This past weekend we took the kids to the science museum to see the Pompeii exhibit and the IMAX film on ancient Greece.
I had no idea that Pompeii was such a rich city...the seaside luxury town of ancient Rome. It was filled with the summer vacation homes of the rich and powerful - like the Hamptons, Newport, or the French Riviera. And in all its luxury, it was destroyed in by fiery volcano 79 CE, roughly the same time the Gospel of Mark was written - our earliest gospel.
Greece gave us democracy, our concepts of art and music, philosophy and drama. The ivory and gold statue of Athena filled the parthenon. And today we hear stories about whether or not Greece will be able to pay its debts - draggging Europe and the world economy into turmoil.
But the first time I read these verses, the Babylon that I saw being criticized was not Greece or Pompeii. v. 3 "and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries."
We are a nation of excessive luxuries - we use far more than our fair share of resources and create far more than our share of pollution and waste. We consume. And this is not the way of the Lord.
So as we prepare for the coming of the kingdom this Advent, where do our loyalties lie? Can we look at our nation through God's eyes? And can we accept that God's anger may be justified?
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