TWENTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
14 AUGUST 2022
When
Jeremiah received God’s call to become a prophet, he tried to get out of
it. He argued that he was too young to
be a prophet. But God assured him that
he would be a good prophet, despite his youth.
God promised to be with him to speak the truth to his people. Trusting that promise, Jeremiah spoke God’s
word faithfully. It was a word that the
people did not want to hear. They
ignored his call to repent and return to living the Covenant. They argued that God would protect Jerusalem,
the Temple, and the king, as God had done in the days of Isaiah. Today, the king orders him to be thrown into
an empty cistern, accusing him of being a traitor when he told him to surrender
to the Babylonians. Sunk into the dirty
mud of an empty and dark cistern, Jeremiah is deprived of everything. When the king changes his mind, three men
drag him out to save his life.
In today’s
Gospel, Jesus shocks us with uncomfortable words. He tells his disciples that he has come for
division. Instead of being the Prince of
Peace proclaimed to shepherds at his birth, he speaks of dividing household
units into enemies. As much as these words might shock us, they make more sense
when we understand that Jesus is about to be thrown into his own dirty mud of
an empty cistern. He will know the fire
of being betrayed, abandoned, and wrongfully judged. He will be baptized into the fate of being
executed like a common criminal.
Jesus faces
this terrifying fire and baptism trusting that the Father will not abandon
him. In his example, he is telling us
that we too will sooner or later be thrown into a dark and muddy cistern. We too must share in his baptism of
fire. That happens when we have the
courage to speak the truth out of love to someone who does not want to hear
it. When we live as faithful disciples,
we take the risk of divisions within our families. That happens too often when people go through
the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and find opposition from their families.
Some of you
may find yourselves now in some kind of dark and muddy cistern. We are thrown into those cisterns when we
lose our health and face life threatening illnesses. We find ourselves in those dark cisterns when
we must face the death of someone we love, especially a sudden and unexpected
death. We find ourselves in those
cisterns when marriages fall apart or when those whom we had considered friends
betray us or walk away from us. We find
ourselves in those cisterns when we lose jobs or face financial ruin. Cisterns come in many different forms and
shapes. But they are all dark, muddy,
and frightening.
The Letter
to the Hebrews urges us to have the same trust in the Father’s love that Jesus
does. His trust is rewarded in the
resurrection, when the Father transforms him by raising him from the grave in a
much more dramatic fashion than the Cushite lifted Jeremiah from the
cistern. We are surrounded by a great
cloud of witnesses who have experienced the same fire and the same baptism that
we do. We need to keep our eyes fixed on
Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.
When we are burned by the fire of the
baptism described by Jesus, we find ourselves in a most vulnerable and utterly
helpless condition. When we find
ourselves at the bottom, we begin to learn what people battling addictions
learn when they go through a twelve step process. We can learn that we need to depend on God,
and not ourselves. The Lord keeps his
promise that those who die with him will rise with him. That is at the heart of everything we believe
as disciples of Jesus Christ. This is
what sustains us whenever we find ourselves in those dark and muddy cisterns,
baptized into the fire of Jesus Christ.
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