Today’s Scripture Reading (March 5,
2016): 1 Chronicles 13
Last
weekend, the Best Picture Award from the Academy went to “Spotlight.” The movie
tells the story of the Boston Globe’s fight to put a “Spotlight” on the sexual
abuse scandal within the Catholic Church. For the Globe, the genesis of began
with another Globe article that asserted that Cardinal Law, the Archbishop of
Boston, knew that child abuse was happening under his watch and did nothing to
stop it. The exposure of the inaction of Cardinal Law changed the dialogue
about child abuse and sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church as well as
within the catholic (which simply means “universal”) church.
I am not a
Roman Catholic, but I admit that some of the language around the movie makes me
uncomfortable, which is probably a good thing. The problem is that the catholic
(universal) church has been caused great harm from what I still believe is a
minority number of people, which includes priest, pastors and influential
church leaders. But at the same time, this minority of people have inflicted
immeasurable harm on the very people who came to them for spiritual guidance.
But it is so easy for the language to evolve, as I felt it did on Oscar night,
to indicate that the whole church is at fault. We cannot shirk our
responsibility to attack sin wherever we find it, but I still believe that the
catholic church and the Catholic Church is still led by well-meaning and God
fearing people attempting to do their best, and part of their best means doing
no harm. The fate of Cardinal Law became apparent when fifty-eight priests,
mostly priests that were subordinate to Cardinal Law, signed a petition asking
the cardinal to resign. Cardinal Law’s inaction was inexcusable. The move to
remove him from his position was later than it should have been, but it was
also a move that deserves our recognition for happening at all. And in this
move, the good of the Catholic Church once again came to the fore.
Yet, the
action of this few, and the inaction of good people like Cardinal Law, has
caused harm from which many will not recover. We are responsible – all of us.
We didn’t know, but we should have known and harm resulted. There are good, but
there are also bad. And I am often at a loss as to how I can honor the good and
oppose the bad. Thus, I am uncomfortable.
The story of
Uzzah is another story that makes me uncomfortable. The broad strokes of the
story is that David wanted to move the Ark of the Covenant from its existence
in exile, an exile that had already lasted decades, to Jerusalem, the new
center of the faith under the reign of David. A new cart is built and sent to
pick it up. The Ark is placed on the cart and the cart is sent off toward
Jerusalem. But the cart hits a literal bump in the road. It threatens to topple
over, and Uzzah stuck out a hand to stop the fall off the Ark. It seems like a
logical thing to do, except that it was strictly forbidden by God. So Uzzah
dies. And the reader of the story is left to only wonder why.
But there is
an answer to the question that has nothing to do with Uzzah. The reality is
that the Ark was never meant to be on a cart in the first place. It was
designed to be carried on poles between priests. And if the leadership didn’t know
that, they should have. Their inability to follow the dictates of God means
that a good man has died, and it wasn’t Uzzah’s fault. And the reader of the
story has to wonder if maybe there was a Cardinal Law somewhere in the
background – some leader who knew that the plans to move the ark were wrong,
but kept his silence rather than have an uncomfortable conversation about what
it was that needed to be done.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Chronicles
14
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