Mass readings for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Jeremiah 20.10-13 Psalm 69.7-9, 13&16, 32-33 Romans 5.12-15 Matthew 10.26-33
A member of parish council brought me a copy of the theology journal Comment, the cover had the title, “The Understory” – So, issue (the summer issue) was going to have articles discussing this idea of “the understory.” And a natural question for me was, “what is an understory?”
Now, it occurred to me that I know what a “cover story” is. It can mean the story featured on the cover of, well a journal, a magazine, any kind of regular publication that features its its articles, on the cover. However, a cover story is also an act of deception. It is a story told to cover up an inconvenient reality, obscure the truth with a plausible explanation that directs people away from discovering what really happened or is happening. We’re familiar with this from movies and television where we find intrigue, conspiracy stories, criminal activity dramatically presented. Something happens, or is planned, and to conceal what has or is going to happen, a convincing “cover story” is created – and it is important for the conspirators, the criminals, that they all agree what that cover story will be.
So, I concluded that an understory is what the cover story is trying to cover up.
Of course, what Jesus is talking about in the gospel today is deception, the hiding of truth, “nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.”
Now were he to have said this today, there are those who would call him a conspiracy nut; while others would be intrigued, and ask to hear more. We can see that kind of divide in our own society: there are those who are happy with the stories they are told, all set within a grand overarching narrative that provides explanation and justification for where we are being led as a civilization. Others, noting how the explanations we’re given don’t always tally with the facts, the reality we experience, are looking for what the real story is, that “understory” that is being covered up.
The original Christians, those of the first generations of the Church must have struck a lot of people as more than a little crazy, because they could not agree to the explanations provided by institutions, the powers that be, they knew that they were being fed “a cover story” and were in no way convinced by it. They knew, as we do, that our Lord is not some tinfoil hat wearing paranoid. He’s telling us an important truth: the world and those in thrall to it are engaged in a cover up, a great deception, a grand illusion, often without being conscious of it. That is, there are those who consciously have signed on with the diabolical forces, practice deception in pursuit of power and material gain, but so many more are merely deceived, and are truly victims. Yet, even among those deceived, I fear, are those who suspect something’s wrong, but prefer the comfort of the lie to the discomfort of acknowledging, and living in the truth. No one likes to be fooled; yet even more, no one likes to be seen to have been fooled.
In Jesus’ days of earthly ministry, the grand story (the cover story) was focused on the Roman emperor as the fount of all blessings, the peace and prosperity of the ancient society that encircled the Mediterranean Sea and reached down into Africa, up into Britain, out into Asia flowed from him. And the Emperor was to be worshiped, and all the cults and strange religions of the Empire were to defer to this central truth. If there were problems, crises, these were the result of a lack of proper devotion to the emperor, and obedience to his decrees.
Of course, for Christians then, as now, the real story is one we see in our scriptures, but also is well-evidence in the world. The problem is sin, and consequent death; and, of course, our turning from God out of both fear, but also pride. We continually bring sin into our lives, into our world, and it corrupts and destroys, divides and dissolves, society, family, individuals, spiritually and materially.
If we get back to talking about movies as the popular source of conspiracy stories, we know there is a whole genre that meditates on the idea that we are deceived as a society, a civilization. The most celebrated of these in recent years is probably the sci-fi classic The Matrix where people are sleeping their lives away plugged into a computer-generated fantasy – but not a fun fantasy, a rather mundane artificial existence that resembles the humdrum existence we have right now, including the protagonist being stuck in a job he hates. I think that’s why so many found the film fascinating, and disturbing.
However, for those few movies that make us ponder such things we get far more like Stephen Spielberg’s just released to mixed reviews Disclosure Day. As the title suggests, there are secrets being kept, in this case about aliens visiting earth, hidden out of fear by our leaders because they think we can’t handle the truth. This is something that Spielberg has said in recent interviews, that such information would be traumatizing, especially for religious people – Christians would lose their faith. So, oddly enough, the movie argues that religion has created the need for governments to lie to us. That is, it’s our fault – talk about blaming the victim!
That assertion about religion is very much part of the big cover story, that humanity is struggling to free itself from irrational religion toward a rational and realistic understanding of the universe.
Of course, this just tells us that Spielberg, as great a moviemaker as he has been in the past, doesn’t understand Christian faith – the Catholic Church certainly believes the God who made everything could also have made little green men from Alpha Centauri. We are not deniers of reality. Indeed, we search for it constantly, because by faith we know the ultimate reality is God, and he can be glimpsed in creation.
But that lying to us for our own good is something we see too much of from our institutions, government and its agencies, because they presume to think themselves smarter, more enlightened than us, more adult and reasonable. It is arrogant pride straight through.
Recent revelations in the UK over a decades-long cover up of sexual grooming gangs, in the US the release of government documents pointing to the illegal funding of labs making super viruses, something long denied by the implicated agencies, and many other more secrets being uncovered, is fast eroding our trust in our institutions. This is alarming for us, but perhaps a necessary process as we untangle our minds from the stories we’ve been told over long decades to the neglect of the gospel story which really does speak to the truth of who we are, who God truly is, and how we need to live in right relationship to him.
Indeed, that story, that reality, that underlies everything is that God’s got this, and we can trust in that. He sees the little sparrows, he sees us and knows us, knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows the understory of our sin, our fear, our lack of trust, our selfishness, our greed and grasping after power. He knows how we try to cover that up, wrap in the darkness of our pride, keep it out of the light. We need to acknowledge this, but more so, trust in Christ and not those who claim to be our benefactors, our guardians and our guides – such consistently and continually prove they are not. Our prayer then is rightly to God, who is steadfast in his love, merciful, and truthful.
Amen.