Long ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in The Cost of Discipleship, spoke of cheap grace as one of the tragic failures of Christianity since the era of Constantine. At a price, and in contrast with the demands of Jesus, Christianity became the religion of the masses. Its message was watered down and instead of being salt of the earth it became one with culture. The Letter to the Hebrews invites us in the second reading today "not to lose sight of Jesus" who "endured the cross, disregarding the shamefulness of it".
What Jesus is saying in today's Gospel coupled with Jeremiah's experience in the first reading is a much needed provocation for a society like ours. We boast of very fine-tuned mechanisms of decision-making which guarantee the good functioning of our institutions. And yet, where the individual is concerned, we promote a culture that weakens the 'self'. The diktat of culture and of public opinion has become so strong where values are concerned that the individual, so exalted in the wake of modernity, has been reduced to a product of culture.
Jesus' statement that "I have come to bring fire to the earth" recalls the prophet Elijah in the Old Testament who drew down fire from the Lord against the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18). Fire as the instrument of judgment recurs often in the Scriptures. Luke himself also associates fire with the gift of the Spirit on Pentecost. What Jesus is saying here as regards fire and baptism can aptly be understood, as at the time of Elijah, with reference to the false prophets of our day that insist on killing the God of life.
Jesus provokes division because all the time he confronts us with decisions to take. The programmatic prophecy of Simeon about Jesus as 'sign of contradiction' is here given explicit fulfilment because one word which for sure is anathema in the Gospel vocabulary is 'compromise'. Compromise means "settlement reached by making concessions on each side". But no such settlement can ever be reached in the name of Jesus.
Jesus could have come to such a settlement and avoided Judas's betrayal or his death at the age of 33. But God's Word is prophetic precisely because it knows no compromise. Unfortunately, the temptation of diplomacy and political correctness has always given to the Church in time that sort of assurance which is worldly and not coming from the Spirit.
Jesus wants to bring fire to all those situations where today we feel ashamed of the truth of the Gospel. Jeremiah was condemned not for his wrongdoing, but because his way of talking was "unquestionably disheartening the remaining soldiers in the city". He was imprisoned for the simple reason that he was an extra chorus when all were preparing for war. Jeremiah was considered a dangerous person, a defeatist, someone not easy to take on board.
How easy it is today for many of us to be taken on board even in matters of life and death! Jesus invites us to call a spade a spade. The Gospel is not trendy. Even today Jesus would want to bring fire to many of our daily situations, particularly where truth is the victim.
Someone said that the only thing that is needed for the triumph of evil is that the good do nothing. This is very true in all those situations where we opt not to speak up for fear of who knows what. Jesus is not a pacifist at all cost. Equidistance has never been his politics. "For this I was born", he told Pilate, "to witness to the truth", even at the cost of causing division in the most intimate of relationships.