Love and Doom

For some people, the Old Testament is filled with thunder and punishment while the New Testament is filled with peace and love. Today’s readings seem to point in exactly the opposite direction. In the Old Testament reading, God says

How could I give you up, O Ephraim,
or deliver you up, O Israel?
How could I treat you as Admah,
or make you like Zeboiim?
My heart is overwhelmed; my pity is stirred.
I will not give vent to my blazing anger…

And today’s Gospel, the “Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ,” ends with Jesus saying that on Judgment Day it will go better for the lands of Sodom and Gomorrah than it will for a town that rejects the Apostles.

The apparent tension between the two readings is even more pronounced when one remembers that Admah and Zeboiim were located precisely around the lands of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The bottom line is that God is love and wants all people to be saved. The history of the world, however, as well as our own personal histories have been filled with occasions when we, in one way or another, have turned away from God and rejected His love. Yet He has come back, again and again, reaching out to us, finally sending us the greatest gift of His love in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Jesus calls us and asks us to walk in His love. If we have strayed, we must turn away from the doomed path we are on. That is what Jesus is saying: if we reject God, we are on the path that leads to doom.

We must turn to Christ and walk more closely with Him in His eternal love and truth.