instead, he says that the Lord alone is shepherd. The source of life, protection, and abundance is not the machinery of power.

The psalm imagines something very different: green pastures, quiet waters, and a table prepared in the presence of enemies where cups overflow. It is an image of a world organized around care rather than domination.

Paul’s Wokeness

Paul’s words to the Ephesians introduce another theme running through today’s readings: the contrast between light and darkness. “You were once darkness,” Paul says, “but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.” Notice how Paul defines that light. It is not merely personal piety or private virtue.

“Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness,” he writes, “but rather expose them.” In other words, light reveals what systems of power try to hide. Unjust structures survive only by persuading people that their violence is necessary and their privileges natural. But when those illusions are exposed—when reality becomes visible—the system itself begins to tremble.

What the Poor See

That insight prepares us for the extraordinary drama in today’s Gospel from John. Jesus encounters a man blind from birth. The disciples immediately ask a question reflecting the dominant ideology of their time: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

It is the ancient version of a familiar argument: suffering must be someone’s fault. Victims must somehow deserve their fate. Jesus rejects that entire framework. The man’s blindness is not the result of personal guilt. Instead, it becomes the occasion through which God’s work will be revealed.

Jesus then performs a strangely earthy action. He spits on the ground, makes clay, and spreads the mud across the man’s eyes. The gesture echoes the creation story in Genesis where humanity is formed from the dust of the earth. It is as if Jesus is re-creating the man, giving him new sight. But the real miracle unfolds afterward.

Once the man can see, he becomes the center of a storm of controversy. Neighbors question him. Religious authorities interrogate him. Even his own parents become frightened and refuse to defend him.

Why such anxiety? Because the healing threatens the authority of those who claim to interpret God’s will. If Jesus truly comes from God, the leaders who oppose him might be wrong. So the authorities attempt to discredit the miracle. They accuse Jesus of breaking the Sabbath. They pressure the healed man to denounce him. When he refuses, they ridicule him and eventually throw him out of the synagogue.

Meanwhile something remarkable happens within the man himself. His understanding of Jesus gradually deepens. At first, he knows only that “the man called Jesus” healed him. Later he declares that Jesus must be a prophet. Finally, he encounters Jesus again and proclaims, “Lord, I believe.” The man who began the story blind ends it with the clearest vision of all.

The irony is unmistakable. Those who claimed to see—the religious experts—become increasingly blind. Those who were supposedly ignorant perceive the truth. Jesus summarizes the entire episode in a single unsettling sentence: “I came into this world so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”

Conclusion

The pattern repeats itself throughout history. Empires convince themselves they are bringing peace even as they spread destruction. Religious authorities persuade themselves they are defending God even while they silence prophets. And ordinary people—the ones dismissed as insignificant—very often see the truth far more clearly than those who wield power.

That is why Paul’s words sound less like poetry and more like a summons: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

Lent is not simply a season for private self-examination. It is a call to wake up—to recognize how easily faith can be manipulated to justify violence, to question the narratives that normalize suffering, and to listen to voices that systems of power would prefer us never to hear.

Again and again, Scripture insists that God’s work in history begins in unexpected places: among shepherd boys forgotten in the fields, among beggars sitting at the roadside, among those cast out by respectable society.

Those who appear powerless often become the clearest witnesses to truth. And that may be the most unsettling lesson of today’s readings. The future of God’s kingdom does not depend on the calculations of the powerful. It emerges from the courage of those who have learned to see.

Which brings us back to Jesus’ words at the end of the Gospel: “I came so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” The question these readings place before us is simple but disturbing.

Are we willing to let the light of the Gospel open our eyes—even when it forces us to see realities we might prefer to ignore? Even when it forces us to see from the viewpoint of immigrants, the homeless, the impoverished, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans, Iranians, Palestinians, the LGBTQ+ community, the addicted, the imprisoned . . .?

Wells, Walls, and Manufactured Thirst

Readings for the Third Sunday of lent: Exodus 17:1–7, Romans 5:1–2, 5–8, John 4:5–42.

The readings for this Third Sunday of Lent deal with the very human question of thirst. They raise the question, what are we thirsting for — ultimately?

