Electricity

Even what we don’t understand can change us.

Pr27C Track 1 - Haggai 1:15b-2:9, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17, Luke 20:27-38

“Electricity” gets its name from the Greek word for “amber” (“elektron.”) The early Greeks noticed that when a piece of amber rubbed up against something like fur, static electricity happened. Actually, amber is just a non-conductive material. It has nothing to do with electricity.

Today, we see electricity at work everywhere. Electricity has always been with us. We didn’t recognize it or know how to interact with it until about a hundred years ago. And then it changed our lives.

In the First Reading, the prophet Haggai was trying to convince people to start rebuilding the Temple. Apparently, people were in no hurry. Maybe they had some doubts about God. God had said “I am with you” but seventy years earlier everything they cared about had been destroyed: their city, their homes, the Temple. Did God let that happen?

God did not let that happen. God as puppet master is a misnomer, like “amber” when it comes to the phenomenon of electricity. Then as now, people make wars, often after other people have made wars.

Maybe God is a little bit like electricity. It has always been with us, even though we didn’t always see it. Thinking we understand it (“amber!”) may get in the way of our knowing it better. When we learn how to cooperate with it – even though we still don’t fully understand it -- it changes our lives.

In Sunday’s gospel, the Sadducees did not share the commonly held belief in the resurrection. They said that the Law as they knew it would not work in the world-to-come. Jesus agreed. It would be unnecessary in the world-to-come. The world-to-come, like God, is beyond what we think we know. And we don’t need to fully understand it before it can change our lives.

Peace.