20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10; Hebrews 12:1-4; Luke 12:49-53

Video

I imagine that many of you 
did not come here today 
expecting to hear Jesus say,
“Do you think that I have come 
to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.”
With all of the division in the world right now,
did Jesus really come to make it worse?
Didn’t he come, as Zechariah said,
“to guide our feet into the way of peace”?
Didn’t he tell the disciples he sent forth
to let their first words upon entering a house
be “Peace to this house”?
Weren’t his first words to his disciples 
after his resurrection “Peace be with you”?
This is the Jesus we are used to,
and whose words captivate us.

Jesus’ words of peace captivate us because
they speak to our deepest desires in a divided world.
St. Augustine said, “peace is so great a good
that even in relation to the affairs of earth
and of our mortal state
no word ever falls more gratefully upon the ear,
nothing is desired with greater longing,
in fact, nothing better can be found” (Civ. Dei 19.11).
Everyone desires peace.
But despite this fact,
we live in a world of conflict and division.
St. Augustine says that this is because
while we all want peace, 
we want it on our own terms,
and those terms usually involve 
having someone else under our thumb.
Our desire for peace is often only satisfied 
when we win and others lose;
division and conflict are not healed but hidden
underneath the cloak of power.
We see this play out on the international stage,
within our own country,
and even within our own families
as we jockey to bend others to our will.

In such a world, those who herald true peace,
a peace built on justice and not on domination,
appear as a source of division and conflict.
And indeed they are,
for by embodying true peace
they unmask the false peace of the world
and make visible the conflict and division 
that lie just beneath its surface.
Jesus’ words today stand as reminder
that proclaiming the Gospel of peace in a divided world
might heighten conflict rather than alleviate it,
because it unmasks all those versions of peace
that depend on our side coming out on top.

Jesus is a realist, not an idealist.
He has no expectation that the Gospel of peace
will receive a warm welcome.
He doesn’t think peacemakers are blessed
because everyone likes a peacemaker.
He doesn’t think that the peacemakers are blessed
because they can magic away conflict.
He thinks peacemakers are blessed 
because they bear his image,
the image of the one who, 
as the Letter to the Hebrews tells us,
endured opposition from sinners—
endured the cross, despising its shame—
for the sake of the joy that lay before him.
They are blessed because they speak 
a word of truth in a world of falsehood,
a world in which wars are fought for peace
and peoples divided for the sake of unity.

In recent days we’ve seen a striking example of this
in Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Nicaragua,

a kind of modern-day Jeremiah,

who has not been lowered into a well,

but has been placed under house arrest 
by the government of his country. 
A long-time thorn in the side 
of Nicaragua’s authoritarian rulers,

bishop Álvarez was charged 

with inciting violence
and, in a curious turn of phrase, 
“crimes against spirituality.”
I can only presume that in this case 
“spirituality” is supposed to refer to 
a way of practicing the faith
that comforts troubled consciences
and numbs the pain of oppression—
a faith never causes offense,
never creates conflict,
never results in division,
never sets the world on fire;
a faith that aids and abets 
the false peace of domination.
Bishop Álvarez, like Jeremiah, 

rejects this sort of spirituality,
and so he is charged 

with being a source of conflict.

But we do not need dramatic examples,

like bishop Álvarez or Jeremiah, 

to know how faithfulness to Jesus’s gospel of peace

can uncover conflict, division, and tension.
We can look around our own nation and see
how faithfulness to the social teachings of the Church
on the dignity of all human life, 
migration and poverty,
the environment and war
will put you at odds 
with the platforms
of both major political parties.
We can look within ourselves
and feel the conflict between 
that part of us that is willing to settle
for a spirituality that comforts our conscience
and numbs the pain of life,
and that part of us 
that wants to follow Jesus no matter the cost,
knowing that, as the Letter to the Hebrews says,
“In your struggle against sin
you have not yet resisted 
to the point of shedding blood.”

But conflict is not the last word.
Even in the midst of the struggle
that comes with faithfulness to Christ
we can find true peace.
In a recent video message, bishop Álvarez said,
regarding those who have persecuted him,
“Our hearts are full of forgiveness. 
That’s why we’re at peace. 
Our hearts are full of the mercy of God, 
and so we’re at peace…. 
we are at rest in the hands of the Lord.”
Jesus, who passed through conflict into joy,
is “the leader and perfecter of faith,”
and has come to give us true peace—
not the false peace that hides conflict
beneath the cloak of power,
but the peace that the world cannot give,
the peace that overcomes conflict
through justice and mercy 
and self-sacrificing love:
the peace that sets the world on fire.
Let us pray that we would receive that peace,
that we would become that peace,
and that God would have mercy on us all.

