Reading for Tuesday and Thursday: Divine Security

Every year, I teach the concept of Human Security. Human security is a concept that was introduced to convince the United Nations to go beyond the concept of state security. State security is all about the sovereignty of states and the United Nations was established to protect state sovereignty.

Unfortunately for King Nebuchadnezzar, he was born long before an institution like the United Nations was formed and Daniel said (based on the first reading last Tuesday) that  Nebuchadnezzar's  kingdom will be replaced by three other kingdoms (so much for state security) and finally by a fourth kingdom which will be eternal. In the Gospel today, Jesus says that Jerusalem will be surrounded by armies and its desolation would be at hand and that pregnant women and nursing mothers should be very afraid.

The concept of human security was introduced because there was a need to go beyond state sovereignty. Some threats to humanity are brought about by the state (genocide or on a smaller scale: displacement), have nothing to do with state sovereignty (like disasters of the natural or manmade kind) and some problems transcend states (environment, epidemics). Human security is an approach which tries to deal with such threats to humanity. One could say that human security aims for the absence of fear from threats and deprivations.

The Gospel for Tuesday was full of threats to human security. Jesus told his disciples the end of times will be preceded by wars and insurrections, powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place. The Gospel for today says there will be signs and "nations will be in dismay perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world".

People will die of fright. What a thought.

The Gospels of the last few days seem to suggest that we need to go beyond aiming for human security but rely on divine security. Jesus seems to be saying that all of these cataclysmic events are inevitable. But in the middle of his discourse, Jesus tells his disciples not to be terrified. And the absence of fear is not because of the absence of things to be afraid of. In fact Jesus seems to be pretty good at describing everything to be afraid of.

But the source of divine security is what happens after all the cataclysmic events. "And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand." And you can go back to Daniel and his vision of an eternal kingdom.