Our politicians give us a glib answer. They tell us that our thirst is for security — from the threatening humans that surround us. The nation is dying we are told. We have lost our greatness. We are being overrun. Scarcity is closing in.

“Make America Great Again” is not just a slogan; it is an appeal to a deep anxiety — the fear that there is not enough: not enough jobs, not enough cultural cohesion, not enough safety, not enough control.

And so we are offered a diagnosis: the crisis is immigration. The problem is those people (who happen to be the poorest in the world!). The solution is walls, expulsions, exclusion. We are invited to believe that national greatness depends on tightening the circle.

But step back for a moment. The United States has 4 percent of the world’s population and consumes roughly a quarter of its resources. The “crisis” is narrated as though the most powerful nation in human history were a fragile victim of desperate families crossing deserts.

That story itself deserves scrutiny. It feels eerily similar to another story we heard today.

Thirst in the Desert

In Exodus 17, the people have escaped Egypt — escaped forced labor, escaped imperial extraction, escaped brick quotas. But once in the wilderness, they panic. There is no water. And fear rewrites memory. “Why did you bring us out of Egypt?” they ask. “Were there not enough graves there?”

Notice what is happening. A people freed from empire begin to long for the security of empire. Scarcity produces nostalgia. Anxiety produces accusation. Moses becomes the problem. Freedom itself becomes suspect.

And they ask the piercing question: “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”

That question echoes beneath our own political rhetoric. Is God present in pluralism, in equity, in inclusion? Is God present in demographic change? Is God present in movements of displaced people seeking survival? Or is God only present in the imagined stability of a past we have sanctified?

At Massah and Meribah, the people’s fear does not disqualify them. Yahweh brings water from rock. Not from Pharaoh’s storehouses. Not from a border wall. From a rock in the desert. The provision comes not through renewed control, but through trust in a God who sides with vulnerable people.

The biblical tradition has always insisted that this is the decisive revelation: God is known in history through concrete acts of sustenance for those escaping bondage. Not through slogans of greatness, but through water in the wilderness.

The Woman at the Well

Then we move to John’s Gospel, and the political charge intensifies.

Jesus is in Samaria — enemy territory. Centuries of ethnic hatred stand between Jews and Samaritans. Purity codes, historical grievances, competing temples. If ever there were a border crisis, this was it. And yet Jesus does not reinforce the boundary. He crosses it.

He asks a Samaritan woman for a drink.

It is astonishing. The one who will speak of “living water” begins by placing himself in need before someone religiously and socially marginalized. He does not begin with a lecture about law and order. He begins with vulnerability.

And this woman — doubly stigmatized as Samaritan and as female — becomes the first missionary in John’s Gospel. She leaves her jar and runs to her town: “Come and see.”

Our Real Thirst

What if the real thirst in our society is not for greatness, but for encounter? What if the deeper crisis is not immigration, but isolation? What if we have mistaken demographic change for existential threat because we have forgotten how to sit at wells with strangers?

“Living water,” Jesus says, becomes a spring within — not hoarded, not policed, not weaponized. It flows outward.

The irony is painful. The people who once wandered as refugees in the desert now fear refugees at their gates. The descendants of immigrants fear immigration. The community that drinks from a rock fears sharing water.

And beneath it all is that ancient question: “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”

If God is only with the secure, then fear makes sense. But if God is the One who hears slaves, who provides water for rebels, who speaks across enemy lines, then perhaps the presence of the stranger is not a threat but a test.

Paul, in Romans, says that “the love of God has been poured into our hearts.” Poured. Abundance language. Not scarcity language. Not zero-sum logic. Poured out while we were still estranged, still flawed, still confused.

Conclusion

Lent invites us to examine our thirst honestly. Are we thirsty for justice — or for dominance? For community — or for control? For security — or for solidarity?

Greatness, in the biblical sense, is never about territorial assertion. It is about fidelity to the God who brings water from rock and who offers living water at a contested well.

The wilderness is frightening. Demographic change is unsettling. Empires promise certainty. But the Gospel suggests that life springs up not from walls, but from wells.

The bush still burns. The rock still flows. The well is still there.

The only question is whether we will drink — and whether we will let others drink too.

