“No one who lights a lamp conceals it with a vessel or sets it under a bed; rather, he places it on a lampstand so that those who enter may see the light.” (Luke 8:16)
Jesus uses a simple image—a lamp—to teach a profound truth about discipleship.
Think about the purpose of a lamp. Lamps are meant to shine, to give light. We can put them on timers or systems like Alexa. You can set your family room lights to turn on 20 minutes before sunset. Why? Because we know that’s when the light is needed. That’s when the light can fulfill its purpose: brighten the darkness, illuminate, make clear the way to go, to be the beacon of hope like a lighthouse to a seafarer.
Before we delve into the aerial bombing campaign, we should consider an event which was seared into the minds of Tokyo and Yokohama residents – an event which shaped emergency preparedness: the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, also known as the Great Kantō Earthquake (the Kantō plane is the broad area on Honshu island that encompasses some of the great cities of Japan)
The earthquake struck on September 1, 1923, at noon when people were cooking lunch. The ~8.0 magnitude earthquake caused extensive damage that was further exacerbated by widespread fires that swept across the wooden neighborhoods of Tokyo and Yokohama. Both cities were devastated as well as surrounding prefectures. The earthquake caused over 130 fires, some of which merged into firestorms. The most infamous was in the Hongō district, where around 38,000 people perished in an open space where they had taken refuge – heat and oxygen deprivation caused by the firestorm being principal causes.
Tokyo’s infrastructure—including roads, bridges, water supply, and railways—was either damaged or destroyed, crippling transportation and communication. Yokohama, then a major international port, was almost entirely flattened. An estimated 105,000–142,000 people were killed, with over 570,000 homes destroyed leaving more than a million people homeless. The event and its aftermath reshaped Japan’s approach to urban planning, emergency preparedness, and national resilience.
This coming Sunday – the 26th Sunday, Year C – we continue in the Gospel of Luke with more of Jesus’ amazing parables. Recall that in successive weeks we have heard the parable of the Prodigal Son (15:11-32) followed by the story of the Dishonest Steward (16:1-13) – both stories featuring rich men and concern the handling of money (among other key topics). This week our reading again features a rich man but this time in contrast to the poor Lazarus (16:19-31). The in-between verses, vv.14-18, begin with the phrase, “The Pharisees, who loved money.” Jesus describes these people as an “abomination” (bdelygma) before God (v.15). Johnson (Luke, Sacra Pagina, 255) writes about this word:
Its first and most obvious reference is to “idolatry” in the biblical tradition. But the term is also used in two other important connections in Torah, once in condemning financial misdealing (Dt 25:16), and once in condemning a divorced man cohabiting again with his former wife (Dt 24:4). Idolatry, money, and divorce are joined by the term bdelygma.
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