Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10; Hebrews 12:1-4; Luke 12:49-53
I had some trouble with finding a direction for the homily this week. The readings seemed a bit more disparate than normal. In my research I then came across this poem by Sir Francis Drake;
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.
I can say from experience that God is good at disturbing us in our lives when we get to comfortable. He has made this clear to me in two separate instances, the first was in my calling to the diaconate. It disturbed me when I realized it was a real calling and it still disturbs me today as I realize every day that I need to treat people in a different way than I have thought about in the past.
The second time he disturbed my thinking came not long after I was ordained and led me to the employment I enjoy today. My call to be the Director of Cemeteries for the diocese. I was not really interested in assisting at or presiding at funerals or graveside services when I was ordained as I did not think I had the proper temperament to work with families during that most difficult time of their lives. So God decided to disturb my thinking by having me either assist or preside at 6 funerals and graveside services within the first two months that I was ordained. This led to me rethinking my path in life and has led me here today.
I would assume that most everyone here today can think of a time when God has disturbed their thought process or their direction in life. We do hope however that we are not like Jeremiah who we hear about today. He obviously disturbed those around him on many different levels. First the princes of the land convince the King that he is leading people astray in his prophesying. They toss him into a cistern that has no water but is still muddy enough to entrap him.
Then a court official convinces the King that Jeremiah should not die in this manner and gains permission to extricate him from the cistern. As the story continues after this he makes the King rethink his attack plans, though he does not change them and he reaps the disaster prophesied for him by Jeremiah.
This type of disturbance is what Jesus is telling us about in the reading we hear in the Gospel where we are told that family members will be pitted against each other as the Kingdom comes closer.
We see this disturbance today in some families as they are torn apart because of the actions of other family members. Some of these actions may be well meaning and designed to help others lead a life more centered on God and not on the passing fancies of secular society. It has always been this way, as parents we try to teach our children the right way to behave and to be productive members of society. Then we are caught off guard as they grow into adults and have different opinions about morality than we do. You see once they leave the family home and become members of secular society, this society impacts or disturbs the thinking that you have instilled in them.
If that is the case and they begin siding with secular society over their moral upbringing in the church what are you supposed to do? Are you called to let them go or to berate them into submission to your point of view? The second option seems like a great way to fulfill what Jesus says in the Gospel today. “A father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother,” A great division of the family.
There is another way, however, to accomplish the teaching of the faith which we are all called to pass onto our children, and it may disturb your thinking on the matter. We hear in the Letter to the Hebrews today:
“Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us
and persevere in running the race that lies before us
while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus,
the leader and perfecter of faith.”
The witnesses we are surrounded by are the saints who have gone before us. Hopefully we are also surrounded by good role models from the pulpit as well as others in our family. In the worst case if there is no one that you can relate to that will help guide you then there is ALWAYS the opportunity to focus on Jesus and follow him. This last option of focusing on Jesus though will usually lead to a large disturbance in your thinking.
While Jesus always believed in guiding people to God and eternal life in paradise with him, he was not opposed to calling on people to change their ways. If we allow our thinking to be disturbed when we are comfortable then we have the ability to not only gain eternal life, but we may even lead others to follow us.
When we lead and teach from the perspective of Love as Jesus did, we are doing as Jesus taught. This does not make it easy, though the reward is great in the end. Let your minds be disturbed by the Holy Spirit to allow you to more closely align with the teaching of Jesus. It may lead to the people closest to you treating you as Jeremiah was, but in the end it will lead you to eternal life. While it may not be easy I will finish with an idea of why it is so important, also from the letter to the Hebrews.
“Consider how he endured such opposition from sinners,
in order that you may not grow weary and lose heart.
In your struggle against sin
you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.”
Can we all agree there is more for us to do in society to help all those around us gain eternal life by disturbing their thought process. We should all be more counter cultural as we see in the witness of Jeremiah, Jesus, St. Paul, St, Clare of Assisi and St. John Paul II. Are we willing to have our thoughts be disturbed enough to change our direction in our search for eternal life?
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