August 14-15, 2010
12th Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 12:49-56
Salem Lutheran Church
Now to be sure, this has to be one of our least favorite pictures of Jesus before us now, don't you think? He seems to come in with all kinds of anger that he's setting loose on those who have gathered to listen to him. I mean, it could well be that he speaks these words in a gentle whisper, and yet the tearing violence they hold threatens much of what we hold dear. So it feels more like shouting… and yet. These are spoken into a world every bit as broken as the one you and I live in. These are spoken into ears like yours and mine which have real, life-altering choices to make before we're through. These are spoken out of a profound sense of the sometimes difficult consequences of following Jesus. For as he says right up front, "I have a baptism with which to be baptized." A baptism which involves sacrifice and suffering and death. And if this was so for Jesus, mustn't this also be so for those who follow him?
Even knowing all of this, I find it's hard to feel good about hearing these words of Jesus. Until I pause to listen to the stories of God's people who have lived them. Let me offer you one of those.
Tammy was a member of a congregation I served some time ago. This story took place in the late 50's or early 60's…when she was 9 years old. That was when, for reasons she could not and cannot explain, God started awakening faith in her. And it could only have been God for she came from one of those terribly broken places where nobody important in her life would bother with matters such as a life of faith.
This is how it was. Tammy started going to church. She would sneak out of her house on Sunday morning and would walk alone to worship. Too young to have doctrine make any difference at all, she would visit churches of all kinds on her Sunday morning expeditions. Assembly of God, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and yes, Lutheran, were all included. She would walk right in and find a place to sit. She would watch and listen closely and at first timidly and then more boldly she would sing the hymns and stand and kneel and listen and pray in different fashions week after week. Tammy did finally settle on a Lutheran church though. Maybe that's because of what happened after one of their services on one of those Sunday mornings.
Tammy was heading out the front door after shaking hands with the pastor. And she was met by her mother on the expansive green lawn of the church. And there, in front of the pastor and church members, her mother beat her. For her disobedience, to be sure, for sneaking out of the house. But it was something more, at least in terms of how Tammy remembered it. Her mother expressed a violent opposition to the faith that had taken hold of her little girl and was starting to shape her life.
Well, you might think that would have put an end to Tammy's Sunday morning expeditions, but it did not. The next Sunday morning while her mother was still asleep, Tammy showed up again at worship at that Lutheran church ---- just as the 10:30 church bells rang --- and she slipped into a back pew. And that Sunday, and every Sunday after that, after worship, her pastor snuck her out the back door.
"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."
Jesus' words simply affirm what a member of one of our congregations experienced when she was only nine years old. This faith we claim and that claims us has real consequences. Lived into, it may well put us at odds with the people we know to be closest to us in our lives. Indeed, what Jesus describes for us today are inevitable consequences in a broken world where not everyone has heard the voice of Jesus in the same way that you and I have. For everything we are called to be and do in this place and among the people here runs counter to what the world would have us do. Where the world would have us hoard or only spend on ourselves, our faith would tell us to share it. Where the world would tell us getting even is what matters, following Jesus would say that forgiveness is always essential. Where the world would say that the earth's resources are ours to be consumed, our faith would tell us that we are called to care for and tend this wonderful earth, not simply use it up and throw it away.
Now even those few examples have real consequences in terms of how we live our lives day to day. And they may well put us at odds with those who are dearest to us. Hopefully never in the way a former 9 year old experienced at the hands of one of the people in this world who was called to love her first and foremost. But that happens, too. And when it does, the promise of Christ's powerful love rests on us most profoundly then. That love which pulls us into and makes us part of another family, this family of Christ's church, which can give us belonging and hope and purpose: those precious gifts we need to live and be all that God has called us to be.
No, the voice of Jesus does not fall gently on our ears today. But even so, this is surely good news for those who have lived it. For we know then that we're on a journey with Jesus who has already been there. And at the end of, and often in the middle of, this life of faith we will experience God's amazing gifts over and over again. And if we haven't known that kind of division resulting from the choices we're making: if not with family, then with friends or coworkers or neighbors, then perhaps we need to look again at how we're called to follow Jesus. And to do so in new ways. Oh, to be sure, it's likely that one day that time will come when our faith will cause us to break in some way from someone somewhere. Then may these words of Jesus fall as blessing on us, too. Amen.