Donald Trump’s Nakedness, His STFU SOTU Speech

Readings for the Second Sunday of Lent: Genesis 12: 1-4a; Psalm 33: 4-5, 18-19, 20,22; 2 Timothy 1: 8b-10; Matthew 17: 1-9

The Gospel reading for this Second Sunday of Lent is about the “transfiguration” of Jesus.

It’s about how the primitive Christian community’s understanding of Jesus and his significance changed following their experience of what they came to call his “resurrection.”

After that experience, whatever it was, they came to see him clearly as the New Moses and the New Elijah. As such he would introduce a New Order that would embody liberation of society’s most marginalized (Moses) and outspoken confrontation against the given imperial order (Elijah).

Jesus himself called that New Order the Kingdom of God.

It is what the world would look like if God were king instead of Caesar.

That vision should take on new meaning for Americans in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s disgraceful State of the Union Message last Tuesday. It should even embolden the profane response STFU.

Trump’s Un-transfigured World

If you watched the speech, you know what I mean.

It seemed like the dying gasp of the ruling Septuagenarian and Octogenarian classes.

It was a flailing, lie-filled proclamation of a Golden Age that never existed and that never will be if we follow the path the failed braggart president celebrated.

It was the opposite of God’s Kingdom – a world with room for everyone.

I mean, Trump’s SOTU celebrated division, wealth and power, and a militarism while targeting the poorest people on our planet. He had the staggering nerve to tone-deafly call them what the Epstein Files are revealing the political class itself to be: lawless rapists, pedophiles, robbers, drug dealers, gang members and murderers. And Trump’s crowd are blackmailers besides.

Making those allegations, the president revealed his own nakedness and that of his mindless Maga colleagues who mindlessly jumped to their feet to applaud the beauty of the Emperor’s non-existent robes.

Yes, the Files, the coverups, the sweetheart deals for Epstein and Maxwell, the redactions, the months-long failures to disclose, and the reduction of Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice to the President’s private law firm are revealing everything.

The Emperor indeed has no clothes. He’s shamelessly parading around stark naked and tiny.

And reminiscent of the Hans Christian Anderson story, it’s the little children he’s imprisoning (with their bunny ears and Spiderman backpacks) who proclaim the emperor’s embarrassing nudity.

No clothes! Naked!  Tiny. Or as Joseph N. Welch put it to Senator Joseph McCarthy “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”,

Jesus’ Transfigured World

The tale of Jesus’ Transfiguration tells an opposite story.

It’s the story of a poor construction worker – a former immigrant, a prophetic teacher of unconventional wisdom, the death row inmate whom empire jailed, tortured and submitted to imperial capital punishment – whose life and teaching revealed a New Order that was shining and pure because it had room for everyone.

And in today’s reading, it’s his transformed clothes and the spiritual company he keeps that tell the story.

Matthew puts it this way: “His face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with him.”

That is, the one whose imperialized class status would eventually reduce him to nakedness on Mt. Calvary is perceived by his first followers as magnificently clothed.

Even more, Matthew’s account of Jesus’ Transfiguration has him conversing with Moses and Elijah.

Moses, of course, is the great liberator of the enslaved and poor.

Elijah was the courageous prophet who not only spoke truth to power but resisted false gods who take the side of the rich and powerful rather than God’s truly chosen ones, the poor and oppressed.

Don’t Let the Democrats off the Hook

But none of this should let the Democrats off the hook just because some of them refused to attend the STFU SOTU affair. Don’t let them get away with just not being Trump.

It’s time for us to echo Zohran Mamdani, the most popular politician in the country.

In my novella, Against All Odds: How Zohran Mamdani Became President and Changed America Forever, I imagine a moment like this. Not because of special foresight, but because systems built on secrecy, oligarchy, militarism, and spectacle inevitably crack. In that story, hidden ledgers surface. Blackmail networks become visible. The machinery of power is exposed. The old guard responds the only way it knows how — with louder threats, more force, and louder applause.

Sound familiar?

But exposure alone is not liberation.

Which brings us back to the mountain of Transfiguration.

