| Homily for Twentieth Sunday in Year C 19 August 2007 This is one of those uncomfortable Gospel readings, especially if we like to think of Jesus as meek and mild, or if we are like the person who accosted me on the 484 the other day to tell me that she had several problems with the Church but not with Jesus because after all, he was a modern man who got on with everybody. Today’s Gospel reminds us very clearly just how demanding Jesus will be if we embark on a relationship with him. It will inevitably shake us up and cause friction, conflict even, at some point in our lives. Jesus says to the disciples quite bluntly, “Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” And he explains why: “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already!” What is this fire he is talking about? We must be clear first of all that he is not talking about the fire of hell or the fire of punishment- we do not believe in a God who is rubbing his hands with glee saying “Now they’re for it, I’ve had enough now, I’m really going to punish them this time!” We on the contrary believe in a God who never tires of us, whatever we get up to. This symbol of fire that Jesus uses is the fire that is the awe-inspiring presence of God, the close awareness of God. This comes from the Old Testament of course, and first of all from the encounter that Moses has with God on Mt Sinai in Exodus 3. There we read that God appeared to him “in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and lo, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed”. And God calls to Moses out of the flames and reveals to him his name, “I am who I am”, he reveals to him something of his nature, of his very essence, exactly what kind of God he is. And then later, when Moses has led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the wilderness there was a pillar of cloud, that turned at night into a pillar of fire, which stayed with them and which signified to them the continuing presence of God in all their wanderings and troubles, and which acted as their guide as we read in Numbers 9. The pillar of fire guided them all the time, they were constantly aware of it. The Fathers of the Early Church all agree that this fire that guides the Israelites is in fact the Holy Spirit, and of course this reminds us straightaway of the birth of the Church at Pentecost, when St Luke describes the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles with the words “and there appeared unto them tongues as of fire….resting on each one of them”. So what Jesus is fervently wishing for the world is not that there should be some ghastly punishment, but that there should be a new awareness of God, a new closeness of people’s lives to God’s will, all over the earth. And how he wishes that this sense of the reality, the immediacy of God, would set people ablaze with a new enthusiasm for living the sort of life that God wants us to live. Fire is a potent symbol- it stands for warmth and light, indeed our ancestors in their caves only began the long march towards civilisation when they discovered fire and all its properties. It also stands for purefying- in the heat of the fire impurities drop away and in the heat of autoclaves surgical implements become sterile and fit for use in the operating theatre. And it stands for moulding and recreating- in intense heat sand is turned by glass-blowers into glass, and once they are melted by the heat metals can be poured into moulds and take on new shapes and new uses. All of these ideas resonate with us, don’t they, as we think about what a close encounter with God would involve, and what changes it would start off in us. If we let it, that is. Because of course the other thing about fire that has to be borne in mind is, that it is dangerous! So too it is dangerous to get close to God- Moses, we read, “hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God”. It is a risk, because God is a lover, he is the best of lovers, and like all lovers, he is demanding. Or perhaps, to put it another way, when we begin to realise more and more of the nature of God, we will see with increasing clarity the things in our lives that are out of place, that jar, that must sooner or later go- our love for God will cause us to make demands on ourselves. And we will change, the fire of love will change us, and we will come to desire that change, because nothing less will satisfy us in our ambition to be close to God. And then of course we will discover that not everyone in our life, be it in the family circle or in the workplace or wherever, will be comfortable with the change that they see in us. For our newly kindled awareness of God in our fellow men and women may cause us to speak out against unfairness and injustice in a way we haven’t bothered or dared to before; our new knowledge of God may cause us to see the wrong thinking that lies behind some of our country’s laws and find us having to stand up for the Church’s teaching in a more open way than we have been inclined to before- we may in other words find that we have to stand up and be counted! We will no longer be content just to relax and go with the flow of our society, because we will be resting in the Lord and going with the flow of the Holy Spirit. Jesus knows this very well, which is why he is carefully warning his disciples of the cost of discipleship in this reading- “the father divided against the son” and so on. For it is in the crucible, in the fire of a real encounter with God, in the heat of the moment, so to say, that we see what God requires of us and how much must be burnt away before we can be poured into the mould he has prepared for us. The risks are great, but the rewards are even greater! This morning we approach the God who lives in the burning bush, which is the tabernacle, the God whose presence never leaves his faithful people, the God who, giving himself to be consumed by us in every Mass, is nevertheless never consumed. As we receive Our Lord in Holy Communion today, let us ask make this our prayer: Lord Jesus, enkindle in us the fire of your love, the fire of the awareness of what you wish to do in our lives. Amen. |
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