Hebrew 11:29-12:2
Luke 12:49-56
This
passage from Luke is a hard one, I believe, for us to understand. In so many ways, in so many of our
scriptures, we hear words promoting peace, promoting love, promoting a care
that is full of grace and compassion and acceptance and nurture. In the beginning of Luke’s gospel, Jesus, we
are told has come to “guide our feet into the way of peace.” When he appears at the end of the gospel, a
risen Christ, he offers peace again, “my peace I leave you, my peace I give
you.” He tells parables of reconciliation
such as the parable of the prodigal son, and he told his disciples to bring
greetings of peace when they went to share the good news. He brings healing, which is a physical
manifestation of peace, and he offers forgiveness which bring the soul peace.
But then we come
to today’s passage. And instead Jesus
says, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but
division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each
other, 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 daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law
against mother-in-law.” It’s hard to understand.
Not only is this
passage hard to understand, it’s also dangerous when misinterpreted. This passage has been used by Christians of a
more fundamentalist nature to justify the cutting off of children who are
different than we expect them to be (such as LGBTQ children), disengaging from
family with whom we disagree, and separating ourselves into “us” and
“them”. It has been used to isolate and
alienate and create divisions without bridges, without words of understanding
or ears to hear. It has been misused to
justify failing to work on relationships where there is controversy or
conflict. It has been misused to give
excuses for simply ending relationships rather than doing the hard work of
listening, sharing and rebuilding.
But
that is not what this passage is about.
First
of all, I believe this to be another example of a passage that is descriptive
rather than prescriptive. It describes a
reality, rather than proclaiming that this is the way we are called to be. But it describes a reality that accompanies a
faith that is genuine and true and active.
That reality is that when you set your heart and mind on following a
Christ who stands up for the oppressed, who is not afraid to confront the
authority figures of the day (the scribes and pharisees, the money changers in
the temple), who speaks TRUTH in the face of injustice, division will be
created. It will. This is not because we are seeking division,
but because speaking truth to authority, upsetting the status quo, demanding
justice for those who are being harmed, will cause conflict and division. We’ve seem this throughout history. Those people in this country who stood up
during the civil rights movement. The
women who fought for suffrage and the right to vote. Family members creating an intervention for
someone with addiction issues. And now:
with all the people standing up against the inhumane treatment of the children
at the border. The people doing God’s
will, the people saying “No! We will not
tolerate this inability to treat one another with love. We will not put up with the inhumane
treatment of our brothers and sisters.
We will not allow this kind of cruelty to continue, a cruelty that fails
to remember that we are connected, that we are all one, that when one of us
hurts, all of us are lessened.” When
people say this, when people stand up for those who have little voice, when
people reclaim basic human rights for ALL people – this causes division, it
causes strife, it causes disruption. It
is a knife between peoples: between those who are seeking what is good only for
themselves and their families, and those who get, as Jesus taught us to get,
that there are not people who are more deserving or have more right to the good
things that others have. This sword,
this division, is a necessary part of justice.
I wish it weren’t but it is. And
Jesus is clear about that. If we want to
follow Jesus, conflict will occur, divisions will occur. And we are still called to follow.
Sojourner’s
Magazine had a very interesting article this week in which Melissa
Florer-Bixler wrote, “"We wrongly assume we should not have enemies, but
the expectation of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that we will have enemies. We
know this because Jesus gives us a command to love our enemies. And in order to
love your enemies, you first have to know who they are. Enemies are not the
people we dislike or those who are different from us. In the gospel, enemies
are those who make camp on the far side of the line that is justice. And God is beckoning us – ALL of us – to join
God among the oppressed.” She goes on to
explain that yes, we are called to love our enemies. But loving them, true loving and caring about
them is “to call them out of the world of denial and oppression, of despots and
executioners. To love your enemies is to
help them see the truth about themselves and show them something else is
possible. To love your enemies is to
tell them the story of how once we too were enemies of God and that through the
lvoe of God who lived, died and rose among us, we are now called friends. We have enemies because we hope that one day
we might call them friends…. To turn from enemies to friends means our lives
must change.”
Again,
this is what it means to be people following on the way. And it is not pretty. It is not easy. And it does not happen
without confrontation and division.
Frankly, even
reconciliation will bring division. As
Audrey West says in Feasting on the Word commentary, “A ministry that reconciles
long-standing enemies will inevitably rend relationships that depend on the old
status quo.” She goes on to point out
that even in the story of the prodigal son, while the father and younger son
had a healed and reconciled relationship, that reconciliation caused a new
division between the father and the elder son.
She continues, “Humankind does not always appreciate the gospel's great
reversals. We do not like it when those we deem undeserving receive the
abundant grace promised to all. We want others to be punished for their sin,
while we expect to be welcomed into the heavenly home (nobody expects to see
their enemies in heaven!). Jealousy, anger, desire for revenge, resistance to
change: these can consume us in the face of the gospel, to the point that we
find ourselves antagonists against those whom Jesus welcomes.