18th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday

Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Matthew 16:13-23

God says through the prophet Jeremiah:
“I will place my law within them, 
and write it upon their hearts…. 
No longer will they have need 
to teach their friends and relatives
how to know the LORD.”
While this may not be entirely good news
for those of us who teach theology,
which in its better moments
seeks to help people see how to know the Lord,
it does seem to be good news for humanity as a whole.
It is good news that we will no longer experience God’s law 
as something external to us,
something alien and imposed upon us,
for that means that we will know God, as Augustine put it,
as interior intimo meo: closer to me than I am to myself.
And, as St. John Vianney said, 
“This union of God with a tiny creature is a lovely thing. 
It is a happiness beyond understanding.”

And what Jeremiah proclaims as coming,
our Gospel suggests has already arrived.
For when Peter confesses Jesus to be
“the Christ, the Son of the living God,”
Jesus proclaims, “flesh and blood 
has not revealed this to you, 
but my heavenly Father.”
Peter did not learn how to know the Lord
from friends or relatives 
or those who thought Jesus might be
John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah 
or one of the prophets.
The Father himself revealed Jesus to Peter
within the depths of his heart;
the Spirit, who is the new Law of the Gospel,
was written on Peter’s heart through faith.
The days that are coming
seem to have arrived.

But, of course, Peter’s faith is yet imperfect.
He still thinks not as God does
but as human beings do.
For he cannot accept that Jesus must walk
the path of rejection and suffering and death.
But this is the heart of God’s new covenant,
and to reject it is to become 
not the rock upon which Christ 
would build God’s Church,
but the stone of stumbling,
the obstacle that must be left behind.
What Peter could not accept,
what we so often cannot accept,
is that while God has promised 
to write his Law upon our hearts,
the instrument with which he does this writing
is the cross.

To have faith is to embrace the cross,
the cross upon which Jesus bore our sins,
and the crosses that we are called to take up,
the crosses through which we come, over time,
to be conformed to the one 
who laid down his life in love for us.
God’s promise is 
that “all, from least to greatest, 
shall know…the LORD.”
But to know the Lord is to know his cross.
Therefore, each of us, from least to greatest,
is called to take up our cross
so that God’s law, God’s Spirit,
might be written in our hearts.
And this is happiness beyond understanding.

 

18th Week of Ordinary Time, Tuesday

Readings: Jeremiah 30:1-2, 12-15, 18-22; Matthew 14:22-36

 

So, here’s the bad news:
your wound is incurable,
you bruise is grievous,

your running sore has no remedy
and your lovers have forgotten you. 
Your boat is being tossed by the waves
and the wind is against it. 
This is life under the condition of sin
when we justly suffer the consequences of our sin. 

Sometimes, of course, we get away with it,
at least for a time.
We don’t experience the consequences of our sin;
we even prosper and flourish and grow fat
on the fruits of our sin.
But, as God tells Israel through Jeremiah,
no one has escaped God’s justice:
“I struck you as an enemy would strike,
punished you cruelly.”
And when we are struck,
we come to a moment of realization
of exactly how dire our situation is,
exiles mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

And this is also grace.
It is grace to recognize that we are in exile,
to recognize that our wound is incurable,
our bruise grievous,
our boat swamped
and the wind against it.
It is grace to awaken to the truth
that our sin has placed us in opposition 
to the very source of our existence.

But that is not the end of grace.
For Jesus walks toward us through the storm,
and calls to us:  
“Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”
And he calls us to come to him,
just as he called Peter.
He calls us to step into the storm unafraid;
as God says through Jeremiah:
“When I summon him, he shall approach me;
how else should one take the deadly risk.”
He calls us to trust that he comes 
not only in justice 
but also in mercy, 
to heal the wounds of sin
and to rebuild our ruined souls.

But, of course, the life of grace,
like life lived under the condition of sin, 
is not a moment but…well…a life.
And these two lives are intertwined.
We like Peter feel faith flow and ebb,
grow full and drain away,
flourish and whither
over and again.
We boldly step into the storm at one moment
and flail and sink the next,
and so our lives are a continuous calling out:
“Lord, save me!”
And this is right and just,
for the storm that rages 
is the flow of time in which we live,
it is our inconstant natures
that even under grace
suffer the sickness of sin.

But the glad tidings is that this sickness
is not a sickness unto death.
For Jesus has called us to him
and Jesus has grasped our hand and caught us
and Jesus will not let us go.