That scene depicted there is not mystical escapism. It is political theology. It declares that the authority of empire is provisional — that the true sovereignty belongs to the God who sides with slaves, captives, resident aliens, and the poor.

Luke makes the program explicit: “He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor… to proclaim liberty to captives… to set at liberty those who are oppressed.”

That’s a rival social order.

And if the imperial system is unraveling before our eyes — if its nakedness is becoming visible — then what must follow is not nostalgia or revenge, but reconstruction.

In Against All Odds, the answer to systemic collapse is not personality cult or partisan fury, but the institution of a Republic of Care. It is clarity. It is the articulation of a simple, material program centered on ordinary people’s lives. Among others, the items in such a program would include:

  • Affordability
  • Universal health care
  • Full employment
  • Higher wages
  • Free education through college
  • Environmental protection
  • Expanded voting rights
  • An end to oligarchic distortions like the Electoral College
  • Strict term limits in every branch of government
  • Drastic reductions in military spending.
  • No endless wars
  • Immigration reform rooted in dignity
  • The dismantling of structures whose primary function is coercion at home and abroad.

In liberationist terms, none of that is utopian dreaming. Mamdani’s election proved that. The reforms just listed are what happen when the needs of the poor become the criteria of policy.

Conclusion

Trump’s embarrassing speech was the voice of Caesar defending a crumbling temple.

The Transfiguration is the unveiling of another possibility altogether.

Empires grow louder when they weaken. They shout about enemies. They celebrate force. They promise greatness. That is what dying systems do.

But the biblical tradition suggests something else: when Pharaoh hardens his heart, liberation accelerates. When Ahab clings to power, Elijah’s voice sharpens. When Rome crucifies, resurrection faith spreads.

Lent invites us to see clearly — to recognize naked empire and to imagine, without apology, a transfigured order grounded in justice for the poor.

Our petite impotent emperor is exposed.

The question now is whether we have the courage to climb the mountain with Peter, James and John to see what comes next.

Lent, Empire, and the God We Worship

Readings for the first Sunday of Lent: Genesis 2: 7-9, 3: 1-7; Psalm 51: 3-6,12-13, 17; Romans 5: 12-19; Matthew 4: 1-11.

Today is the first Sunday of Lent. Its readings begin with the creation myth in Genesis. They conclude with the famous story of Jesus’ temptations in the desert.

But let me begin not in Eden or in the wilderness, but in Washington, Brussels, and Tel Aviv — and in the shadow places of our own national story.

We live in a country that represents roughly 4.5 percent of the world’s population yet assumes a decisive voice in nearly every corner of the globe. We maintain military installations across continents. We speak of “rules-based international order” while reserving to ourselves the authority to determine when rules apply.

The war in Ukraine grinds on amid NATO expansion despite promises to the contrary. Gaza has become a landscape of genocide even as our government supplies arms and diplomatic cover.

Regime-change interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan have left instability that outlives the speeches that justified them. And at home, the Epstein scandal remains a symbol of elite circles that appear shielded from consequences that would crush ordinary people.

Whatever one’s political alignment, it is difficult to deny that we inhabit an imperial moment.

That is why the Gospel today matters. Because the final temptation Jesus faces is not about private morality. It is about his rejection of empire.

How Animals Became Human

But before we get to the desert, we must pass through Genesis. And Genesis is stranger than we usually allow. It’s a sacred myth about how the animals became human.

Nonetheless, we were taught — many of us in catechism classrooms that did not encourage too many questions — that this story explains how a perfect world fell apart because of disobedience. But biblical scholarship has long suggested something more subtle and more interesting. The story reads less like a fall from perfection and more like the painful emergence of moral consciousness.

God forms the human being from the soil — adamah — and breathes into it. The human is an earth creature animated by divine breath. The animals are already there. What distinguishes this creature is not biology but awareness.

The serpent does not tempt with gluttony. The fruit is “desirable for gaining wisdom.” The promise is that “you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” The issue is not appetite; it is autonomy. It is the claim to define good and evil independently of the Giver of breath.

