Thirteenth
Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 15 – Year C
August
18, 2013
Luke
12:49-56
[Jesus said:] "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:
father against son
and son against father,
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, 'It is going to rain'; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, 'There will be scorching heat'; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"
[Jesus said:] "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:
father against son
and son against father,
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, 'It is going to rain'; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, 'There will be scorching heat'; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"
One
of the central elements of our faith, of our very worship service is
peace. We declare Jesus as the Prince of
Peace. When Jesus appeared to his
disciples, his first words were peace. If
we look to the first few verses of almost every single letter from Paul we see
peace being extended to his readers. Every
Sunday we take the time to share the peace of Christ with one another. We talk about the peace of God that passes
all understanding. We take comfort in
the peace that comes from having a personal connection with our God and our
Savior. Peace is part of our identity;
and just when we think we have a pretty good idea about the importance of peace
in our lives, we run into this passage from Luke where Jesus himself tells his
disciples that he didn’t come to bring peace.
There
have been many different ways in which people have sought to understand this
passage. Probably the most popular is
that the expectations that God places on you when you come to faith in him put
a strain on the existing relationships between the believer and the
non-believer. This interpretation that a
barrier of some kind is erected between Christians and non-Christians is
common. I’ve heard it referred to many
times: from casual friendships, to close connections, from work colleagues to
our spouses. Yet, so often it seems like
the divisions that are created by our Christian faith are between different
persons of faith, different traditions, different denominations than between
the believer and the non-believer.
When
I think back, when I look at my life I see more times when my strongly held
perspective on faith and theology put a greater strain on my relationship with
other people of faith than my relationship with those who didn’t express faith
of any kind. Think about it, how many
super strong arguments have you gotten into with an atheist? How many heated discussions have you gotten
into with another Christian? I think you’ll
agree with me that the number of divisive situations is far greater on the
believers side of the page.
Divisions in families within Christianity are
probably more common than you think. Think
about your own families. Are you able to
talk about your church and your faith around the Thanksgiving dinner table
without things getting really uncomfortable?
I don’t know about you, but my
holiday dinners are sometimes rather tense.
My family is divided by denominational and social issues. My parents and my brother are Lutheran to
their core. My parents are conservative Lutherans. I sometimes joke that my father is more
Lutheran than Luther himself. My leaving
of the Lutheran Church will probably always be a very sore subject for my
parents. We disagree on many things,
some of them seem petty at times, and others seem much more serious.
We all know that from one generation to
another there are differences. I don’t
do things the same way my parents did, and I’m sure my children will do things
differently than me. We don’t think
about things in the same way, we approach problems and issues in different
ways. We have different ideas about how
the world works, or should work. And
that’s okay. There is nothing wrong with
differences. If it wasn’t for
differences of opinion, for differences of understanding we would have never
moved forward as a society. I’m sure
that the first person who decided to jump on a horse was considered an idiot
(especially since the horse probably threw him right off), yet that person’s
difference of opinion regarding horses was the beginning of a change in the way
we traveled as humans. The generation
that preceded him thought about horses in a different way, and I’m sure there
were some rather heated discussion around the campfire. And speaking of campfires, think about the
first person to look at fire and think about harnessing it. Without fire where would we be?
And it is fire that Jesus brings to the
earth. I wish Jesus had explained a bit
more about the fire he was bringing because fire by itself is multifunctional –
but perhaps Jesus’ fire is also to be used in different ways. Fire by itself is neutral, neither something
to be feared or something to be praised.
Yet, in context, when it is given purpose it also takes on positive or
negative connotations. If you were
camping, having a small campfire outside your tent would be desired for its
warmth, for how you could use it to warm yourself. Yet, if you were camping, and the woods around
you were on fire that would not be a desired thing. Fire can be destructive, its power to destroy
is virtually unmatched. The hotter the
fire, the more complete the destruction.
Fire can also bring new life with its
passing. Civilizations around the world
have used controlled burning to clear fields, to renew the ground that new
growth would occur. From time to time
the land would be burned, and in so doing nutrients and chemicals would enter
the soil, the earth would be cleansed, and new life would emerge. The phoenix rises from its ashes reborn.
Before the days of alcohol and sanitizing
aids, people would clean their surgical instruments in flame. I still remember how my mother would
sterilize the needle in the flame of a candle before working the splinter out
of my finger. The flame killed the
bacteria that could have otherwise lead to infection. People have cauterized wounds for centuries
because of how the heat of fire aided the body in healing.
When I worked in the jewelry industry we used
fire and flame constantly. Fire is used
to refine. Its heat melts the gold,
freeing the contaminants from it, burning off the chaff so to speak, and leaving
behind that which is more pure, and more valuable. Fire is needed to melt the gold so that it
might be formed and reformed into its desired shape and form.
In
the Bible, we also see fire serving in many ways. It was used to represent “the presence of God
-- think pillar fire in Exodus (13:17-22) and the tongues of flame at Pentecost
(Acts 2:1-4). It can also represent eschatological judgment -- in Revelation,
Satan and his army are consumed by fire (20:7-10). Fire also represents
purification -- Zachariah (13:9) and Malachi (3:2-3) each refer to God's
intention to purify Israel like a refiner purifies silver by fire.”[1]
In
the New Testament, there is another activity that is described as bringing with
it both purification and judgment: baptism.
Baptism is connected to fire in the New Testament, and in our lives. We speak of the baptism of the Holy Spirit,
and the coming of the Holy Spirit coming like a fire. The coming of the Spirit, and the waters of
baptism, both point to an event when God is seen to be powerfully active in the
life of a person. The fire of faith
comes and consumes and gives us the power to do things that we didn’t think we
could ever do. It also forces us to look
at our lives, and the lives of those around us – and it might very well cause
divisions.
The
divisions that Jesus speaks of are the result of the purifying fire of
God. Jesus comes and declares that he is
not here to bring peace, but division.
Yet, his message was not one of division, it was announcing the Kingdom
of God. The Kingdom of God, the Reign of
God, the new reality, the desires of God that Jesus announced was based on
forgiveness of others and not on the power of one over another, it was based in
courage and not in fear, it was based on
humility and not on personal power. It
was a new reality. Yet, those who were
comfortable I the old reality, those that were in ruling positions, those who
were fans of wealth, of power, they saw the risk of the coming Kingdom and
fought against it – because its coming spells an end to the life they
love. Jesus did indeed announce peace,
but as we all know, there is no profit in peace for those in power. And profit (or the lack of it) creates
division even in the most basic of human relationships: that of the family.
The
calling of the new life in the Kingdom is both its promise and its
challenge. It can be bring both peace
and unease, unity and division. It can
be frightening to step out in faith against the ways of the world, against the
powers that be that desire the world to continue as it is. But our fear, our discomfort can made less
when we look to Jesus and we see that he who come to announce the Kingdom was
its first victim. He experienced harm,
that in his pain we might know healing.
He experienced judgment, that in his trials we might know pardon. He suffered death on the cross, that in his dying
we might know life. The call of the
Kingdom is not easy, yet looking to Jesus we can discover the courage, the
fire, to live in the Kingdom – even with the division it brings. In so doing we join ourselves with the church,
and with people of faith throughout time, and rise from the ashes of the world
that is into the glory of the Kingdom to come.
Amen.
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