Sermon: "I Came to Bring Fire and to Divide"

Date Preached: Sunday August 19th 2007

Bible Reference: Luke Chapter 12, verses 49-52

The great composer Beethoven sometimes used to play a trick on his polite high society salon audiences – especially if he guessed they weren’t really interested in serious music. He’d perform a piece on the piano – one of his beautiful, gentle slow movements – lulling everyone into thinking the world was a soft, cosy place to be – relaxing them and enfolding them so they’d be almost falling asleep. Then just as the final notes were dying away, Beethoven would bring his whole forearm down with a crash across the keyboard – and then laugh at the shock reaction he’d caused. 

A bit cruel and impolite perhaps – and Beethoven found less antisocial ways of telling his hearers that the world was full of pain as well as beauty. But the shock of the discordant crash to his upper crust salon audience is a good image for what Jesus had to say at the end of Luke chapter 12 – because it shocks.

You can imagine people thinking “But I thought this was the Prince of Peace” – why is he turning all the nice stuff about caring for others on its head by saying he’s the Prince of Division? 

And (by the way) what a reading to have to preach on my first Sunday back after a bit of a summer break!! – but here it is – and it’s not going away – so let’s have a look. 

The feast of Mary the Mother of Our Lord was celebrated last Wednesday. If Jesus’ mother had been in the crowd that day, I don’t think she would have been in the least bit surprised by his words. She knew from the beginning that he was going to be controversial. Before Jesus was even born, Mary knew that he was the key to God’s plan to bring down the powerful from their thrones and lift up the lowly, to fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty. We get that at the beginning of Luke in chapter 2 (v52-53)

And then there was that day in the temple, when Jesus was just a little baby. Do you remember the old man Simeon holding the infant Messiah in his arms, relishing the moment that he’d waited for so long. He looked Mary in the eye and said, “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (Luke 2:34-35)

And don’t forget Mary had heard all about his very first sermon, confirming her fear—or rather her expectation—that her son would have a turbulent ministry. Luke’s account of Jesus’ ministry begins in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth with Jesus reading from the prophet Isaiah that day, and the congregation was so comforted by his peaceful words that they drove him out of town and tried to throw him over a cliff! (Luke 4:16-30) So if we think about it, the preaching and teaching of Jesus, Prince of Peace, routinely brought about division.

So Mary wouldn’t have been surprised at Jesus’ dramatic words or his apparent lack of regard for family loyalties. He had already denied her, his own mother, in public on at least one occasion -  when Mary and Jesus’ brothers came to see him but couldn’t get near because he was being mobbed. When he was told that they were waiting to see him, he responded, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the Word of God and put it into practice.” (Luke 8:19-21)

Already Jesus was redefining family.

Already Jesus was demonstrating, in his own life, the primacy of the call to discipleship over any other relationships—even close ties.
Jesus didn’t come to mollycoddle us. He came to bring fire to the earth! To set it alight. To make all things new! So I guess some friction is inevitable with the coming of the New Kingdom - that creates new people and confronts the same old world.

The American philosophy professor Dallas Willard writes that the world “thinks of justice, peace, and prosperity in negative terms. We take justice to mean that no one’s rights are infringed. Peace means an absence of war or turmoil. Prosperity means no one is in material need.” (Willard, Dallas, The Spirit of the Disciplines, Harper Collins, 1988.)

But if we define peace in this way then we can pursue it through violent means. How is conflict avoided internationally? By the threat of war. And it’s similar in society. In our communities, harmony is sought by building walls—by drawing boundaries around some sectors of the population and building more and more prisons for others.

But in God’s Kingdom peace is defined, not as the absence of conflict, but as the fulfilment of his promise to make everything new. I don’t know about you but this all sounds quite a lot different from what experienced over the years in Church – but the more I think about what Jesus preached and what Paul and others understood as the gospel – the good news - the more excited I become about its power.

