(Please read this Scripture passage first, before the homily.)
Nahum is one of the Twelve Minor Prophets. In the Jewish Bible, the Twelve are listed as twelve parts of one scroll or book. In our Bible, they are listed separately. As one book there is a sense of movement not readily seen if looked at as twelve books. The Jewish order is Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.
As one book, the movement is from Assyrian exile to the Persian present, from the northern kingdom to Jerusalem in the south, from prophets to messengers and from Nineveh’s conversion at the preaching of Jonah to Nineveh’s destruction announced in Nahum.
This brings us to today. The scene today reminds me of one of the first images I remember of television. It is of refugees, named Displaced Persons, fleeing the land of Israel after the Second World War and the establishment of the Jewish State. Throng upon throng of people moving out with all the belonging that they could carryon their shoulders. The anguish, the stress and the strain of this expulsion from home seemed quite evident in the pictures I saw. Then the Displaced Persons disappeared, only to reappear later as the Palestinians.
It reminds me of the aftermath of the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan seventy-five years ago. It reminds me of pictures I have seen of the war in Vietnam, the rioting on streets in our country.
It is a bloody scene, full of vehicles and weapons of mass destruction. The things described in Nahum, we would label in our day as crimes against humanity, pornographic torture, and gross abuse of corpses. It is not a pretty sight.
Nineveh has fallen, the great archenemy of God’s people has been destroyed. Salvation has come to God’s people, but at what a cost. Perhaps we should hear Nahum and the rest of the Twelve Prophets as a call to peace. With the destruction of the city, Nineveh has ceased being an enemy because it has ceased to exist. Perhaps we should try to end enmities by destroying the hatred rather than the one hated.
Indeed, this is the work we have to do, to end hate and to love the people, to replace the roar of cannon with the whisper of love, to replace the harsh grinding of the wheels of tanks with the ease of a bicycle and to replace IED’s with shared meals. Today’s reading overflows with blood and gore; today’s work is to change injury to pardon and to replace hunger and thirst with abundant good water and plentiful harvests.
Let us go forth today as positive differences. Let us go forth as a homily of peace, feasting and consolation.