SNEAK PEEK: 40-day The Chosen challenge (beginning the week of July 12)

 

“Where & when are we?”

     As Episode 1 of Season 1 begins, we find ourselves in the village of Capernaum, on the western shores of the Lake of Galilee, located in northern Palestine.  The historical moment is the early decades of the first century A.D.  By this time, Palestine had been the homeland of the Jews for over a millennium and had been occupied by the Romans for about a century.  The Roman Empire dominated the political and economic systems of the entire Mediterranean world.  The region around the eastern Mediterranean had been “Hellenized” by Alexander the Great in the 4^th century B.C., and the Romans took advantage of the unifying effect of Greek culture throughout this area.  The Jews were engaged in a constant struggle to resist the pressure to assimilate to Hellenistic culture and to maintain their distinct cultural and religious identity.

     The context of 1^st-century Galilee is of course vastly different in many ways from that of 21^st-century Montreal.  And yet, the issues of nationalism, globalization, and friction between different social classes haven’t changed that much in 2,000 years.  Questions of religious belief, and how they relate to matters of money, status, and justice still preoccupy us.  Tensions between different cultural and linguistic groups and the struggle to maintain local businesses in the face of global markets are things we know well.

     One of the main economic activities in Capernaum was fishing.  In Episode 1, we are introduced to two fishermen, Simon and his brother Andrew, as they try to hustle Simon’s brother-in-law in a street fight.  Simon and Andrew struggle to provide for their families and keep up on their tax payments, all the while navigating the tensions between the requirements of their Jewish faith and their need to operate their business.

REFLECTION SCENE: One evening, at the local watering hole (“The Hammer”), Simon tells Andrew about the deal he made with Quintus, the local Roman magistrate, to solve their tax-debt problem.  Simon agreed to report on merchant fishermen who worked on “Shabbat”, the Jewish day of rest (Saturday).  Since Jewish fishermen didn’t report their catches taken on the Sabbath due to religious law, they didn’t pay the taxes on those catches and thus deprived the Romans of their expected “cut” (something Simon himself was guilty of).  Quintus agreed to wipe the slate clean for Simon and Andrew if Simon kept him informed on the Shabbat activities of the local fishermen.

Life can be complicated.  Financial pressures may lead us to make choices we wouldn’t make otherwise.  It’s sometimes tempting to treat our neighbours as a means to an end, rather than as human beings facing the same challenges that we do.  During the pandemic, many people reported those who broke the COVID-19 rules to the police.  What is the right thing to do in such situations?  Who would we be willing to betray in order to make our own life easier?  Do we hold ourselves to the same standards that we set for others?  Do we “cut deals” in our own minds, deals that make us compromise our beliefs and cause us to become cynical about the importance of values and ethics?  What are the long-term consequences of such behaviour?  …for ourselves, for our families, for our communities???