OT XX [C] Jer 38:4-6, 8-10; Heb 12:1-4; Lk 12: 49-53

This Sunday’s Gospel reading contains some of the most provocative words ever spoken by Jesus: "Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. And to think that the person who pronounced these words was the same whose birth was greeted by the words: "Peace on earth to men of good will," and that during his life he proclaimed: "Blessed are the peacemakers." The same person, when he was arrested, commanded Peter to "Put your sword back into its sheath!" (Mat 26:52). How do we explain this contradiction?

It is very simple. It is a matter of seeing which peace and unity Jesus came to bring and which is the peace and unity he came to take away. He came to bring the peace and unity of the good, that which leads to eternal life, and he came to take away the false peace and unity, which serves only to lull the conscience to sleep and leads to ruin.

Jesus himself distinguishes the two types of peace. He says to the apostles: "Peace I leave you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives peace do I give peace to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid" (Jn 14:27). After having destroyed with his death the false peace and solidarity of the human race in evil and sin, he inaugurates the new peace and unity that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. This is the peace that he offers to the disciples on Easter night, saying "Peace be with you!"

Jesus says that this "division" can also work its way into the family: between father and son, mother and daughter, brother and sister, daughter-in-law and mother-in-law. And, unfortunately, we know that this is sometimes painfully true. The person who has found the Lord and seriously wants to follow him often finds himself in the difficult situation of having to choose: Either make those at home happy and neglect God and religious practice or follow the latter and put himself in conflict with his own, who give him trouble for every little thing he does for God and piety.

This saying of Jesus on “division” reflects what actually happened within families in the early church. Those who became disciples of Jesus often found themselves at odds with family members who refused to take that step. Jesus did not come with the explicit intention of dividing people or families. He came to proclaim the kingdom of God, the values that God holds dear and wants us to live by. The consequences of proclaiming those values by his word and deed were that communities and families ended up divided. Peace or unity at any price was not what Jesus was about. The Jesus who lived and worked two thousand years ago is the same risen Lord who lives and works among us today, and the world today sometimes can be as resistant to the gospel as it was when Jesus first proclaimed it. We can expect that if we try to live by the values of the gospel today, we will find ourselves at odds with people who have a different set of values. There can be enormous peer pressure, especially on young people, to take a very different path to the one that Jesus calls us to take. The refusal to swim with the tide, to do what everyone is doing, can bring on ridicule and hostility from others, leaving people quite isolated. Like Jeremiah in the first reading we can find ourselves thrown into a muddy well. Jesus himself in today’s gospel reading speaks about the great distress he continues to experience until his mission is completed. We can expect to share in his distress if we identify with his way of life.

 

We are here at this Sunday Eucharist because something of the fire that Jesus lit is burning within our own hearts. The fire of the Spirit of God’s love has been lit in our lives. We often pray that lovely prayer, ‘Come Holy Spirit, fill my heart, and kindle in me the fire of your love’. Perhaps we sometimes pray that prayer out of an awareness that the fire of the Spirit has died back within us and needs to be reignited. On one occasion, Paul calls on his co-worker, Timothy to ‘fan into a living flame the gift of God that is within you’, the gift of the Holy Spirit. We all need that gift to be rekindled from time to time. The Lord wants us to be alight with the fire of the Spirit, a fire that can renew the face of the earth by burning away all that is hostile to human well-being and flourishing. It has been said that true disciples of Jesus have revolution in their hearts, in the sense that they have a burning desire to work with others for a better world. As we work to allow that fire to burn more brightly, it is important that we do not lose sight of Jesus, in the words of today’s second reading. As risen Lord, he is full of the Spirit and he stands ready to pour the gift of his Spirit anew into our hearts if we ask for it.

 

Hence, the central theme of today’s readings is that we should courageously live out our religious convictions and principles in our lives, as Jeremiah, Paul, and Jesus did, even if doing so should result in our martyrdom and turn society upside down.   If no one is ever offended by the quality of our commitment to Christ, that commitment may not be authentic, and if our individual and communal living of the Good News casts no fire and causes no division, then perhaps we are practicing “inoffensive Christianity.”

Let’s pray that the light we received at Baptism and reignited at confirmation be kept aflame brightly to burn off all the impurities in our life and help us to set the fire of God’s love everywhere.