God dreams bigger than we can ever imagine – Zech 2:5-9, 14-15a

Saturday of the 25th week of Ordinary Time; St. Stanislaus.

They had lost everything.  If you’ve ever met a refugee, or just kept yourself informed about the plight of the 10.4 million refugees that are displaced from their homeland today, you don’t need a long spiel from me about the horror of being forced from your homeland, of being displaced, of feeling like you are a person without a place, as if your roots were amputated against your will.  But if I can say it, being an exiled Israelite was even worse.  Your Land was your God’s promise to you in terrestrial form; your Temple was the locus (no mere sign) of your God’s very real presence in your midst and an invitation to relate to Him in worship; your King was the embodiment (however imperfect) of God’s sovereignty.  In the Exile, Babylon took all of that.  Marduch, their god, beat up your God and took Him from you.

For seventy years, the people were bereft.  Then, Cyrus the great Persian warrior-king arose, beat the Babylonians, bid the exiles return to their homeland and even gave them resources to rebuild their city and their Temple.  No wonder many called him Messiah!

Zechariah was a member of a priestly family involved in this rebuilding, and in this reading he relates a vision he sees, of a surveyor preparing to build Jerusalem’s walls.  We’re in the second chapter of Zechariah here, in the third vision, and the suspense has been building throughout the book: when will the rebuilding begin?  Reading the book through, you’re sure that when you hear talk of a surveyor, the prophet’s about to start narrating the rebuilding (just like you probably thought the boat was about to sink a lot earlier during Titanic than it actually did).  But no, two angels come to break up the party.  The message is simple: don’t build walls.

It’s natural, when we get back something treasured we lost, to want to fence it, enclose it, protect it, to not be able to see how anything could be better than to have gotten back what we lost.  It’s natural, but grace perfects nature.  God dreams bigger than we can ever imagine.  Don’t build walls, the angel says, because the new Jerusalem will team with more people and prosperity than your wildest dreams have envisioned.  Don’t try to box God’s abundance in.  Don’t build walls, the angel says, because God is inviting everyone to the feast.  Don’t try to ration God’s mercy.  Even those who oppressed you, they’ll pass through fire, that purifies, that welcomes while it transforms, and they’ll rejoice with you.  The coldness of those walls you were planning will be replaced by the all-consuming warmth of God’s fire!

I was privileged last year to have dinner with Archbishop Gerhard Mueller, the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  One of our dining companions asked him what it was like to be the person most singularly charged with defending the Catholic Faith.  He responded, “That’s not my main job.  My primary job is to promote the faith; defense can only come in second.”  He’s not a man who builds walls. 

What’s your dream for the world?  I guarantee you: God’s is more extravagant yet.  May God use us to set this world on fire!