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The Book of Eli is an incredible post-apocalyptic film staring Denzel Washington as the titular Eli. The world it’s set in is the kind of post-apocalyptic world where everything is uncertain and everyone has to fend for themselves.
In the midst of all the horror and corruption in this world is Eli’s task: to safely bring a copy of the Bible so it can be preserved not by those who wish to control what is left of humanity, but by those who wish to keep it as the treasure it truly is.
The Book of Eli speaks so well to our readings for today. In Colossians and in Luke, we are called to shun the things of earth and focus our attention on the things that are above, mainly God in our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Psalm even points to our need to focus on God, even in the midst of our trials and troubles.
Luke goes a little further in this discussion. In Luke, Jesus reminds us of the uncertainty of life, how it can be wholesome and full one minute and become a post-apocalyptic landscape, as in The Book of Eli, the next. While The Book of Eli’s reality is thankfully not our own, the uncertainty of life, in the midst of pandemic, violence, and threats to our system of government and way of being, is certainly all around us.
Jesus’ warning is meant to get us to focus on the things that will last. The only thing we can hold onto, no matter the times, is our relationship with God. When we store up for ourselves the richness of God, we possess the one thing that actually will last. We possess the one thing that will truly matter.
Not having a richness in God will have dire consequences for us. These results aren’t simply wasting our time storing up things we can no longer use, as Jesus says in Luke today. They are the very things we see in the Book of the Prophet Hosea. The Israelites of the Northern Kingdom, referred to by the Prophet Hosea with the name of the Tribe Ephraim, did not make themselves right with God. They turned to their own ways. They made offerings to false gods, not to the one true God who brought them out of the land of Egypt and who created them and the entire world.
The result of the Northern Kingdom’s failure is laid out by the prophet today. Because they abandoned God, God will leave them to their own devices. Without God to guide and protect them, they will return once again to the slavery they knew in Egypt, this time at the hands of the Assyrians.
Thankfully for them in the economy of God Love always wins. One day, the Lord says through the Prophet, they will come back to the cry of the Lord shouting out like Aslan in Narnia.
In the uncertainty of the world, we would do well to listen to the words of the Prophet, as well as all the words of Scripture. There are so many voices out there vying for our attention and trying to tell us to follow them. When God’s very own Chosen People listened to the words of their kings over the words of the Lord, they were led to collapse and despair. What makes us think the kings of today are any different? The path to certainty can’t be found in the rulers of this world, nor even in the demagogues who vie for our attention and support. They don’t have your best interests at heart. The only place certainty can be found in an uncertain world is in the same place Jesus, Paul, and Eli tell us of: in the words, the treasure, of our Lord.