Year A
Ephesians 3:14-21
Psalm 33:1-2.4-5.11-12.18-19
Luke 12:49-53
TO BRING FIRE
Sirach 2:5
"For gold is tested in the fire, and those found acceptable, in the furnace of humiliation."
Today Jesus Christ in the gospel says he came to bring fire to the earth and how he wish it is already blazing. His statement today has a lot of tension, but I think whenever Jesus Christ makes such statements full of tension, He is quoting from Scriptures and mostly from the prophetic books. This particular statement found in today's gospel can be found in the prophetic book of Micah.
Micah 7:6
"For son insults father, daughter rebels against mother, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law; a person's enemies come from within the household itself."
Now all that is described in Micah chapter 7 of which Jesus Christ quoted a verse from shows how corrupted the world has become. Bribery, adulterous living and so on. But the Prophet talks about the fact that God will bring his light to shatter all darkness and bring Salvation to earth again, so he must endure until God comes to take up his cause and rights his wrongs;
Micah 7:9
"I must endure Yahweh's anger for I have sinned against him, until he takes up my cause and rights my wrongs; he will bring me out into the light, and then I shall contemplate his saving justice."
So Jesus Christ says today, I have come to bring fire. In Scriptures, the first time God brought fire was when humans sinned and where expelled from the Garden of Eden. This fire was accompanied with a sword and was to guard the way to the tree of life (cf. Genesis 3:24).
Why was the fiery flashing sword guarding the way to the tree of life? The point then is that, as it was to guard the way to the tree of life, it also shows or knows the direction to the tree of life.
Obviously the fiery flashing sword is a power that separates and destroys. So the imagery of war is clear. Thus as Jesus Christ talks of bringing division our minds must be drawn to what this fiery sword is all about. This fiery flashing sword indeed speaks of a hidden mystery. A Cherubim was also beside the fiery flashing sword.
This mystery is what will be later portrayed on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant found in the Most Holy Place of the Tabernacle of Moses (cf.Exo.25). Because as we see the Cherubim by the fiery flashing sword in front of the Garden, so we see the two Cherubs protecting the mercy seat.
This draws more light on the reasons why only the High Priest could enter into the Holy of Holies but once a year in the Lord's Presence with the blood of a sin-offering.
With our attention now drawn to the mercy seat, let look at how the story of mercy began in the life of Abraham and Isaac's sacrifice where God offered a Lamb to be sacrifice instead.
Before the Tabernacle, we have the story of Abraham and Isaac, and the first time ever the sword is separated from the fire and both are been held by Abraham as he is going to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God. But as the story turned out God offered a Lamb whose head was stacked in the thorns for the sacrifice(cf. Genesis 22: 6ff), point forward to Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (cf. John 1:29).
Jesus Christ's Passion is therefore the Baptism he talks about in today's gospel. It is through this that he reverses the curse on earth. Through his sacrifice, the Holy Spirit is poured onto and into our hearts (cf. John 19:34 and Revelation 22:1). This is what we must imitate.
So St. Paul in today's first reading says that, knowing the love of Christ, the love which he showed us on the Cross which as foolishness and obstacle for the Gentiles and Jews respectively (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:23), is beyond knowledge, we will be filled with the utter fullness of God.
Just as the fiery flashing sword became an obstacle to Adam and Eve, the act of surrendering our life to God as depicted on the Cross can be an obstacle if we don't accept God's love which is beyond knowledge.
We cannot think our way into the Kingdom of God, man is a fallen creature and therefore he can no longer return to God’s Paradise without God himself been the way. I repeat, no matter what we do to try and find the way into God’s Paradise, we will surely come face to face with death. It’s the fiery law of death. We must sacrifice something, we must die to something.
Also no matter how devout and holy we live our life, death will still stand before us. God is a consuming fire as He is a holy God. We must be broken and consumed by his fire before we can enter into union with him.
We must be tested by God's fire, we must learn to hate ourselves and love God above all things. This is the furnace of humiliation we must be tested with as my first quote from Sirach talks of.
By Sylvester Amakye-Quayson
Comments
Post a Comment