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20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
St. Margaret Church
August 14, 2016
The Cost of the Choices We Make
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato
Jeremiah, A Model for Our Choices
Jeremiah has been accused of
demoralizing the city’s soldiers and his adversaries claim that he should therefore
be put to death.
With permission from the
king, they throw him into a large cistern which is empty, with only mud at its
bottom.
Ebed-Melech, a court
official, rights the wrong and gets permission to pull him out of the cistern
before he dies.
Hopefully, the same fate
wouldn’t befall us for doing the right thing.
What today’s readings tell us
is that being faithful to our conscience will challenge us as it did Jeremiah.
The Gospel
In the Gospel, Jesus spells
out what those challenges might look like and in the passage we just heard, he specifies
the 3 areas in which challenges for doing the right thing are likely to take
place.
Listen again to that section
to see if you can pick them out.
“I have
come to set the earth on fire…. There is a baptism with which I must be
baptized…. Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I
tell you, not peace, but rather division.”
Three symbols that Jesus uses
spell out the areas in which we like Jeremiah might be challenged.
First, there is Fire
which symbolizes decisions that can literally or figuratively burn us.
For example, you have just
said “No” to your teenager. Homework ranks higher than going to the mall with
her friends or going to his buddy’s unchaperoned party on Saturday night is not
going to happen.
Your “No” has been met with a
slam of the bedroom door, an angry stalking off, and silence.
You believe you had to take
the action you did and take the heat of the fire.
Second, there is Baptism
which symbolizes the suffering that most of us will one day be plunged
into.
It may be that your declining
health is causing you much suffering. A day doesn’t pass without the constant
pain in your joints.
There are risks to have
surgery or not have surgery. It’s a question only you can answer.
And finally, there is division
which symbolizes the separation we will experience when having to take a stand that
Jesus would have taken.
Here you are part of a conversation
that puts “them” down. “If only we were rid of ‘them.’ We need to
do something about ‘them,’ to stop ‘them’.”
But you know “them” and they are good and decent
folks. But their race, their ethnicity, their religion, they politics makes “them” a target for the anger and fears
of some folks in your social circle.
You refuse to participate in
the conversation and it’s noticeable and creates a division between you and the
others.
Conclusion
Jesus has spelled out the
areas of challenges we are to encounter, and it’s we who have the concrete
experiences of them.
What to do? As Ebed-Melech
rescued Jeremiah, Jesus’ example and God’s grace, will be there for us when we
must choose.
And chose we must at some
point. And that point may be today!
