The Mosul Dam is located in the region that is known as the cradle of civilization, which grew out of the Middle-Eastern Tigris-Euphrates valley. This dam, built in the 1980’s, regulates the Tigris River and generates power to the region. According to many engineers, the dam was built geologically in the ‘wrong place.’ The dam sits on weak rock that is constantly eroding. The ongoing needed repair to the dam is complicated by the fact that ISIS took over the dam in 2016. The collapse of the dam, it is predicted, would result in the loss of more than a million people, not to mention the millions of people who would survive only to suffer from the famine and loss of power resulting from the flooding.
In my layman’s understanding, the managing of energy through dams, depending on how and where they are built and managed, can provide resources to some, but sometimes deprive others. Moving beyond the mechanics of dam building, in general, the management of force and energy can be resourceful, but it can also be oppressive and disastrous. Energy in our universe is abundant, yet we are called to be creative and imaginative as to how we can harness it so that it can be utilized for the benefit of all. For this reason, the creative use of energy is a necessary albeit aspect of our lives in this universe.
Isaiah in today’s reading (IS 58: 9B-14), continues telling us about the abundance of the Divine Energy of God available to us, when we remove those obstacles that prevent the flow of this energy to empower not just ourselves, but everyone:
“ If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; Then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday; Then the LORD will guide you always and give you plenty even on the parched land. He will renew your strength, and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring whose water never fails.”
I wonder, from a standpoint of humanity and relationships in communities (political, religious, social, economic, cultural, etc.), how many times we build dams in the ‘wrong places.’ Where do we focus on diverting – or at least attempting to do so – the energies of this world into selfish pipelines that disregard a holistic consideration of how everyone is affected? This type of mindless plunder of the resources meant for everyone is so useless it seems.
Isaiah seems to be reminding us over and over again that the “light shall rise” when we see the darkness that we may be casting over one another. When we try to usurp this light, or energy, all we manage to do is ironically, go deeper into the darkness. We cannot seem to realize that the deprivation and affliction that we do to one another is truly done to ourselves and in doing that, a complete effrontery to the Divine Energy of Love that is always available. We mistake a lightbulb for the sun. This is the uselessness that accompanies plundering the abundance of resources by making them seem scarce due to selfish greed.
Where is the water flowing? Isaiah says, if we allow it, it flows into us as a “watered garden, like a spring whose water never fails.” Where do we build dams and try to stifle the Divine Energy, which is God’s Love, by preventing the flow out to all? Where are these wrong places that we have built dams? Not just dams but walls also. How can we begin to see them, much less perhaps remove them?
Enter Luke’s Gospel today (LK 5: 27-32), and the story of how Jesus invites Levi (Matthew), the tax collector (and much despised in society), to follow him. Levi does just this, and on top of that, throws a big party and invites all of his tax-collector friends, much to the dismay of the Pharisees, as we hear:
“The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”
I can almost see Jesus turn to his disciples right after this address to the Pharisees and saying, perhaps under his breath, “Guess who came to dinner?”
The Pharisees have actually showed up at the banquet, perhaps standing outside to take issue that Jesus has not only invited a loathsome tax collector to become a follower, but now is dining with him and his ‘tax-collector sinners.’ I imagine Jesus saying something like this…
“Look…you (Pharisees) have showed up for dinner too. Can’t you not see that you can identify yourselves right here in this gathering as ‘one of us… all of us? Can you see that you yourself are sick and in need of healing?
“Stop trying to build dams that cast others out – that you think protect you and divert all God’s loving energy to you – and realize that the invitation to sinners is not a condemnation, but an invitation for everyone to a banquet of abundance.”
Awareness of the solidarity that Jesus is speaking of, perhaps between the lines, in this Gospel hides itself behind the protection of the many dams and walls that we build in the wrong places, ones that support structures that try to segregate God’s love and concern for an elite few. The force of trying to withhold the Spirit of God present in the creation of humanity is not only oppressive and unjust, but is in fact, foolhardy. God’s Love cannot be dammed or walled up, no matter how hard we try. Stubborn blindness can be resilient, but it cannot prevent the Infinite Loving force of God’s abundant energy moving throughout creation.
We have the choice though to be participants in how God’s Love comes into our lives. We can heal each other, when we allow the Holy Spirit of Jesus to flow through us. Isaiah invites us to this Divine participation in healing the wrong places where dams and walls are built…
The ancient ruins shall be rebuilt for your sake, and the foundations from ages past you shall raise up; “Repairer of the breach,” they shall call you, “Restorer of ruined homesteads.”
We can Repair the Flow!
Peace
Thomas
The soul is the delicate yet durable cloth woven and laced together in loving pattern by the merciful strokes of God’s Passings…
And the sheen of our soul is the ever-glowing awareness we have of this sacred-stitched fabric.
(originally posted March 2017)