20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Gospel Reading: Luke 12:49-53

49 Jesus said to his disciples: I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already!
50 There is a baptism I must still re­ceive, and how great is my distress till it is over!
51 Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.
52 For from now on a household of five will be divided: three against two and two against three;
53 the father divided against the son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.'

Meditation

The gospel passage for this Sunday is in three sections

• verse 49;
• verse 50;
• and verses 51 to 53.

As I have often recommended, you should meditate on one section at a time. But you will find that in this passage the three sections complement one another; if taken together, they correct any false interpretations which could arise if they were read separ­ately. Think of them, therefore, as parts of a beautifully con­structed building in which each part is appreciated in relation to the whole.

The metaphor of fire in verse 49 is difficult to tie down, be-1 cause it is a common one and can be interpreted in many different ways. In fact, it is used with a variety of interpretations in the Bible itself: the tongues of fire representing the coming of the' Spirit; the burning fire of love, and so on.

The interpretation probably intended by Jesus in this passage is the one we find in chapter 3 of St Luke's gospel, where John the Baptist said that the Messiah would come and baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire, and went on to explain that he would gather God's pure wheat into the barn and dispatch the chaff to be burnt in a fire that would never go out.

In our passage, then, Jesus is at a mo­ment in his life - one that we can identify with - when he deeply moved by all the chaff in the world, the phoniness, the ar­rogance, the oppression, and he longs to see it going up in a great bonfire, while true goodness is gathered safely into God's barn.

Secondly, the sayings of Jesus are usually metaphors, speak­ing to our imagination. You say the words with Jesus, then, get­ting in touch with the particular form of chaff that makes you in­dignant - hypocrisy, or racism, or manipulation - and getting in touch with the particular part of ‘the earth’ where you see it -your family, your church community, your country or some other country, your own self. Experience with Jesus the blessed­ness of hungering and thirsting for God's justice to be realised in the world.

Thank God for those people you have known who saw it as their mission in life ('I have come to..’) to expose evil in one of its hidden forms and refuse to accept it passively as we are in­clined to do. Put their names into the verse so that you can exper­ience that the Spirit of Jesus is still in the world.

There is a danger that we will read verse 49 self-righteously or fanatically, and it has often been read like this, Christians cov­ering up a natural hardness or intolerance with the pretence that it was the will of God.

Verse 50 comes, therefore, as a corrective. Jesus is anxious to cast fire, but he took no pleasure in this; he expressed his feel­ings with the metaphor of a baptism with which he had to be baptised, not referring to the sacrament, but using the word in its original sense of drowning.

He felt he was being thrown into a dark abyss and he was afraid. Identify with him at this mo­ment. All his life has been leading here, he knew it was the only way to go, that he would be bringing new life for the world, and yet, he was afraid.

This was the moment the synoptic gospels recorded as the agony in the garden and St John in Chapter 12 verse 27:
'Now my soul is troubled.
And what should I say -
"Father, save me from this hour/'?
No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.
Father, glorify your name.’

The Epistle to the Hebrews also describes this moment: 'He of­fered up prayer and entreaty, aloud and in silent tears to the one who had power to save him out of death/ The prophet Hababuk had the same feeling as he waited for a moment of grace:
 
‘My whole body trembles
my lips quiver at the sound;
decay creeps into my bones,
my steps falter beneath me.’

Be with people who are living that moment, knowing that they are doing the right thing and yet insecure and afraid of the hurts will cause others, 'carrying with them in their bodies the death of Jesus,' as St Paul described it.

Finally, enter into the movement of verses 51-53, with its ‘do you suppose?' and 'no'. Remember a time when you took for granted that the teaching of Jesus was going to make life easier for you, and someone or some event brought you up short, hitting you with the realisation, ‘Hey! It isn't like that at all.’  Twas Jesus entering your life.

Respond to the concreteness of the teaching. It is a family of five: mother, father, a married son with his wife and a daughter, and they are divided three against two and two against three.

Let the repetitiveness touch you so that you experience the continued pain and the frustration of the division. Then bring Jesus into the story, looking on at that painful situation and saying that it is what has to be.

See him as the great leader, not hiding the facts, nor abdicating his responsibility, and thank God for people you have known who were like that.

Prayer 

Lord, we thank you
that you know there is a fire you want to bring to the earth
and you wish it were blazing already.
We know that you did not come to bring peace on earth
but rather division.
We thank you for the times
when you brought some separation between us
and people we knew were very close to us.