Spiritual Hiccups - Praise the Lord, and Pass the Ammunition

I hope it isn't simply a "liberal bias" that makes me scratch my head in bewildered puzzlement when people who say that America's troubles arise from our failing to be a Christian nation also consider military spending to be something sacred.  Which is it, we trust in God to secure us, or we trust in military might?

Happy is the nation whose God is the LORD,
     the people whom he has chosen as his heritage...
A king is not saved by his great army; 
     a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.  
The war horse is a vain hope for victory,
          and by its great might it cannot save.

These words from Psalm 33 are echoed in other biblical passages that insist military might cannot save.  And when the prophet Amos speaks against Israel in today's Old Testament reading, it is clear that no amount of military power or might will be able to stave off the forces that will soon surround them.  "Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: An adversary shall surround the land, and strip you of your defense; and your strongholds shall be plundered."  No amount of human power will thwart God's will.

But the sort of faith that proclaims trust in God while insisting that spectacular military might is necessary to protect us is hardly restricted to one side of the political spectrum.  How easy it is to proclaim faith in Jesus, to speak of following the good shepherd, all the while anxiously seeking to secure happiness and fulfillment through the very things Jesus shuns.  Jesus says to us, "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or your body, what you will wear... Instead, strive for God's kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well."  Yet I can worry with the best of them: about money, about success, about what people think of me, or what could go wrong.  

I suppose that I and many other people of faith are not too different from those first disciples of Jesus.  We are drawn to him.  We recognize something in him that we cannot find anywhere else.  But when following Jesus gets difficult, we often scatter, just as those disciples did when Jesus was arrested.  In our own ways, we deny him, just as Peter once did.

Of course the colossal failures of those first disciples did not stop Jesus from sending them out in his name after the Resurrection.  Those fearful, timid disciples were transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.  

Jesus, in this season of Advent, come to us in the power of the Spirit.  Transform and empower us to live as the body of Christ in the world.

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