2 Chronicles 26: Pride and Fall
Sunday, February 5, 2023
This chapter in 2 Chronicles tells us a great deal about Uzziah, a promising man who falls when he presumes that he can be God to himself and others in the way he chooses. He might represent the perennial flaw in humankind.
But after he had become strong, he became proud to his own destruction and broke faith with the Lord, his God.
And how did this happen?
He entered the temple of the Lord to make an offering on the altar of incense.
Why was this incorrect?
But Azariah the priest, and with him eighty other priests of the Lord, courageous men, followed him . . . saying to him: “It is not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord, but for the priests . . . who have been consecrated for this purpose”.
Today, we each bring our offerings to the Lord. Christian liturgies often provide a time when we can offer ourselves back to God both collectively and individually. These moments give us the opportunity to be priests ourselves. They bring us the opening to enter fully into relationship with God, in our personal service to God on the manner God shows us. The Old Testament Law asks us to remain in covenant with the Lord and to serve God with burnt offerings and sacrifice. The New Testament Law of Love asks us to live the Beatitudes in an intentional way. Both Testaments bring us a yardstick with which we might measure our adherence to this law, our fulfillment of old statutes, our flowering in Christ. The presence of Christ that we bring to our troubled world.
Today’s readings in MAGNIFICAT are God’s constancy and ours. Our fidelity to God and to one another. God’s law is not a set of arbitrary rules but the concrete shape given to the lasting covenant that God has made with human beings – broken many times by faithless people, kept from generation to generation by our God. God’s faithful constancy is an anchor in an ever-shifting world, where love declared today is spurned tomorrow, and all other certainties are blown away by the wind. Even when those who love us are inconstant, we must remain constant in our love of them for in this way we reflect God’s constancy to us.
Pride calls us to our false selves. Constancy in God helps us to remain faithful in God. The story of Uzziah is one in which we may see ourselves or others puffing up in self-importance, blinding our vision to the fall that inevitably follows. God’s Law of fidelity and gratitude never fails; it brings flourishing rather than destruction. God’s laws are the statutes we teach ourselves and our children. They are the laws that open us to possibility, and that bind our hearts forever to God.
On this last Sunday before Lent, let us consider the temptation to ignore pride in our own lives. And let us determine to remain constant and faithful to God.
Adapted from a reflection written on February 27, 2008.
Cameron, Peter John. “Meditation of the Day.” MAGNIFICAT. 27.2 (2008). Print.
Image from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzziah
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