TWENTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME C

[cappie]

In the Gospel reading  today, God is saying, that behaviour is important, that God has some very real expectations of us, and that what we do, our actions and attitudes, matter.

So, we hear all Jesus’ strong words about division and fire – about what he must undergo and his impatience to get on with it.

 God offers us a vision of what human life can be, of what it should be. We know what that vision is. It has to do with shaping ourselves as people by living faithfully, by keeping God at the centre of our lives. It has to do with telling the truth and with living not for ourselves alone but also for others. It has to do with holiness of life and with a concern for the poor and oppressed. It has to do with the way we take care of the people God places in front of us. It has to do with how we behave, but even more, it has to do with who we become.

What it all really comes down to is the imitation of Christ; Jesus living his life in us and through us.  God expects us seriously to try to conform our lives to it.

And when Jesus talks about fire, and about his baptism, and about division and conflict, he’s talking about what it looks like and what it feels like – for him, and from time to time, for us – to struggle to live this way, to be faithful to God’s vision of who we are created to be.

  God’s first call for holiness and righteous is made to us, to those who claim to follow Jesus.  It all begins with us.

Each one of us, has the same choice. On one hand, we can choose to live as God will have us live, to live faithful, honourable Christian lives wherever we are, no matter where such faithfulness may lead us or what it might cost. Such a life is truly heroic. It demands our very best. We fall down; we get up. We fall down; we get up.  

Now, it’s also very important that we keep clear , God doesn’t give us this vision of how human beings should live so that God can sit up there with a checklist keeping score . That’s wrong.

And none of this stuff about behaviour and discipline has to do with whether or not God will keep loving us. God’s love is a given, it’s never at issue. Instead, there are at least two other reasons, two real reasons, why God tells us these things about how our lives should look.

The first reason for all of these demands is that God loves us, and God wants for us the fullest and the richest and the deepest life we can have. We are created in such a way that the very best that life has to offer us is available to us most fully as we try to live God’s vision of what it means to be a human being. It’s a little bit like the fact that most cars are made to run on gasoline. Sure, there are some other things you can put in cars that may work for a bit – things that might even make for a very interesting ride, for a little while. But then the car just won’t work anymore. So, with God’s vision for our lives. We just run better, over the long haul, when our lives are running as they are created to run.

God’s way of living promises is life at its fullest and its most abundant. God loves us, and God wants the very best for us. That’s one of the reasons God gives us his vision of how human beings should live. For our own sakes.

The other reason has to do with our mission, with our calling to be the body of Christ, to carry out the work and the ministry of Jesus Christ wherever we may be. Part of our witness to the world out there is offering it a real option – a different way to live and to be.

This is what Jesus did, he offered himself; he spoke of the Father; he told the truth; he lived with absolute integrity. People saw in Jesus something that caused a crisis within them – and they had to choose.

And for the world to see Jesus today, it must look at us. There’s really no place else.

Again, it does no good for us, or for the church, to sit on the sidelines and shout to the world out there that it is “bad, bad, bad.”   We are called, as was Jesus himself, to transform ourselves, to show and to tell the world what it looks like, and how it’s different to live as we are created to live.

That’s what’s behind all of these tough lessons.  

It’s a challenge, and it’s hard. Nevertheless, this is what we believe, this is the challenge we have accepted, and this is what we try to teach our children.