Division
Luke 12:49-56
Click here to view the full sermon video, titled "Division"
I’m sure that preachers everywhere looked at the lectionary this week and like me, tried really hard to find anything else to preach on. Here we find not the Jesus who feeds the hungry and heals the sick, but the Jesus who calls down fire upon the earth. And yet, this is very much part of Scripture and sometimes what we want to avoid is what we most need to pay attention to. So, listen now for what God might be saying to us through this morning’s difficult text from Luke 12:49-56:
49“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! 51Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53they 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.”
54He 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. 55And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. 56You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
Luke’s Gospel begins with the angels and heavenly hosts all singing songs of “peace on earth!” as Shepherds marvel at the miracle of the Christ child’s birth.
Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, marvels at this unfolding miracle also, saying: “by the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
And this Jesus grows up and teaches us to Love our enemies, do good, lend expecting nothing in return, be merciful, do not judge, forgive.
He heals people, telling them: Your faith has saved you – go in peace.
He sends the seventy disciples out, instructing them “whatever house you enter, first say, ‘peace to this house!’ and if anyone is there who shares in peace, peace will rest on you.”
So, when Jesus asks his disciples: “do you think I have come to bring peace on the earth? …Well, is the sky blue, Jesus?
OF COURSE we thought you came to bring peace on the earth. Is this a trick question?
When I was in sixth grade, I hit the peak of my acting career with my role in that year’s play The Christmas Carol. I was cast as man #2 and my entire role was to walk across the stage and accidently bump into man #1, spilling all the Christmas gifts I was carrying, then angrily berate him for having the nerve to get in my way.
But then, the ghost of Christmas present sprinkles some kind of magical confetti on my head that turns me nice and restores peace to the scene and everyone goes on their merry way. Peace on earth, goodwill to all!
I wonder if this is how we imagine Jesus bringing peace to the earth. A wave of the wand, some kind of magical transformation and all of a sudden the world sparkles with peace and justice, joy and kindness.
…Maybe we need to take a closer look at Luke’s gospel for what Jesus actually means about peace and how it arrives.
While the angels were singing their song of peace on earth, Mary sang a different kind of song about scattering the proud, sending the rich away empty and pulling the powerful down from their thrones - (not divisive at all, right?). Then there’s John the Baptist, the one who prepared the way for Jesus- out calling the people a brood of vipers and warning of God’s coming wrath and the need to repent. Jesus himself, when he sent the 70 out on their mission, told them to call down judgment on the towns which refused to welcome them
If Jesus was only preaching a message of rainbows and unicorns, he would not have been crucified. Time and again we see how his words challenge those he encounters, especially the rich and powerful ones.
Not only his words, but even his healing - When he heals and restores the man possessed by demons and chained to a cave in the Gerasenes, the villagers were frightened to see this once dangerous man healed and in his right mind, so terrified, in fact, that they ran Jesus out of town. Jesus had disrupted the status quo they’d worked so hard to preserve. Even Jesus’ healing was upsetting and frightening, bringing conflict instead of peace.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised by this morning’s passage. Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? Jesus asks.
…well, maybe it’s a little more complicated than we first assumed.
The meaning of peace in Greek comes from the word “to join together.” It’s when everything and everyone is fully connected, made whole, unified. Peace, properly understood, is what the Kingdom of God envisions – a world where all are invited to the table, nobody is hungry, isolated, or marginalized, justice flows down and creation rejoices.
The problem is what we settle for instead of real peace, the problem is what we mistake for peace in the world today. Like the false prophets Jeremiah warns us about who proclaim peace when there is no peace, we aim for merely an absence of conflict and name it peace. We settle for broken systems that depend upon the oppression of others, we protect the status quo, we avoid the can of worms that probably should be opened. We don’t want to stir the pot, so we settle for denial instead of peace.
Denial which allows the suffering of neighbors and creation to continue because to do anything else feels scary, messy, dangerous, divisive.
It’s like moving neighbors who are homeless out of the city and then proclaiming that we’ve solved homelessness. Or telling people struggling to get by that they just need to work harder - while refusing to even consider how our systems place obstacle after obstacle in their way. Or censoring books on our racist history so we can pretend it didn’t happen. Or continuing to consume and pollute for our comfort and convenience, while turning a blind eye to our catastrophic impact on creation.
All of this is denial. It’s not peace. And the kingdom of God intends to disturb it.
So of course, when Jesus comes preaching the Kingdom of God, we absolutely should expect that getting there would be messy. The proud don’t get scattered and the rich don’t get sent away without some conflict. The powerful don’t get pulled down from their thrones without division. Mary’s song sounds dangerous now, doesn’t it? The road to real peace begins by challenging the fake peace we’ve settled for and I think we all understand how that might bring division.
The writer and theologian Debie Thomas in her commentary on this passage, describes the kind of peace Jesus intends. She writes:
His is a holistic, truth-telling, disinfecting peace. The kind of deep, life-changing peace that doesn’t hesitate to break in order to mend, and cut in order to heal. Jesus will name realities we don’t want named. He will upset hierarchies we’d rather keep intact. He will expose the lies we tell ourselves out of cowardice, laziness, or obstinacy. And he will disrupt all dynamics in our relationships with ourselves and with each other that keep us from wholeness and holiness. This is not because Jesus wants us to suffer. It's because he knows that real peace is worth fighting for.
Jesus intends to disturb the fake peace we’ve settled for, to name what we want to avoid, to dismantle exploitative power structures. All of this is probably why he starts this passage saying he’s come to bring fire to the earth – a purifying fire, the kind of fire that burns away impurities and allows for the new growth of God’s Kingdom - fire that intends to prepare the way for true and lasting peace.
But as you know, we need to be very careful when playing with fire.
In chapter 9 of Luke’s Gospel, James and John were offended at the lack of welcome they received in a Samaritan village and they ask Jesus if they could call fire down from heaven to consume the people. Of course Jesus rebukes them – the fire they want is for the purpose of revenge and destruction. The fire Jesus talks about is for the ultimate purpose of peace.
Our passage this morning is dangerous because too often it has been handled with the very same human intentions of James and John – for the purpose of destruction rather than peace. It has been used, among many things, to justify the exclusion of LGBTQ family members, the justification for war, the mistreatment of those from other religious backgrounds.
In the wrong hands, these words of Jesus can become a destructive weapon. They can be used to justify exclusion and violence, to put a stamp of approval on hate and sectarianism, and so we must handle these words carefully and within the entire context of Jesus’ message and example of welcoming the stranger and loving the enemy. Remembering that as with James and John, it is not our role to call fire down from heaven.
We must also read this passage in the context of Luke’s Gospel, and at this point, one of Luke’s main themes is the need to pay attention – to pay attention to the time we’re living in – to read the time as we read the weather, to look for signs of God’s kingdom breaking in and to live accordingly.
This passage invites us not to seek conflict and division and fire from heaven, but it invites us to keep our eyes open and our lamps lit, training our vision to notice the fake peace we’ve all settled for and the ways Jesus intends to shake things up on the messy road to the true peace of God’s Kingdom.
May it be so, in the name of Jesus Christ – the disturber of fake peace. Amen.