Today’s second reading comes to us from the Hebrews. Originally, many believed that St. Paul wrote this letter, but of late, that is no longer believed. Therefore, no one knows whom the author is. We do believe however, as the title of the letter suggests, that the author is addressing this to Jewish Christians. That is a different dynamic than formerly pagan Christians. This is because with Jews you have the whole history of the Jews as part of the message. Indeed, this history is intensely misunderstood by the current crop of atheist academics. Lets take a look at why.

The Jews relationship with God was rooted in whether or not they were enjoying his favor or not. If they were then they assumed they were doing the right things, if they were not, then they felt a call to repent. However, the other side of this reality was that their morality began first with how much they were living the first three commandments. Often times the Jews would stray from recognizing the God of Abraham as their God because they felt that those who worshiped other Gods were faring better. They would then abandon God and embrace the foreign gods for one reason or another usually economic.

A better example of this, which by the way resonates with the current time here in the United States and Europe,is the Jewish story found only in Catholic bibles of the Maccabees. It was then that pagan Greeks, similar to today, figured the world would be a better place if there were not all those religions. So they decided to come up with an Esperanto of religions, just one big happy religion worshiping one big happy gaggle of gods and this would bring peace to the land. Many Jews joined this movement, but a small group resisted choosing to die rather than abandon their God. Thus we had the civil war for Jewish freedom.

The question to look at however, is why is worshiping God so important. The answer which our Atheist friends have never understood is that when we abandon the God of the Jews for another God from a previous time in the evolution of man we find a structure of injustice come to the fore. That structure grows until there are two groups of people, the haves and the have nots. The haves are very rich, but they become rich by oppressing the have nots. So the poor live through great suffering while the rich live through great comfort. An example of this is that Solomon’s wisdom gave way to his passions and led him to build great structures, however on the backs of the poor.

The Old Testament Jew is always looking forward to the coming of the Messiah. This Messiah will build a civil society on pure justice and there will be peace, freedom equality in the society. Until that time we must patiently bear the injustice of the world around us. If we are poor, we must bear with the suffering until such time as the Messiah comes to bring justice.

When Jesus arrives and people see him as the Messiah they are thinking in these terms. The Messiah is coming and he will build a just society. Yet, with Jesus’ death and resurrection, we understand that the just society will not be of this world, but of the next. Therefore, we now as Christians and what are called Messianic Jews await the second coming of Christ to bring us to eternal life and to peace and Justice. St. Paul reminds us that the kingdom of God is not about eating and drinking, in other words living in luxury, but in peace and justice.

In our world today, like in the time of the Maccabees, in fact, almost literally in the time of the Maccabees, many are abandoning God. They are figuring the time of God is no longer here and we can live without him. The Atheist movement teaches that one does not need God to know how to do good things. Embracing the teachings of Friedrich Nietzche wholesale, they decide we can figure out our own morality ourselves.

However, the reality is our faith is not about morality, it is about anthropology. It is about the wisdom of God teaching us whom we are as humans. This leads us to understand our strengths and weaknesses and our needs and requirements. Outside of this, then we build a society based on a false understanding of such and that will create a house of cards. That house will collapse upon us and the only one who can rescue is the same God rejected by so many outside of our faith.

One of my favorite stories is Lord of the Flies, that is because it touches on this very reality, that without God humanity does not have the capability to build a longstanding just society. Like the mosquito that can destroy of vacation, so the perfect world is destroyed by those who unable to live peaceably with others. Therefore, a perfect world cannot exist. There are just those who embrace evil and in so doing make others’ lives miserable. If you know the story about the Lord of the Flies, these innocent educated military school boys fall victim to a shipwreck. All ties of friends and affections end and their society deteriorates into a tyranny. If you do not get onboard the tyranny your become victim to its violence. As you know at the end, the lesson of humanity unable to peacefully run its own society without outside helps comes clear.

Pope Benedict XVI obviously a victim of a society that fell to such a similar dynamic reminds us that without God we fall victim to Chaos theory. The world cannot be controled, but without God it controls us and we fall victim to it.

The history of the Jews is one filled with gross injustice at the hands of those who felt they knew better than God, first from the leaders of the their own people and later from the opressors of those leaders.

Today, when we see our world going down a path that again rejects God we know the script and where it will lead. We as humans can build a just society without God but only for a time. It eventually will deteriorate into the same mess as every society that tried to create a world without God. Our only hope when that happens is to remember that the Messiah comes and brings us to a world that cannot be without God. This means neither can it be without love, justice and peace. Until such time, we await the coming of the Messiah the second time. He is always our hope in eternal life, a hope those who reject God can never know and we can never forget.

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