With Our Eyes Fixed on Jesus

Homily for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Last week’s reading from the Letter to the Hebrews invoked Abraham as a model of faith. Indeed, Abraham is upheld as the first of many to put their faith in the promises that God makes throughout the plan of salvation. God speaks of this plan immediately after the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. After cursing the serpent and relegating it to crawling in the dust on its belly, God reveals that the plan of salvation will involve another woman and her offspring: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; they will strike at your head, while you strike at their heel.” In poetic language, God tells us that a Savior will come to us born of a woman. That Savior will crush the head of the serpent as it continues to strike at humankind in an attempt to win the battle between good and evil. We know that woman to be Mary of Nazareth who becomes the Mother of the Son of God.

Today we hear another passage from the Letter to the Hebrews. It begins by referring to the men and women of the Hebrew Scriptures who put their faith in God as a “cloud of witnesses” who surround us as models for our own faith in God. The author goes on to say that we are to rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us with our eyes fixed on Jesus. We have a distinct advantage over the men and women of the Hebrew Scriptures, for we have seen the fulfillment of the promise of God – the defeat of the serpent through Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection to new life after three days in the tomb. Last week’s reading reminded us that the men and women of the Hebrew Scriptures persevered in their faith and died without seeing that which they had been promised. We, on the other hand, have the sure knowledge that our faith will mean that we will never die but will live forever with God. Jesus is the leader and perfecter of our faith.

If you have ever watched or participated in the Special Olympic games, you know that as the children who participate in these games cross the finish line, they are embraced by a person who is waiting for them. No matter whether they come across the finish line first or last, they are rewarded with a tender hug. This image is the way that I read the first verses of chapter twelve of the Letter to the Hebrews. Jesus stands at the finish line of our race, waiting to envelop us in his outstretched arms. Life with Jesus is the reward of our faith. Just as he rose from the dead, our faith teaches us that we too will rise.

This reading is followed by a passage from the Gospel of Saint Luke that makes us scratch our heads a little bit. How can the Prince of Peace, the preacher of the message of nonviolence that we hear in the Sermon on the Mount—how can he speak the hard words of today's Gospel? “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” Then Jesus proceeds to promise the most painful kinds of division—within households, even between parents and children. However, that his mission should have divisive results should not surprise us. Recall the prediction of Simeon at the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem: “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted. … ” (Luke 2:34). And such indeed was the effect of Jesus’ public life—from the rejection at the synagogue of Nazareth to the divided response of the bandits crucified on either side of him.

The creation of the new family of the Church would continue to provoke as much rejection as acceptance—even to the splitting of households and families. But even as today's readings confront us with this hard picture of prophetic mission constantly rejected—from Jeremiah, through Jesus, down to us—the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews is there to console us.

There, the author of Hebrews presents Jesus himself as a model for Christian perseverance through tough challenges “for the sake of the joy that lay before him.” He dares to call Jesus the “perfecter of faith”—in other words the one whose own faith showed what true faith is. Although the men and women of the Hebrew Scriptures are examples for us, it is really Jesus’ own trust in the Father that we are called to imitate. That faith sustains us through any and all rejection as well as through any suffering that we might be called upon to endure. Our faith, of course, is sustained by the Eucharist.