A Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. Patricia Gillespie
Jeremiah 23:23-29
Hebrews 12:1-7(8-10)11-14
Luke 12:49-56
Psalm 82
Hey, what happened to Family Values here? All this dividing families talk sounds as if Jesus never heard of them. Whatever happened to the nice little baby in the manger and the angels singing "Peace on Earth"? Jesus should forget those fiery Palestinian divisions and get himself over here and learn Minnesota nice.
Instead Jesus, like an impatient adolescent, announces, "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled." "...What stress I am under until it is completed."
Jesus has plans to set the world on fire. And waiting is frustrating. He is longing for the time when YOU will catch fire. When the Spirit burns in your heart as it does in his. Are you ready to burn?
Fire is a mixed metaphor. It can mean SURVIVAL: warmth and energy, the Spirit-filled enthusiasm apparent in the early church; light and comfort, a candlelight dinner. cleansing and purifying, a refining fire; healing and safety, gathering around a campfire. But fire can also mean DANGER: wildfire out of control; explosion and destruction, the aching loss of a housefire; painful burns and blisters, even death.
When Jeremiah talks about God's fiery word, it sounds more like the fire of destruction: "Is not my word like fire, says the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?"
God's word is literally earth shattering. It shatters injustice and oppression. It destroys our sin and selfishness.
When Christ the hammer or the fire is destroying the bad stuff it makes some sense to us. Yet Jesus talks about families being broken apart. That fire looks really scary, especially for those of us who love our families.
"Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." Now, that's painful. Instead of warming our hearts this fire burns and blisters. I don't want my family or my church or any other group I'm in to be split apart. Jesus didn't say this would be easy.
What if I told you that to be a member of this church, you must reject your family, cut yourself off from them? I suppose that might be one way to get a church full of teenagers. Yet perhaps that adolescent drive to find an identity by separating from family is part of what Jesus is talking about. Our divisions and our differences, even the painful ones, help define who we are. Maybe Jesus is telling us that we have to grow up and stand on our own when we decide to follow him.
It looks like Jesus comes along and separates us from everything that seemed important to us, good or bad. This fire will burn away even peace especially if that "keeping the peace" in our families or communities or churches is a way to avoid confronting injustice and sin. This fire is radical – that means it burns right to the roots. Everything dies and we have to start all over again. When I put it like that, I can think of a lot of things I'd rather do than be a Christian. This is just too hard and too painful.
To respond to the Fire of God's Word our epistle tells us that we need discipline: "Endure trials for the sake of discipline" "Discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time."
That is not to say that God causes the trials of our lives but rather that in those times of trial, God shapes in us the courage and discipline to stand up to the hard times in our lives. Facing rather than running away from those trials can be painful, but it is the path to truth and life.
"Discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, BUT later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."
It is this Godly discipline that is the road to peace and healing. Reconciliation and peace come AFTER the divisions and trials have been faced. This is true peace, not the "nice peace" that covers up very real divisions.
After the division that Jesus brings in our lives when we choose to follow him we become part of a new family of witnesses, a family that may include members of our ‘old' family.
"We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses" – those who have run the race before us who have walked through the fire and now journey with us.
Our hope is in the knowledge that Jesus ran that painful road before us, through fire and division, even to death on the cross, He suffered for the sake of the joy that is set before us and for the peace that we are promised.
Jesus will not settle for a false unity or a nice, comfortable peace that denies or disguises injustice and sin. Jesus comes among us bringing fire and division so we can find true peace.
And now Christ lives again in you, all fired up to run the race that is set before you.
Jesus comes asking us to make hard choices that may separate us from those we love. We are able to make those choices because Jesus runs with us and gives us a vision of the end of the road: A vision joy and peace, of reconciliation in God's kingdom, where all are brought into wholeness and holiness.
Therefore, we are told to "lift our drooping hands and strengthen our weak knees, and make straight paths for our feet" so that what is lame is healed and what is divided is made whole.
The fiery path of division can set us free find true Peace. So "Pursue peace with everyone" because you are running with the saints.
May the Spirit catch fire in our lives; and God's Kingdom spread like wildfire. Amen.