Father Rick Bolte's Homily

C: Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time                  2007-08-19

Jesus seems almost antifamily in today’s Gospel, speaking of dividing families and causing various members of the family to be against each other.  But in Jesus’ time, a family was much more than the nuclear family we think of today.  Families were the extended families and most everyone in your village was related to you.  Your family determined your economic and social status.  Your family expected you to carry on the vocation of your parent and to socialize with only those of your own status.

Jesus is presenting a different sense of family.  His own family had a hard time with him as we hear in John (7:5) that his brothers did not believe in him and in Mark (3:21) how his relatives tried to seize him thinking he was out of his mind.  Jesus is calling his followers to break out of those family constraints that keep them from being with people of different social and economic backgrounds.  He is proposing a new family, “those who hear the word of God and keep it.”  This would cause real division in families as social status and reputation were of utmost importance in this society.  Associating with the “wrong” people could lead to one being disowned by one’s family.  There is a real sense that to follow Jesus would mean losing one’s (former) life and livelihood.

For us today, the reaction to our following Jesus and breaking through social and economic barriers is not so obvious.  We are less family oriented and more individualistic.  Our families don’t so much get angry with us but they, with others in society, pressure us to be successful.  We are individually pushed to climb the ladder of success so that associating with others about faith and deeper life issues get squeezed out of our life.  We just don’t have time because so many other things have to be done.  Our families and society don’t so much directly oppose our associating with others and sharing real life concerns, they just push us to do what is “more important” and “necessary” first.  Many of us know how hard it is to have time to do the things our faith and deeper life experiences invite us to do.  When we stop and think about it, we can often recognize these things as being truly more important.  Society pressures us to live “more practically” and “realistically” and so we don’t get around to it.

We are called to be a catalyst for the fire Jesus wishes to ignite and consume the world.  In Jesus’ time, salt was used to enhance the burning of camel dung in their earthen ovens.  When Jesus calls us to be salt for the earth, this is the sense that he means, we are to spread the good news that breaks through the social norms that prevent people from living the kingdom.  Salt eventually loses its ability to be a catalyst for the fire and in this way salt can lose its flavor.  Our world needs a greater sense of reality and permission to live differently from the dictates of a society that keeps us too busy to be about what we know is most important.  Let us ask God to send the fire that burns through to that new freedom and the courage we need to show society a new way to live in God’s freedom!