Homily for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Allow Jesus To Interrupt And Disrupt Your Life

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, August 14, 2022

In today’s Gospel, Jesus said, “I have come to set the earth on fire and how I wish it were already blazing.” What’s the Lord saying? Since the Second Vatican Council, there has been this tendency in the Catholic circles to play down the challenging aspects of the biblical revelation. The notion of God as kind, merciful and loving has become the overriding theme in our preaching and evangelization. Don’t get me wrong. The biblical God of both the Old and New Testaments is kind, merciful, and compassionate, but he is also fierce, demanding, frightening and judgmental. In our contemporary culture, being judgmental is one vice a vast majority of people consider unacceptable. But whether we like it or not, whether our contemporary culture accepts it or not, whether being judgmental fits our present sensibility or not, the fact is that the true and living God is extremely judgmental. Even though our culture is against being judgmental, it is not so in the Bible. In Jesus’ statement in today’s Gospel: “I have come to set the earth on fire and how I wish it were already blazing,” we see the judgmentalism of God. He has not come to light a gentle and cozy fire in the fireplace. He is throwing fire down. Just like the God who in the Old Testament destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and sent down fire to consume the enemies of prophet Elijah, Jesus is embodying in flesh Yahweh.  

Add to it Jesus said, “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three.” Interesting! I thought prophet Isaiah announced that Jesus would be called “Prince of peace?” How come he is now bringing not peace but a sword? How come he is bringing division? How come he is dividing households? How do we make sense of these different dimensions of who God is? How do we connect together the harsh and frightful images with the gentle and lenient ones? In the context of a corrupt world, what does God’s love look like? Love is what God is. God never changes. However, God’s love is received by us in the context of the fallen world and perceived by our fallen mind. According to the principle that St. Thomas Aquinas adopted from the great ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, “Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the recipient.” What does that mean? We receive things not as they are but as we are. Whatever is taken in is taken in according to the capacity of the recipient. If you recite Shakespeare to a three year old, he is not going to take it in because he is not yet able to do so. If you teach theoretical physics to someone who has no background in it, he will hear you but it will be received as a gibberish. God’s love is unchanging, but when it breaks into a world and a life messed up by sin, it will sometimes appear as fierce, judgmental, harsh and demanding. Look at it this way: when you are in a grumpy mood, who is the most obnoxious person to have around you? It’s not going to be a fellow grumpy person. A grumpy person will most definitely appreciate a company. The most annoying person to have around when you are moody is someone who is in a good mood, who is full of sunshine and light. That’s the person you find obnoxious. But is the person objectively obnoxious? Not at all! But you receive the person as you are. You receive that person as annoying. If you are stuck in a cave in absolute darkness, what’s your greatest enemy after being rescued? Light! But light in itself is good, beautiful, and illuminating. But to you who have been stuck in a cave for quite sometime in total darkness, the light will be a torture. Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the recipient. God’s love is like a good world class soccer coach who is hired to manage a football club. Once he resumes work, how would lazy players perceive him? Obnoxious, mean, fierce, unpleasant.

Sisters and brothers, the world is like a dysfunctional family. G. K. Chesterton said “we are all in the same boat and we are all seasick.” Therefore, when Jesus comes, he necessarily comes as a troublemaker, as an interruptor, as a breaker of peace. In a dysfunctional family, there is some kind of phony peace. Everyone finds a way to get along even though they know there is a deep problem. But that’s not peace! Such families need someone who can come in and break up the phony peace. This is what Jesus means when he says I have not come for peace rather for division. Jesus comes as God’s own order, and because the mode of the receiver is dysfunctional, he will be received as judgment, as fierce. A good soccer coach will not select third grade players and lazy players for competitive matches. If he tries to set things right and they are not going along, he will not select them for matches. In fact, he will start offering those players to lower teams to buy. To those players, the coach is mean and ruthless. But he has a job to do. Jesus has come to light the fire. As the consuming fire, he has come to burn everything in us that is opposed to God’s desire and purpose. He has to clear the threshing floor.

As you can now see, there is no contradiction between God’s gentleness and God’s fierceness. There is no contradiction between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. There is no contradiction between the God who is kind and God who is fierce and demanding. Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver. If you are in a good spiritual place, how would God’s love break into your life? As something gentle, kind and pleasant. But if your spiritual life has gone off kilter, you will perceive God’s love as judging fire. Do you want God’s love to gently break into your life? Then consider the words of our today’s second reading: “Brothers and sisters: since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.” If someone is preparing for a relay race, he has to get rid of those things that make running smoothly hard and impossible. He has to lose weight, change his form, adjust his style, change his diet and rid himself of certain things. Finally, he has to have a clear sense of  goal. This is also true in spiritual life.