Sunday August 19th – Ordinary Time: "A House Divided, but Please Don't Complain"

{The Sunday before Game #1 on August 21st}

Luke 12:49-53
"I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished! 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; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."


Today's Gospel is one of those I think where people read and just say, "I give up. I don't get the Bible!"

This is a short passage with a lot going on in it that, when read literally is seriously confusing, is it not? First Jesus sounds like some kind of religious planetary arsonist and then there's this weird sort of family math that doesn't exactly work does it? It's one of those times you're tempted to toss it aside and say "well, this is for religious scholars or something because it is certainly not for me!"

What is Luke trying to convey when he tells us of this announcement of the Savior to his disciples? That it's okay if you think math is hard because Jesus couldn't do it either? And what's he on about with this fire and baptism? And more so – since when does Our Savior talk of division of people rather than uniting them? What is Luke trying to tell us?

Most often I hear this gospel interpreted as the fact that Jesus knows that even though he has proclaimed God's Kingdom to us, He still knows that this world, this societies' future is to fall away from the sacrifice He made for us and to become again a fallen world of sin: this world we have now where families are estranged by television, and drugs, and distraction. And that Jesus is literally so anguished by this knowledge he wishes to set the world on fire and so too be engulfed in the flames.

Wow. Dramatic. But, I guess the guy really loved us a lot.

But I have been having another idea. The idea is that perhaps it is no mistake that we have a second reading today in which Paul addresses the Hebrews and tells them maybe not to complain so much. Because certainly that's something we can relate to. Everyone likes to complain.

And when we put the ideas from these two readings together, what's happening? Well, we have modern society don't we? But we also have the reminder that you may have troubles, you may feel alone, you may feel different, and you probably have plenty of very good reasons to complain, but wait! Stop and think about Jesus who bore all of these ills and didn't. And of course in the Gospel have a very good example of the kinds of things that Jesus said when he was upset by the way he saw things going and these certainly weren't complaints. As strange as it sounds to our ears, his is a call to action.

This week in the university where I teach, a new class will arrive for their first year of college. And if they are anything like the last year's class they will completely take over the house. Within minutes the staff kitchen will be their favorite hang out, they'll know where to find all the stuff they're not supposed to find, and they'll own the place. For exactly one week. Then the second year class who owned the place last year will return and within that tiny society of students rather than complaining and a house divided perhaps this Gospel and this reading won't play out; that instead these students meeting for the first time will see opportunities not for division and complaints, but to use the example Jesus gives us: A call to action.

Because in the end it is in doing the right thing that makes us holy and brings use closer to God.

Thank you.



--Fr. Kurt