Twentieth Sunday In Ordinary Time
LUKE 12:49-53
In the strange collection which we call Luke’s chapter twelve, he moves on to a topic without connection to the preceding (last Sunday’s gospel). He depicts Jesus saying, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already set ablaze.” Does Luke portray Jesus as the Lord God is sometimes portrayed in the Old Testament, a God of War?’’ Does he have in mind a description of the Lord God in Psalm 18:8, “Smoke went up from his nostrils, devouring fire from his mouth, glowing coals flaming forth from him?” Thus Jesus’ flaming statement would be a claim to being God. Closer to Luke’s thought may be Isaiah 10:17. The prophet says, ‘The Light of Israel will become a fire, and its Holy One a flame, burning and devouring . . . .” Luke 2:32 refers to Jesus as a “Light of revelation to the Gentiles,” and 4:14 designates him as “the Holy One of God.”
More helpful is a reality check to see how Luke used “fire” in his gospel up to this point. In Luke 3:9 those who oppose the message of repentance are compared to a tree that does not bear good fruit. It is therefore cut down and thrown into the fire. The better interpretation is from Luke 3:16. John the Baptizer describes the baptism with which Jesus baptizes, “He will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire” If “Holy Spirit” and “fire” are parallel expressions, Jesus’ statement is a yearning for the mission of the Holy Spirit, which brings life to the Church. That event is described in Acts 2:3, when the presence of the Holy Spirit is signaled in tongues of fire.
Before the mission of the Holy Spirit can begin, another event must take place. Therefore the Lucan Jesus says, “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and how greatly I am stressed until it is accomplished.” This baptism is Jesus’ martyrdom, his Passion followed by his death on the cross. One prefers to interpret the terminology of a specific gospel chiefly through that gospel itself. However, since Luke persistently used the Gospel of Mark as a source, his expressions can be interpreted through Mark’s expressions. In Mark 10:38-39, Jesus promises martyrdom to James and John in these words, “The cup, (an Old Testament term for suffering), that I drink, you will drink, and the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.” Recall that at the beginning of this section of Luke’s gospel, Jesus “sets his face for Jerusalem” to meet his baptism in his own blood. Therefore, “. . . how greatly I am stressed until it is accomplished.”
The above two sayings attributed to Jesus are difficult and strange enough. Something even stranger and more difficult follows, “Do you think I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” The “division” and strife are explained. “In one house there will be five against three, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and vice versa.” This sounds like families sometimes are, and more like the frequently real situation when the division of inheritance takes place. But Luke already dealt with that problem two Sundays ago.
This divisive saying is influenced by Micah 7:6, “The son treats the father with contempt. The daughter rises up against her mother, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. A man’s enemies are those of his own household.” In the context of the time of Micah’s dreadful oracle, about 700 B.C., he speaks of blood and violence everywhere. How and when does this fit into a time contemporary with the writing of the gospels, the last third of the first Christian century? A horrendous persecution took place in Rome about twenty years before Luke wrote his gospel. There was blood and violence everywhere. Family members did turn traitor to each other, even reporting to the authorities close relatives as Christians. Jesus’ purpose is not to bring persecution, but the statements attributed to him by Luke recognize that Christianity produced the kinds of family divisions Luke found expressed in Micah 6:7. He used Micah’s words to fit what had already happened.
JEREMIAH 38:4-6. 8»10
The time is early 6th century B.C. Jeremiah is convinced that Jerusalem is doomed to fall to the Babylonian king and his army. The prophet openly proclaims his conviction. Some royal princes accuse him of treason. The king gives them carte blanche (full power). The princes lower him into a cistern without water, only mud. An Ethiopian official of the king reported this to him. The king orders Jeremiah pulled out of the cistern. What connection is there to today’s gospel? Jeremiah's words, like the words of Jesus, caused division in families, (this time the royal family), and led to Jeremiah’s own “baptism.”
HEBREWS 12:1-4
The “cloud of witnesses” refers to the preceding chapter, a list of Old Testament figures whose faith enabled them to persevere against all odds. The author encourages Christians to imitate those witnesses to faith, “looking to Jesus, the leader and perfector of faith.” He endured the cross because he knew of the joy that awaited those whose trust in God remains intact no matter what the suffering that entails. Jesus resisted to the point of shedding his blood, “You have not yet resisted sin to the point of shedding blood.”