“Jesus' teaching also speaks to the
reality of a kinship based not on familial blood ties, but on a covenant of
Jesus' blood (22:20). Even among his own people, where he is known as
"Joseph's son" (4:22), Jesus becomes an outsider when he announces
his mission from God. And when his own mother and brothers try to get close to
him, he redefines the familial ties that bind his true family to him: "My
mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it"
(8:21). What ties believers together is not the covenant of lineage but the
covenant of blood, poured out for those who find fellowship in the family of
God.” (Feasting on the Word: Preaching
the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year C, Volume 3:
Pentecost and Season After Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16).)
It
is when we are actually following in the way of Christ that divisions begin, not
because we are seeking division but because we are seeking goodness, grace,
justice, which will upset the status quo. It will unbalance the mobile that we’ve come
to understand and accept, especially when it has benefitted and served us. It will not be pretty when the work of the
gospel begins, it will not be smooth, it will not be easy. It will require change, from all of us, and
it will demand the best of us to challenge the worst that arises in response.
Jesus
specifically describes this “division that will come” as a division within
families. And this is a reminder to all of us that the “family of God” is not
biological. It includes everyone. And when we try to protect what is “ours” for
“our family” we miss the point. All of
it is God’s, and it is put in our care so that we might be stewards of the
resources that come our way, using them for the good of everyone:
EVERYONE. The new family of God will not
look like everyone looking out for their own.
It will look like us taking very seriously the call to see that homeless
man as our brother, to see that undocumented child as our own child, to see the
prostitute and drug addict as our sister, to see the person in prison as our
spouse. And it will mean that we provide
the same care for them as we would if they really were our family member
because in the new kingdom of God, in the NOW, in the following of Christ, that
is exactly what they are.
In
the book Tattoos on the Heart, Father Boyle talks about the upset that some of
the older church members experienced when his congregation really took on
caring for the poor, for the homeless, and for gangs. He says,
It was about
this time what a man drove by the church and stopped to talk to me. He was Latino, in a nice car and had arrived
at some comfortable life and living. He
knew I was the pastor He waxed nostalgic
about having grown up in the projects and pointed to the church and said he had
been baptized and made his first communion there. Then he takes in the scene all around
him. Gang members gathered by the bell
tower, homeless men and women being fed in great numbers in the parking lot. Folks arriving for the AA and NA meetings and
the ESL classes. It’s a “Who’s Who of
Everybody Who Was Nobody. Gang member,
drug addict, homeless, undocumented.
This man sees all this and shakes his head, determined and disgusted, as
if to say, “tsk tsk.”
“You
know,” he says, “This used to be a church.”
I
mount my high horse and say, “You know, most people around here think it’s finally
a church.” (p73)
That’s
what the gospel looks like. It offers
grace and comfort to those who are afflicted.
And we like talking about that.
We are comfortable talking about that.
This is important. And if you are
suffering, which all of us are in some way, know that the love and compassion
of Christ is with you, offering comfort, presence, love, grace and
healing. But the other side of this is
that the gospel also offers affliction to those who are comfortable. Doing the work of Christ is not and will not
be easy. It does not come without cost,
and sometimes the cost is relationships with those we love the most. We know this.
We know as we struggle to get along in an increasingly divided time how
hard it is to listen and speak truth in a way that maintains
relationships. We know that as much as
we try, if we do the work of Christ we put at risk for people the comfort of
their current lives and that challenge costs us at times. The cost for God-self, for Christ, for Jesus,
in his speaking truth and in his standing up for the defenseless, and for his
healing of people and confronting the status quo: that cost was death: a death
on a cross in a most awful and gruesome way.
And yet, he stepped into that life, with conviction, with strength,
because God’s love for us was so great, Jesus’ love for all was so big, that
being that Truth, being that Way of unconditional love and strength: these were
things he was not willing to sacrifice to make nice or to get along with
everyone, or even to keep his life. He
calls us to be willing to follow in the same way. Again, not easy. Not pain-free. Not comfortable. There is no room for “prosperity gospel”
thinking here. Following Christ is
hard. It is simple, but it is hard.
So
where is the Good News in this? The good
news is that there is peace at the end.
But as Bonhoeffer said it, “There is no way to peace along the way of
safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never
be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to
protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment,
wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the
nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish
purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when
the way leads to the cross.” The good
news is also that when we choose to do what Jesus calls us to do, when we
choose to stand up for those who are voiceless, those who are weaker, those who
are suffering, that is when we find true peace within our own hearts. It is truly the “peace that surpasses
understanding.” And part of why it passes understanding is that it comes in the
midst of the divisions that action causes.
It
is difficult for us to hear passages like today. I understand that. God understands that. But God is not only about grace. God calls us into a life of radical and
complete love. That means speaking
truth, it means acting for the best for everyone. It means caring about those we would rather
not speak to. It means being willing to
give some things up, to step forward into a life of stewardship, sharing,
caring that confronts injustices and brings wholeness to all people. This isn’t easy. But God wants us to be the most whole, the
best we are and the best we can be. For our sake, as well as for the sake of
all we encounter. Thanks be to God! Amen.
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