In a book called The Blue Mountains of China, Rudy Wiebe put it this way:
Jesus says in his society there is a new way for [people] to live – & just think about this in relation to our conventional understanding – because it’s so different:

you show wisdom… by trusting people;
you handle leadership…(by lording it over?) – no! - by serving;
you handle offenders, by (labelling them, punishing them and shutting them away?) No – by forgiving;
you handle money, by sharing;
(you handle) enemies, by loving;
and you handle violence, by suffering.

In fact, she says, you have a new attitude toward everything, toward everybody - because this is a Jesus society, and you repent, not by feeling bad, but by thinking differently.”

(Wiebe, Rudy, The Blue Mountains of China, McClellan and Stewart, 1970.) 

Luke’s Gospel makes clear that the peace of the New Creation isn’t just a matter of personal attitude – going to church giving us a bit of psychic comfort from the stresses of the modern world. It’s a structural reality:

• where the lowly are lifted up and the hungry are filled;

• where there is release of the captives and recovery of sight to the blind;

• where the oppressed go free;

• where the poor and the hungry and the sad are the ones who are blessed.

• where God’s people love not only their friends, but also their enemies;

• where the other cheek is turned; where shirts are given away as well the coats off our backs; and where lending is done without expectation of getting anything back. 

Doesn’t that sound just a little different from what we’re used to – different from the norm? Peace which comes through a Cross; power and strength found in weakness; greatness in submission, humility, and service.

(I didn’t want to get carried away – but - oops too late!!).  

But haven’t we been seeing this over the year as we’ve been digging into the gospels: this is a completely upside-down kingdom. Or maybe the right-side up if we start looking from God’s perspective that subverts what we’ve learned and got used to in our world.

Maybe that’s why this text is so-ooo hard. Because it reminds us that the decision to follow Christ is not a stroll in the park. It’s not about just being nice, and polite, and minding our own business. To follow where Jesus leads is to be picked up and turned upside-down. And when that happens it’s going to be painful at times, and people around us—maybe even our own families—are not always going to understand. There’s going to be friction. “Aren’t you taking this Christianity thing just a little too seriously?” Sometimes there’s going to be division. Jesus is simply telling the truth—that following him wasn’t – isn’t - meant to be easy or comfortable.

But let’s not misunderstand either. The peace of Christ is not about opposition for the sake of it – not about being obnoxious tub-thumping killjoys – like that Harry Enfield character – “You don’t want to do that”. The peace of Christ – in fact the purpose of the Church - has only one agenda—to make all things new in accordance with the promise of the Kingdom. Following Jesus means living each moment of each day with him at the centre. To say that Jesus Christ is Lord in those days was to say that Caesar was not! Today we’re supposed to bow down to our modern idols of success, fame, money, self-importance, financial security. To say “Jesus is Lord is to proclaim” that whatever those idols are they are also – not to be worshipped!

When Hitler and the Nazi party came to power in Germany in the 1930s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and theologian, had the opportunity to leave Germany. He chose to stay and resist. For him following Christ brought him into conflict with his world. He vocally opposed the Nazi regime and its policies, spent two years in a concentration camp, and was executed a few days before the Allies liberated the camp.

So if the cost of discipleship is potentially so high, if the decision to follow Christ inevitably leads to division, why on earth follow? Why did the disciples leave everything behind and follow Jesus at the sound of his call? Why did the early Christians suffer persecution and death to follow him? Why, throughout the centuries, have there always been those who willingly accepted the cost of standing up for the downright subversive and dangerous upside-down ways of the kingdom?

Maybe there are few tangible rewards; little promise that life will be smooth. But what deep joy there is when hooked up to Jesus – sharing friendship with him and knowing that whatever life throws at us … we belong, we have an identity, a purpose for being. - we matter – we’re loved unconditionally – we’re forgiven, even when we blow it (as I tend to continuously) and have to crawl back.

Think about image versus content; style versus substance; spin versus truthfulness and righteousness. Where are we going to place our trust?

The call of Christ overrides any other loyalty, and other commitment, any other relationship. The call of Christ overrides worldly logic – but then that’s all about me and my own importance: what I can get, how I appear, The joy of being in a relationship with Jesus overrides any fear of having to be at the centre – because it’s then all about him.