August 18, 2022
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) on August 14, 2022 at The Paulist Center in Boston, MA. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10; Psalm 40; Hebrews 12:1-4; and Luke 12:49-53.
Today, Jeremiah witnesses to the hardships of being God’s prophet. When we challenge others to change, it can lead them to despise us. Our reading from Hebrews exhorts us to persevere in holiness, ridding ourselves of our own sinful tendencies.
And there’s the challenge, friends: when the people around us disagree with us, how can we be sure that the gospel is prompting as to disagree? For those times when we have caused division because of our sinful tendencies, we ask God for mercy.
Jesus said it well after preaching in his hometown of Nazareth: “No prophet is accepted in his own native place” (Luke 4:24). Proclaiming how God wants others to change their current lifestyles may cause people to distance themselves from us and our message. We need look no further than our first reading for the example par excellence in the Old Testament of a prophet despised by the rich and the powerful. Jeremiah had been prophesying for decades the ugly but obvious truth: the corrupt kings of Judah made the nation too weak to resist the Babylonian Empire. At the time of our first reading, Babylon has already laid siege to Jerusalem and taken thousands of aristocrats and priests away in captivity. Even then, the last king of Judah wants Jeremiah punished for predicting the complete annihilation of Jerusalem and Judah.
How often do those of us involved at the Paulist Center relate to Jeremiah? We speak constantly about issues of justice in our society and reform in our Church. We embrace immigrants and refugees, advocate for equal opportunities for marginalized groups, and call for better stewardship of our planet’s resources. We incorporate the gifts of women and LGBTQ+ people as fully as we can into our community while still maintaining the requirements of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. As we exercise our prophetic role, we may turn son against father, daughter against mother, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law, even in our own households.
Isn’t that what Jesus is saying when he preaches of division, wishing the world was “already blazing”? That there will be conflict between those who follow the gospel and those who don’t?
Until this week, that’s what I thought Jesus was saying. But then it dawned on me: Jesus spoke about divided households in the previous chapter of Luke. He said, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste, and house will fall against house” (11:17). We’re much more familiar with how it’s phrased in the Gospel of Matthew, because Abraham Lincoln quoted it: “no… house divided against itself will stand” (12:25). Many of us in the United States interpret Jesus’ endorsement of division as being a division between the good and the evil relatives within a single household.
But is that what Jesus meant? It seems to me that the only divisions that Jesus desires are divisions within the ranks of evildoers. If Satan is divided against himself, how, then, will his kingdom stand? (Ref. Matthew 12:26.) I don’t think that Jesus is telling his followers that the more people despise them, the better disciples they are!
We live in such a contentious time. Both our nation and our Church are bitterly divided, and those divisions often reach into our very households. These are not the divisions that Jesus desires. Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus advocate that the disciples take an active role in sowing division among the forces of evil themselves. Jesus may have said that those who were persecuted would be blessed, but he didn’t say the same about the hell-raisers and the overconfident. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the humble of heart.
I have never belonged to a community that was so united in its vision of the future as the Paulist Center, so passionate in wanting to bring about the kingdom of heaven, but I’m still confused. Some people seem to believe that this is supposed to be a place for those who share our vision. Others believe it is supposed to be a place where people who don’t share the vision feel welcome enough to continue coming here, week after week, to be persuaded to more fully embrace it. I think it’s supposed be both/and, not either/or. Pope Francis is calling us to be a more synodal Church, where we are enriched from listening and welcoming people who are different from us. Right now, we say that all are welcome, but I wonder if a moderate political conservative or a “high church” Catholic would feel welcome here! We want to avoid disagreement, but throughout the past 2000 years, the Church has thrived when those who disagreed with one another were able to stay in communion with one another, rather than going their separate ways. The author Madeleine l’Engle once wrote, “We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”
We are on fire with the passion of the Holy Spirit to right wrongs. We desperately want people within the nation and the Church who disagree with us to change. How are we to bring about the reign of God and defeat the kingdom of Satan? I’m not sure. It’s going to take me my whole life to learn how I am supposed to follow Christ as closely as I can, so I presume it will take each you a lifetime to figure out how Christ calls each of you to do it. One thing is clear: if we think that the people in our nation, our Church, and our households who disagree with us belong to the kingdom of Satan, we are not bringing about the reign of God. We are all children of God. All are welcome within the reign of God. No matter the divisiveness of our nation’s political rhetoric, our own passion for God’s righteousness must always remain a loving, reconciling passion. We must get out of our echo chambers where we only talk with the people who already agree with us. We are a people drawn to Christ, being formed together in a stumbling, fumbling, beautiful way that is sometimes awkward and painful. But God can use all of this. God loves us all. The more appealingly we present the reign of God, the less power Satan has in our world.