Mass was beginning one Sunday morning in a small Latin American town when a band of revolutionaries, armed with machine guns, stormed their way into the chapel. The priest and the congregation were terrified. The men dragged the priest outside to be executed. The leader came back inside and demanded, “Anyone else who believes in this God stuff, come forward!” Everyone was petrified. There was a long silence.
Finally, one man came forward and said to the leader, “I love Jesus.” He was then roughly tossed to the soldiers and taken outside. A few others stepped forward and said the same thing. They too were marched outside. Each time someone was taken outside, machine guns were heard. When no more people stepped forward, the leader told them to leave. “You have no right to be here!” He then herded them out of the chapel where they were astonished to see the priest and the others standing there, unhurt and very much alive.
The leader then ordered the priest and those with him to go back into the chapel and continue with the Mass. He warned the others to stay out, “Until you have the courage to stand up for your beliefs!” He and his fellow revolutionaries then disappeared into the jungle.
I cannot imagine that happening to us here on Whidbey Island. Still, what would you do if someone threatened you in the same way? Do we have the courage to stand up for what we personally believe in or do we keep silent for fear that we will “rock the boat” and alienate someone?
Being a follower of Jesus Christ means taking stands that will sooner or later make others uncomfortable, just as Jeremiah made his peers uncomfortable. Proclaiming a message that they didn’t want to hear, his enemies threw him into a muddy cistern.
When a commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ causes us to struggle with making certain unpopular choices, we should follow the advice of the author of the letter to the Hebrews, who wrote, “Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who inspires and perfects our faith.”
Sometimes, our commitment to follow Jesus will compel us to oppose choices made by those closest to us. Jesus warns us of that when he said, “Do you think I have come to establish peace on earth? I assure you, the contrary is true; I have come for division.” His goal was to create acceptance of the truth he embodied, but he knew that there would be division so long as people rejected his truth and made morally wrong or unjust choices.
Life is full of many choices from choosing amongst the 31 flavors at Baskin Robbins to what clothes to wear or what to do. What holds true for the many choices we make regarding how we will live each day also holds true for how we relate to God. How devoted have we been to fostering our relationship with the Lord? Has our relationship with God suffered because we have placed our focus on things that command our attention, which in the long run are not that significant?
Many people practice what could be called “cafeteria Catholicism.” They take what they like or want about our faith and its teachings but leave behind what is needed for a well-balanced spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ. The danger of practicing our faith in this way is that at some point we become Catholic in name only.
Many norms of our culture clash with the values of the gospel and our Catholic faith: abortion, artificial contraception, and cohabitation are issues that can divide families. So too have moral issues such as euthanasia, capital punishment, and Obamacare. We find ourselves making ethical decisions and when we do, who is our guide? Do we turn to the Church for guidance who speaks to us on behalf of Jesus or do we turn to the secular media, opinion polls, and government?
As a visionary, Jesus saw how things ought to be and acted to make a difference. He spoke of coming to light a fire and yearning for a blaze. Well, every blaze begins with a single flame. That brings to mind prophets of our times who dared to make a difference, includingRobert Kennedy who asked, “What can one man or one woman do against such an enormous array of world ills?” He then added, “Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lots of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
A whistle blower is someone whose conscience doesn’t allow him to look away from obvious disregard for human rights. Another whistle blower was Martin Luther King, Jr. who challenged the mindset of our American culture 50 years ago when he said in his landmark speech at the Lincoln Memorial, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Well someday, we will all be judged by the content of our character,not by our peers, but by Christ himself. When that moment comes, will he judge us as having lived by the gospel and our Catholic faith or by our own perception of what it means to be Catholic? Will we have been Catholic enough in the manner that we lived our lives and made our moral choices that he could say to us, “Come, you, who are blessed by my Father! Inherit the kingdom prepared for you!” Or will he say, “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”
Do you recall the cartoon strip, Calvin and Hobbes? One strip showed Calvin sitting under a sign that advertised, “Kick in the butt for one dollar!” When Hobbes, a talking tiger and Calvin’s playmate, asked, “How’s business?” Calvin replied, “Awful! And I don’t know why, because so many people need a good kick in the butt!”
That to me is the point of this gospel passage. A lot of us may need a “kick in the butt” at times although few of us appreciate being told that. Here we find Jesus in anything but a docile mood. Instead, he is warning us sternly, “I have come to set the earth on fire and how I wish it were already blazing!” He is calling on us to stand up for our faith and let our light shine in the darkness and if the darkness is offended, so be it. Setting the earth on fire is a mission that every Christian must undertake if our world is to ever experience peace rather than division.