20th Sunday of the Year
Jer 38:4-6, 8-10 Heb12:1-4 Luke 12:49-53
Life in God seems to be full of contractions!!
Jeremiah, the prophet of today’s first reading, was chosen by God to be a sign to a very stringent community and to teach them and preach to them. But he was only a youth! What possible effect would he have on such a difficult audience? He was regarded as a ‘mad man’. But he humbly accepted his painful vocation, one which gave him no satisfaction other than a clear conscience that he was answering God’ call. We learn from Jeremiah that serving God and doing God’s will is a virtue in itself whether people approve or not and whether or not there is any satisfaction or consolation.
Then the Gospel today begins by Jesus saying that he has come ‘to bring fire on earth’! Fire can destroy and fire can give heat and light. The fire that Jesus brings is the light of divine love to people’s hearts. It is the fire of God’s Word which made the hearts of the disciples, on the Road to Emmaus, ‘burn within them’. (Luke 24:32) Later in today’s Gospel reading, there seems another contradiction – He speaks of His Baptism. Fire and water surely work in opposing ways! But the Baptism Jesus speaks of is His Death - another contradiction, because from His Death comes Resurrection and New Life.
Throughout His life Jesus experiences clashing of emotions too. He felt the need and urgency to go forward and proclaim God’s Kingdom and yet the fear of what that would bring, Calvary, must have been great. We know that ordinary life is made up of positives and negatives, and what we perceive as good and evil, but we must be realistic and patient. The sadness of leaving is always balanced by the joy of arriving, night will inevitably lead to day and the seed must go into the ground and die before we see new life and growth. John the Baptist teaches us and gives us the example of his life of preaching and doing good and ‘decreasing’ in order to make way for the Lord and allow His life to ‘increase’.
The contradiction that strikes us today is that Jesus came to teach of God’s Love and reiterate the commandments given by Moses, and yet He speaks of the fire of division and even the breakup of families or communities. This Gospel calls us to focus on life in God and what Jesus came to preach – Love of God and Love of neighbour. The basic pattern of Christian life is a sharing of opposites, in the Suffering and Death of Jesus and in His glorious Resurrection and New Life.
Saint Paul expresses it clearly; “Always, wherever we may be, we carry with us in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus, too, may always be seen in our body. Indeed, while we are still alive, we are consigned to our death every day, for the sake of Jesus, so that in our mortal flesh the life of Jesus, too, may be openly shown.” (2 Cor 4:10-11)