And here is where the text becomes theologically uncomfortable. The God portrayed in Genesis can sound petty and jealous. (In fact, as biblical scholars Mauro Biligno and Paul Wallis have suggested, the plural Elohim in today’s reading might not refer to God at all, but to “Powerful Ones” pretending to divine identity. But that’s another story.) In any case, the prohibition from on high appears arbitrary. The threat — “you shall die” — sounds disproportionate. If we read the story naïvely, we are left with a deity who seems insecure about competition.

Many Christians resolve that discomfort by refusing to wrestle with the text. We flatten it. We moralize it. We turn it into a children’s story about disobedience and punishment. That is the fundamentalism many of us were raised on — including in Catholic form — a fundamentalism that often ignores biblical scholarship and historical context in favor of simple certainty.

But the deeper issue in Genesis is not that God fears competition. It is that humans actually do become like God. In the end the Powerful Ones (Elohim) admit  “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” However, the moment the earth creature claims ultimate moral sovereignty, alienation follows. Shame. Blame. Fear. Violence. The story is mythic, but it describes something real: despite God-like powers, when creatures enthrone themselves as divine, relationships fracture.

The serpent’s whisper — “you will be like gods” — does not remain in the garden. It scales upward into civilizations.

Empires are what happen when that whisper becomes policy.

Jesus’ Temptations in the Desert

Which brings us to the desert. Matthew tells us that Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. The temptations escalate. First, appetite: turn stones into bread. Reduce humanity to consumption. Then spectacle: throw yourself from the temple and force divine validation. Manipulate religion to secure legitimacy. And finally, the decisive offer: all the kingdoms of the world and their magnificence — in exchange for worship.

This is the climax. Empire is offered as destiny.

And here the contrast with Genesis becomes luminous. The first humans grasp at godlike autonomy. Jesus refuses it. He refuses to reduce life to bread. He refuses to weaponize God. And he refuses political domination secured by kneeling before a lesser power.

“The Lord your God shall you worship, and him alone shall you serve.”

That sentence is not pious abstraction. It is a political declaration. It means that no nation, no military alliance, no economic system, no leader can claim ultimate allegiance. It means that empire — however benevolent it imagines itself — is not God.

This is precisely where much contemporary Christianity falters. Christian fundamentalism, whether Protestant or Catholic, often aligns itself enthusiastically with imperial power. It baptizes national projects. It equates military strength with divine blessing. It reads Scripture in a way that reinforces dominance rather than questions it. The same tradition that once rejected liberation theology for being “too political” now blesses drones, sanctions, and occupation without hesitation.

And yet the Gospel we read today shows Jesus rejecting the very thing many Christians defend.

He rejects empire as diabolical.

Paul & Psalms

Paul’s letter to the Romans reframes the story. Through one human being came sin — the pattern of grasping autonomy. Through another came obedience — the pattern of trust. The contrast is not between sexuality and purity, or rule-breaking and rule-keeping. It is between self-deification and worship.

Psalm 51’s cry — “Create in me a clean heart” — becomes, in this context, a plea for undivided allegiance. A clean heart is not one that never doubts. It is one that refuses to kneel before false gods.

Lenten Conclusion

Lent, then, is not about chocolate or minor self-denials. It is about allegiance. It is about whether we will continue participating in systems that assume the right to dominate the earth and dictate history — or whether we will align ourselves with the one who refused.

If Genesis tells the story of animals becoming human through moral awareness, the desert tells the story of a human refusing to become a god.

And that refusal leads to a cross, because empire does not tolerate rivals or dissent.

We begin Lent in a world intoxicated with power. The kingdoms are still on offer. They are offered to nations. They are offered to churches. They are offered to each of us in smaller ways — security in exchange for silence, comfort in exchange for complicity.

The question is not whether temptation exists. The question is before whom we will kneel.

Dust breathed upon by God does not need to become divine. It needs only to remain faithful.

And that, perhaps, is the most subversive act of all.

The Commandments and the Epstein Revelations: Whom Does God’s Law Really Protect?

Readings for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm 119; 1 Corinthians 2:6-10; Matthew 5:17-37

Let me say it straight out: the Epstein affair is not primarily about sex. It is about law. It is about whether the commandments — and the legal systems supposedly derived from them — apply equally to everyone.

