Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sunday, August 14, 2022

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

First Reading: JEREMIAH 38:4-6, 8-10

Responsorial Psalm: PSALMS 40:2-4, 18

Second Reading: HEBREWS 12:1-4

Gospel: LUKE 12:49-53

DISCIPLESHIP IS A CAUSE OF DISSENSION.

“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” In these words of Jesus, the programmatic prophecy of Simeon in Luke 2: 34 is given an explicit fulfilment: a sign which shall be contradicted. He is the prince of peace. At his birth, a multitude of angels praised God saying, “Glory to God in the highest: and on earth peace to men of goodwill” (Luke 2: 14). Continuing, Jesus said, “From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three;” father against his son, son against his father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother and son on. Jesus is revealing his messianic identity as the one who fulfils the prophecy of Micah chapter 7 which is a prophecy about the coming age of salvation which will be preceded by tribulation and division. Micah says, “the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house” (Micah 7: 6-7). Imagine for a moment, the man who said to Jesus, ‘I will follow you, but let me first go and bury my father’ and Jesus responded ‘let the dead bury their dead.’ If this man had followed Jesus and not bury his father, what division it would have caused between him and his brothers and sisters and mother.

The theme of discipleship as a cause of division and dissension runs through the readings today. Discipleship demands us to take a stand and to make a decision, a costly decision. From old, discipleship has been a cause of division and dissension and will continue till the end of time. The first reading today is about the challenges prophet Jeremiah faced as spoke the Word of God to his people. He was persecuted, beaten and thrown into a well full of mud. The preaching of Jeremiah brought upon him rejection and ill-treatment. The context is the growing threat of invasion posed by Babylon in the 6th century BC. Zedekiah, the king of Judah hoped to avert the Babylonian invasion by entering into an alliance with Egypt. Jeremiah urges submission to Babylon and personal conversion. The king and the leaders of the people will not hear that. They had him thrown into a well, to silence him.

This is the challenge that continues to confront every true prophet of God. Our time is no different. Jeremiah could have made a choice to speak what will please the king, his advisers and the leaders of Judah and be loved, but he chose the path of integrity.  Like Jeremiah, a disciple will always be confronted with fidelity to God and speaking the truth which will not be pleasing to many and speaking what will please the world and be accepted by all. For those who take the Gospel seriously, misunderstanding and division must likewise be expected. The Church will always be faced with either taking a stand with the truth of the Gospel that will put it against the world or one that will make it pleasing to the world. That is the permanent condition of discipleship. This is why Jesus said, ‘I have not come to bring peace but division.’ To follow Jesus is to take a serious decision, a decision that can cost you what is as dear as the bond of the family.

The second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, after recalling the extraordinary faith and fidelity of the patriarchs, prophets and kings; i.e., the righteous of the Old Testament in chapter 11, draws a moral lesson. Christians today should even be more faithful because we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, not only in the patriarchs, prophets and kings of old but also in Christ Jesus himself who is the leader and perfecter of our faith. Jesus is the perfect example of sinlessness, he is the perfect example of obedience: he was obedient unto death, he is the perfect example of suffering for the sake of the truth, he is the perfect example of faithfulness to the mission, he is the perfect example of perseverance in suffering, he is the perfect example of self-surrender to the will of the Father.

His example helped the martyrs to embrace division and endure trials without complaint. His teaching and example remind us that we should not be surprised to be rejected and persecuted for the sake of the truth, even by our best friends and family. Rejection and the cross were his lots and will be the lots of his followers.  The point here is that a disciple must remain faithful in spite of challenges and difficulties. The image of the “cloud of witnesses” which refers to all the holy men and women who have gone before us throughout history, evokes the idea of active spectators at the games. They follow the events from the stands, applauding, gesticulating and encouraging us. The author invites us to run with perseverance and shed everything that can cramp our movement; burden and sin that clings to us. This Christian image of the athlete invites us to fix our gaze on Jesus, who is our goal and reward in the same way as a runner, once the race has begun, lets nothing distract him from his determination to reach his goal.

Our post-modernist society wants to achieve false peace. False peace is the peace we achieve through the refusal to stand for truth and justice, the peace that will come if we don’t condemn the killing of the unborn and same-sex marriages; when we silently support a system of discrimination and refuse to confront a prison system that erases the humanity of the prisoner. The Church will achieve false peace when she begins to deny the dogmas of faith, that Jesus is the only way to the Father or that Mary is the mother of God. The moment you decide to stand with Jesus, the moment you begin to stand up for the truth, expect division. That is the division Jesus brought. The cloud of witnesses that surround us lived with division. They stood against the values of the world, some, to the point of death. In the same way, we also must resist the values of the world and stand with Jesus. Let us pray in this mass that the example of Jesus and all our cloud of witnesses will inspire and instil in us faith and perseverance.

Happy Sunday

Fr Chidi Onwuka M.Ss.Cc