Daily HOMILY for August 14, 2016: 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle C

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20^th 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!