For decades, Jeffrey Epstein moved among billionaires, politicians, royalty, financiers, academics, and cultural elites. His crimes were known. Complaints were made. Investigations occurred. Yet he received an extraordinary plea deal. Associates remain shielded. Documents remain sealed. Networks remain largely untouched.

Meanwhile, poor defendants fill prisons for far lesser crimes – and in the case of immigrants and asylum seekers, for no crimes at all. Petty theft, drug possession, probation violations, and “illegal” border crossings — these are prosecuted with relentless enforcement of law.

If you want a relevant commentary on such two-tiered systems of “justice,” look no further than today’s liturgical readings. They are explosive in their contemporary application.

Sirach: God Commands No Injustice

 Start with Sirach 15: 15-20. There the book’s author says: “If you choose, you can keep the commandments… He has set before you fire and water… life and death.”

At first glance, that sounds like individual moral exhortation. Choose good. Avoid evil. But Sirach adds something devastating: “No one does he command to act unjustly; to none does he give license to sin.”

That line destroys every attempt to sanctify unjust systems like ours. I mean in the United States, injustice is routinely protected by law. After all, Epstein’s plea deal in 2008 was legal. The shielding of his powerful associates has been legal. Non-disclosure agreements are legal. Sealed records are legal.

But Sirach says God commands no injustice.

If the law functions to shield predators when they are rich and well-connected while punishing the poor with mechanical severity, then the issue is not simply moral failure. It is structural perversion.

Liberation theology (i.e. non-literalist biblical interpretation supported by modern scripture scholarship) reminds us that “choice” is structured. The poor do not choose within the same field of protection as billionaires. There, fire and water are not distributed evenly. Life and death are not equally accessible.

The commandment is not merely “Don’t sin.” The deeper question is: Does the legal order reflect God’s refusal to legalize injustice?

Psalm 119: Blessed Are Those Who Follow the Law

Now look at today’s responsorial psalm. It’s refrain proclaims: “Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord.”

But what is the law for?

As José Porfirio Miranda and Norman Gottwald argue, the Decalogue emerged not as abstract piety but as social protection. It arose among people resisting royal systems that accumulated land, wealth, and power in elite hands.

Both theologians remind us that biblical law was a shield for subsistence households. “You shall not steal” originally meant: the powerful may not confiscate the livelihood of the vulnerable. “You shall not covet” meant desire backed by power must be restrained.

In that light, now ask the uncomfortable question: when billionaires operate in networks of mutual protection and the law seems reluctant to expose them fully, is that still Torah? Or is it what the prophets called “corruption at the gate?”

Psalm 119 blesses those who follow God’s law — not those who manipulate civil law to protect privilege.

Paul: The Wisdom of the Rulers

In the same spirit of Sirach and Psalm 119, Paul speaks of “a wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age… who are passing away.” He also adds something chilling: “None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”

The cross was a legal execution. It was state-sanctioned. It was justified under Roman law and enabled by religious authority.

That’s Paul’s point.

The rulers always believe their system is rational and necessary. Franz Hinkelammert reminds us that ruling ideologies present themselves as inevitable. Markets are inevitable. Elite networks are inevitable. Certain people are untouchable.

When the Epstein affair reveals how proximity to wealth and power appears to blunt accountability, we are witnessing what Paul calls “the wisdom of this age.” A wisdom that protects itself.

The rulers crucified Jesus legally. Legality is not the same as justice.

Jesus: Fulfilling the Law by Protecting the Vulnerable

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus declares:
“I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.”

Then he radicalizes it. “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not kill.’ But I say to you, whoever humiliates…”

Jesus’ point is that dehumanization precedes violence. When victims are dismissed because they lack status, when their testimony is doubted because they are young, poor, or socially marginal, contempt is already at work.

“You have heard it said… You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, whoever looks with lust…”

Could these words be more pertinent to the Epstein Affair? In a world where wealthy men are allowed to treat vulnerable underage girls and women as property, lust backed by power means coercion. Jesus targets the interior logic of such domination.

His teaching on divorce does the same thing. It sides with the economically vulnerable spouse. Legal permission did not equal justice.

Notice the pattern: every intensification of the commandment in today’s readings closes loopholes that allow the powerful to exploit the weak.

