WORD 2day: Saturday, 5th week in Ordinary time
February 15, 2020: 1 Kings 12:26-32, 13:33-34; Mark 8: 1-10
For the people of Israel there was no difference between their political life and their religious life. For them everything was just one; an integral mode of living as people of God; forever the people of the Covenant: 'I shall be your God and you shall be my people'. But at a certain point, as we read in the first reading today, the misery befalls them - Politics and Religion part their ways. Further, something that happens makes things worse: using religion for political ends or politics for religious reasons. It becomes almost an unjust alliance and remains so even to this day!
That is socio-political history, but it can happen in our personal life too: the division between our religious life and our civil life, and worse still if we use one for the manipulation of the other. Jesus is totally against this division and considers it always an hypocrisy.
One cannot call oneself a shepherd and still remain untouched by the miseries of the people. One cannot call oneself a 'Christ-ian' and live a life that is totally insensitive towards others. One cannot call oneself a child of God and look down on his brother or sister, or much worse ill-treat, exploit or oppress them.
We see both Jeroboam and Jesus doing something for the people. Both of them did not want to send the people away. But but the difference between what they did lies in the fact of what they intended by it. Though Jeroboam did something for the people, his idea was to keep his power and dominion alive - it was using religion for politics! While Jesus fed them not because he wanted to be powerful but because that was the need of the people!
When one uses religion for politics, God for usurping power and spirituality for material gains, he or she is giving into idolatry. Worse if that person claims to belong to Christ - so divided within oneself, externally professing Christ but totally against Christ at the level of one's inner self. Can we live such divided lives?