An Exegetical Reflection on the Gospel of the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, Luke 12:49-53, August 18, 2013
IN 1938, NEVILLE Chamberlain
(1869-1940), British Prime Minister from 1937 to 1940, thrice went to Germany
with the end in view of preventing the outbreak of a general war in Europe over
the demand of Adolf Hitler that Czechoslovakia cede its northern region to
Germany. By virtue of the Munich
Agreement signed on September 30, Chamberlain, together with Premier Edouard
Daladier of France, gave in to almost all the demands of Hitler. By pacifying the German Dictator and by
preventing the outbreak of hostilities, he was able, in his own description, to
achieve “peace with honor”, “peace in our time.” When he returned home, England quite
expectedly gave him a hero’s welcome. The Britons thought that they could now
sleep soundly, without having to fear that they would wake up to the sound of
drums and cannons. He was an instant
celebrity in Europe. In the eyes of many, he was a peacemaker.
What about Jesus?
Of course, Jesus was expected, if he was the Messiah, to bring peace. That precisely was the longing of the
prophets. According to Isaiah, his reign
will be characterized by peace: “they will name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero,
Father-Forever, Prince of Peace; his dominion is vast, and forever peaceful”
(Isa 9:5). For Zechariah, he will
proclaim peace to the nations (Zech 9:10b).
Luke, of course, sees in Jesus the fulfillment of what the prophets
proclaimed. It was expected that Jesus
would bring peace. At his birth the
angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom
his favor rests” (Luke 2:14). Jesus was
a peacemaker.
But to bring about peace, Jesus had to unmask effort to
cultivate the appearance of peace by taking the bull by the horns. The problem with the kind of peace that
Chamberlain sought in Munich was that it did not go to the root of the
problem. The Munich Conference never
treated the real situation, perhaps because the participants were scared to
displease the Dictator. That “peace” was
short-lived, of course. Hitler seized
the rest of Czechoslovakia, and when he attacked Poland on September 1, 1939,
Chamberlain found himself making a declaration of war with Germany. Understandably enough, when “peace in our
time” is recalled, historians tend to identify Chamberlain with the word appeasement—describing
his policy toward Hitler on the eve of World War II. It was peace at a great price. How often it happens that we cover up the
real situation out of fear of displeasing the powerful, of being unpopular
before the people, or of losing our personal interests.
In the 1st
Reading, for example, we are told that the People of God were in a precarious
situation. The Babylonians, under king
Nebuchadnezzar, were so powerful that going against them would seal the doom of
Israel. But the ministers of King
Zedekiah refused to recognize the gravity of the situation, afraid as they were
of losing their interests and privileges.
They tried to pressure the King to revolt against the Babylonians. It is not infrequent that leaders are not
able to see the state of the nation because the cordon sanitaire makes
it impossible for them to obtain the correct knowledge and judgment, even as
people around them always try to protect their privileges and interests, even
if these do not coincide with the interest of the whole nation. Advisers and ministers often speak of words
that the leaders wish to hear because this is advantageous to the latter’s
sycophants and favorable to their self-interests.
Under such a situation, anyone who speaks the truth,
engages in a correct reading and assessment of the situation and attempts to
suggest a correct approach to the problem is liable to become unpopular,
ostracized, criticized, or even killed.
Thus, when Jeremiah, who had nothing in mind but real peace for the
whole nation, informed King Zedekiah that by going against the Babylonians the
people would be hopeless, he was ultimately accused by the King’s ministers of
desertion and treason, for his diatribe, according to them, destroyed the will of
the soldiers to resist their enemy, even if the King himself had sympathies for
the prophet. No wonder, in the Gospel,
Jesus said that he came not to bring peace but division. For the peace that Jesus brought, shalom,
wholeness, is not one that can be bought at any price. It is a message that attacks the subterfuge
of peace, the façade of the establishment whose leaders profit from the
injustice and violation of rights that are being committed under the name of tranquility
of the social order. It exposes the
falsity and evil in the light of God’s word.
The hearers are placed in a situation of crisis, in which they must
decide for themselves whether they are for the message or against it. As a consequence, the message becomes a
source of conflict not only between groups but even within families: “from now
on a household of five may be divided, three against two or two against three”
(Luke 12:52).
Of course, when
truth is proclaimed, the messenger himself becomes part of the casualties,
though people and those who go against him suffer in the end. Jeremiah was imprisoned (Jer 37:11-16) and
later, because of his announcement of defeat to the revolt, left to die in an
empty cistern (Jer 38:1-13). In the
Gospel, Jesus speaks of “the baptism which I must be baptized, and how great is
my anguish until it is accomplished” (Luke 12:50). By baptism, Jesus must have referred to his
death; he would have foreseen that from the way the people and the
religio-political authorities react to his message his death was
inevitable. Such anticipation of his
fate as a prophet is well expressed in his lament: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you
who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you” (Luke 13:34a). This was the consequence of the rejection of
his message by the people. They turned
against him. “When I gave bread to the
poor,” says Bishop Helder Camara, “they call me a saint. But when I ask why the poor have no bread,
they call me a communist.” Just as
Jeremiah suffered much in the hands of those who wanted to silence him, so
Jesus suffered from those who wished to choke his message. Still, the baptism of Jesus, like the
sufferings of Jeremiah, was necessary in order that real peace may be
established. In the words of Isaiah
about the Servant of God, “he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our
sins, upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole [i.e., shalom,
peace], by his stripes we were healed” (Isa 53:5).
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