That is fulfillment of the law. If a legal system permits exploitation through influence, money, and secrecy, it has not fulfilled the law. It has hollowed it out.

Two Systems

The Epstein affair is not an anomaly. It is a revelation.

It reveals what liberation theology has long argued: sin is social as well as personal. Structures can be sinful. Systems can crucify.

When poor defendants encounter swift prosecution while elite networks encounter delay, protection, and opacity, we are not witnessing isolated moral failure. We are witnessing two systems.

Sirach sets before us life and death. The death-dealing system is one where law bends upward. The life-giving system is one where law protects the vulnerable first:

  • “Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord.”
  • Blessed are those who refuse to equate legality with justice.
  • Blessed are those who demand that commandments function as protection for the powerless.
  • Blessed are those who see through the “wisdom” of powerful elites

Jesus did not abolish the commandments. He sharpened them until they pierced hypocrisy.

Before us remain fire and water. The question is not whether we personally avoid wrongdoing.

The question is whether we will accept a system where justice is negotiated by wealth — or insist that the law once again become what it was meant to be: protection and good news for the poor.

A Gospel for Palestinians under Siege

Readings for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time: JER 38: 4-10; PS 40: 2-4, 18; HEB 12:1-4; LK 12: 49-53

Today’s gospel excerpt presents real difficulties for a thoughtful homilist. That’s because it shows us an apparently confrontational Jesus — one who sounds completely revolutionary. It raises an uncomfortable question: why would the Church choose such a passage for Sunday worship? What are we supposed to do with a Jesus who doesn’t sound like the soft-focus “Prince of Peace” in our stained-glass windows?

In the context of Zionist genocide and starvation of Palestinians, perhaps this is providential. Maybe this gospel can help us understand a truth that polite Christianity often avoids: people living under the heel of settler colonialism supported by empire — even people of deep faith — sometimes find themselves pulled toward resistance that is anything but gentle.

We forget that Jesus and his community were not free citizens in a democracy. They were impoverished, heavily taxed subjects of an occupying army. Roman power loomed over their fields, their marketplaces, their synagogues. By today’s international standards, they were an occupied people with the legal right to resist.

And in Luke’s gospel today, Jesus says, without apology:

“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing… Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.”

In Matthew’s parallel account, the language sharpens:

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

These are not the soundbites that make it into Christmas cards. They make us ask: what happened to “Turn the other cheek” and “Love your enemies”?

Some scholars, like Reza Aslan, suggest that Jesus’ nonviolence applied primarily within his own oppressed community, while his stance toward the Roman occupiers was far less accommodating. Others, like John Dominic Crossan, argue that Jesus was unwaveringly committed to nonviolent resistance, and that later gospel writers softened or altered his message to make it more palatable in times of war.

Either way, the backdrop remains the same: an occupied land, a foreign military presence, a people dispossessed. In that context, fiery words about “division” and “swords” are not abstract theology. They are the language of a people under siege, the language of survival.

This is where the parallels to our world are hard to miss. Today, in the land we call Israel-Palestine, we see a modern occupation with its own walls, checkpoints, home demolitions, and armed patrols. We see Palestinian families pushed off their land in the name of “security.” We see the weight of military might pressing down on those who have little power to push back.

This is not to glorify violence but to say that this kind of daily humiliation, dispossession, and threat inevitably breeds anger, desperation, and — for some — the temptation to meet force with force. The gospel today, like the headlines from Gaza and the West Bank, confronts us with the messy, often tragic choices that emerge under occupation.

As Christians, we have to wrestle with this. Would we cling to a nonviolent ethic, like the Jesus Crossan describes? Or, living under bulldozers and armed patrols, would we find ourselves understanding — perhaps even empathizing with — those who choose other paths?

Jesus’ words today refuse to let us take the easy way out. They call us to name the real causes of conflict — not some vague “ancient hatred,” but the concrete realities of military domination, settler colonialism, and American imperialism. They challenge us to imagine what peace would require: not simply the silencing of the oppressed, but the dismantling of systems that oppress them in the first place.

Because if we only condemn the flames without questioning the spark, we miss the deeper gospel truth: that justice is the only soil in which true peace can grow.