You would not need a son to appreciate the value of a college with a good sports program as very appropriate to his education. It seems obvious to most. Not that such a son would specifically be a good athlete. Rather, it is the symbolic value of contest that is at point. The dynamism of struggle, of conflict. Surely, the main thrust of a great stadium packed with an enthusiastic crowd witnessing a football game is more than what appears. The drawing power of the whole is conflict, contest. Those actually playing — highly trained — the total investment in site, equipment, scheduling, traditional play-offs, act out the hidden drama of elemental involvement with good and evil, mostly unconscious, of enormous power.

St. Paul draws from the same source: "With so many witnesses in a great cloud on every side we too then should throw off everything that hinders us — and keep running steadily in the race we have started."

It is odd to hear Jesus in our Gospel portion today speaking not merely of fire on the earth, but "do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on, a household of five will be divided..." This does sound off-key for the gentle Jesus who preaches love and mercy, pardon and peace.

But the love and mercy, pardon and peace are against a background of profound commitment to a cause. Ultimately, we are engaged in the conflict of good and evil, in an amalgam of time and eternity, the passing and the permanent, the spiritual and the material. Basically, the warfare is internal, for we meet the enemy there and engage him there. The external is but the reflection of the internal. But the basic business and the major work is internal, is spiritual.

Yet the internal and the interior is enormously helped by external expression. So love is born in the heart and finds expression in our neighbor. Mercy experienced is revealed in mercy extended to all and any. The outer without the inner is sham, and the inner without the outer will soon wither.

So the dread is that the great conflict acted out in stadium and coliseum nation-wide and world-wide, will turn into war-games and the skills practiced there be expressed in real war. Then the outer play devoid of inner life turns evil and is expressive of death, not life. The outer war reveals the inner war. Where good was defeated and evil triumphed. Out of the heart of man come greed and lust, hatred and violence.

Hence the fascination with mass conflict publicly witnessed, whether baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, or bull-fight. For every witness is participant in a conflict and knows it, sees it acted out in front of him. If what you learned at Eton, you did at Waterloo, then what you learned was in vain. So we witness play turned to tragedy, children shooting each other for fun.

We are daily called by Christ to the service of love and the good fight against evil. It is a pity to think "Onward Christian Soldier Marching As to War" as the ideal Christ had in mind. The war we wage is not with material weapons and against visible enemies. It is all the same, real war. Count it defeat when you use angry words, ugly temper, anything violent in reference to your neighbor. You are losing the inner battle. Contempt for others, arrogance, fault-finding and judgment reveal the loser.

We are called then to take on the armor of Christ and to practice peace by war against all that is selfish and evil within. The conflict then that Christ predicted would rise between father and son, mother and daughter, is not manifest violence and apparent meanness, but rather an admission that the other asks me to engage in a conflict I cannot abide, want no part of. Something I cannot stoop to. No contest.

No society is wholly communal nor wholly competitive. The cooperative society will act as one against an enemy and the competitive society can be as communal as any monastery. It is the inner engagement that tells all. Where that is amiss in personal terms or in social ones, nothing will come right and the evil will be expressed externally in injustice bigotry, violence, abuse and ultimately war.

The fire Christ came to cast on the earth is the fire of the Spirit burning within, consuming all evil, inspiring every good. Keep that fire brilliant — bright.  Amen.